“If you wouldn’t mind.” Nero grinned. “And maybe I can suck some too.”
Josh snorted as he headed toward the house. “Oh, you’re going to suck, all right. You’re going to swallow me down like—mmph!” Suddenly he was in a choke hold with Nero wrapping him close to his chest and locking him in tight. Then the guy leaned close enough to speak straight into Josh’s ear.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. And just how much you’re going to love it.”
His words were specific and had Josh hard as a rock beneath his blanket skirt. A few minutes later they were acting on every single word. Then, afterward, Nero wore a hazmat suit as he cleaned up the lab. Josh stayed close as he studied the data.
It took two more weeks, though, before he finally found a clue.
Chapter 20
NERO WASliving the best and the worst weeks of his life. Everything happened as he predicted. Josh attacked the fire bomb problem with renewed vigor. Nero made sure he ate and practiced being a wolf, and the shift-back-to-human sex was spectacular.
Bing and Yordan left for some specialized training. Laddin had been recruited for his bomb skills, but that same meticulous attention to detail really helped in organization. When he wasn’t creating test fires in the lab, he was overhauling something he called Asset Management and Flow. All that was after he got over an existential depression, though. The day after Josh blew up the basement, Laddin ate a family of wild bunnies on a run. Apparently he’d had pet rabbits as a kid, and the knowledge that raw bunny tasted spectacular really threw the guy for a loop. Even Stratos found her place. She, Josh, and Wiz would spend hours together discussing magic theory and then doing experiments that usually resulted in fire, flood, or blood. Fortunately they kept the disasters contained. And besides, it gave them practice shifting to their wolves in order to heal.
And so the weeks passed.Weeksthat Nero didn’t have while his debt to the fairy bastard continued to grow. He owed more every day that Bitterroot kept the mulligan available, up to seven weeks.
To add to the bad news, the government blew up what used to be Lake Wacka Wacka (or whatever it was called), but the explosion hadn’t stopped every living thing from dying within hours of touching the water, or what was now mud in a huge crater. That meant the demon was still alive, and it was sucking the life out of the area one inch at a time. The soil in a five-foot radius around the blast zone was thick with cyanide, and the toxicity wasn’t decreasing.
That’s what had everyone flummoxed. Whatever was killing the land was pouring out poison at an ever-increasing rate. Last week the dead zone around the lake and been four feet. This week the cyanide saturated five feet all the way around. Predictions said it would hit six feet by Thursday, and then seven a few days after that. It would get bigger and wider until the circle of death touched Lake Michigan. Cyanide would pour into the water and create an ecological disaster with global consequences.
Everyone was searching for a solution. The normals had experts of every kind examining and testing the area—government, military, CDC, NASA, everybody. The media was rife with theories that were no more or less plausible than what the paranormals thought, which was a big fatwe have no solution. Prayers from the Religious Crew weren’t helping. The fairies were noticeably silent, and the shifters couldn’t do anything but growl.
And if someone didn’t fix things soon, Wisconsin would be a wasteland by midsummer. And once the Great Lakes got touched, worldwide disaster was imminent.
As far as Nero was concerned, the only hope was his fairy mulligan, but that was dependent on finding a solution to that fire bomb. He was back, full circle, and all he could do was wait… and enjoy his ever-diminishing time with Josh. His seven-week deadline was nearly here, and whatever happened with the mulligan, Bitterroot would demand payment.
Time was running out. Which meant that all the warm and fuzzy things he was feeling were going to go through the shredder. For both of their sakes, he needed to dial back on the postshift sex-fests and start looking for a way to break with Josh so that neither of them invested more than was appropriate into their relationship.
That was the plan, at least. Except every time he got close enough to prepare his recruit for what was coming, he was also close enough to kiss that same recruit. And do so much more. Josh was always willing and often the initiator. It always felt too good to stop, and so the discussion got delayed and put off and forgotten. For a time.
Until the day Josh knocked on his bedroom door. The guy looked a mess. His hair flopped over his bloodshot eyes and his body sagged against the doorframe, but his grin nearly split his face wide open.
“Josh?”
“I’ve got the answer.”
“Is it forty-two?” Josh had told him about his favorite sci-fi books from when he was a teen, and Nero had been enjoying geek humor in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.
Josh blinked twice and then immediately clapped. “You read a book! Good for you.”
He had, but Josh liked to tease him about being a stupid jock, so he played the part to the hilt. “Nah. Streamed the videos,” he said even though the paperback was clearly visible on his bedside table.
“Yeah, figures. But no, that’s not the answer I meant.” He dropped his head against the doorframe, and Nero realized that the guy really was exhausted.
“How late were you up last night?” They’d both headed for bed around two, but Nero knew Josh often kept working in his room. And since Josh was a full-grown adult, Nero didn’t feel like he could assign a bedtime to the man, even though sometimes Josh really needed a keeper.
“Um, what time is it?”
“One. In the afternoon.”
“Ah. There you go. I stayed up until one.”
Nero pushed away from his desk. “You’re going to burn out and get sick. Let’s get you some lunch and then—”
Normally Josh flowed along when Nero grabbed his arm, but this time he refused to budge. “You’re not listening,” he interrupted. “I found the answer.” And when Nero stared at him, Josh huffed out a breath. “I found the answer to magical plasma that burns.”
Everything in Nero stilled. “As in what it is? Or—”
