The shifter lifted her phone, typing away with rainbow-painted nails. “That fake-ass act you gave everyone else here, and in the two other warehouses.” She held up her phone. “We’re all on a group chat.” She gestured to everyone in the market around them. “I got, like, ten warnings you two would be coming through here, asking cheesy questions about drugs or whatever.”

It was, perhaps, the first time Hunt had seen Bryce at a loss for words. So he stepped up to her side. “All right,” he said to the teenager. “But do you know anything?”

The girl looked him over. “You think the Vipe would allow shit like that synth in here?”

“She allows every other depravity and crime,” Hunt said through his teeth.

“Yeah, but she’s not dumb,” the shifter said, tossing her braid over a shoulder.

“So you’ve heard of it,” Bryce said.

“The Vipe told me to tell you that it’s nasty, and she doesn’t deal in it, and never will.”

“But someone does?” Bryce said tightly.

This was bad. This would not end well at all—

“The Vipe also told me to say you should check the river.” She went back to her phone, presumably to tell the Vipe that she’d conveyed the message. “That’s the place for that kinda shit.”

“What do you mean?” Bryce asked.

A shrug. “Ask the mer.”

“We should lay out the facts,” Hunt said as Bryce stormed for the Meat Market’s docks. “Before we run to the mer, accusing them of being drug dealers.”

“Too late,” Bryce said.

He hadn’t been able to stop her from sending a message via otter to Tharion twenty minutes ago, and sure as Hel hadn’t been able to stop her from heading for the river’s edge to wait.

Hunt gripped her arm, the dock mere steps away. “Bryce, the mer do not take kindly to being falsely accused—”

“Who said it’s false?”

“Tharion isn’t a drug dealer, and he sure as shit isn’t selling something as bad as synth seems to be.”

“He might know someone who is.” She shrugged out of his grasp. “We’ve been dicking around for long enough. I want answers. Now.” She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you want to get this over with? So you can have your sentence reduced?”

He did, but he said, “The synth probably has nothing to do with this. We shouldn’t—”

But she’d already reached the wood slats of the dock, not daring to look into the eddying water beneath. The Meat Market’s docks were notorious dumping grounds. And feeding troughs for aquatic scavengers.

Water splashed, and then a powerful male body was sitting on the end of the dock. “This part of the river is gross,” Tharion said by way of greeting.

Bryce didn’t smile. Didn’t say anything other than, “Who’s selling synth in the river?”

The grin vanished from Tharion’s face. Hunt began to object, but the mer said, “Not in, Legs.” He shook his head. “On the river.”

“So it’s true, then. It’s—it’s what? A healing drug that leaked from a lab? Who’s behind it?”

Hunt stepped up to her side. “Tharion—”

“Danika Fendyr,” Tharion said, his eyes soft. Like he knew who Danika had been to her. “The intel came in a day before her death. She was spotted doing a deal on a boat just past here.”

59

“What do you mean, Danika was selling it?”

Tharion shook his head. “I don’t know if she was selling it or buying it or what, but right before synth started appearing on the streets, she was spotted on an Auxiliary boat in the dead of night. There was a crate of synth on board.”

Hunt murmured, “It always comes back to Danika.”

Above the roaring in her head, Bryce said, “Maybe she was confiscating it.”

“Maybe,” Tharion admitted, then ran a hand through his auburn hair. “But that synth—it’s some bad shit, Bryce. If Danika was involved in it—”

“She wasn’t. She never would have done something like that.” Her heart was racing so fast she thought she’d puke. She turned to Hunt. “But it explains why there were traces of it on her clothes, if she had to confiscate it for the Aux.”

Hunt’s face was grim. “Maybe.”

She crossed her arms. “What is it, exactly?”

“It’s synthetic magic,” Tharion said, eyes darting between them. “It started off as an aid for healing, but someone apparently realized that in super-concentrated doses, it can give humans strength greater than most Vanir. For short bursts, but it’s potent. They’ve tried to make it for centuries, but it seemed impossible. Most people thought it was akin to alchemy—just as unlikely as turning something into gold. But apparently modern science made it work this time.” He angled his head. “Does this have to do with the demon you were hunting?”

“It’s a possibility,” Hunt said.

“I’ll let you know if I get any other reports,” Tharion said, and didn’t wait for a farewell before diving back into the water.

Bryce stared out at the river in the midday sun, gripping the white opal in her pocket.

“I know it wasn’t what you wanted to hear,” Hunt said cautiously beside her.

“Was she killed by whoever is creating the synth? If she was on that boat to seize their shipment?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Could the person selling the synth and the person searching for the Horn be the same, if the synth can possibly repair the Horn?”

He rubbed his chin. “I guess. But this could also be a dead end.”

She sighed. “I don’t get why she never mentioned it.”

“Maybe it wasn’t worth mentioning,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” she murmured. “Maybe.”

Bryce waited until Hunt hit the gym in her apartment building before she dialed Fury.

She didn’t know why she bothered. Fury hadn’t taken a call from her in months.

The call nearly went to audiomail before she answered. “Hey.”

Bryce slumped against her bed and blurted, “I’m shocked you picked up.”

“You caught me between jobs.”

Or maybe Juniper had bitten Fury’s head off about bailing.

Bryce said, “I thought you were coming back to hunt down whoever was behind the Raven’s bombing.”

“I thought so, too, but it turned out I didn’t need to cross the Haldren to do it.”

Bryce leaned against her headboard, stretching out her legs. “So it really was the human rebellion behind it?” Maybe that C on the crates Ruhn thought was the Horn was just that: a letter.

“Yeah. Specifics and names are classified, though.”

Fury had said that to her so many times in the past that she’d lost count. “At least tell me if you found them?”

There was a good chance that Fury was sharpening her arsenal of weapons on the desk of whatever fancy hotel she was holed up in right now. “I said I was between jobs, didn’t I?”

“Congratulations?”