House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas

Only when the car rounded the corner did Bryce slide her eyes toward them.

She angled her head, her silken sheet of hair sliding over the shoulder of her white skintight dress, and smiled brightly. Waved. The delicate gold amulet around her tan neck glinted.

Hunt pushed off the parked car and stalked toward her, his gray wings flaring wide.

A flick of Bryce’s amber eyes took in Hunt from his tattoo to his ass-kicking boot tips. Her smile grew. “See you in three weeks,” she said cheerfully, and slammed the door shut.

Hunt cleared the street in a matter of steps. A car screeched to a stop, but the driver wasn’t stupid enough to blast the horn. Not when lightning wreathed Hunt’s fist as he pounded it into the intercom button. “Don’t waste my fucking time, Quinlan.”

Isaiah let the near-frantic driver pass before coming up behind Hunt, his brown eyes narrowing. But Bryce replied sweetly, “My boss doesn’t like legionaries in her place. Sorry.”

Hunt slammed his fist into the iron door. That same blow had smashed cars, shattered walls, and splintered bones. And that was without the aid of the storm in his veins. The iron didn’t so much as shudder; his lightning skittered off it.

To Hel with threats, then. He’d go for the jugular, as deep and sure as any of his physical kills. So Hunt said into the intercom, “We’re here about a murder.”

Isaiah winced, scanning the street and skies for anyone who might have heard.

Hunt crossed his arms as the silence spread.

Then the iron door hissed and clicked, and inched open.

Bull’s-fucking-eye.

It took Hunt a heartbeat to adjust from the sunlight to the dimmer interior, and he used that first step into the gallery to note every angle and exit and detail.

Plush pine-green carpets went wall to wood-paneled wall in the two-story showroom. Alcoves with soft-lit art displays dotted the edges of the room: chunks of ancient frescoes, paintings, and statues of Vanir so strange and rare even Hunt didn’t know their names.

Bryce Quinlan leaned against the large ironwood desk in the center of the space, her snow-white dress clinging to every generous curve and dip.

Hunt smiled slowly, showing all his teeth.

He waited for it: the realization of who he was. Waited for her to shrink back, to fumble for the panic button or gun or whatever the fuck she thought might save her from the likes of him.

But maybe she was stupid, after all, because her answering smile was saccharine in the extreme. Her red-tinted nails idly tapped on the pristine wood surface. “You have fifteen minutes.”

Hunt didn’t tell her that this meeting would likely take a good deal longer than that.

Isaiah turned to shut the door, but Hunt knew it was already locked. Just as he knew, thanks to legion intel gathered over the years, that the small wood door behind the desk led upstairs to Jesiba Roga’s office—where a floor-to-ceiling internal window overlooked the showroom they stood in—and the simple iron door to their right led down into another full level, stocked with things that legionaries weren’t supposed to find. The enchantments on those two doors were probably even more intense than those outside.

Isaiah loosed one of his long-suffering sighs. “A murder occurred on the outskirts of the Meat Market last night. We believe you knew the victim.”

Hunt marked every reaction that flitted across her face as she maintained her perch on the edge of the desk: the slight widening of her eyes, the pause in those tapping nails, the sole blink that suggested she had a short list of possible victims and none of the options were good.

“Who?” was all she said, her voice steady. Wisps of smoke from the conical diffuser beside the computer drifted past her, carrying the bright, clean scent of peppermint. Of course she was one of those aromatherapy zealots, conned into handing over her marks for the promise of feeling happier, or being better in bed, or growing another half a brain to match the half she already had.

“Maximus Tertian,” Isaiah told her. “We have reports that you had a meeting with him in the VIP mezzanine of the White Raven two hours before his death.”

Hunt could have sworn Bryce’s shoulders sagged slightly. She said, “Maximus Tertian is dead.” They nodded. She angled her head. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Isaiah said neutrally.

Hunt had heard of Tertian—a creep of a vamp who couldn’t take no for an answer, and whose rich, sadistic father had taught him well. And shielded him from any fallout from his hideous behavior. If Hunt was being honest, Midgard was better off without him. Except for the headache they’d now have to endure when Tertian’s father got word that his favored son had been killed … Today’s meeting would be just the start.

Isaiah went on, “You might have been one of the last people to see him alive. Can you walk us through your encounter with him? No detail is too small.”

Bryce glanced between them. “Is this your way of feeling out whether I killed him?”

Hunt smiled slightly. “You don’t seem too cut up that Tertian’s dead.”

Those amber eyes slid to him, annoyance lighting them.

He’d admit it: males would do a lot of fucked-up things for someone who looked like that.

He’d done precisely those sort of things for Shahar once. Now he bore the halo tattooed across his brow and the slave tattoo on his wrist because of it. His chest tightened.