Sin & Salvation (Demigod of San Francisco #3)(11)

Bria nodded, accepting another drink from Liam. “What bullshit.” She took a large gulp. “I wanted to spend some quality time in here, getting hammered.”

“What do you think she does?” I asked quietly, hesitant to drink any more. If I needed to react quickly, alcohol would make things difficult.

“Spy.”

I started at hearing Mick’s raspy voice.

He reached for his whiskey. “She thinks we’re daft.” His lip curled into a snarl as he lifted the whiskey to his mouth. “She works for Valens. Should have his bollocks cut off, duh coont.”

Sometimes it didn’t even sound like English.

“Do you know her?” That was the last thing I’d expected to come out of him. The absolute last.

“No, I don’t fecking know her.” His spit pummeled my face. “Don’t need to. You seen one, you seen ’em all.” Mick shot back his whiskey and slammed the glass down on the bar. “Ahhhhh,” he said, much too loudly, while looking aggressively at the woman down the way.

“We’re going to be great friends,” Bria said with a smile.

The woman’s eyes darted up at the noise, and stalled on Mick’s hostile-eyed stare. Her jaw set, and I could see her weighing and measuring her opponent. The Six did it all the time—even Mordecai and Daisy were starting to do it. No question about it. This was no civilian.

Her gaze flicked to us, hitting me for a fraction of a second before lingering on Bria. She then jerked her gaze down to her drink, slumping her shoulders as if submitting.

“It’s me she is interested in,” Bria said quietly, finishing her second drink in record time. “Let’s see if she’ll follow me. Come on, Alexis, drink up. Let’s reel in this fish.”





4





Valens





“Sir, I have eyes on the subject,” Flara said through the cellphone in a sultry voice.

With the phone against his ear, Valens glanced at his son, sitting across the expansive living room with his gaze rooted to the smear of vibrant colors streaking the evening sky through the darkening window.

“Oh yes?” Valens said, pushing up from his seat. The movement drew Kieran’s notice, a slight question in the depths of his eyes.

Despite Valens’s best efforts, the boy had turned out more like his mother. He dallied around all day setting up government aid for the sick and the poor, people who had no place in Valens’s city. He was even organizing a magical fair, of all things, dragging him into the squalor of the dual-society zone. If it wouldn’t severely strain their already tense relationship, Valens would have ended that accursed fair and demanded his son stay in the magical zone where he belonged, learning the ropes of government. He had plans for the boy.

Valens made a light gesture with his hand, indicating the call was nothing, before retiring to his library. He had been about ready to make the move anyway.

“And where is that?” he said into the receiver as he climbed the stairs.

“The Necromancer is in a decrepit bar in the dual-society zone near the ocean.”

“Decrepit goes without saying in that waste of an area,” he murmured, stalling the conversation until he could sequester himself in his library. His son never ventured very far into this room. His disgust for Valens’s hunting conquests was plain, though that was probably because his son didn’t understand the cunning and endurance required to bring down some of these beasts. A manticore, for example, was a formidable foe. The creature had nearly taken Valens’s skin.

Or maybe it was another example of his son’s weak constitution.

Right now, Valens’s allies were giving Kieran a pass. They were letting the boy breathe to mourn his mother. Soon, however, they’d start to wonder if Kieran was hard enough to take Sydney. They’d wonder if Valens could execute his plans for expansion with his son as his partner.

Valens was starting to wonder that himself.

In another few months, Valens would be forced to give his son an ultimatum, one with possibly devastating consequences for both of them: continue the family business, or you will cease to be useful. He had not spent his life creating an empire to see his wife’s weak blood ruin his efforts. She’d weakened him once—he would be damned if he allowed her to do it again from beyond the grave.

Valens walked around his desk, checking the doorway to make sure Kieran hadn’t followed him, and then sat in his chair.

“Who is she there with?” Valens asked Flara. He’d chosen her for this lowbrow task because she was decent at blending in, powerful enough to hold her own, and rarely, if ever, professionally engaged. He didn’t like his bedmates bruised. Her greatest asset came when she spread her legs. Not to mention all of his elite staff were assigned to higher level duties, at present, getting his complex plans into action.

“She showed up at the bar with a female in her mid-twenties, and they sat next to an older man with a staring problem. The older man is a drunk and is trying to pick a fight.”

“Ignore him. The other female—do you recognize her?”

“No, but I’ve had the team run her face. She’s a lower-level Ghost Whisperer living in the dual-society zone. She’s a nobody.”

Valens clenched his fist and leaned against the dragon scale desk. A desk he’d commissioned after stalking and killing one of the most fearsome creatures in the magical wild. It was said that a man who could take down a dragon could do anything. But here he was, nearly two months after his employees had disappeared, and he still had no clue who’d done it, or why.