Page 51 of The Flame Game

Quinn sighed. “Yes, she was. Her hive sisters, too. She was likely infected at least a few weeks before she kidnapped you, too. The surrogate was also treated for rabies. The whelps are all fine, however. Fortunately, most diseases don’t transfer from surrogate to egg.”

“What happened to her? That poor woman.”

He smiled at me. “Her prince has a brother who was without a bride. Last I heard, he introduced himself to her, claimed her whelps as his own, and has been coaxing her into taking her rightful place as their mother. She’ll be fine. Last I heard, she wants to meet you, as you were the one who helped save the eggs and keep them warm until they could be taken to my grandmother.”

“That’s good. So, if Audrey was involved with both the gorgon dust production and rabies, how is she connected to the incident at 120 Wall Street? What was the real purpose of that incident?”

“That’s a very good question, and it’s one we’re going to have to find the answer to, I think. Initially, I thought it was a distraction from another incident, a raid on one of the CDC warehouses.”

“For what? Which warehouse?”

“High-grade neutralizer.”

I cringed. “That stuff isn’t cheap.”

“No, it’s really not. And it was a large enough operation that it needed a big distraction.”

“120 Wall Street was a pretty big distraction, yes.” Quinn picked up a piece of his bacon and held it up. “This is 120 Wall Street. Using gorgon dust would have made every police chief in the area converge on the site. If everything had gone to their plan, making some assumptions about their plan, it would have severely crippled a majority of the NYPD, who showed up to help with crowd containment and to resolve the bomb threat. By disguising the dust as bile, if it hadn’t been for you and your recognition of how it differed from actual bile, things would have played out a lot differently.”

“Manhattan would have become a city of stone.”

“And the high-grade neutralizer capable of possibly reversing some of the damage would have been unavailable, as it had either been stolen or destroyed during the warehouse raid.”

I faked my saddest sigh. “I ruined all of their plans. How utterly tragic.”

“Such tragedy,” he agreed with a grin. “Not only did you ruin their plans, you thoroughly crushed them beneath your hooves while you were high on napalm.”

“That hangover was so bad, Quinn. So bad. Is that orange drink you gave me magic?”

“Only in part. Once I realized you were as interested in me as I was in you, I helped make you forget all about the hangover while the medication did its work. I rather heavily influenced you.”

“Oh, look. More tragedy. I got influenced by my gorgon-incubus doohickey. Not only are you the best husband, you are the best hangover cure.” As he insisted on holding his bacon up where I could snatch it out of his hand with my teeth, I did so. Once out of his hold, I went to work making it disappear into my stomach where it belonged. “Meat-eating unicorns require a lot of bacon in the mornings.”

“I have noticed we go through a pound of bacon a day in the morning for some reason. I think my favorite time was when you went downstairs one night while a unicorn to steal a package of bacon. You cooked it on the porch by snorting on it.”

“Desperate times, desperate measures. My bacon provider was sleeping on the job.”

“It was three in the morning. Why did you change into a unicorn then, anyway?”

“I got itchy.”

“Itchy?”

“Yeah. Itchy. Transforming stops the itch. It takes a few weeks without transforming for the itch to start up. I got itchy, and after I popped a pill, I got hungry, so I stole some bacon and helped myself.” I giggled at the memory. We hadn’t been married all that long, and I’d still felt like an intruder in our home. “I’ve gotten better. I check to see if you’re actually asleep before raiding the fridge now.”

“You don’t have to check if I’m awake if you want a snack, Bailey.”

“But if you’re awake, you’re part of my snack.” Well aware my remark would rile my husband up and make him hungry for more than breakfast, I took my laptop and sat on the bed so he could finish eating without falling prey to me and my wicked ways. “Once we’re back, you’ll have to suggest that someone go through Audrey’s financials from after her marriage with you, up until her death. That might help us pin down her involvement with 120 Wall Street. Also, I really hope they don’t build another concrete cake. That building always pissed me off. It’s not edible.”

“You thought of 120 Wall Street as a concrete cake?”

“It’s the tiered top. It reminded me of a damned wedding cake each and every time I saw it. Then I’d get hungry, and that’d piss me off even more because I could barely afford to make ends meet, and there was no room in my budget for cake.”

“I see I’m going to have to learn how to bake cakes for you.”

Some women wanted roses and diamonds. I got the roses, but instead of the diamonds, I’d gotten a man willing to learn how to do new things for my sake.

No one had told me love could hurt so much as a child.