The Sight (17 page)

“I'll take it,” Liam said. “I'll put it in the truck, and it will be there when you're ready.”

That small kindness nearly did me in, but I forced myself to hold it together. We had bigger problems right now—bigger dangers—than my personal drama.

“Okay,” I said, and climbed to my feet.

“Let's go back to the store,” Liam said, putting a hand against my back.

“Yeah,” I said, and turned my back on the spoils my father had gathered.

Whatever this was, it wasn't home. And I was ready to go back to mine.

W
e went back to the Quarter with more questions than he'd come with. Why not tell me about the Apollo? Why not give me a chance to get there if something had happened to him?

Because maybe it hadn't been meant for us. Maybe he'd built it, prepared it, for her, for the woman in the photograph. Maybe he'd been biding his time until he could get to her.

“You all right?” Liam asked when we'd put some distance between us and the station.

“I don't know. I'm confused and sad and suddenly the owner of what is probably the biggest cache of magical artifacts in the Zone.”

“If not the United States,” Liam said with a smile. “In a manner of speaking, you hit the jackpot.”

“If we ignore the contraband part.”

He waved that away. “I'm sure Containment wouldn't care. It's only a few things. A few hundred very illegal things.”

“Quit trying to cheer me up.”

He slid me a quick glance. “You'd rather wallow?”

“At the moment, yeah, I would.”

Brow furrowed, he futzed around under his seat. “I may have a cassette of depressing violin music in here somewhere.”

“God,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face. “Could you have picked a trainee with more drama? I'm sorry.”

“No,” Liam said. “Don't ever apologize for who or what you are. A lot of people would have walked away from New Orleans, from Royal Mercantile. You built something, Claire. You are heart and recklessness and fire. The drama just came along for the ride.”

This time, I couldn't keep the tears from falling.

“Your eyes appear to be sweating,” Liam said, and handed me a tissue he'd scrounged from under the seat.

“Shut up,” I said, but I was half smiling when I said it. “And thank you.”

“Anytime, Claire. Anytime.”

—

There were several customers in the store, but Tadji gestured us to the back room as soon as we walked in.

We found Gunnar at the table, bottle of Scotch in front of him and fury written in every feature. Gavin stood nearby, arms crossed and watching.

“Hey,” I said, glancing between them. “What's wrong?”

“I am in a fighting goddamn mood.” He poured a finger of amber liquid into a short glass. “I had to walk away for a few minutes, or I was heading for court-martial.”

Liam stood beside his brother. “What happened?”

“They're gone. Ezekiel, the arsenal, anybody else strong enough to fight. They cleared out the camp before PCC could be bothered to send anyone over there.”

Liam blinked. “What do you mean, ‘before PCC could be bothered'? Why did they wait? They had our firsthand reports.”

“They had your reports, and they had a bunch of red tape handed
to them by some legal eagle in PCC who decided we didn't have jurisdiction at the camp.”

“I don't understand,” I said, taking the seat in front of Gunnar.

“Camp Couturie was a federal refugee camp on city property,” Gunnar said. “It apparently took a lot of red tape for FEMA to set up the camp in the first place—back when FEMA was still in charge—and all that goddamn red tape had to be untangled so that we could walk into Camp Couturie to search for Reveillon, even with a warrant.”

“Jurisdictional bullshit,” Gavin said.

“A-fucking-men,” Gunnar said. “By the time we got our teams in, they'd probably been gone for hours. And it took hours more to search completely. We found a few perfectly legal weapons and a handful of people who had no interest in joining him.”

I looked at Liam. “And that's why they only sent one vehicle after us. They were letting us get away.”

“Damn,” Liam said with a nod. “Ezekiel had decided to run, and they used the other vehicles to evacuate the camp.”

Guilt settled heavy in my belly that we'd been the reason they'd run, had slipped Containment's grasp. But we'd been the only ones willing to check out the lead. Containment should have taken the tattoo, the possibility of Camp Couturie, more seriously.

“Do you have any idea how many Reveillon members were there?” Liam asked.

“Based on the last population estimate, and the count we did today, about a thousand.”

Silence fell as we considered that.

