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

“When I want things done, Bryce, you’re to do them. No questions.”

“Yes, Jesiba,” Bryce muttered, climbing the stairs. Dodging the reaching hands of the leopard shifter yesterday had twinged something in her bad leg.

“Would you like to be a worm, Bryce?” Jesiba purred, voice sliding into something eerily close to a Reaper’s rasp. At least Jesiba wasn’t one of them—even if Bryce knew the sorceress often dealt with them in the House of Flame and Shadow. Thank the gods none had ever shown up at the gallery, though. “Would you like to be a dung beetle or a centipede?”

“I’d prefer to be a dragonfly.” Bryce entered the small, plush office upstairs. One wall was a pane of glass that overlooked the gallery floor a level below, the material utterly soundproof.

“Be careful what you ask of me,” Jesiba went on. “You’d find that smart mouth of yours shut up fairly quickly if I transform you. You wouldn’t have any voice at all.”

Bryce calculated the time difference between Lunathion and the western shores of Pangera and realized Jesiba had probably just come back from dinner. “That Pangeran red wine is heady stuff, isn’t it?” She was almost to the wooden desk when the firstlights flicked on. A rack of them illuminated the dismantled gun hanging on the wall behind the desk, the Godslayer Rifle gleaming as fresh as it had the day it’d been forged. She could have sworn a faint whine radiated from the gold and steel—like the legendary, lethal gun was still ringing after a shot.

It unnerved her that it was in here, despite the fact that Jesiba had split it into four pieces, mounted like a work of art behind her desk. Four pieces that could still be easily assembled, but it put her clients at ease, even while it reminded them that she was in charge.

Bryce knew the sorceress never told them about the six-inch engraved golden bullet in the safe beside the painting on the right wall. Jesiba had shown it to her just once, letting her read the words etched onto the bullet: Memento Mori.

The same words that appeared in the mosaic in the Meat Market.

It’d seemed melodramatic, but some part of her had marveled at it—at the bullet and at the rifle, so rare only a few existed in Midgard.

Bryce powered up Jesiba’s computer, letting the female rattle off instructions before sending the file. Bryce was halfway down the stairs again when she asked her boss, “Have you heard anything new about Luna’s Horn?”

A long, contemplative pause. “Does it have to do with this investigation of yours?”

“Maybe.”

Jesiba’s low, cold voice was an embodiment of the House she served. “I haven’t heard anything.” Then she hung up. Bryce gritted her teeth as she headed back to her desk on the showroom floor.

Lehabah interrupted her by whispering through the iron door, “Can I see Athie now?”

“No, Lele.”

He’d kept his distance this morning, too. Good.

Look toward where it hurts the most.

She had her list of Danika’s locations. Unfortunately, she knew what she had to do next. What she’d woken up this morning dreading. Her phone rang in her clenched hand, and Bryce steeled herself for Jesiba calling to bitch that she’d fucked up the file, but it was Hunt.

“Yeah?” she asked by way of greeting.

“There’s been another murder.” His voice was tight—cold.

She nearly dropped the phone. “Who—”

“I’m still getting the details. But it was about ten blocks from here—near the Gate in the Old Square.”

Her heart beat so fast she could scarcely draw breath to say, “Any witnesses?”

“No. But let’s go over there.”

Her hands shook. “I’m busy,” she lied.

Hunt paused. “I’m not fucking around, Quinlan.”

No. No, she couldn’t do it, endure it, see it again—

Bryce forced herself to breathe, practically inhaling the peppermint vapors from the diffuser. “There’s a client coming—”

He banged on the gallery door, sealing her fate. “We’re leaving.”

Bryce’s entire body was taut to the point of near-trembling as she and Hunt approached the magi-screens blocking the alley a few blocks away from the Old Square Gate.

She tried to breathe through it, tried all the techniques she’d read and heard about regarding reining in her dread, that sickening plunging feeling in her stomach. None of them worked.

Angels and Fae and shifters milled about the alley, some on radios or phones.

“A jogger found the remains,” Hunt said as people parted to let him pass. “They think it happened sometime last night.” He added carefully, “The 33rd’s still working on getting an ID, but from the clothes, it looks like an acolyte from Luna’s Temple. Isaiah is already asking the temple priestesses who might be missing.”

All sounds turned into a blaring drone. She didn’t entirely remember the walk over.

Hunt edged around the magi-screen blocking the crime scene from view, took one look at what lay there, and swore. He whirled toward her, as if realizing what he was dragging her back into, but too late.

Blood had splashed across the bricks of the building, pooled on the cracked stones of the alley floor, splattered on the sides of the dumpster. And beside that dumpster, as if someone had chucked them out of a bucket, sat clumps of red pulp. A torn robe lay beside the carnage.