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

“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.”