4. Don’t crush my dreams. I’ve always wanted to be a stripper. #2
I gave that some thought, and I found I didn’t mind the situation nearly as much as I should have.
“Think we should give them a head start? We can play dumb.” I chuckled at the thought of Bailey storming Las Vegas.
“While accidental, it’s perfect timing. If Bailey and Tiffany are road tripping, it’ll be a lot harder for the Dover hive to find them. ”
“It’s good for our wives—and us—to get out of the house for a while.”
“My car likes your garage. It just told me so. We should get a rental. We need a vacation. Right? We need a vacation, Arthur.” Using his first name would indicate we were truly off duty, the kind of off duty where we wouldn’t be fielding even emergency calls.
I’d view my rank as a police chief as temporary unemployment with a few perks if I needed to call in for some backup to protect my wife.
“Definitely. And since we’re excellent husbands, we should pick up a few gifts for our wives on the way.” Perkins grinned, and he rubbed his hands together. “We’ve obviously neglected them most cruelly, and thus they are in need of a reward.”
I laughed. “This explains a lot. My great-grandfather must have known she was skipping town and wanted to fuck with me. He loves screwing with us mortals, especially the ones he helped bring into existence. It gives him an excuse to visit and create trouble.”
“I’m rather surprised you’re not panicking yet. I also understand why he got that prescription. You get edgy at the end of your shift when you haven’t seen Bailey all day. After a few days, you’re going to be an anxious mess.”
“I’m not panicking yet because she’s safest on the move,” I admitted.
Perkins nodded. “Tiffany’s with her. We’ll have a call by midnight about them, guaranteed. We’ll be able to track them from law enforcement pulling Tiff’s records—”
My phone rang, and when I didn’t recognize the number, I answered, “Chief Quinn speaking.”
“Quinn,” my wife purred in my ear.
Normal humans couldn’t purr, but my wife had developed a purring habit around the same time she’d started getting a better grasp on being a fire-breathing unicorn. I figured it had something to do with her special brand of magic, and I loved the sound.
When she purred, she was happy.
“Why hello there. Get arrested already?”
“No.” Bailey stopped purring, but I heard a hint of her amusement in her faked sigh. “I didn’t get arrested.”
“Well, that’s something. What has my beautiful wife been doing?”
“Watching Tiffany the Bitch Perkins bra whip a cop. Watching as in she’s doing it. Right now. It’s a bra from Victoria’s Secret, and I want one.”
Okay. I loved when my wife wanted new lingerie. She took me with her, and she kept staring at me with hopeful, innocent eyes every time she spotted one she liked, which roused my demonic side to an almost frightening degree.
She got whatever lingerie she wanted, and I had a great deal of fun destroying most of it.
I thought the sacrifices well worth the money.
However, she rarely admitted she wanted new lingerie, especially not when someone might hear her. “Have you been drinking?”
When my wife got drunk—or high off excessive sugar—trouble happened. So much trouble. She didn’t need more than a sip or two for the trouble to start.
“No, not yet. I might if she doesn’t stop whipping police officers with her bra.” Bailey whimpered. “We were about to leave, but Tiffany remembered some law here letting her get only a misdemeanor for smacking a cop with her bra.”
“Tiffany is assaulting a police officer with a what?”
Perkins’s eyes widened.
“It’s a brassault.” My wife giggled. “And she’s dancing on a table.”
“On a table.” I fought my urge to laugh and failed miserably. When I recovered enough to speak, I asked, “Do you need to be rescued?”
“No, not precisely. Yet.”
“What do you need?” She wouldn’t have called me unless she needed something—or wanted me to rescue her.
“A favor,” she admitted.
Uh oh. Favors could mean anything. “What do you need?”
“Assurance this outing with Tiffany won’t end with a divorce.”
As always, whenever Bailey’s insecurities got the best of her, she reduced me to an emotional mess of a man, and I wanted nothing more than to hold her and convince her everything was fine.
I smiled, and I marveled I’d been able to breathe before she’d steamrolled her way into my life.
