The Flame Game (Magical Romantic Comedies #12) - R.J. Blain Page 0,76
Bad Audrey.”
“Do you need therapy, Bailey?”
I flicked an ear. “Therapy in bed?”
My husband sighed. “I meant actual therapy.”
“But why would you do that to some poor therapist? What therapist do to you? Would need army of therapists to fix me. Don’t need. Could use bed therapy?”
“And you call me insatiable.”
“Is your fault. You good and warm and nice and stuff.” I bobbed my head and gave myself another shake. “Much stuff.”
“Is that all I am to you? Good, warm, nice, and stuff?”
“Yes.” I whinnied my laughter and trotted after Alan. “Check our babies.”
My husband obediently headed for the SUV to check on our pets while I followed after the FBI-CDC liaison, who talked to several people in protective gear at his van. “Do meter reset before testing for this dust. It is hard to scan, use clean meter. Set highest set-ting. It high potency, but odd. We think high infection rate but weak actual potency. But it shows high potency on meter.” I pricked my ears forward at my tongue’s cooperation. “Sorry for talk strange. It hard. My Sam better, but he shy.”
“Yes, we were made aware he can shapeshift to be a cindercorn for your amusement due to his incubus genes, although he is not one whereas you are.”
“I weird. Good par-rents make me cindercorn, but I cindercorn because an-cess-tor also cindercorn! Comp-lee-cay-ted.”
“According to your file, you’re complicated.”
I whinnied. “True! Ask hus-band. He con-firm. I comp-lee-cay-ted. If you worried about dust, I carry meter by strap and check.”
“Actually, I’ll take you up on that. This model of scanner can create a map of the zone you scan, and you can just walk with it, and it will record the area around you. It will have a ten foot range, and it’s smart enough to be able to handle overlapping zones, so you can just take a walk and get a full scan.”
“It dee-tect statues?”
“Yes, it will pick up the magic on the statues.”
“I walk while you do tech stuff. Will take time, explore whole garden.”
Within a few minutes, Alan set up the scanner. Rather than make me carry the meter in my mouth, he strapped it around my neck. “Ignore any beeps and alarms and keep walking. It’s designed to keep you from stepping in dust, but as you’re immune, should you be contaminated, we’ll fill up a bucket of napalm for you and have you go on a run and burn it off. If you’re producing blue flames without napalm, you won’t have any trouble decontaminating with a little of your favorite barred substance.”
“I go find dust! I no roll in dust, but I find it so I get nay-palm.”
“Am often right, but I sad I right. Dust bad. No burn statues more. Crystal coffin if needed, but no burn statues more.”
“We’ll do our best for the victims,” Alan promised.
According to the meter, the building was a gorgon dust nightmare, and it would be flooded with napalm, lit on fire, and reduced to ash before the sun set. As the only being capable of going into the building without facing some sort of mishap or another, I was volunteered to handle the search.
The pesky CDC reps wanted to know what was inside the building before they restored the humans to flesh.
Muttering curses that made my husband laugh, I trudged into the structure armed with multiple cameras, several of which were tied to me, including a pair around my barrel. I wanted to gnaw through the straps and rid myself of them, especially as they’d been secured tight enough to keep the cameras from shifting. The cameras amused me, as they were attached to stabilizing arms to make certain those outside got a full view of the building before I destroyed it.
I made it all of ten feet inside before I found the first gorgon corpse, likely a female judging from the earrings beside her grayed, decaying body. According to the meter around my neck, she was a source of at least one dust contamination. “Ew. She all rotted.”
Rigging a headset to a unicorn took some work, but they’d sent me inside with one, and Quinn sighed. “That’s dust decay—not quite the same as the dust we’re worried about. While it can cause petrification, the probability of it causing an infection is nil. Rather than putrefaction, gorgons erode down to a dust-like state following death.”