Page 44 of The Flame Game

I nuzzled his chest before using his shoulder as a headrest. “Think they get bail?”

My husband wrapped his arms around my neck and held me. “I don’t know. Are you all right?”

“Fine! Got tast-ee treat, smoosh their car with my not-fat ass. Gave cops coffee. Their Ther-mos now. I make more cof-fee in new Ther-mos!”

“The pair was across the street?”

“Yes. Can walk across street by self. I talk with them, give cof-fee. Then par-rents come. I stop them. Did not want to lose to car. Lost to trans-port once. That hurt, no do that again. Fell off car when stop, but no hurt me. Did not burn car.”

“You did great, Bailey. Not quite to regulation, but we’re allowed to use force to stop a vehicle in situations like this, and you did so with no damage to anything other than their vehicle. I don’t even think you damaged the road.”

“Leave some holes in asphalt. I blow fire for fixer people and help ree-pair in spring. It cold. Open door, puh-lease? Keys inside. I ride sunbeam through window to say hello to cops. No sunbeams in house. I go change. Talk hard.”

Quinn kissed my nose before letting me into the house and giving my rump a slap. “Go enjoy your fire and catch a snooze. I’ll be a while sorting this mess out. Since you went through the trouble of lighting it, go enjoy it.”

I had the best husband. “I love Queeny.”

He smiled at me.

Naps by the fireplace were the best, especially when my sneaky husband lit a proper fire and cranked the temperature in the house so I wouldn’t get cold. By the time the cops finished with him, the sun had set. I woke to Quinn running the brush over my coat while talking to someone on the phone.

“He asked her to call you, but she’s sleeping in front of the fireplace. Cold weather isn’t great for cindercorns, and we had some excitement earlier. No, no. Everybody is fine, so please don’t worry. Ra wanted her to tell you that he wanted to see you in the morning while the moon was still up. As soon as Bailey gets up, we’re going to resume our vacation. All right, I’ll let her know, and I’ll try to have her call you tomorrow night.”

My mother. Ra had put her number into our phones, but I’d figured out early on the phones only worked when they were active. I hadn’t quite figured out the specifics. Magic worked in mysterious ways, and I’d learned not to think too hard about some of the odder impossibilities—like why I couldn’t call my father when the sun shone brightly on the other side of the world.

Before I could notify Quinn I was awake, he hung up, and then he smacked my rump with the brush. “Up, my beautiful. I need coffee, and your machine refuses to give me good coffee. It laughs at me.”

I whinnied a laugh, rolled, and scrambled to my hooves. “Mother okay?”

“Ah, caught part of that conversation, did you?”

“Some.”

“She’s fine. I opted against notifying either of your parents about the incident with the assholes. The last thing our house needs is an angry divine coming over and raining hell on a pair of assholes.”

No kidding. “Go change, make coffee,” I promised.

“While you were sleeping, I printed out all of the old banking information I had on Audrey’s accounts.”

“You have her bank info?”

“She had me go over her accounting work because she’s hopeless with money, so she dumped all of her transactions into a spreadsheet for me. I never deleted it. Technically, because she never asked me to delete the files, it’s legal for me to have. Even after our divorce, I helped her with her paperwork. She wasn’t exactly a bad woman.”

“She just not stay loyal.”

“Right.”

“You ruined me for other men. Tragedy.” I shook off and stretched. “Go change now. Then coffee. Then we run away in rented SUV. No more assholes try to light things on fire?”

“We have a pair of cops parked in our driveway to discourage anyone from trying anything stupid. Oh, that reminds me. I saw Valorie flirting with the cops. In our driveway.”

“Do we have older, single hot cops?”

“Bailey, we’re not playing matchmaker for our neighbor.”

“Why not? Else your uncle may get her.”

“Maybe we’ll play matchmaker for our neighbor, although it depends which devil he has in mind for her.”