The Flame Game (Magical Romantic Comedies #12) - R.J. Blain Page 0,58
my uncle seems to be the one obsessed with unicorns, so I’ll start with him.”
“Do you think it’ll be safe for our puppies and our most vicious huntress to come with us?”
“Sunny will be fine, and we’ll be careful with Blizzard and Avalanche. I’d really rather Sunny come with us, and I’d rather not separate her from Blizzard—and Avalanche whines if Blizzard leaves her.”
“But what about our babies? They’re with our babies.”
“Beauty and Sylvester will understand. They’re already unusual. Gorgon whelps usually aren’t allowed to have any pets until they’re at least twelve. It’s too much of a risk to the animals. I’ll just tell them the pets need to be trained. Gorgon whelps understand training, so they won’t think twice about it. Training our pets isn’t punishing them, and they know this.”
“They’re so different from human children, aren’t they?”
“In a way, but it’s necessary. Don’t feel badly about it, Bailey. We’re protecting our children this way.”
I scowled but nodded. “We are. And this whole rabies thing has hurt our family enough.”
“That’s right. And if we can sink Morrison with his involvement in the rabies outbreak, we’ll nail him on multiple murder charges.”
“If Morrison runs from bail, do you think they’ll tell us?” I asked, allowing my insecurities to come out, so I wouldn’t bottle it up and have it explode out later.
Time—and Quinn—had changed me.
For the most part, I loved the woman I’d become since tumbling into his life.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “With my heritage and tendencies, they—mostly meaning Commissioner Dowry—will believe I’ll do anything necessary to protect you, which is correct. I will. You’ve already demonstrated you’ll do whatever is necessary to protect me. By neglecting to tell us, they stop us from pursuing the matter personally.”
“Except we are. Pursuing the matter personally, that is.”
“We are, but we are doing so in a questionably acceptable fashion. We are using only resources publicly available or already have in our possession. We’ll have to avoid looking at the facial recognition results to make that stick, but since it hadn’t processed when we last looked at it, we can get away with a technicality on that score. The CDC rabies resources will look innocent enough. I mean, there’s no reason to think Audrey was involved with that.”
“Was she rabid?”
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.”