House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (18 page)

“So you went to Samson Street to brood? What’s the emergency?”

“The emergency, asshole, is that I might kill her before we find the real murderer.” He had too much riding on this case.

“You’re just pissed she’s not cowering or fawning.”

“Like I fucking want anyone to
fawn
—”

“Where’s Quinlan now?”

“Getting her nails done.”

Isaiah’s pause sounded a Hel of a lot like he was about to burst out laughing. “Hence your presence on Samson Street before nine.”

“Gazing through the window of a
nail salon
like a gods-damned stalker.”

The fact that Quinlan wasn’t gunning for the murderer grated as much as her behavior. And Hunt couldn’t help being suspicious. He didn’t know how or why she might have killed Danika, her pack, and Tertian, but she’d been connected to all of them. Had gone to the same place on the nights they’d been murdered. She knew something—or had done something.

“I’m hanging up now.” The bastard was smiling. Hunt knew it. “You’ve faced down enemy armies, survived Sandriel’s arena, gone toe-to-toe with Archangels.” Isaiah chuckled. “Surely a party girl isn’t as difficult as all that.” The line cut off.

Hunt ground his teeth. Through the glass window of the salon, he could perfectly make out Bryce seated at one of the marble workstations, hands outstretched to a pretty reddish-gold-scaled draki female who was putting yet
another
coat of polish on her nails. How many did she
need
?

At this hour, only a few other patrons were seated inside, nails or talons or claws in the process of being filed and painted and whatever the Hel they did to them in there. But all of them kept glancing through the window. To him.

He’d already earned a glare from the teal-haired falcon shifter at the welcome counter, but she hadn’t dared come out to ask him to stop making her clients nervous and leave.

Bryce sat there, wholly ignoring him. Chatting and laughing with the female doing her nails.

It had taken Hunt a matter of moments to launch into the skies when Bryce had left her apartment. He’d trailed overhead, well aware of the morning commuters who would film him if he landed beside her in the middle of the street and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Her run took her fifteen blocks away, apparently. She had barely broken a sweat by the time she jogged up to the nail salon, her skintight athletic clothes damp with the misting rain, and threw him a look that warned him to stay outside.

That had been an hour ago. A full hour of drills and files and scissors being applied to her nails in a way that would make the Hind herself cringe. Pure torture.

Five minutes. Quinlan had five more fucking minutes, then he’d drag her out. Micah must have lost his mind—that was the only explanation for asking her to help, especially if she prioritized her
nails
over solving her friends’ murder.

He didn’t know why it came as a surprise. After all he’d seen, everyone he’d met and endured, this sort of shit should have ceased to bother him long ago.

Someone with Quinlan’s looks would become accustomed to the doors that face and body of hers opened without so much as a squeak of protest. Being half-human had some disadvantages, yes—a lot of them, if he was being honest about the state of the world. But she’d done well. Really fucking well, if that apartment was any indication.

The draki female set aside the bottle and flicked her claw-tipped fingers over Bryce’s nails. Magic sparked, Bryce’s ponytail shifting as if a dry wind had blown by.

Like that of the Valbaran Fae, draki magic skewed toward flame and wind. In the northern climes of Pangera, though, he’d met draki and Fae whose power could summon water, rain, mist—element-based magic. But even among the reclusive draki and the Fae, no one bore lightning. He knew, because he’d looked—desperate in his youth for anyone who might teach him how to control it. He’d had to teach himself in the end.

Bryce examined her nails, and smiled. And then hugged the female. Fucking
hugged
her. Like she was some sort of gods-damned war hero for the job she’d done.

Hunt was surprised his teeth weren’t ground to stumps by the time she headed for the door, waving goodbye to the smiling
falcon shifter at the front desk, who handed her a clear umbrella, presumably to borrow against the rain.

The glass door opened, and Bryce’s eyes at last met Hunt’s.

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?” The words exploded out of him.

She popped open the umbrella, nearly taking out his eye. “Did you have something better to do with your time?”

“You made me wait in the rain.”

“You’re a big, tough male. I think you can handle a little water.”

