She winked. “Riiiight. In a stone with Bathin. That’s why your cheeks are all pink and the rest of you looks all relaxed and healthy glow-a-fied. Why, if I didn’t know better I’d say someone was getting a little possessed-by-a-demon on the side.”
“Shut it,” I said.
“Wait,” Delaney frowned.
“Air five, you dog, you,” Jean said.
Bathin just held his palm up over his head, and Jean did the same. They both slapped the empty space between them at the same time.
“But you know, if you hurt her, I will shove you into a hole you’ll never dig out of and pour gasoline over your burning corpse for all of eternity,” she added.
“You won’t live for all of eternity,” Bathin noted.
“I know people.” She grinned.
“Point taken. Not that anyone wants to listen to me, but I give you my word I didn’t take Myra from here to harm her. In fact, the only reason I left was to keep her from committing harm to herself and to Delaney. You’re welcome,” he added snidely to Ryder.
“Don’t push me, Bathin. There are more ways to get rid of you than reasons to keep you.”
“And there’s the trifecta. Everyone’s had a chance to threaten me. Now can we get on with solving the problem?”
“Which one?” Delaney asked. “We took care of the frogs.”
“Just curious,” I said. “What was the solution?”
“Crow came up with it.” Delaney didn’t sound happy.
“Crow?”
“He showed up looking for you, looking for Bathin. You know how he has a knack for appearing whenever trouble is going down.”
“Okay, so what did Crow tell you to do?”
“Kiss them,” Delaney said.
She was staring right at me, and I knew she wasn’t lying. “Kiss them,” I repeated. “Like the fairytales?”
“Slimier,” Ryder noted. “Smelled like mulch. And not a single prince in the bunch.”
“All of you kissed them?” The idea of that, the image of that was something I was sorry I’d missed. “Tell me someone took pictures. I need photo evidence of this. Of the whole thing.”
“No one took pictures,” Ryder said.
“Crow took some.” Jean handed me a cup of coffee with just the right amount of cream and sugar in it.
“Thank gods.” I took the cup from her gratefully.
“That’s what I said. I mean, we can’t exactly publish it in the local paper, but still, it was a day for the Reed scrapbook for sure.”
“Totally want to see them,” I muttered to Jean over the top of my coffee.
“Got your back,” she said with a wink.
“Anyway,” Delaney said, dragging us back on track. “We took everyone to one of the rooms at the hospital, kissed frogs, then told them they’d been hit by a microburst and been knocked out, but that none of them had suffered concussions, so they were fine, and should go home.”
“No lingering side effects? They still have their souls?”
“We had a witch—Jules—check them out. We asked a couple other people just to make sure. Turns out getting frogged by Hell doesn’t really stick with you for long. But just in case, we’re keeping an eye on them.”
