He choked. Not just at the message from Bryce: The gallery roof isn’t a pigeon roost, you know, but what she’d changed her contact name to, presumably when he’d gone to the bathroom or showered or just left his phone on the coffee table: Bryce Rocks My Socks.

And there, beneath the ridiculous name, she’d added a photo to her contact: the one she’d snapped of herself in the phone store, grinning from ear to ear.

Hunt suppressed a growl of irritation and typed back, Shouldn’t you be working?

Bryce Rocks My Socks wrote back a second later, How can I work when you two are thumping around up there?

He wrote back, How’d you get my password? She hadn’t needed it to activate the camera feature, but to have gotten into his contacts, she would have needed the seven-digit combination.

I paid attention. She added a second later, And might have observed you typing it in a few times while you were watching some dumb sunball game.

Hunt rolled his eyes and pocketed his phone without replying. Well, at least she was coming out of that quiet cloud she’d been in for days.

He found Isaiah watching him carefully. “There are worse fates than death, you know.”

Hunt looked toward the Comitium, the female Archangel lurking in it. “I know.”

Bryce frowned out the gallery door. “The forecast didn’t call for rain.” She scowled at the sky. “Someone must be throwing a tantrum.”

“It’s illegal to interfere with the weather,” Hunt recited from beside her, thumbing a message into his phone. He hadn’t changed the new contact name she’d given herself, Bryce had noticed. Or erased that absurd photo she’d added to her contact listing.

She silently mimicked his words, then said, “I don’t have an umbrella.”

“It’s not a far flight to the lab.”

“It’d be easier to call a car.”

“At this hour? In the rain?” He sent off his message and pocketed his phone. “It’ll take you an hour just to cross Central Avenue.”

The rain swept through the city in sheets. “I could get electrocuted up there.”

Hunt’s eyes glittered as he offered her a hand. “Good thing I can keep you safe.”

With all that lightning in his veins, she supposed it was true.

Bryce sighed and frowned at her dress, the black suede heels that would surely be ruined. “I’m not in flying-appropriate attire—”

The word ended on a yelp as Hunt hauled her into the sky.

She clung to him, hissing like a cat. “We have to go back before closing for Syrinx.”