The Flame Game (Magical Romantic Comedies #12) - R.J. Blain Page 0,71
have requested napalm.”
“They’re bringing a few cups for you. They’ll have you purify the statues with flame before we use neutralizer on them. You’ll torch the entire exterior, and then we’ll do an investigation of the interior. They’re going to dome the building so you don’t light it on fire, and they’ll do a secondary dome around the garden so you can be a happy little pyromaniac. Hopefully, you can neutralize this batch of dust without harming the victims.”
I had my doubt on how effective that would be, but I would do my best. “Should I shift now?”
“If you want. You can poke around while sporting your fur coat if you think you won’t get too cold. And if you do get too cold, I’ll enjoy warming you up tonight.”
“Can you warm me up tonight even if I don’t get cold?”
“That was my plan,” my husband admitted with a shameless grin.
“Gorgon-incubus doohickeys are not precisely complicated to care for, which is a good thing, as I’m not sure I could deal with a high maintenance man. I only have lower grade pills with me.”
“They’re bringing a supply of the high grade pills, so don’t worry about it this once. It’s not that you can’t take the lower grade transformatives, the higher grade ones are just better. But at this stage? You can get away with a lot—or so says my grandfathers. All of them.”
“Has anyone told you that you have too many grandfathers?”
“On occasion.”
“I have more grandfathers than you do, so I can’t really say anything. But we have too many grandfathers.”
“We really do. Try not to light anything on fire before the CDC arrives, but if you went inside and had a look while a unicorn, you shouldn’t do any harm. Just don’t step on anything that might be evidence.”
“You could ride me inside and tell me what’s evidence and what isn’t evidence.”
“I didn’t bring your saddle, Bailey.”
“You don’t need a saddle to ride me. You’re not going to hurt my back.”
“I was less worried about your back, truth be told. Your spine is more pronounced than a horse’s underneath all that fur, though I wonder if you being at a healthier weight has helped with that.”
Oh. I thought about that, and I winced at the thought of a sharp spine to the groin. “You’re right. You’re banned from riding bareback unless it’s an emergency. Should such an emergency occur, I will have to nurse you back to good health. We should check and decontaminate the statues first, anyway. If we have time, then we’ll investigate the building.”
“To be fair, I’m not really a fan of riding regular horses bareback, either. Saddles are useful things.”
“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” I reminded him.
“You’ll learn how to ride on a cindercorn, I’m afraid. I’m very jealous, and I don’t want my wife riding a horse when—”
I lunged across the vehicle and clapped my hands over my husband’s mouth. “We do not pervert my future horseback riding lessons with your gorgon-incubus doohickey naughtiness!”
My husband laughed and kissed my hands. When I released him, he said, “Okay, my beautiful. I will try to limit my jealousy and inquire with my uncle on how to shapeshift into a regular horse, too. Especially when you’re first learning, I’d feel a lot better if I’m playing at being a horse rather than put you on a school horse. Some of them have opinions.”
“If you say so.”
Without any other sources of fuel to work with, I ate an obscene amount of underbrush before running around the garden and bucking to elevate my body temperature enough so I could begin the tedious process of checking the victims for anything of use before burning the contaminated clothing off them and prepare them to be treated with neutralizer and returned to flesh. My husband joined me as a cindercorn after locking our pets in the SUV with the window cracked open and the engine running so they’d stay toasty warm while we flirted with dust contamination.
I suspected the dust had been exposed to weather for long enough Sunny had detected the residual scent, which in such low concentration wouldn’t be able to petrify most people.
“Pretty stallion,” I observed after having lit several statues on fire enough to destroy the contaminated fabric. “Remind me to thank uncle. He make you pretty stallion.”
“Well, I am part incubus, Bailey. The whole point is to be irresistibly attractive.”
“Ir-res-ist-i-bly attr-act-ive, all for me. Like this math. Other math suck.”