“Took your sweet damn time,” Moses said.
I smiled, really and truly, for the first time in hours.
I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. Apparently, he’d been spending more time with Eleanor, which made me feel better. Safety in numbers, maybe.
Moses hopped down to the floor onto short and slightly crooked legs, then walked toward us with a swinging gait. When he reached us, he looked me up and down, then Liam.
“You look whole enough,” he said, then looked back at Eleanor. “They look whole enough.” His voice was a shade too loud, as if he thought the volume was necessary to accommodate her blindness.
But Eleanor just smiled at him. “Thank you, Moses.”
He bobbed his head in acknowledgment, a move she certainly couldn’t see.
“You’re all right?” she asked to confirm, eyebrows raised in hope.
“We’re fine,” Liam said. “You heard what happened?”
“Heard it, felt it, smelled the smoke,” she said. “The block captain came by, but he wouldn’t tell us anything.”
“Asshole,” Moses muttered, moving back to the chair opposite Eleanor’s and hopping onto it.
“Then we might as well start at the beginning.” Liam offered me the other free chair, but I waved him off, sat down on the floor before he could argue.
“I’m grubbier than you are,” I said. “I don’t want to ruin the cushion. Please go ahead.”
Liam folded his tall frame into the chair. He and Moses were physically different, but there was something about them—call it their spirits or souls—that was similar. They were both on the right side of good.
“They call themselves Reveillon,” Liam said. “They believe magic is the root of all evil, so all magic, all Paras, Containment, everything, has to be eliminated to bring the Zone back to life. To bring about a ‘reawakening.’ They think killing the remaining Paranormals will usher in a better New Orleans.”
“They said all that at the bombing?” Eleanor asked.
“They were protesting on Bourbon before they reached the gate. Came at me with nonsense about Gracie.”
“Oh, Liam,” Eleanor said quietly, and put a hand on his, squeezed.
“They don’t have boundaries,” I said.
Liam nodded. “They’re led by a man named Ezekiel. Could be as much cult of personality as cult. I don’t like it. The lack of respect for life, this ‘kill ’em all and damn the consequences’ mentality.”
He sat back in the chair, ran long fingers through his hair. “I’m a bounty hunter. I get there’s an irony in my saying that—”
“Nonsense,” Eleanor said, swatting away the idea. “That’s nonsense, and you know better. You know the difference between what’s legal and what’s good. You know what it means to be Paranormal in this world, and you choose your bounties very carefully.”
While Liam’s eyes widened at the ferocity in her voice, Eleanor—clearly not done—made a haughty sound and pointed a skinny finger at him. “I know you don’t take every bounty. Bounties are a prime topic of conversation in Devil’s Isle. Who’s been brought in, who the Paras believe is still out there. We know who you bring in—and we know who you don’t bring in.” She aimed her gaze in my direction. “Case in point.”
“And thanks for that,” I said, smiling at him.
Eleanor smiled approvingly. “But all that, my dears, is neither here nor there, just an issue I’m a bit sensitive about. Do not come between me and my grandchildren.” She settled in her chair again, and her expression sobered. “You’re saying this won’t be their only act of violence.”
Liam looked at her squarely. “They had enough explosives to break through the gate, put a crater in the ground, and kill people in a hundred-foot radius. And they had enough time and wherewithal to get all that done and convince each other that death—theirs and others’—was worth it. That the cause was worth dying for. They won’t stop until they’re satisfied.”
“Will they ever be?” I asked.
“Maybe not,” Liam said. “At the very least, there’s more destruction to come.” He leaned forward, linked his hands on the table, and looked at his grandmother. “I think it may be time for you to leave Devil’s Isle.”
“No.” Eleanor’s answer was quick and brooked no argument. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s dangerous here,” Liam insisted. “And now with Reveillon—”
“It’s dangerous for everyone,” Eleanor finished. “As much as I appreciate your looking out for me, this is where I belong.” She looked at Moses. “I am magic, just like every other Para, wraith, and Sensitive in here.”
Moses nodded. “Damn right you are.” It was clear he meant it as a compliment.
“Besides, there’s no reason to think I’m any more of a target than anyone else.”
“Everyone is a target,” Liam insisted.
“And are you going to get everyone else out?”
That question hung in the air, stained with guilt.
“No,” Liam said. “I don’t have that power.”
“Then I stay where I belong.” Eleanor crossed her thin arms, set her jaw. There was determination in her eyes that belied her age, her apparent delicacy.
Liam breathed in and out for a moment, staring down his formidable grandmother. Two generations, testing their wills against each other.
“All right,” Liam said, sitting back again. “But I don’t like it.”
Eleanor grinned. “You don’t have to, dear.”
“Hardheaded,” he muttered.
“Damn right,” she said, chin lifted. “I am no simpering miss.”
“I would certainly never accuse you of that.”
“Maybe we could come at this another way,” I said. “Educate Reveillon about how they’re wrong.” I looked at Moses. “Getting rid of Paranormals—even if they walked right back through the Veil again—wouldn’t really change anything, would it? Clean the soil, for example?”
