Page 29 of The Flame Game

“You could afford lunch dates before, Mrs. Millionaire.”

Right. Outside of buying an excessive number of coffee machines for the station, I had barely touched the money I’d received as my danger pay for leveling 120 Wall Street so the gorgon dust infecting the building couldn’t spread. “I guess I can, can’t I?”

“You’re brilliant with budgeting, Bailey, but you can afford to come to lunch with me. And trust me when I say this: you’ll be grateful to escape for even half an hour on a bad day. Our job isn’t easy, and I doubt it’s going to get easier. It’ll be good for us, because we’ll be working together. It’ll be hard, but it’ll be good.”

Things worth doing were often difficult. “What else should I put into my bag if lunch doesn’t need to go into it?”

“Your laptop will fit, as will your phone. I might have to get one for myself, honestly. It looks really convenient for when we’re sporting four hooves and a fur coat.”

“We’ll test drive the bag looking into this gorgon and rabies problem. Did you get a bag or something?”

“I have a manly messenger bag which is also immune to fire-breathing unicorns, but I don’t know if the strap is big enough to get around my neck when I’m a cindercorn.”

“Show me!”

Like my bag, which was designed to accommodate me while a cindercorn, Quinn’s was black and fireproofed to survive my wicked ways. His was a little wider and lacked the third strap meant to keep it snug to my body and prevent the bag from getting in the way of my legs. “Mine isn’t quite as elaborate as yours.”

“We can add a third strap to yours, and it’ll be fine. My third strap can be removed, too. All we’d need to do is add a clip to secure it to your saddle if it’s not being worn around your neck. Honestly, the strap should be fine as long as it’s snug enough on your neck so the bag can’t bang into your legs. The handles on both look sturdy enough we can carry them in our mouths if needed. We’re nose breathers, so it’s not like we need to open our mouths when we run. We’ll fiddle with it until it works.”

“Mine will definitely fit gloves, bags and any other tools we’ll need if we find anything that might count as evidence. We’re going to have to work on your evidence handling skills, Mrs. Cindercorn.”

“It’s not my fault the bomb squad hadn’t swept better. If they hadn’t left a bomb up there, I wouldn’t have played around with the evidence. Or pulled the wires. Or decontaminated the exterior. Basically, don’t do anything I did with that bomb, and I’ll be mostly okay.”

“Sadly, you’re right.”

I stuck my tongue out at him before resuming my exploration of my bag, stuffing both of my laptops inside because I could. “This is nice!”

“Before we leave, we can go make use of your gift cards, too. One of the group gifts should have enough for a new leather coat if you want one.”

I sucked in a breath, as leather coats fell into the domain of wishful thinking unless Quinn showed up with one and tricked me into wearing it. “For me? But it’s your card, too!”

“As my cops know what style of leather coat I like, they bought the coat. You watched me look it over for ten minutes, remember?”

Oops. “I was busy looking at you and not your coat,” I confessed.

“Obviously, I’ll have to attend to your special needs after we go shopping for a new coat for you. Get dressed, grab your new bag, and we’ll do just that. Leave your laptops here, as we’re going out to play and not work, but you should check to see if the image recognition request you put in on that photo has processed yet. It probably hasn’t, but there is a chance it’s done.”

I obeyed, checking on the photo I’d taken during the demonstration. “It’s marked as eighty percent complete.”

“Give it another few hours and it should be good. There were a lot of people in the picture. Fortunately, it’s an automated process, but it takes time to run everything. The software will even separate out all of the faces so we can see who might be who—and if there are multiple matches, we’ll get a list. It really helps streamline some elements of investigation.”

“That is so cool.”

“Wait until you have to put in for fingerprints or a DNA analysis. Things get far less cool, and sometimes, it can take days for the database to churn through everything and get results. The good scanners are outside of our budget.”

“That’s a pity.”

“It really is. Go get dressed, and I’ll see about making arrangements for getting us home in a hurry. I’m sure I can cut a deal with my uncle.”

“No deals.”

“Bailey, we can’t just demand everything from him without giving something back.”

“He can have nice Easter and Christmas presents. No deals!”

“Bailey.”

“Unless the deal fully benefits us while sending us home, no deals.”