Page 90 of The Flame Game

“She gets a huge tip when we leave. And whatever I think is huge probably isn’t, so we need to double whatever number I try to put in as a huge tip.” I giggled and ducked my head. “This might be a first.”

“It is part of my extensive campaign to raise your self-esteem.”

“You’re very good for my self-esteem. I seem to have graduated from my initial knee-jerk disbelief to concern my sexy incubus might become unpleasantly jealous rather than delighted.” I leaned towards him and whispered, “If I wasn’t already the prey of a sexy incubus, I’d say she’s really pretty.”

“That is because she is really pretty,” my husband replied with a soft laugh, and he checked on our pets. “Is Avalanche doing okay with her meats? I know you’re giving some to her every day, but you don’t usually give her a lot. She’s still pretty heavily drinking milk?”

“She would very much appreciate some fresh meat from the pet menu, but she should still get her milk, and her meat needs to be in small pieces, so we should look at the kitten menu for her.” I checked the pet menu, my brows raising at the wide assortment of meats and brands they kept for pets. “This is a pet paradise, Sam! They even have moose. Oh, they have edible bones, Sam. We need to get those for the puppies.” I thrust the menu at him. “Are any of those bone types what you give them?”

He checked. “Yeah, these are good. I’ll order a few extra for the road so they can keep busy while we’re driving around and in the hotel room tonight. We’ll get a box for them to go. It should keep them happy. Oh, I want you to do rabies treatments on them in a few days, just in case, and we’ll do a round ourselves. No idea if we’ll be exposed handling this, so I’d rather just pretend we will be.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I will be sad if I flip off that damned marker again.”

“And if you do, my grandfather will flip it back on, so don’t worry about it. He’ll want to check on you weekly anyway to make sure the babies are okay.”

“It’s going to be a constant stream of worriers, visiting and visiting and visiting. Make it clear if they visit, they babysit!”

“I can do that.”

The waitress returned with our drinks, and we ordered for our pets first, which amused the woman. Once certain our furry friends were cared for, I ordered a salad to appease my husband’s vegetable-eating ways to go with my sea bug roll.

It amused me when he ordered the same thing.

“I have learned when it comes to sea bugs, I should follow your lead.”

“What is this strategy you want to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he began.

“Thinking, now that’s a seriously frightening statement right there. That’s almost as bad as when I’ve claimed to be thinking. Do you know what happens when I think?”

“A slightly mitigated version of what happens when you don’t think.”

I would feel that burn for at least an hour. “Oh, wow. Do that again.”

He laughed. “I swear, Bailey. You’re the only woman I know who enjoys it when I fling zingers at you.”

“That one was just beautiful. I need more of that, or I start thinking life is too perfect. But then those zingers make it actually perfect. I can’t help it. I’m a glutton for punishment, and it burns better when you’re the one handling the punishment.”

Still laughing, he sipped his coffee. “It’s not as good as yours, but I’ve learned there is no coffee as good as yours. However, this was made by someone who knows how to operate a coffee machine.”

I held out my hands. “Sip!” He handed me his mug, and I took a tentative sip. As promised, someone with some skill with a coffee maker had made the brew. After a moment of thought and a second sip, I returned his drink. “You may go to the car and retrieve our Thermos, and you may pay the nice waitress to fill it for us. And you’ll call your grandfather and find out if coffee is off the list of things I can have, because that is good enough I will drink it with minimal complaint it’s not as good as mine.”

“The highest of accolades,” he teased.

“It’s true! Less tease, more strategy. Although you can still tease while we strategize. I don’t think I can handle a day without feeling the burn.”

“We’re going to play the flame game.”

“The what game?”

“The flame game. Essentially, the goal is to burn Morrison in all regards. We must completely destroy his reputation at the same time we, if an opportunity happens to present itself, eliminate him as a risk. Ideally, we will figure out what his end game is so we can burn that to the ground, too. What we need to know is why Morrison and Audrey wanted to convert so many people into gorgons.”

“That seems simple enough to me. Gorgons aren’t protected by most of the human laws. They’re considered second-rate citizens and have very specific ways they have to behave. They’re executed if they don’t follow those rules,” I replied. “But if there are sufficient gorgons mass petrifying people, those laws would go second to the recovery of petrified citizens. However, if the infection rate is as high as what Audrey was hoping for, Morrison would be in a position to eliminate most Manhattan law enforcement, yourself included, as the grade of gorgons produced would not qualify to serve in any policing roles. The plan falls apart because of your rating and base genetics, which Audrey didn’t know about.”

“Right, because all of my official documentation lists human as my primary species, which is true.”

“I’m listed as a cindercorn. Why is that allowed but gorgons aren’t?”