Page 78 of Playing with Fire

I hoped it was work he actually needed to do. Under the influence of A+ pixie dust, he’d enjoy doing anything anyone threw his way. At least it wouldn’t compromise his ability to realize someone was giving him an order he shouldn’t comply with. It would impair his base ability to refuse requests, but it wouldn’t force him to act against his nature.

If angels had necks, I would have wrung Sylvester’s with my hands and enjoyed every minute of it. Immortals wouldn’t die from a mere strangulation. I could indulge for hours without any harm done. I’d enjoy it.

On the eighth floor, Quinn’s cops gaped at us while I herded my trio of miscreants to their desks and locked my new husband in his office. Turning and pressing my back to the door, I glared at the cops. “Get. Me. Neutralizer.”

Everyone stared at me in dead silence, doing a fair imitation of statues. Great. They probably thought I had lost my mind.

“Three choices: I kill you all, I swear never to make any of you a single cup of coffee as long as I live, or you get me neutralizer right now.”

My threats needed work. People weren’t supposed to laugh when I issued them. I sighed. “Please.”

Amanda stepped away from her desk, grinning so wide her face had to hurt. “How much do you need?”

“A spoonful in a cup of coffee each should work. Make it an espresso.”

The woman laughed. “We don’t know how to use the machine.”

Screaming my frustration, I pointed at the nearest cop, one of the younger men. “You. Do not let Chief Quinn out of his office.” I picked two other victims and pointed at them in turn. “Keep those other two at their desks. Pretend they’re little kids. Give them candy or something.”

The three saluted, and my first volunteer replied, “Yes, ma’am!”

In retrospect, giving the cops a good coffee machine without teaching them how to use it classified as cruel and unusual punishment. I could kill multiple birds with a single stone. “All right. The rest of you, fall in. Time to learn how to make coffee.”

A few whoops answered me, and with a herd of eager cops in tow, I descended on their new machine. Suzy sat on the counter with a half-filled pot. I hissed at it.

Suzy’s time would end soon enough—after I restored Quinn, Perky, and Nilman to sanity.

“Pay attention, but I’ll be here to teach you how the whole thing works after I sober the three idiots up.”

The break room couldn’t fit everyone, although they made a valiant effort to cram as many bodies into the space as possible. Armed with three espressos spiked with neutralizer, I delivered them to my intended targets. It didn’t take much to convince them to drink. Within five minutes, the neutralizer would do its job and counter the worst of their pixie-dust high. I turned to the rest of the cops. “Chief Quinn never gets A or higher grade pixie dust again. Ever.”

I’d think long and hard about using a tiny bit of the dust stashed in my bra in the safety of his home with neutralizer on hand. If I gave him a hit of the truly good stuff, I could make sure no one learned of it.

When I was certain they drank down every last drop of their coffee, I turned to their volunteered babysitters. “Watch them until they stop giggling.”

In a way, I envied the high threesome. Why couldn’t I benefit from a small hit of instant joy? I sighed and headed back to the break room. “Just this once, I will make you all a cup of coffee, but in exchange, you need to teach everyone else in the building how to use the machine.”

My plan to spread the love of coffee would have worked a lot better if someone hadn’t opened their big mouth and spread the word I was on the eighth floor teaching people how to get a good fix of java.

Since pixie dust didn’t come bundled with a low, ten minutes after I got the espresso into them, Quinn, Perky, and Nilman went to work as though nothing had happened, still in a good mood, but otherwise oblivious to their high. While tired, they dove into their jobs with the same cheerful determination as someone dosed with a mild hit of C-grade dust.

It would do.

Five hours of dealing with an endless stream of cops eager to have a good cup of coffee convinced me I definitely never wanted to work as a barista ever again. As soon as the tides shifted and the cops no longer needed my help to play with the coffee machine, I headed for Quinn’s office. It took another twenty minutes of waiting before he got off the phone. I let myself into his office. “Do you still have the room at the Plaza?”

“Indeed we do. I decided to reserve it for a week before we left for Virginia.”

I came to a decision, and it involved the vial hiding in my cleavage. “I dealt with six hours of listening to you sing about beer on a wall and wheels on a bus. You owe me, Quinn.”

A sly smile creased my husband’s lips. “Okay. I’ll ask someone to drive us to the hotel.”

“I need a favor.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to need a vial of neutralizer.” When I dosed him with the good pixie dust, I needed to get him down from the high after I finished making him the happiest of men.

“All right. What quality?”