“Bailey, you have nothing to worry about. Your man repellant is with you, and what happened the last time you met a rowdy incubus?”
“I stabbed him with my horn,” she dutifully replied.
“Do you have your pills with you?” I knew she always carried a stash of pixie dust and transformatives in her bra, the best grade the CDC would legally allow her to cart around without additional permits.
We never spoke of that stash, and we pretended it didn’t exist.
As such, my question was about the other stashes in the house, so numerous I’d stopped bothering to count them.
We had a special permit that covered the entire house for a wide assortment of controlled substances thanks to her special brand of magic.
“I stole the living room stashes.”
“Stashes?” I tried to remember how many stashes we had kept in the living room. The last time I’d checked, she’d even put plastic baggies of pills inside the lamp shades. All of them.
“Well, I grabbed one, forgot I’d grabbed it, and then the next thing I knew, all of the stashes were in my purse of holding. Tiffany wanted to leave, and I didn’t have time to put the extras back.”
Every time I thought I couldn’t love her any more than I already did, she opened her mouth and started babbling, often saying the first thing to pop into her pretty head. “You only need to take one pill unless it’s an emergency, and try to limit it to no more than five if really needed, okay?”
After five pills, strange things started to happen around Bailey, and my grandfathers usually showed up to fix the resulting mess—or prevent a calamity.
“I’ll be careful with them,” she promised.
“Take pictures, have fun, and don’t worry about the bail. If she can’t negotiate her community service hours, or if either of you need legal advice, give me a call. When will you be home?”
“Uhm, about that.”
“What is it, Bailey?”
“Merry Christmas!” She hung up.
I blinked and stared at my phone. “Hey, Perkins?”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Where in the United States is bra whipping a cop only a misdemeanor?”
“Atlantic City. Cops’ wives, especially from here, head there when the going gets rough, and for some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to write it into the legal code so it’d be less of a hassle for their husbands in the aftermath.
I’m pretty sure most of the married guys in our precinct have made a run to Atlantic City to retrieve their wives following such an incident.
The local cops love it, and at most, she’ll get a few hours of service. ”
I blinked, and upon thinking about it, realized he was right. Every few months, one of my cops did have to make an unexpected run to Atlantic City on personal business.
No one had told me why, however.
“Is this your wife’s first time hitting Atlantic City?”
Perkins sighed. “She’s bra whipping a cop in Atlantic City, isn’t she?”
“While on a table. Bailey called it a brassault and wanted to be reassured.”
“About what?”
“She wanted assurances her outing with Tiffany wouldn’t end with a divorce.” I laughed. “Then she wished me a merry Christmas and hung up.”
“Do you want to head to Atlantic City tonight?”
“No. It can wait until morning. Let’s let our ladies have their fun for tonight. We can pay the Dover hive a visit tomorrow before tailing them.”
“We?” Perkins sighed. “Can I sit in the car?”
Considering how much Perkins hated petrification, it impressed me he’d limited his request to just staying in the car. “Sure. Hey, do you like kids?”
“You’re not wiping out that hive and taking the kids.”
Perkins knew me well. Too well. “Why not?”
“It’s wrong. That’s why.”
I scowled. “No. Threatening my bride is wrong.”
“You’re not wiping out that hive and taking the kids unless they go after Bailey or Tiffany first. Then and only then may you wipe out the hive and take the kids.”
I could accept those terms. “Well shit, Perkins. How’s that fair?”
“It’s fair to them.”
He presented a very good point. “Bailey’s worth at least a hundred times their starting offer. At least. They deserve it for insulting her.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Quinn, but murder is bad.”
“I’d kill them quickly. I should be given credit for being merciful. What do you think Bailey will do to them if she finds out about this?”
Perkins sighed and bowed his head. “I need to tell her that murder is bad, too.”
I snickered. “I’ll pay good money to watch you try to convince the pyromaniac, meat-eating unicorn of that.”
“How is it that I became the adult supervision of this relationship?”
“That’s a really good question.”