Moses rubbed one of his horns. “No. Magic doesn’t belong in this world; I don’t think anybody would argue with that. But whether the magic comes from the Veil or the Paras, it’s already out there. Killing us isn’t going to change anything. Now, if these Reveillon assholes were smart, they’d talk to Paras about fixing the soil, the power grid. Making the damaged areas usable again.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Do Paras know how to do that?”
Moses shrugged. “I don’t know that anybody has tried. I’m guessing you’d have to use magic to fix magic, and that’s not something Containment wants to talk about.”
Considering, Liam leaned back. “They also won’t talk about treating Paras as temporary allies, even against a group with an arsenal.”
“We have friends in Containment,” I pointed out. “Maybe they could use their influence, try to get Delta involved.” After all, Delta had been crucial to keeping the Veil closed at the Memorial Battle. And giving me hope that becoming a wraith wasn’t an inevitability.
Moses snorted. “Red, I know you’ve only been recently indoctrinated to the church of the actual fucking truth, but to do that, they’d have to admit Paras aren’t all enemies, and Devil’s Isle is fundamentally unfair. They won’t do that.”
“Sooner or later,” I said, “they’ll have to. That’s just history. Kingdoms don’t last forever. People change, attitudes change. Maybe we can speed that process along.”
Liam looked at me. “You’re sounding very optimistic.”
“We’ve got a prison full of Paras who shouldn’t be in there, a magical curtain that could split at any time, and a group of humans who think the way to fix the Zone is to kill everyone and everything in it.” I looked at Liam. “It’s almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better, so might as well hope for the better to get here sooner rather than later.”
Moses’s eyes na
rrowed. “There may have been logic in that, but if so, it was buried deep, deep down.”
Liam smiled at me. “That’s a redhead for you.”
—
“Don’t be such a stranger,” Moses said, when we said our good-byes. He looked up at me with those gleaming green eyes. “But also don’t be killed by xenophobic idiots.”
“I will try to not do both of those things,” I promised.
“You should probably send a pigeon,” Liam said when we walked downstairs. “Tell Delta what’s happened, and what might be coming. Like you said, it will probably get worse before it gets better.”
In the Zone, things seemed to work that way.
CHAPTER FIVE
I’d expected to walk into Royal Mercantile, find the store dark and empty, Tadji behind the counter reading a book, waiting impatiently for me to come back.
Instead, she stood in front of a counter that was now dotted with displays and racks of product. In her beautiful, waving script she’d made pretty signs that now hung from the ceiling and pointed customers to different areas of the store.
And that wasn’t the only difference. Business had always been steady; the customers knew me, and there just weren’t a lot of options. But even as the sun set, when most remaining NOLA residents would be returning home for the night, there were a dozen people milling around the store, carrying wicker baskets to hold their goods—baskets I recognized from the storage room.
In the half dozen hours that we’d been gone, she’d turned Royal Mercantile into a bustling retail establishment.
“Damn,” Liam said quietly as the bell strap on the door rang our arrival. “Even Mos would be impressed by this.”
I was sure Liam was right. I had clearly not been giving my best friend enough capitalistic credit. So why did I have an angry clench in my belly, irritation at the sheer number of people in the store, and anger that she’d rearranged it—and better than I ever had?
Tadji’s head lifted at the sound of the bells, and she said something to a customer at the counter, then hurried around it to get to us.
“Thank God,” she said, looking us over. “I was frantic. You’re all right?”
“We’re fine,” Liam said when I didn’t answer.
“I’ve been getting reports from people about what happened.” Her eyes darkened with anger. “It was Reveillon, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Liam said, “but Containment’s still investigating. It’s going to take time to piece everything together.”
“Your grandmother?” Tadji asked.
“She’s fine. Thanks for asking.”
Tadji nodded, shifted her gaze to me, and I could feel her eagerness, which only made me more irritated.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, waving a hand at the store. “I was antsy, and I needed something to do, and this was the least destructive thing I could think of.” She looked around. “I tried to think like a customer and, I guess, take everything up a notch.” She looked back at me, her eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. “I’ve got some more ideas, too, actually.”
“Uh-huh,” was all I said.
She frowned at me, the enthusiasm shifting to concern. “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t. I was suddenly itching with irritation, with anger, and I had no idea why. And considering what I’d just walked away from, that made me feel ridiculous and petty.
She put a hand on my arm. “If I overstepped, I can move everything back. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I lied, because I didn’t know why it was a very big deal. I couldn’t process it.
The only thing I could think to do was get away, try to figure out what the hell was happening inside my head.
“I need to go upstairs,” I said and, without waiting for an answer, tromped up to the second floor like a kid who’d taken her ball and run.
—
The storage room on the second floor of Royal Mercantile was a warren of antiques and furniture. I’d tried to organize it roughly into departments, but that effort had failed when I was nearly pinned by a metal gas station sign and discovered—at a rusty point—that I had magic.
