17. You really are the reason you don’t get enough sleep.
SEVENTEEN
You really are the reason you don’t get enough sleep.
We needed to use my wayfinder magic in order to locate the ‘resort’ Audrey had visited once upon a time.
In the past few years, nature had done an excellent job of erasing the trail.
The snow was deep enough Avalanche couldn’t navigate through its depths without disappearing, so my husband carried her while I transformed and made the journey as a cindercorn.
Sunny and Blizzard bounded through the drifts, and for the first time since we’d started our trip, Sam let them off their leashes.
“Is that good idea?” I stared at Blizzard, who romped after Sunny.
I gave it five minutes before I needed to chase down my runaway pets.
“Sunny will keep Blizzard around, and Sunny won’t abandon you. And if I’m wrong, I’ll put on my fur coat and help you track them down.”
“Such a nice stallion. Yes, put on fur coat. I like stallion.”
“Tiffany’s right. You really are the reason you don’t get enough sleep,” he teased.
I flicked my tail. “Fur coat?”
“Maybe later. Work first, indulgences after work and we have someone to watch the pets and kids. You may have to survive, sadly, for a while.”
I could do sadly. “So much sadness.”
Chuckling, my husband stomped through the snow, cradling Avalanche close while the ocelot snuggled against him. I kept an eye on our puppies, who bounded through the trees and ran back to us before running off again like furry lunatics. “Puppies so much fun.”
“They really are. Your kitten is a little spoiled, too. She has decided it is nap time, and that I am present only to serve as her bed.”
According to my husband’s tone, there was nothing better than him being present only to serve as the ocelot’s bed. “You love kitty! But my kitty. You tool of kitty, so you prop-er-tee. You best prop-er-tee.”
Quinn chuckled. “I have no problems with being your property, especially as this means you’re also my property, and I enjoy our joint property arrangements.
And if you don’t think you’re my property, I will implement particularly intensive corrective therapy techniques tonight to reinforce my claim. ”
“Okay. You do that. After noo-dles with sea bugs. Need those or might perish from sadness.”
“As I can’t have my wife perishing from sadness, I will do my best to get you noodles with sea bugs tonight.”
I pranced in place and waited for Quinn to pick his way over the trail, following the glimmering path I’d created to guide us to our destination.
Snow began to fall, and I dined on fallen trees to keep my heat levels up, although it didn’t take much to snort blue flame.
“Tiny terrors make me hot,” I announced.
“Did you just call our children tiny terrors?”
“I snort blue flame with no effort. This is thing of true fear, terror for those who annoy me! They are the creators of blue flame. They tiny terrors. Very tiny right now. Do I get extra bite from Francisco for calling them tiny terrors?”
“Sure.”
“Tiny terrors much trouble. Think we find some-thing here?”
“I hope we find something, else I’ll have gotten a lot of exercise for nothing.”
“Pets happy, not for nothing. They have much fun. This snow? This snow is fun! Only fun because tiny terrors. Usually not fun.”
“I am grateful the tiny terrors turn you into a cold-loving cindercorn rather than a miserable one.”
“Much misery without tiny terrors.”
“I hope the sea bug populations can handle you and our tiny terrors.”
“Me, too. No sea bugs would be sadness.”
My magic led us deep into the woods to a clearing with several run-down buildings. Years of abandonment hadn’t done the place any favors, although the structures seemed sound enough except for the roof of one of the smaller buildings, which had begun caving in. “That building no safe.”
“We’ll have to be careful when we check around that one, yes. It looks like your trail is going inside the main building.”
I followed after my magic, which had gone for the route of least resistance, entering through a broken window, one too small for my mass. “Put kitten on back, I stand still, you go inside and open door like good Queeny should. Open door for lady.”
“What lady?” my husband asked, although he did as asked, placing Avalanche on my back. The ocelot stretched, nestled into my thick fur, and resumed her nap.
“Best burn. So many burns today. Not sure how I will recover. You must help me tonight with recovery.”
“We’ll see.” Smirking, he climbed through the broken window. The instant he made it inside, my magical trail disappeared. He headed to the front door, and careful not to dislodge my furry passenger, I followed. After a few minutes and some cursing, he opened it.
“The lock is rusted and the hinges were stuck,” he announced, shouldering the door fully open so I could walk inside. “We’ll have to detox.”
“Gorgons?” I asked.
