The Sight (16 page)

We'd walked away from the fire then, left the crowd to its bloodlust.

“He was in love with New Orleans,” I said. “And he loved objects—was fascinated by their meaning, their history, their symbolism. That's why I stayed here and kept the store.” I looked back at the table. “If any of these belonged to him, he didn't tell me about it. He certainly didn't tell Containment about it.”

“If he'd gotten these things from anyone else, surely they'd have come back,” Liam said. “Cleaned up, or added things, or taken them back.”

I nodded. It was a miracle the place hadn't been looted. I swiped a finger of dust off the table. Everything looked carefully arranged—carefully curated—but the dust said they hadn't been touched in a very long time.

I looked back at Liam. “It's cold in here, and nothing looks dirty, moldy.”

“Dehumidifier and air conditioner,” he said. “Although how that's been operating for seven years I have no idea. Parts break over time, especially metal parts in New Orleans.”

“Maybe someone checked on it in the meantime.”

“Or maybe it was magicked. This was a big risk,” Liam said, flipping through a book before sliding it back onto a shelf again. He looked back at me, his blue eyes blazing. “He put you at risk. If Containment found this now, they'd destroy it. And then they'd destroy you.”

I walked across the room, stared up at the golden shield that hung from posts there. It was a weapon of the Consularis, heavily engraved and inlaid with metals and symbols in a language I didn't understand.

I reached out and traced a finger across a deep diagonal dent that ran across the middle of the shield. The metal vibrated softly beneath my fingertips, like an engine hummed beneath it. Magic, alive and well seven years later.

“The walls have to be shielded,” I said, pulling back my fingers and rubbing the sensation from my fingertips. “Wraiths would be swarming outside if they weren't. They'd be drawn to the magic.” Maybe that was why I'd felt vertigo when I stepped inside.

Liam nodded. “Maybe the same person who shielded the store. More confirmation of your father's involvement.”

Yeah, it was. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

“I'm going to look around,” he said, and walked to the staircase.
He took a testing step, bouncing slightly to be sure the steel was sturdy, then circled up into the second floor.

I walked to the kitchenette, opened the refrigerator. It was cool, but empty. Immaculately clean, as was my father's way. The cabinets were glossy red and slick to the touch. They held a few white cups, a few white plates. The cabinet below it had a small set of pots and pans, still unmarked and unused.

Waiting for someone to use them. Waiting for someone to make this a home.

“There's a loft up there,” Liam said, footsteps clanging on the metal treads as he came downstairs again. “Bed, bureau. You find anything?”

I closed the cabinet, frowned. “A few cups, a few bowls, a few pans.” I looked back at him. “This place is outfitted like a guesthouse, but it doesn't look like anyone stayed here.”

Liam nodded, walked to a door on the other side of the room. “Up there, either. It looks untouched. Maybe your dad wanted a hole in case you had to run.”

“Because he was a Sensitive.” Because my very existence—through no fault of my own—was illegal in the Zone. And the possibility existed that someone would figure that out. He probably felt the same.

“Yeah,” Liam said, and opened the door, then closed it again. He must not have found anything interesting.

From my spot in the kitchen, I looked back over the space, realized the tables were perfectly aligned on a couple of large woven rugs, which were placed perfectly parallel to each other, about five feet apart.

This had been a garage, I thought. Maybe it still worked like one. I walked to the far wall, looked over a light switch plate with an awful lot of wide buttons, and pressed one.

“Winning,” I said as the metal plate beneath two of the tables began to rise, lifting them into the air and revealing the empty space beneath.

“Clever girl,” Liam said, walking toward it. He gave the steel rod that supported the plate and tables a solid look before moving to his knees beside it. “And what do we have here?”

“What is it?” I asked, jogging toward him, my eyes widening as he moved aside to let me look.

“Supplies,” he said. The lights above us pooled into the space below the lift, showing crates, boxes, and barrels of food and supplies. Water, dehydrated potatoes, cans of soup and broth, bags of rice and beans.

