to open the door to the Underground yet. Normally, I got in without a worry.
“There are some new players in the city. A lot of them showed up the last week or so. He wants to make sure there isn’t anyone you might take offense to.”
Ah. He wants to make sure there're no criminals with open warrants on them from the Tribunal. Smart move, Paden. I’d have to act and take them out, even if they aren’t my assignment.
“He didn’t vet them as they came in?”
“You know we do, but sometimes they bring friends faster than we can get information,” Deacon answered. “You know how the underground clientele is.”
“I do.” I was one of them.
It took a few minutes, but Deacon received an all clear and opened the door for me.
Already, my return home was strange. Paden had never done that before, meaning something had him uncomfortable, worried about the safety of his establishment, especially with me roaming around in it.
I walked down the narrow staircase quickly and breathed in the unique mix of magic, alcohol, soil. This was the secret of The Jackalope I didn’t tell Carter about—The Underground. This was the reason I always came back.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite bounty hunter,” Paden said, greeting me from the bottom of the stairs.
I grinned. Only Paden.
“I’m a Tribunal Executioner. You know that,” I reminded him softly when I reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Everyone knows. It’s an open secret that you are also a bounty hunter with your own agenda when you aren’t on the Tribunal’s dime,” he countered. “Come on. Have a drink with me before you drive off into the desert.”
“You going to tell me about the new faces Deacon mentioned?” I inquired, falling in step beside him.
“In a minute. It’s a little weird. I know you just landed, but I want to pull you aside for this one.”
As we walked into the Underground’s main bar, I ran my tongue over my lips. Everyone probably thought I had a bad case of chapped lips, or I was playing with my lip piercing, but I was a naga. I pulled in scents from the air with my tongue that my nose couldn’t pick up. In the room, there were five werewolves, over six types of fae, three vampires who smelled like the humans they had recently fed on, and a witch. Of that group, the only one I was worried about was the witch. They always had too many tricks up their sleeves for me to be comfortable around them. They didn’t have the same consistency as the rest, every one of them different from the next.
It wasn’t just my unusual ability to ‘taste’ scents on the air that helped me remain aware of my surroundings. If I closed my eyes, I could map the room out based on thermal information. Werewolves ran hot; vampires were cooler than any human; fae fluctuated in strange ways, depending on how much magic they were doing. The witch only read as human thermally, another reason I didn’t like them. They could hide in the crowd.
I followed him to his back office, knowing every set of eyes in the underground was on me. It was actually a light night. The underground was three times the size of the bar above and hosted the worst of the worst from the state of Arizona.
They watched me because I played both sides. Bounty hunting wasn’t illegal because it was a way for the supernatural world to police itself, but it was frowned upon that I did both, Bounty Hunter and Executioner.
“What is it?” I demanded once Paden shut the door.
“A new bounty. Ten million U.S. dollars.”
My eyebrows went up. “That’s serious money.”
“It is, and has gotten everyone’s attention because it’s probably going to be easy, but it’s also going to get a lot of them in trouble.” Paden seemed uncomfortable as he picked up the printout for the bounty.
We all recognized the deep yellow parchment that bounties were printed on, one of the few things consistent in the world of supernaturals. There was a simple system. A bounty was put out publicly, giving any of us a chance to go for it. It guaranteed the backer would get the best work, and there was a competitiveness that was normally friendly. There were only two stipulations for bounties, two very simple rules.
“Why?” I had a sneaking suspicion this wasn’t a normal bounty.
“It’s for a human,” Paden answered.
“Oh. Well, that’s bad,” I mumbled, taking the bounty