“They didn’t even bother trying to hide it in this one.
We’ll need a scanner. I’m going to take the pets to the SUV and call the CDC.
They left me with a meter, and it can scan the dust types, so if this is the original dust sample, we’ll know about twenty minutes after I start processing it.
Alan showed me how to do the test early.
He seems to think you are the queen of finding trouble. ”
“I am the queen of finding trouble. I found you.”
He gave me a round of applause. “That was well done. Soon enough, I will have you trained to do that intentionally more often than blurting things when you’re nervous.”
“Clever boy,” I praised, stepping into the battered bed and breakfast.
Sunny halted at the threshold, barked twice, sat down, and barked three times.
“Oh, get rabies and dust. Sunny best puppy. Sam no go in. Out, out. Go get scanner. Only need one rabid person. Take kitten. We treat all pets tonight. No dust on pets.”
Quinn scooped Avalanche off my back, leashed both of our puppies, and headed for the SUV. To make sure he didn’t get lost, I gave a soft snort and stomped my hoof.
A pink, shimmering trail appeared, leading off in the direction of our rental.
“Good magic.”
The entry seemed normal enough, and I followed Quinn’s snowy footprints to get a better feel for what had unnerved him. I passed through a short hallway to a large, rustic sitting room, one meant to entertain many people.
Rather than entertained people, decaying barrels rested on the floor while the desiccated bodies of male gorgons hung from the rafters, dust trickling off their bodies to pool over the floor. A shimmering barrier kept the dust to one half of the room, although it, too, eroded from time.
Quinn had come within several feet of showing off his gorgon-incubus doohickey form, and I flattened my ears, counting the bodies, stomping my hoof at the brutality of their deaths.
Like the poor male at the other bed and breakfast, their serpents had been decapitated.
“Who?” I demanded, stomping my hoof again in fury over so many lost lives. Worse, the gorgons had been killed in a fashion nobody deserved.
The dust swirled, creating a haze within the dying barrier, which broke under the onslaught of new magic.
My magic, given life by anger over those killed, ignored its usual rules, spelling out the name of a man I learned to hate to a whole new level.
Morrison.
I resisted the urge to snort, which might erase the precious evidence of Morrison’s misdeeds.
“Need proof,” I whispered to the dust of the fallen, wondering if ghosts might truly exist. If anywhere in the world might have them, the lounge corrupted into a ghastly tomb surely counted as such a place.
The dust settled, erasing the bastard’s name and leaving me alone among the decaying dead.
I explored their final resting place, the gray clinging to my legs and trailing in my wake, its damp chill penetrating through my coat.
The furniture fell to ruin like everything else, but several books on an end table endured despite the years.
Taking care with my sharp claws, I flipped open the topmost title to discover a ledger.
No, not a ledger. A scientific log detailing the progress of the dust batch. Not batches, but batch. Names went with the fallen gorgon, which would allow me to find closure for their hives if they still lived. Quinn’s grandfather would know. I memorized their names.
In the back of the book, I found the evidence I needed in the form of several receipts for equipment and supplies, and they bore Morrison’s name.
However contaminated with the dust, it contained the clues we would need to put an end to the man’s plans, whatever they were.
The log only provided a step-by-step guide on how to make the dust, and its infection rate, a horrific 25.7%, ensured I would be burning the building to the ground to make certain the recipe and the victims never surfaced again.
“Bailey?” Quinn asked.
“Stay out. This master batch. Bad dust. Recipe here. Morrison name on receipts used in ex-per-ee-men-tay-shun and creation. Use scanner from window, but barrier broken. Dust may get out. Must burn, Sam. They tested. High infection rate.”
“How high?”
“Twen-tee five per-cent.”
“Did you just say it has a twenty-five percent infection rate?”
“Point seven. Plus point seven.”
“Fuck.”
“No kidding. Need napalm. Barrier. Around building. No let dust out. Make hurry. Bring big dozer to get tanker here. No let this stay. No big snort big enough for this. Must all burn. I stay in building, get information. Bring good cameras? I take pictures of all pages before burn. Done in few hours. Have names of gorgon, notify family.”
“On it. Find what you can, and I’ll make the rest of this easy on the CDC and just hand over all of Audrey’s files so they can look over everything and do additional investigations. But if this is the master batch, we should be near the end of this mess.”
One could only hope.