Page 65 of The Flame Game

That sad. Beating gorgon males fun.

The CDC arrived before I could investigate the decaying bed and breakfast. I sighed, staring at the convoy of vans, water tankers, and trucks destined to make a mess of my day. After ten such vehicles parked behind our rental, I opted to hide in the nearest snowbank, doing my best to burrow into the snow.

There was not enough snow on the ground for me to hide well, and I sighed at the unfairness of it all.

“Bailey, what are you doing?” my husband asked.

“Hiding.”

“I can see you.”

“Hiding,” I repeated, and as he could wear flame at his whim, I huffed in his general direction. My flames didn’t even come within a foot of him, which earned me a raised brow. “Hiding!”

“Bailey, you’re being ridiculous again.”

“Kick snow. Help hide.”

“I’m not burying you in snow, Bailey. The last thing I want is you getting sick because you decided to become one with your worst enemy.”

“Mean!”

“Chief Quinn?” an older man asked, approaching us. The suit stood out compared to the other sensible CDC folks, who wore protective gear.

My husband sighed and turned. “That’s us. We’ve already dealt with at least one source of gorgon dust, and we have burned the clothing on all of the statues to remove any remaining residue. We’re both immune to dust, but you will want to use a high sensitivity scanner to make certain we have destroyed all remaining sources. We have not gone into the building yet.”

“Excellent. I’m Alan, and I’m an FBI-CDC liaison. I see your wife has already made use of transformatives. We have a note to provide a higher grade? I only had a short briefing, but I was asked to request her assistance with any bile or dust removal.”

“Normally the lower grades are fine, but she’s pregnant, and the higher grade is better for her and the babies.”

“Babies is plural. Twins?”

“Twins. Shapeshifting is also good for them, and she’s to be rationed napalm, and her immunities need to be used so our children properly develop them as well.” My husband smiled, crouched beside me, and scratched under my chin. “It seems pregnant cindercorns appreciate snowbanks. Her internal body temperature seems higher than normal, too. She was snorting blue fire after a short run around the gardens so she could dispose of the dust. One of our dogs is trained to detect dust, and she couldn’t smell any when she was finished with the contamination.”

“Interesting. Would you consent to non-invasive testing? Honestly, we haven’t had any records of a cindercorn foaling in over a decade; the surviving cindercorns, outside of yourself, are very old and are no longer of breeding age as far as we can tell.”

Huh. I’d known the wilds were in trouble, but I hadn’t thought they’d been in that much trouble. “That sad.”

“I’m all right with non-invasive testing, but only if you reward her with a cup of napalm afterwards for good behavior.”

I had the best husband, and with a happy sigh, I rested my head on his foot. “Queeny best.”

Smiling at me, my husband patted my shoulder. “All right, my beautiful. We have to work for our supper, and the sooner we handle this, the sooner we get to our hotel for the night.”

“Why did you come here, anyway? This is pretty remote.”

“It’s somewhere my ex-wife liked, and I wanted to show it to Bailey. She’s often curious about my life before I met her. We weren’t expecting this at all. We have one positive identification on a victim, though. She used to be a friend of my ex-wife’s, although judging from the situation, that friendship has expired. I was unaware Kendra had gone missing. Audrey hadn’t mentioned anything. Here’s the bigger problem—”

Huh. My husband could lie with the best of them, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have believed him.

“Wait. Kendra Thames? The senator’s daughter? There was a note that she had a relationship with Audrey McGee, and that was in the files I was reading over on my way here.”

Well, that rabbit hole was a deep, dark place—and it worried me that the FBI or CDC had already begun investigating Audrey’s connection to others, like the poor woman stuck as a statue. As my big mouth would make a mess of things, I nosed at my melting snowbank, sighing over my general misfortune.

The one time snow didn’t bother me, my hot coat made it go away.

Quinn scratched me behind one of my ears, and I focused on enjoying his affection. “One and the same. Her statue is intact, and my wife has taken care of the base cleaning. Between the two of us, assuming the weather hasn’t done irrevocable damage to her statue, we should be able to restore her. I have the facial recognition software trying to identify the rest of the victims. There is a gorgon who was mortally wounded before petrification. There is a slim chance she was petrified before death, but it would take an intervention to save her if she’s still alive. We may want to deal with her first.”

I nipped Quinn’s ankle. “May-be alive?”