My stomach growled, and I put a hand against it to silence it.

“Is half of my protein bar the only thing you've eaten today?”

“It was
my
protein bar,” I reminded him. “And yes, but I'm fine. That was a covetous growling.”

Liam made a sound of doubt and sat back on his heels. “There's got to be a way to get down there. A door, some stairs to the lower level.”

He stood up, offered a hand to help me to my feet. When he pulled me up, we scanned the walls.

“There,” I said, pointing to the narrow door in a corner of the kitchen.

We walked to it, opened it. A narrow set of stairs led into darkness.

Liam found another light and flicked it on, illuminating another set of stairs in corrugated metal. Another testing step—it was wise never to trust old metal in a subtropical zone without testing it first—and we descended.

The air was even cooler down here, the dust just as thick. The scents were different. The first floor smelled more like an antique
store than a gas station—dust and must and fiber. The basement smelled more like a museum. Clinical. Sterile.

Everything was organized—cans on shelves, bags on pallets, life vests and backpacks hanging from a pegboard. Stacks of first-aid kits. Bundled and wrapped sleeping bags. Dozens of cases of bottled water, also still wrapped in their plastic sleeves. In one corner, a humming dehumidifier.

My father had collected food, water, and supplies the same way he'd collected magical supplies.

“This isn't a guesthouse,” Liam said, trailing fingers across the front of a row of canned soups.

“No,” I agreed. “It's a bunker.”

His voice was soft, and I could feel his eyes on mine. “Did your father ever mention it?”

“No,” I said again, and could hear exhaustion in my voice. I was tired of developments and revelations, and my anger at my father was growing with every one of them. Growing every time I had to wonder why he hadn't told me about this place, whatever it was.

I walked to the pegboard, unzipped one of four matching camo backpacks. Inside was a bottle of water, two flares, a small first-aid kit, a plastic bag of protein bars. It was a go bag, not unlike the one I had stashed in an armoire in the second-floor storage room. Just in case.

I'd asked him about leaving. One night, when we sat huddled in the downstairs bathroom, all the lights off, all the doors locked, as sirens screamed outside, I'd told him it was insane to stay.

“We can't abandon her,” he'd said. “We can't abandon New Orleans.”

“I'd rather live somewhere else than die here.” I'd been seventeen, and convinced I knew everything.

“We don't just quit,” my father had said, putting an arm over my head as shots of magic crackled outside, vibrant green light flashing
in the sliver of space along the bottom of the bathroom door. “We don't just walk away.”

Instead, he'd made a plan to stay in New Orleans, with enough supplies to last at least a little while.

There was a tall, metal safe in the corner. It was dark green, with the manufacturer's name across the front in pretty gold script. I'd seen a safe like that before—there was one in the back room of the store. Empty now, but meant to hold weapons.

I walked to it, Liam's footsteps falling in line behind me, and turned the heavy handle, and the door swung open. Closed, but not locked. And inside, two rifles, two shotguns, two handguns that I guessed were nine millimeters, or something like that, and several cartons of ammo.

“He was prepared.”

“For war,” I said, touching a finger to the cold metal barrel of a rifle, then closing the door again.

“They're yours,” Liam said carefully, glancing down at me. “You could take these with you—or one of them. Or anything else in here.”

I turned back to the room, crossed my arms as I looked at it all. “It's mine if we assume it was my father's.”

“You'd know him best.”

“I thought I did,” I said, and looked back at him. “What am I supposed to do with this, Liam? What am I supposed to think?”

Outside, while using my magic and then while seeing Liam's reaction to it, I'd felt more myself than I ever had. Like, for the first time, I really and truly fit within my own skin, not trying to make myself fit in someone else's. Not just Claire of Royal Mercantile, but
Claire
.

This—this castle my father had built and furnished—made me feel like a stranger all over again.

