“You were bitching this morning that I wasn’t doing anything of value,” Bryce muttered back as they trailed the Viper Queen through an archway and down a back set of stairs. From below, roaring and cheers rose to meet them. “And now that I am doing something, you’re bitching about it, too?” She snorted. “Get your shit together, Athalar.”

His jaw tightened again. But he glanced at her bag, the block of salt weighing it down. “You bought the salt because you knew it’d attract her attention.”

“You told me that it’d take weeks to get a meeting with her. I decided to bypass all the bullshit.” She tapped the bag, the salt thumping hollowly beneath her hand.

“Cthona’s tits,” he muttered, shaking his head. They exited the stairwell a level down, the walls solid concrete. Behind them, the roar of the fighting pit echoed down the corridor. But the Viper Queen glided ahead, passing rusty metal doors. Until she opened an unmarked one and swept in without so much as looking back. Bryce couldn’t help her smug smile.

“Don’t look so fucking satisfied,” Hunt hissed. “We might not even walk out of this place alive.” True. “I’ll ask the questions.”

“No.”

They glowered at each other, and Bryce could have sworn lightning forked across his eyes. But they’d reached the door, which opened into—

She’d been expecting the plush opulence of Griffin Antiquities hidden behind that door: gilded mirrors and velvet divans and silk drapes and a carved oak desk as old as this city.

Not this … mess. It was barely better than the stockroom of a dive bar. A dented metal desk occupied most of the cramped space, a scratched purple chair behind it—tufts of stuffing poking out of the upper corner, and the pale green paint peeled off the wall in half a dozen spots. Not to mention the water stain gracing the ceiling, made worse by the thrumming fluorescent firstlights. Against one wall stood an open shelving unit filled with everything from files to crates of liquor to discarded guns; on the opposite, stacked cardboard boxes rose above her head.

One glance at Hunt and Bryce knew he was thinking the same: the Viper Queen, mistress of the underworld, feared poisons expert and ruler of the Meat Market, claimed this hovel as an office?

The female slid into the chair, interlacing her fingers atop the mess of papers strewn across the desk. A computer that was about twenty years out of date sat like a fat rock before her, a little statue of Luna poised atop it, the goddess’s bow aimed at the shifter’s face.

One of her guards shut the door, prompting Hunt’s hand to slide toward his hip, but Bryce had already taken a seat in one of the cheap aluminum chairs.