“Can’t you use your lightning-thing to protect us?”

He suppressed another smile at lightning-thing, but he said, “There’s water down there. Adding lightning to the mix doesn’t seem wise.”

She cut him a glare. Hunt gave one right back.

Hunt had the feeling he’d passed some test when she smiled slightly.

Avoiding that little smile, Hunt scanned the river of filth running below. “All sewers lead to the Istros. Maybe the Many Waters folk have seen something.”

Bryce’s brows rose. “Why would they?”

“A river’s a good place to dump a corpse.”

“The demon left remains, though. It—or Sabine—doesn’t seem to be interested in hiding them. Not if she wants to do this as part of some scheme to jeopardize Micah’s image.”

“That’s only a theory right now,” Hunt countered. “I have a Many Waters contact who might have intel.”

“Let’s head to the docks, then. We’ll be less likely to be noticed at night anyway.”

“But twice as likely to encounter a predator searching for a meal. We’ll wait until daylight.” The gods knew they’d already risked enough in coming down here. Hunt placed the metal lid back on the sewer with a thud. He got one look at her annoyed, dirty face and chuckled. Before he could reconsider, he said, “I have fun with you, Quinlan. Despite how terrible this case is, despite all of it, I haven’t had fun like this in a while.” In ever.

He could have sworn she blushed. “Hang with me, Athalar,” she said, trying to wipe the grime off her legs and hands from kneeling at the grate entrance, “and you might get rid of that stick up your ass after all.”

He didn’t answer. There was just a click.

She whirled toward him to find his phone out. Snapping a photo of her.

Hunt’s grin was a slash of white in the rainy gloom. “I’d rather have a stick up my ass than look like a drowned rat.”

Bryce used the spigot on the roof to wash off her shoes, her hands. She had no desire to track the filth of the street into her house. She went so far as to make Hunt take off his boots in the hallway, and didn’t look to see if he was planning on taking a shower before she ran for her own room and had the water going in seconds.

She left her clothes in a pile in the corner, turned the heat as high as she could tolerate, and began a process of scrubbing and foaming and scrubbing some more. Remembering how she’d knelt on the filthy city street and breathed in a face full of sewer air, she scrubbed herself again.

Hunt knocked twenty minutes later. “Don’t forget to clean between your toes.”

Even with the shut door, she covered herself. “Fuck off.”