Hunt fell into step beside her. “I told you to make those two lists. Not go to a motherfucking beauty salon.”

She paused at an intersection, waiting for the bumper-to-bumper cars to crawl past, and straightened to her full height. Not anywhere close to his, but she somehow managed to look down her nose at him while still looking
up
at him. “If you’re so good at investigating, why don’t you look into it and spare me the effort?”

“You were given an order by the Governor.” The words sounded ridiculous even to him. She crossed the street, and he followed. “And I’d think you’d be personally motivated to figure out who’s behind this.”

“Don’t assume anything about my motivations.” She dodged around a puddle of either rain or piss. In the Old Square, it was impossible to tell.

He refrained from pushing her into that puddle. “Do you have a problem with me?”

“I don’t really care about you enough to have a problem with you.”

“Likewise.”

Her eyes really did glow then, as if a distant fire simmered within. She surveyed him, sizing up every inch and somehow—some-fucking-how—making him feel about three inches tall.

He said nothing until they turned down her street at last. He growled, “You need to make the list of suspects and the list of Danika’s last week of activities.”

She examined her nails, now painted in some sort of color
gradient that went from pink to periwinkle tips. Like the sky at twilight. “No one likes a nag, Athalar.”

They reached the arched glass entry of her apartment building—structured like a fish’s fin, he’d realized last night—and the doors slid open. Ponytail swishing, she said cheerfully, “Bye.”

Hunt drawled, “People might see you dicking around like this, Quinlan, and think you were trying to hinder an official investigation.” If he couldn’t bully her into working on this case, maybe he could scare her into it.

Especially with the truth: She wasn’t off the hook. Not even close.

Her eyes flared again, and damn if it wasn’t satisfying. So Hunt just added, mouth curving into a half smile, “Better hurry. You wouldn’t want to be late for work.”

Going to the nail salon had been worth it on so many levels, but perhaps the biggest benefit had been pissing off Athalar.

“I don’t see why you can’t let the angel in,” moped Lehabah, perched atop an old pillar candle. “He’s so handsome.”

In the bowels of the gallery library, client paperwork spread on the table before her, Bryce cast a sidelong glare at the female-shaped flame. “Do
not
drip wax on these documents, Lele.”

The fire sprite grumbled, and plopped her ass on the candle’s wick anyway. Wax dribbled down the sides, her tangle of yellow hair floating above her head—as if she were indeed a flame given a plump female shape. “He’s just sitting on the roof in the dreary weather. Let him rest on the couch down here. Syrinx says the angel can brush his coat if he needs something to do.”

Bryce sighed at the painted ceiling—the night sky rendered in loving care. The giant gold chandelier that hung down the center of the space was fashioned after an exploding sun, with all the other dangling lights in perfect alignment of the seven planets. “The angel,” she said, frowning toward Syrinx’s slumbering form on the green velvet couch, “is not allowed in here.”

Lehabah let out a sad little noise. “One day, the boss will trade
my services to some lecherous old creep, and you’ll regret ever denying me anything.”

“One day, that lecherous old creep will actually make you do your job and guard his books, and you’ll regret spending all these hours of relative freedom moping.”

Wax sizzled on the table. Bryce whipped her head up.

Lehabah was sprawled belly-down on the candle, an idle hand hanging off the side. Dangerously near the documents Bryce had spent the past three hours poring over.

“Do
not
.”

Lehabah rotated her arm so that the tattoo inked amid the simmering flesh was visible. It had been stamped on her arm within moments of her birth, Lehabah had said.
SPQM
. It was inked on the flesh of every sprite—fire or water or earth, it didn’t matter. Punishment for joining the angels’ rebellion two hundred years ago, when the sprites had dared protest their status as peregrini. As Lowers. The Asteri had gone even further than their enslavement and torture of the angels. They’d decreed after the rebellion that every sprite—not only the ones who’d joined Shahar and her legion—would be enslaved, and cast from the House of Sky and Breath. All of their descendants would be wanderers and slaves, too. Forever.

It was one of the more spectacularly fucked episodes of the Republic’s history.

