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She leaned in closer as though breathing me in. The invasion of my personal space should’ve alarmed me, but I didn’t care. My pulse leapt, and I had to force my eyelids to remain open as she leaned toward the left side of my face and neck. A shiver pricked my skin. The scent of pine and earth and something more feminine surrounded her, a faint aroma of fresh mint mixed with something else. Lavender, perhaps. Her soft chuckle stirred my hair.
“Grigori will see you,” she said in a deep, smoky tone, straightening back up and then walking back to the side door.
Hank shot me a quick questioning look as we moved forward. I shrugged, not understanding what had just happened any more than he did. The hybrid didn’t bother waiting for us to catch up.
I resisted the urge to fix my hair and smooth the skirt and torn sweater set. Instead of looking like a tough-as-nails officer, I was going into Grigori Te
The hybrid led us down a long flight of creaking wooden stairs. The air became wetter and substantially thicker with the smell of warm dirt and stone. The walls had been left bare. Massive wooden beams held up doorways and supported the ceiling in places. Ditches lined either side of the walkway to hold water and condensation that collected on the walls. We passed rooms open to view, fire pits dug into the centers and the ceilings outfitted with a fan-driven ventilation system to draw out the smoke.
I’d heard about this place for years, but this was a moment I never thought I’d see. It may be the last thing you see, I thought.
“Hey.” Hank’s hand nudged my shoulder. “On the left.”
I followed his gaze and saw a room occupied by male and female ji
The corridor was filled with the scent of honeysuckle.
Ash. It had to be.
The hybrid led us into a vast chamber with torches burning along the walls and a great fire pit in the center. Ji
At the end of the chamber sat an enormous wooden table. Grigori Te
He was bigger, darker, and meaner-looking than any other ji
We stopped, as the hybrid walked to the short side of the table and slid into the only empty chair. Grigori didn’t look up; too busy cutting a plate-sized steak with a serrated dagger. A goblet of red wine sat next to the pewter plate. He stuck a piece of meat into his mouth and then grabbed the goblet, the rings on his large fingers flashing in the firelight.
His wide jaw flexed like a pit bull’s as he chewed. After he swallowed and drank deeply from the goblet, he relaxed against the back of the chair and wiped his mouth. I hadn’t come all this way to watch the man eat his di
Finally, Grigori turned his attention to us, a faint violet gleam lighting the depths of sharp, calculating eyes.
“I ask myself,” he began in a deep, accented baritone, which seemed to have an echo all its own, “how is this … Detective Madigan, a female who killed two of my warriors, going to come out of this visit with her head still attached to her scrawny human body?”
The hybrid’s mouth quirked. “You can give her to the females. She reeks of sex. Even I can smell it on her.”
My head whipped to Hank as heat shot to my face. Seriously. I was going to murder him. Apparently the spell worked on other species as well. Len wasn’t the only one capable of attracting the entire female ji
Grigori leaned to the side and smoothed a dark thumb down the hybrid’s cheek, but his attention remained fixated on me. “Sian is my daughter. My only heir. She is unique, you see, prized, for human and ji
He shoved her back into the chair. My heart raced as she coughed and quietly tried to overcome near strangulation by her own father. I’d gotten what I came for—evidence that the ji
“This isn’t Charbydon,” Hank spoke up, his voice coated with steel. “Here you’re subject to human law.”
The ji
“Ash.” I figured I might as well push this as far as I could. “You’re manufacturing it for the CPP.”
He slapped one beefy hand on the table and threw back his head. The deep laughter sent chills down my spine. No one else dared laugh with him. When he was done, he leaned forward and gri
“You’re not above the law.”
He sat back and threw his arms wide. “Look around you. I am the law. My word is law.” He paused. “You coming here … It amuses me. I assume you want to make payment or bargain?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
Blood pounded through my temples. I swallowed. “Do you take Visa?”
The entire room froze. Even Grigori.
My blood pressure soared. With one bad move I’d be history, and I prayed to God I was reading him right.
Another eruption of laughter boomed through the room, startling me and everyone else. Grigori’s chair shook with the sound. As it receded, he wiped the corners of his eyes with his napkin. “Charlie Madigan. You make me laugh. You’re not the brightest female in the world coming here like this, but you have grômms, I’ll give you that. You and me, we will bargain.”
A female ji
Jaws dropped. It was obvious she’d made a terrible, fatal mistake.
Grigori pushed back from the table and stood, both hands coming to rest flat on either side of his plate as he focused on her. Her dark gray skin turned to light ash. She fell to her knees and tripped over desperate-sounding words in the ji