Page 97 of Playing with Fire

Damn it. The answer didn’t help at all; I’d be pissed off, too—I’d be alive, stink of gorgon, and want to kill whoever had dumped me in, but I’d be fine. Would Quinn? I needed to know. “After he’s been petrified?”

“You’d piss him off,” my grandfather-in-law repeated.

Grandfather Quinn needed to have his pretty snakes braided and tied off with pretty little bows. “Let me rephrase this: I’ve been terrified that if Quinn was exposed to dust, they would lock him in a glass coffin and bury him due to his magic rating. What would happen?”

Quinn sighed and banged his head into the wall a few more times.

“He wouldn’t be buried. First of all, the Quinn family wouldn’t allow it.”

With a low groan, Quinn bumped his head into the wall again. “I’m very cautious around dust and bile. Don’t worry, Bailey.”

“I torched a skyscraper for you!”

Ouch. Even to my ears, my voice turned painfully shrill.

Quinn turned to face me and sighed. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that was bothering you. There’s a reason I’m cautious around bile sites.”

If he could be reasonable, so could I. I wouldn’t yell nor would I shriek again. “Okay. Can you tell me this reason?”

With a soft clearing of his throat, Quinn’s grandfather shut the door to Chief Hollands’s office. “He is his father’s son, that’s why. While he’s technically human, he does have an exceptionally high magic rating.”

Quinn shook his head. “I’ll tell her.”

“Then do it.”

Quinn approached and sat beside me on the couch. He took hold of my hand and rubbed his thumb against my palm and traced my fingers. “It’s a matter of gorgon biology. In most circumstances, bile won’t petrify another gorgon. Their dust, on the other hand, can petrify many gorgons—most, in fact. Gorgon kings and their scions are only petrified by the dust created from a stronger gorgon.”

“So it’d be difficult to petrify a gorgon king—and princes, like you.”

“Right.”

I clacked my teeth together to bite back my growing irritation. “Did the pixie dust bring out your incubus tendencies?”

“Yes.”

I pointed at the whiteboards. “On the timeline, put when you remember coming to Mary’s shop for coffee and I served you. Does it line up?”

“Before we continue,” Chief Hollands lifted his hand and waited for silence. When he had it, he continued, “I’m not sure I understand why this is relevant, Mrs. Quinn.”

Oh, right. I was interrogating and filleting my own husband. Crap. “He’s a demon between the sheets without pixie dust. On it, he must be like a god. If they were only together when I was dosing him…”

The chief snapped his fingers. “Sex addict.”

Quinn groaned. “You’re really going to make me detail this, aren’t you?”

“It’s important information.” At the very least, I’d make sure I wasn’t messing up and driving him away. Of course, I had already pushed my luck with him as it was. “That, plus if I ever see the bitch again, I can tell her I don’t need any damned pixie dust to rile you up. Then I’ll shove her own snakes down her throat and punch her in the mouth until she swallows her teeth.”

With a soft laugh, he shook his head. “There you go running your mouth again. Should I fetch you a shovel so it’s easier to dig the hole you’re trying to bury yourself in?”

“Quinn!”

“All right, all right. I’ll detail my lackluster sexual exploits with my ex-wife. For the record, I think this is ridiculous.” Hopping to his feet, Quinn went to work, and to my surprise, he pulled out his phone to reference it.

“You note when you have sex?”

Crap. I clapped my hands over my blabbering mouth.

“No, I noted when I saw you, actually.”