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

Hunt’s stare lifted to her own again. “Do you own any weapons?” The purely male gleam in his eye told her that he assumed she didn’t.

“Bother me again,” she said sweetly, just before she shut the window in his face, “and you’ll find out.”

Hunt wondered how much trouble he’d get in if he chucked Bryce Quinlan into the Istros.

After the morning he’d had, any punishment from Micah or being turned into a pig by Jesiba Roga was starting to seem well worth it.

Leaning against a lamppost, his face coated with the misting rain that drifted through the city, Hunt clenched his jaw hard enough to hurt. At this hour, commuters packed the narrow streets of the Old Square—some heading to jobs in the countless shops and galleries, others aiming for the spires of the CBD, half a mile westward. All of them, however, noted his wings, his face, and gave him a wide berth.

Hunt ignored them and glanced at the clock on his phone. Eight fifteen.

He’d waited long enough to make the call. He dialed the number and held the phone to his ear, listening to it ring once, twice—

“Please tell me Bryce is alive,” said Isaiah, his voice breathless in a way that told Hunt he was either at the barracks gym or enjoying his boyfriend’s company.

“For the moment.”

A machine beeped, like Isaiah was dialing down the speed of a treadmill. “Do I want to know why I’m getting a call this soon?” A pause. “Why are you on Samson Street?”

Though Isaiah probably tracked his location through the beacon on Hunt’s phone, Hunt still scowled toward the nearest visible camera. There were likely ones hidden in the cypresses and palm trees flanking the sidewalks, too, or disguised as sprinkler heads popping from the soggy grass of the flower beds, or built into the iron lampposts like the one he leaned against.

Someone was always watching. In this entire fucking city, territory, and world, someone was always watching, the cameras so bespelled and warded that they were bombproof. Even if this city turned to rubble under the lethal magic of the Asterian Guard’s brimstone missiles, the cameras would keep recording.

“Are you aware,” Hunt said, his voice a low rasp as a bevy of quails snaked across the street—some tiny shifter family, no doubt—“that chimeras are able to pick locks, open doors, and jump between two places as if they were walking from one room to another?”

“No …?” Isaiah said, panting.

Apparently, Quinlan wasn’t, either, if she bothered to have a crate for her beast. Though maybe the damn thing was more to give the chimera a designated comfort space, like people did with their dogs. Since there was no way he would stay contained without a whole host of enchantments.

The Lowers, the class of Vanir to which the chimera belonged, had all sorts of interesting, small powers like that. It was part of why they demanded such high prices on the market. And why, even millennia later, the Senate and Asteri had shot down any attempts to change the laws that branded them as property to be traded. The Lowers were too dangerous, they’d claimed—unable to understand the laws, with powers that could be disruptive if left unchecked by the various spells and magic-infused tattoos that held them.

And too lucrative, especially for the ruling powers whose families profited from their trade.

So they remained Lowers.

Hunt tucked his wings in one at a time. Water beaded off the gray feathers like clear jewels. “This is already a nightmare.”

Isaiah coughed. “You watched Quinlan for one night.”

“Ten hours, to be exact. Right until her pet chimera just appeared next to me at dawn, bit me in the ass for looking like I was dozing off, and then vanished again—right back into the apartment. Just as Quinlan came out of her bedroom and opened the curtains to see me grabbing my own ass like a fucking idiot. Do you know how sharp a chimera’s teeth are?”

“No.” Hunt could have sworn he heard a smile in Isaiah’s voice.

“When I flew over to explain, she blasted her music and ignored me like a fucking brat.” With enough enchantments around her apartment to keep out a host of angels, Hunt hadn’t even tried to get in through a window, since he’d tested them all overnight. So he’d been forced to glower through the glass—returning to the roof only after she’d emerged from her bedroom in nothing but a black sports bra and thong. Her smirk at his backtracking wings had been nothing short of feline. “I didn’t see her again until she went for a run. She flipped me off as she left.”

“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.