Rise of the Blood by Lucienne Diver

rose from their table and did the same, saying into my ear as he hit my second cheek, “You are okay? You look a trifle…piqued.”
    “I’m fine, which is more than I can say for you if you pull one wrong move with my friend, capisce ?” I was about to say you break her, you bought her , but that might just give him ideas.
    “Of course, agape . She is safe as houses.”
    Yeah, I knew what Vesuvius had done to them and Hermes was just as much a force of nature.
    “Safer,” I insisted.
    He winked and was gone, making no promises.
    Nick stood holding his plate, looking between me and their retreating backs. “Why didn’t you warn her off if you didn’t approve?” he asked.
    “Tried that. Didn’t work.”
    “She has a thing for bad boys, huh?”
    I nodded, biting the head off a croissant that had never done a thing to me but dare to be light and flaky.
    “Seen a lot of that,” Nick said. “Rarely ends well.”
    I swallowed the bite of croissant that had turned to ashes in my mouth and glared. “That your idea of comfort?”
    “You want comfort, you don’t come to a cop. Hey,” he added, grabbing my hand before I could decapitate a second pastry, “does Christie seem the typical type to you?”
    I eyed him. “No,” I admitted.
    “Then there’s a good chance her results will vary.”
    It was exactly the right thing to say, and he must have read that on my face.
    “I made it all better?” he asked.
    “Mostly.”
    “Good.” Then he mumbled, “If only Apollo’s petrification was as easily solved.”
    I went a lot easier on my second croissant and gulped coffee to wash it down. “We’d better get going before our transportation leaves without us,” I said once I’d consumed enough caffeine to care.
    We retrieved our bags from the room and met up with the others in the lobby.
    In front of the hotel, two gleaming white stretch limos waited and Odd Job…er, Viggo…stood, directing people toward one or the other based on the list he held. It turned out the film people were going in the first limo, family in the second. There’d be no chance for me to interview any of the suspects, Serena top of the list, regardless of what Apollo thought. But the two-hour ride was the perfect opportunity for me to catch up on my missed sleep.
    For the second time in as many days, I drooled on Nick’s shoulder…until we hit the switchbacks and I was catapulted upright and knocked awake by my head hitting the window. From there on up the mountain it was an unending thrill ride. And by thrill ride, I mean sheer heart-stopping terror as each time it looked like there was no possible way the limo could make the turn in the space provided and we’d go shooting off a cliff, cinematically falling end over end down the mountain, ending in a fiery wreck at the bottom.
    By the time we reached the top and pulled into the almost forty-five-degree angle of the parking lot of our mountain-view hotel I had nearly shredded the leather interior with my fingernails and was seriously in need of a drink. Or ambrosia. Or all of the above. And then a way down off this deathtrap. Times like this, I doubted my ancestry. We Greeks had a habit of building on the very tippy top of impossible places. They were the holiest, the most strategic…at least, that was supposed to be the reasoning. Heights were certainly religious experiences for me. Nothing made me pray so much— ohgods, ohgods, ohgods —as being perilously close to cliffs, summits, high wires and other insanity.
    I felt a prayer coming on now.
    No one was happier than I was to come to a complete stop, but Nick had to be a close second. I noticed as he helped me out of the limo that his hand had gone nearly white from my squeezing of it and that he was flexing and tightening his fist in the hope of getting blood to circulate back through.
    “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
    “You going to be okay?” he asked.
    I sampled the air outside the limo, trying to breathe deeply and