I walked through the maze to the wall of windows that faced Royal Street, pushed back the silk curtains, and stared into the falling darkness. And then I tried to figure out exactly why I’d just been bitchy to my best friend.
Liam let me stew for fifteen minutes before wooden floors signaled his entrance. Darkness had fallen completely, and I hadn’t thought to turn on the light. He did so, and I blinked into the shock of it.
He found me in an oak rocking chair in front of the windows, the floor creaking beneath me.
“This is a horror movie waiting to happen, cher—you sitting in the dark in a rocking chair, making that sound.”
Silence stretched between us. “You want to talk?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“The bombing, or what she did to the store?”
“Both, I think.” I sighed, not entirely sure I wanted to bare my soul. But I knew I’d have to get it out sooner or later, because I was going to have to apologize to Tadji. Maybe if I talked through it, I’d understand it. I’d understand myself.
“Before the war,” I began, “I had this plan for my life. I had pretty good grades, and that mattered back then. I was gonna go to Tulane, live in a dorm, be an irresponsible college student. I was going to get roaring drunk at parties and find a boy and make the dean’s list.”
“And then war came,” Liam said.
“And then war came,” I agreed. I sighed and rose, feeling suddenly antsy, and not a little bit trapped. Maybe that’s how I’d felt then, too.
“Dad started selling provisions,” I continued, “started moving more of the antiques up here, started spending more time at the store. By that point, it was dangerous to stay alone in the house. Better to be here with him, even if the Quarter was a bigger target. So I stayed here most of the time, and I worked. I didn’t have a lot of choice, and I didn’t feel like I should complain about the choice I did have.” I looked down, picked at a spot of dirt on my jeans with a thumbnail. “I was alive, I was safe, and I had a way to make a living. That was rare in the Zone.”
“Why not leave when your father died?”
I looked back at him. “Because I’m the last of the Connollys. If my father had lived, he’d have stayed here forever. Maybe I’d have kids, and one of them could have taken it over. Still could, I guess. But in the meantime, I couldn’t let it just fade away.”
I walked to the windows, pointed at the pale green building across the street. “That’s the Prentiss Building. Built in 1795, I think. It’s one of the first structures in New Orleans.” I traced the building’s lines on the glass with a fingertip.
“The thing is, that building held an operating business from 1795 until the war. And then the war came, and the Donaldsons—they owned it at the time—left.” The windows and door had been broken, the store rummaged and hollowed out, blackened with war. But the building had still survived.
“I was just trying to keep going,” I said. “And it turned out, being here was the best way to remember him. People came by all the time. Mrs. Proctor, Mrs. Jones, Tony. People who’d known my father. They checked on me every day. They were brave enough to stay, to hold on to what we had. So I did the same.”
“But maybe,” Liam said, joining me at the window, “you’d have liked to have had another option.”
I nodded. “I’ve worked hard on the store, and I love it. But as much as it’s a part of me, I’ve never had that look in my eyes—the eagerness Tadji had.”
I paused, trying to put my churning emotions into words. “After the bombing, after all that today, I was really looking forward to getting back here. Getting into my space—my place.”
“Your comfort zone.”
“Yeah. After all this time, yeah. The place where I’m in charge, where I make the rules. And instead, I find her in tornado merchandising mode.” I looked up at him. “She’s been in retail for five hours . . . and she’s done a better job of it than I have in the years since my father died. And it suddenly felt like this wasn’t my place.”
“Come here,” Liam said, voice filled with compassion. Then he pulled me against his body, wrapped his arms around me.
Want rose so quickly, so powerfully, that it might have been a tangible thing. To be so close to something I wanted so badly but couldn’t have. But I let myself have what I could. Not because I was a Sensitive, not because I could someday become a wraith, but because I was a woman, and he was a man, and something had sparked—bright and hot—between us.
I dropped my forehead to his chest and rested there, let myself be, let my hands rest at his lean hips.
I could have tipped up my head and offered him a kiss; I had the sense he was waiting for it, would welcome it. But I knew where it would lead. As sure as he felt the spark, he didn’t want to hurt me. We’d both walk away, but I’d get bruised in the process.
I gave it a minute, then two. And I dropped my hands, pulled back. Liam gave the embrace a last bit of strength before letting me step away.
“Claire.” My name fell softly, part exhalation, part frustration, part grief.
I just looked at him. After a moment he tore his gaze away, looked over my head to the windows behind us. There was stubble around his jaw, tiredness in his eyes.
“Probably going to rain tonight,” he said.
Yes, let’s please talk about the weather. Let’s talk about anything but need and want and feelings. It hadn’t rained in two days, and this was New Orleans, so a downpour soon was pretty much inevitable. “Yeah.”
We stood in that room of memories, the breach between us as big as the one I’d created at the Memorial Battle. And then the lights above us buzzed, went dark as the city’s power grid was overcome once again by magic.