“There can't be that many gullible people,” I said. “People dumb enough to buy in to his nonsense.”

“Not necessarily dumb,” Gavin said. “Just gullible and angry.”

Gunnar nodded. “Nailed it in one. You're on a roll today.”

“I'm more than just delectable good looks.”

“They've probably split up,” Liam said. “Safe houses or camps across the city so they don't attract too much attention. They might have done the same with the arsenal.”

“Every Containment officer who isn't working in Devil's Isle is searching the city,” Gunnar said, pouring another shot. “And that's only the first issue in this shitshow of a day.”

I took the shot before he could drink it, winced at the heat, and waited for the warmth to settle. Not my poison of choice, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

“We saw the fires,” Liam said.

Gunnar nodded, poured another drink, downed it. “We lost two in the fires to smoke inhalation. We also lost records, equipment, stockpiles of water—we keep it all over the city, just in case. But things could have been even worse. Fortunately, Malachi spotted one of the fires, just after dawn. He pulled a couple of napping agents out of the building, triggered the monitor so Containment would respond.”

“Clever,” Liam said.

“It was. The fire was too big for him to stop, and was raging by the time our people got there. We'd have lost two more men if he hadn't intervened. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the violence. One of Burke's convoys was attacked outside the city, near Ponchatoula.”

“They nearly made it to New Orleans,” Liam said.

“Nearly,” Gunnar agreed, misery in his eyes. “But not nearly enough.”

Liam sighed. “How many?”

“Four.” Gunnar ran a hand through his hair. The anger had burned off into guilt and grief. “Four more agents lost.”

“They're spreading Containment thin,” Gavin said.

“They are. We know it, but we can't do anything other than what we're doing. At least not unless PCC can get some troops across
the goddamn border. That would require identifying the PCC leak, which PCC denies it has.”

“The brass taking heat?” Liam asked.

“The president is pissed. Congress is pissed. The Joint Chiefs are pissed. And everybody is blaming someone else for this absolute clusterfuck.”

“That's what it's all about, isn't it?”

We all looked at Gavin.

“Blame,” he said. “That's what Ezekiel is doing—making promises about the future, blaming the past and present on Paras.”

“Yeah,” Gunnar said. “And he's doing it damn effectively.” He looked at me. “Tell Malachi that Ezekiel is in the wind. And that he has my personal thanks for stepping in when he saw the fire.”

I nodded. “We're meeting him at noon,” I said, and checked the wall clock. It was nearly time to leave. The Apollo had taken a good chunk of the morning.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

“We hunt,” Liam said darkly, deadly intent in his eyes. “We find them, and we take them down.”

We didn't have time to throw out a plan before the air raid siren began to ring again.

“Shit,” Gunnar said, and we followed the crowd out the door. Royal was empty except for the flock of pigeons that lifted into the sky across the street, startled by our outburst.

Smoke lifted inside the walls of Devil's Isle. And for the second time in as many days, we ran toward the prison.

—

Gavin stayed at the store, so Gunnar, Liam, and I did the running.

The sirens grew louder, the smoke more intense, the ache in my
ankle stronger the closer we got to the fence. The gate was closed and guarded, so something had happened inside, not at the gate.

“Report,” Gunnar asked, flashing his ID as the gate swung open.

One of the guards who stood inside nodded. “A Reveillon fugitive blew the riverside warehouse.”

We followed Gunnar into the neighborhood and two blocks past the gate, where flames shot from the roof of a long, narrow building. A dozen Containment officers stood nearby while firefighters worked to contain the blaze.

Reece stood across the street, hands linked behind his back. He looked like a soldier at parade rest, but for the tension around his eyes.

“Reveillon?” Gunnar asked when we reached him, and the sirens finally quieted.

Reece nodded. “Molotov cocktail. Fire was started by one of the fugitives.” He gestured to the opposite corner, where a woman in dirty linen kneeled on the sidewalk, her hands behind her head. She was flanked by particularly pissed-looking Containment officers.

“Only one building affected?” Gunnar asked.

“That we've seen, yes,” Reece said.

Near the fires outside the gate,
TRAITORS
was scrawled in spray-painted letters across the front of the building.

