Thank fucking Urd, her phone rang as she opened the gallery door. But it wasn’t Ruhn calling to check in, and it wasn’t Juniper with an earful about missing the dance class. “Jesiba.”
The sorceress didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Get the back door open. Now.”
“Oh, it’s horrible, BB,” Lehabah whispered in the dimness of the library. “Just horrible.”
Staring up at the massive, dimly lit tank, Bryce felt her arm hair stand on end as she watched their new addition explore its environment. Hunt crossed his arms and peered into the gloom. Any thoughts of getting naked with him had vanished an hour ago.
A dark, scaled hand slapped against the thick glass, ivory claws scraping. Bryce swallowed. “I want to know where anyone even found a n?kk in these waters.” From what she’d heard, they existed only in the icy seas of the north, and mostly in Pangera.
“I preferred the kelpie,” Lehabah whispered, shrinking behind her little divan, her flame a quivering yellow.
As if it had heard them, the n?kk paused before the glass and smiled.
At more than eight feet long, the n?kk might have very well been the Helish twin to a mer male. But instead of humanoid features, the n?kk presented a jutting lower jaw with a too-wide, lipless mouth, full of needle-thin teeth. Its overlarge eyes were milky, like some of the fishes of the deep. Its tail was mostly translucent—bony and sharp—and above it, a warped, muscled torso rose.
No hair covered its chest or head, and its four-fingered hands ended in daggerlike claws.
With the tank spanning the entire length of one side of the library, there would be no escaping its presence, unless the n?kk went down to the cluster of dark rocks at the bottom. The creature dragged those claws over the glass again. The inked SPQM gleamed stark white on his greenish-gray wrist.
Bryce lifted her phone to her ear. Jesiba picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”
“We have a problem.”
“With the Korsaki contract?” Jesiba’s voice was low, as if she didn’t want to be overheard.
“No.” Bryce scowled at the n?kk. “The creep in the aquarium needs to go.”
“I’m in a meeting.”
“Lehabah is scared as Hel.”
Air was lethal to n?kks—if one was exposed for more than a few seconds, its vital organs would begin shutting down, its skin peeling away as if burned. But Bryce had still gone up the small stairwell to the right of the tank to ensure that the feeding hatch built into the grate atop the water was thoroughly locked. The hatch itself was a square platform that could be raised and lowered into the water, operated by a panel of controls in the rear of the space atop the tank, and Bryce had triple-checked that the machine was completely turned off.
When she’d returned to the library, she’d found Lehabah curled into a ball behind a book, the sprite’s flame a sputtering yellow.
Lehabah whispered from her couch, “He’s a hateful, horrible creature.”
Bryce shushed her. “Can’t you gift him to some macho loser in Pangera?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“But he’s—”
The line went dead. Bryce slumped into her seat at the table. “Now she’ll just keep him forever,” she told the sprite.
“What are you going to feed it?” Hunt asked as the n?kk again tested the glass wall, feeling with those terrible hands.
“It loves humans,” Lehabah whispered. “They drag swimmers under the surface of ponds and lakes and drown them, then slowly feast on their corpses over days and days—”
“Beef,” Bryce said, her stomach turning as she glanced at the small door to access the stairwell to the top of the tank. “He’ll get a few steaks a day.”
Lehabah cowered. “Can’t we put up a curtain?”
“Jesiba will just rip it down.”
Hunt offered, “I could pile some books on this table—block your view of him instead.”
“He’ll still know where I am, though.” Lehabah pouted at Bryce. “I can’t sleep with it in here.”
Bryce sighed. “What if you just pretend he’s an enchanted prince or something?”
The sprite pointed toward the tank. To the n?kk hovering in the water, tail thrashing. Smiling at them. “A prince from Hel.”
“Who would want a n?kk for a pet?” Hunt asked, sprawling himself across from Bryce at the desk.
“A sorceress who chose to join Flame and Shadow and turns her enemies into animals.” Bryce motioned to the smaller tanks and terrariums built into the shelves around them, then rubbed at the persistent ache in her thigh beneath her pink dress. When she’d finally worked up the nerve to emerge from her bedroom this morning after the kitchen fiasco, Hunt had looked at her for a long, long moment. But he’d said nothing.