Page 61 of The Flame Game

“I never thought I’d say working with bombs seemed a lot easier than this.” I dug in the back for my holster, strapped it around my waist, and stowed my Glock before arming myself with my phone. “Whose bright idea was it to make me a cop again?”

“Personally, I’m grateful Clemmends had it out for you and wanted to dump you with the NYPD. You have far superior co-workers now.”

That I did. “What a dick. You should have let me light him on fire and shove our marriage license down his throat, though.”

My husband chuckled while he made his own preparations, which included arming himself and zippering up his new bulletproof jacket rather than show off his resilience against the cold. I pouted over his ability to tolerate snow and the brisk wind better than I could, regretting I hadn’t gotten a scarf, gloves, and the little things that helped make the outdoors during the winter almost bearable.

Within twenty minutes, I’d freeze my ass off, and I deserved to be mocked for my failure to plan accordingly. “Hey, Quinn?”

“What is it?”

“I need scarves and mittens and gloves and a cute little hat to keep my ears warm, assuming I survive this. Winter is bad for cindercorns. There’s no fire. No fire anywhere. I’m going to turn into a block of ice before the team gets here.”

“Check the back of the SUV in my black leather bag. I anticipated your special needs.”

Huh. I really did have the best husband. I checked the back, and sure enough, there were several pairs of black leather gloves that would fit me, several scarves, and a winter hat meant to keep my poor ears warm. I bundled up, muttering over how phones were evil and I’d have to wear the pair without fingertips in order to take the needed pictures. “We need an actual camera, one that doesn’t need me to touch a screen to operate.”

“Normally, we have one as part of our work kit, but we’ll get one of our own just in case. Until the team arrives, you’ll survive using your phone.”

“But will I?”

“You better.”

The gorgon was the only victim I believed to be dead, but I struggled to comprehend how seventy-three women had been left as statues for so long. Fortunately, none of the statues seemed weathered, which offered some hope they would survive being returned to flesh. While I took pictures, Quinn handled running the facial recognition software while keeping Blizzard and Avalanche company in the SUV.

When I finished documenting everything I could, I returned to the vehicle to watch him.

“Have I told you today you’re beautiful and smart?”

“Not sure,” I replied. “I could probably handle being told again. I haven’t had time to recruit the entirety of a mental health department to resolve my self-esteem problems.”

He snorted. “You’re smart and beautiful. I wouldn’t have thought to go this far back in Audrey’s records despite having them, and I probably wouldn’t have thought to come to some little bed and breakfast, as I would have assumed it was just yet another location of one of her trysts.”

“It looks like a lot more than that. What have you found so far?”

“A lot of missing women, the newest of which is six years ago, so they’ve been here a while. The oldest is from eleven years ago.”

“Long before you married Audrey.”

“Bingo. The real question is how do these women connect to Audrey or Morrison? If they connect to them. They might not. However, considering Audrey became a gorgon and killed her brother when he refused to go through the process, I’m starting to think this is far more than a mere coincidence.”

“Audrey had weak snakes, too. Like Michella.”

“And she was just as impotent, so that tells me that the batch of dust, while registering as high potency to the scanners, didn’t have sufficient magic to create strong gorgons. Perhaps it’s got a higher infection rate?”

“Easy to infect, hard to destroy.” I wrinkled my nose. “Which supports my general decision to torch 120 Wall Street. I really thought Yale would kill me for that stunt if the CDC didn’t get me first. In other news, that hangover really sucked.”

My husband shot me a glare, which promised retribution in some form or another. As his favored form of retribution involved trying to convince me I had value, I expected to enjoy every minute of it. “Without your napalm order, a huge number of weak gorgons may have been created, and they would have become easy targets for gorgon trafficking—and they would have become excellent pets for the wealthy. They would have fetched a high price on the black market.”

“They wouldn’t have been able to defend themselves.” I regarded the nearby statues with a frown. “How many of these women do you think were infected?”

“None of them. They would have reversed their petrification on their own if they’d become infected. Whoever did this probably dosed them with pixie dust to make them cooperative, had them pose, and then exposed them to the gorgon dust to see if they would become infected. Infection rates are typically low. But, considering there were at least two infections from this batch of dust, it’s not the normal one-in-a-thousand rate.”

“But why kill the gorgon they had? Do you think that one was infected, too?”

“No, she’s probably a natural gorgon. Gorgon males are usually the ones killed and used to create the dust, so she would have been killed for sport or to force the male to cooperate. The females can get quite vicious trying to defend their hive, and she wouldn’t have been useful to the dust producers.” My husband shook his head, checking something on his laptop. “Honestly, I’m impressed we have reception at all out here. I’m not getting any hits on the gorgon, so chances are the entire hive was wiped out. The hive was probably small, with one male, two or three females, and no whelps. Hives with whelps tend to be poor targets for schemes like this because the male will fight to the death along with the females, and they want the males alive.”

“But they just need the bodies for dust production, right?”