“It can't be a coincidence they set similar fires outside Devil's Isle and inside Devil's Isle today,” I said.

“Is there any evidence Reveillon has been talking to the fugitives in here?” Liam asked.

“Not that we're aware of,” Gunnar said.

“Maybe they planned ahead,” Reece said. “Both knew today was the day.”

Liam's gaze lifted to the faint streaks that marked the sky outside the prison. “Or the fires outside were the signal—a sign the fugitives should act. What was in the building?”

“Storage,” Gunnar said. “Paper files, mostly. It's barely guarded, because there's literally nothing in there that anyone could use.”

“The building wasn't staffed?” I asked.

“No,” Reece said. “And no injuries reported.”

Reveillon liked drama, which made me wonder why they'd bother torching an unstaffed storage building. It would be inconvenient for Containment, sure, but that was all.

“So there's not really any point in burning it?” I asked.

Liam put his hands on his hips, glanced around, squinting in the sunlight. “Maybe this fire was an answer to Ezekiel's signal. Not an attack per se, but a way to get a response over the walls.”

“Signaling what?” Gunnar asked.

“That the fugitives are alive, that they're ready to start some plan of their own . . . or that they're starting.”

“Starting what?” Reece asked.

Like instant confirmation Liam had been right, a scream split the air to our left, and then a gunshot did the same from our right. Two more gunshots fired somewhere in front of us.

Liam put out a hand in front of me, like a parent protecting a child in an imminent car crash.

Gunnar pulled a communication unit from his belt as Containment agents around the building looked around, trying to figure where to go and what to do.

“This is Landreau!” he called out, gaze on the towers that marked the corners of the prison. “What the hell's going on out there?”

The response was staticky, but clear enough.

“Attacks . . . Reveillon fugitives . . . All positions report . . . All positions report!”

“To your positions!” Gunnar yelled, and the agents immediately pulled weapons, began to head in all directions. “Reveillon is attacking Paras!”

“Not Paras!” the voice shouted over the comm unit. “Humans.”

My stomach twisted as I glanced at the letters etched by fire into the side of the building:
TRAITORS
.

I thought of our time in Camp Couturie, in Ezekiel's tent. He'd called me and Liam the same thing, said we were betraying our fellow humans because we supported Paranormals. Because we supported Containment.

“Containment agents killed,” I said. “Humans attacked. Ezekiel is targeting humans he believes are traitors to his cause.” I looked at Gunnar. “How many humans live in Devil's Isle?”

“Only a handful,” he said, frowning. “A few agents, a couple of people who staff the clinic.” And then he paled. “And Liam's grandmother.”

Fear coated my belly. Reveillon knew Liam lived in Devil's Isle. If the fugitives had seen him, followed him, or even just asked around, they might have learned about Eleanor, or even seen her.

Fear and fury crossed Liam's face in equal measure. “I'm going.”

“I'm with you,” I called out, and fell into step when he dashed in the direction of his grandmother's town house.

“Reece?” Gunnar asked, pointing at us, and got a nod. When Reece fell into step beside us, Gunnar yelled at two agents nearby. “Smith and Valentine. Go with Reece, Claire, Liam to the civilian's home.”

Inviting Containment into Eleanor's home wasn't a great idea—she had magical objects, and she had Moses. But it couldn't be helped. We'd just have to do our best to keep things from getting worse.

—

The town house was only a few blocks away. Unfortunately, after the mile-long run to Devil's Isle, my ankle throbbed like a bad tooth.

We passed two clusters of people along the way, Containment agents administering help to wounded or Paranormals who screamed
in a language I didn't understand. A man was on the ground near one of them, arms and legs covered in pale linen and unseeing eyes open to the sky. He was a Reveillon fugitive, and I couldn't muster up any remorse that he was dead.

By the time we reached Eleanor's block, it was empty of guards and people, and much too quiet.

The gate swung open in the breeze, and the door was cracked. There was no sign of Foster, or the Containment guard Gunnar had promised. Liam didn't waste any time running inside. I didn't waste any time following him, the others' footsteps echoing behind me.