Liam searched my face. “He didn't tell you about any of it.”

I shook my head.

“I'm sorry.”

I nodded, walked to the army green cot across the room, sat down. “Me, too.” I looked up at Liam. “I feel like I have to keep grieving for him all over again, that every time I find out something like this, I lose him all over again. Lose the person he was.”

“Yeah,” Liam said with a sigh. “I understand that.” He walked closer, stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed, chin down.

“Helluva thing. So what do you want to do?”

I looked down at the floor—more polished concrete—while I considered. We could use the supplies, sure. Everything in here could be used, sold, distributed to those who needed it. But I thought of the prediction I'd made to Tadji earlier today, of the fact that an army was actively trying to dismantle that organization that remained in the Zone. It wouldn't be wise to burn through supplies we'd almost certainly need down the road.

I thought for a moment but couldn't find anything that would be gained from telling anyone else about this.

“I'm not going to tell anyone. Containment would either destroy the objects . . . or try to use them against the Paras.” They'd become more flexible on that as the war had continued. “I'm not going to start a war against Containment, but neither am I going to hand them the weapons to use against someone else.”

Maybe that was irresponsible of me. Maybe I should have handed it all over to Containment for the good of the cause. But Containment's “cause” was Devil's Isle. That didn't seem right, either.

Liam nodded. “Agreed. What about Gunnar?”

That answer was easier. There was too much here that could be
used against me, against my father. And since I trusted Gunnar completely, used against Gunnar.

“No,” I said. “I don't want this to become his problem.”

“And the food? The supplies?”

“We don't have a lot these days, but we have what we need. I told Tadji today that I thought this was going to get worse before it gets better, and I think it will.” I looked around again, shook my head. “I don't think we should touch it. Not now. Because there might come a time when we need it more.”

That neatly sidestepped the issue of whether I wanted to use it, the fact that I felt uncomfortable even thinking about it. It might have been my father's . . . but he hadn't given it to me. And that made me want to touch it even less.

My gaze settled on a pink footlocker across the room. “CC” was painted in green across the front. It had been mine, a Christmas present that I'd filled with dolls and books and mementos. And occasionally pretended was a boat.

Hope flared. Had he saved that for me, so I could have my own things here, my own space?

I rose and walked to it, flipped up the gold latches, and opened it.

It was empty, except for a single photograph.

I stared down at the lithe woman with the long red hair who stared back at me.

She was tall and slender, her long arms and legs covered by a simple wrap dress, sandals on her feet. Her hair was long and straight and vibrantly red, set off by golden skin and green eyes. She stood beneath a live oak, one hand braced on the rough bark, limbs and Spanish moss reaching down around her. The sky was blue and dotted with cotton clouds, sunlight dappling through the leaves to cast shadows on the ground.

She looked like the redheaded woman I'd seen at the Memorial Battle.

I flipped the photograph over, but it was blank. No name, no year, no indication of where the picture had been taken or by whom.

“Claire?”

I could feel Liam suddenly behind me, his body big and warm.

“Is that your mother?” he asked when I didn't answer.

“I didn't know my mother,” I said, barely holding back tears I didn't want to shed. “She died—had a bad strain of the flu when I was only two. There weren't any photographs of her in the house, so I'm not even sure what she looked like.”

I looked back at Liam. “This looks like the woman I saw at Memorial.”

He took the photograph, stared at it. “I didn't see her—the woman with red hair.” He looked up at me, then back at the photograph again. “She looks like you.”

I nodded. But if this was my mother, I didn't know then, and I didn't know how I could know it now.

“Do you want to take this?” he asked, offering it to me again.

I didn't know the answer to that. I didn't know if I should drop it back into the trunk—the trunk with my name on it, that carried no memories of me or anything else—or take it with me, because maybe I could use it to figure out who she was.

“I don't know.” I didn't want to take it. But I also didn't want to leave it here. And I was too angry and sad to make a decision about anything.