Radiant Sin(21)

“Okay. I trust you.” Her easy belief in me is staggering, but she continues before I can fully process. “I don’t suppose you have blueprints of the house?”

“No.” The admission grates. “It used to belong to Hermes.” Hermes is one of the few members of the Thirteen that I have next to no information on. She took the title about a year after me. The Hermes title is transferred by virtue of stealing an unstealable object or acquiring a piece of information about one of the Thirteen that no one else knows. This Hermes did both.

She appeared out of nowhere. No past, no active connections to any of the legacy families, no motive that I can see. She stood before the rest of us and recited things about the others that not even I knew while holding an heirloom vase from my family’s vault. No one contested the truth of those facts, and she was instated as Hermes immediately.

Since then, she’s been an agent of chaos, but she seems to genuinely want to protect Olympus. I wouldn’t call her an ally, but she’s not an enemy.

I think.

Either way, despite her apparent lack of boundaries and deep love of breaking and entering, Hermes is intensely private when it comes to her own home. Frankly, I’m shocked she sold this place to Minos. The country might not suit her, but she’s owned the house since she took over the title.

“Well, shit.” Cassandra sighs. “Then it’s bound to be full of surprises. Hermes’s sense of humor is too twisted not to have secret passageways and the like. It would appeal to her.”

I can’t argue that, though the familiar way she speaks of Hermes has my curiosity stirring. “Most likely.”

She hesitates. “I’m still surprised you didn’t manage to get the blueprints. The house didn’t spring out of nothing. Someone built it. If you can’t get to it through permits, applying pressure to one of the workers is the next best thing.”

I love that she already made that logical jump. I shake my head. “I tried. She didn’t use any of the known contractors in the upper city.”

“She went to the lower city.”

I smile reluctantly. “That’s my theory. And they have no love for me as a member of the Thirteen, so it’s a dead end.” Not to mention Hades wouldn’t have thanked me for trespassing in his domain. There are circumstances when it would behoove me to test him, but not over something as mundane as this. It aggravates my curiosity to no end that I don’t know what Hermes did to the building after she acquired it, but ultimately it’s a country house that I would never set foot in.

Or so I thought.

Cassandra examines her long red fingernails. “Will Hermes be at the party?”

“I don’t know.” The guest list is another thing that’s been kept under wraps. Minos hasn’t kept a convenient list to peruse, at least not digitally.

“Poor Apollo,” she murmurs. Her eyes are alight with amusement. “It must be aggravating to have run into so many dead ends. So we need to map the house as quickly as possible, find out where Minos keeps the keys to the kingdom, and use them to unlock his mysteries.”

“Nice metaphor.”

“I try.”

We share a grin that quickly becomes…something else. It’s my fault. My gaze falls to her lips, and despite my best efforts, I can’t help thinking about that kiss the other night again. She’d tasted of wine and had practically melted when I deepened the contact.

Not even cold showers were enough to combat that memory over the weekend. I haven’t had my body take over so intensely since I was a teenager, but back then, I was jacking myself to whatever I could find on the internet that suited my tastes.

These days, my fantasies all revolve around one woman.

Cassandra frowns. “I don’t understand why this is all necessary, though. If Minos bargained for information in exchange for his citizenship, why hasn’t he given that information?”

“He has.” I shrug. “Or so he says. He was recruited to a militant group fifteen years ago, but according to him, he was part of a cell that was only informed about the Ares tournament. Which we already knew, since he showed up here for that event. We don’t know anything about their leader, their motivations, or their plans.”

“You think he’s still working for them?”

“That’s what I am to find out. He says he defected. We’re not naive enough to believe it. I need evidence of correspondence or a money trail or something to prove he’s still answering to the enemy.”

“Okay. That makes sense. We need to get you access to Minos’s personal computer, since I doubt he’s got paper files just hanging out with incriminating evidence.” Cassandra licks her lips. “I, uh, suppose we’ll be doing more kissing this week.”

“Yes.” The word is low. A command I’m practically daring her to challenge. If she did…

Well, it doesn’t matter, because she just gives a jerky nod. “All for the cause, right? I’ve kissed worse people for shittier reasons.”

I don’t like to think about her kissing worse people for shittier reasons. I have very intentionally not looked into Cassandra’s private life. Oh, everyone in the city is aware her parents were killed in a car crash after displeasing Zeus—and I know the truth behind that public lie—and that she and her sister were publicly shunned afterward.