Lehabah sighed. “Buy my freedom from Jesiba. Then I can go live at your apartment and keep your baths and all your food warm.”

She could do far more than that, Bryce knew. Technically, Lehabah’s magic outranked Bryce’s own. But most non-humans could claim the same. And even while it was greater than Bryce’s, Lehabah’s power was still an ember compared to the Fae’s flames. Her father’s flames.

Bryce set down the client’s purchase papers. “It’s not that easy, Lele.”

“Syrinx told me you’re lonely. I could cheer you up.”

In answer, the chimera rolled onto his back, tongue dangling from his mouth, and snored.

“One, my building doesn’t allow fire sprites.
Or
water sprites. It’s an insurance nightmare. Two, it’s not as simple as asking Jesiba. She might very well get rid of you
because
I ask.”

Lehabah cupped her round chin in her hand and dripped another freckle of wax dangerously close to the paperwork. “She gave you Syrie.”

Cthona give her patience. “She
let
me
buy
Syr
inx
because my life was fucked up, and I lost it when she got bored with him and tried to sell him off.”

The fire sprite said quietly, “Because Danika died.”

Bryce closed her eyes for a second, then said, “Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t curse so much, BB.”

“Then you really won’t like the angel.”

“He led my people into battle—
and
he’s a member of my House. I deserve to meet him.”

“Last I checked, that battle went rather poorly, and the fire sprites were kicked out of Sky and Breath thanks to it.”

Lehabah sat up, legs crossed. “Membership in the Houses is not something a government can decree. Our expulsion was in name only.”

It was true. But Bryce still said, “What the Asteri and their Senate say goes.”

Lehabah had been guardian of the gallery’s library for decades. Logic insisted that ordering a fire sprite to watch over a library was a poor idea, but when a third of the books in the place would like nothing more than to escape, kill someone, or eat them—in varying orders—having a living flame keeping them in line was worth any risk. Even the endless chatter, it seemed.

Something thumped on the mezzanine. As if a book had dived off the shelf of its own accord.

Lehabah hissed toward it, turning a deep blue. Paper and leather whispered as the errant book found its place once again.

Bryce smiled, and then the office phone rang. One glance at the
screen had her reaching for the phone and hissing at the sprite, “Back on your perch
now
.”

Lehabah had just reached the glass dome where she maintained her fiery vigil over the library’s wandering books when Bryce answered. “Afternoon, boss.”

“Any progress?”

“Still investigating. How’s Pangera?”

Jesiba didn’t bother answering, instead saying, “I’ve got a client coming in at two o’clock. Be ready. And stop letting Lehabah prattle. She has a job to do.” The line went dead.

Bryce rose from the desk where she’d been working all morning. The oak panels of the library beneath the gallery looked old, but they were wired with the latest tech and best enchantments money could buy. Not to mention, there was a killer sound system that she often put to good use when Jesiba was on the other side of the Haldren.

Not that she danced down here—not anymore. Nowadays, the music was mostly to keep the thrumming of the firstlights from driving her insane. Or for drowning out Lehabah’s monologues.

Bookshelves lined every wall, interrupted only by a dozen or so small tanks and terrariums, occupied by all manner of small common animals: lizards and snakes and turtles and various rodents. Bryce often wondered if they were all people who’d pissed off Jesiba. None showed any sign of awareness, which was even more horrifying if it was true. They’d not only been turned into animals, but had also forgotten they were something else entirely.

Naturally, Lehabah had named all of them, each one more ridiculous than the last.
Nutmeg
and
Ginger
were the names of the geckos in the tank closest to Bryce. Sisters, Lehabah claimed.
Miss Poppy
was the name of the black-and-white snake on the mezzanine.

Lehabah never named anything in the biggest tank, though. The massive one that occupied an entire wall of the library, and whose glass expanse revealed a watery gloom. Mercifully, the tank was currently empty.

Last year, Bryce lobbied on Lehabah’s behalf for a few iris eels
to brighten the murky blue with their shimmering rainbow light. Jesiba had said no, and instead bought a pet kelpie that had humped the glass with all the finesse of a wasted college guy.