the garden before skidding to a halt near my husband and blowing as much flame as possible at the pouch. Blue fire burst from my nose and engulfed the pouch, which vanished in a flash of white before the blue overtook it and eradicated the pouch and reduced its contents to a fine powder. “Pow-der!” I pranced in place and snorted more blue flame. “All gone, now ash.”
“I’ll shift and bring Sunny to see if she can detect any dust,” my husband said before trotting off in the direction of the SUV.
I snorted more flame at the smear in the smoking ground. “Dust no like blue flame!”
“Better safe than sorry,” my husband retorted.
I pawed at the ground before eyeing Kendra’s statue. “You make shit choice in friend. Audrey no good. Me introduce you to nice people, you do better next time. Me better friend than Audrey.”
The statue didn’t reply, and already bored waiting for Quinn to return, I rolled on the ground and kicked my hooves. When that didn’t help alleviate my boredom, I played in the snow to learn if cindercorns could build snowmen.
To my dismay, hooves did not work well for packing snow into vaguely ball-shaped objects, although I could make ice statues using little snorts of fire on the piles of snow I made and carving it with my claws. By the time my husband returned, in his human form, I’d crafted a small ice sculpture of a cindercorn.
Well, if I tilted my head to the side and squinted, my artwork almost resembled a unicorn of some sort.
“What are you doing?” my husband asked, keeping a firm hold on Sunny’s leash.
“Bored, bored, bored,” I complained, shoving more snow into a pile so I could try to carve another ice sculpture. I snorted little flame, waiting for it to partially melt and freeze over before layering on more snow. “Sunny no bark!”
My puppy sat and regarded me with one ear flicked forward.
Damn. Even my puppy recognized I was more than a little crazy.
“That’s a good thing. Apparently, pregnant cindercorns are rivals of phoenixes for heat and flame generation. I’m not going to allow them to study this, for the record.”
“Left no dust for them to study.” I snorted, checking to make sure my flames no longer glowed blue before resuming my work checking the statutes. I discovered no more pouches, and I took care to be gentle with burning away the clothes covering them. “No be per-vert. Go to car and not look at pretty women not me. Cuddle pets. Make CDC bring me pink pow-der.”
“I think everything will be okay. Come on, Sunny, before Bailey gets jealous enough she bites chunks out of me. I’ll see if I can get an identification on any of the other victims and look into Kendra’s case, assuming there is one.”
“Good luck. Enjoy in-ter-ro-gay-shun later. Ex-wife stupid.”
“That she was. Be careful. If you want to roll around in any other snowbanks, do so near the SUV, please.”
“I check statues, do more flame to make sure extra safe. You stay out of dust, Queeny!”
“I’ll be careful,” he promised.
Twelve
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