by Chloe Neill
“No point beating her up for trying to talk to family,” Moses said. He cocked his head to the side. “She was at ADZ, eh?”
I nodded. “Going into the building. She called Containment on us.”
“No wonder your father got rid of her. Good riddance, I say.”
But my father hadn’t gotten rid of her. She’d gotten rid of him, and me, soon enough that I didn’t have a single clear memory of her face.
Tears—of sadness, of frustration, of pent-up emotion—stung my eyes, and I looked away, blinked them back.
“I need to get some air,” I said, and headed outside before anyone could stop me.
I walked down the street in broad daylight, angry and hurt enough in that moment that I’d have dared Containment to take me. And I’d have thrown everything I had at them. Every last ounce of magic.
I was so tired of pretending.
A few doors down, past Moses’s butter house, was a cottage with a swing bolted to the roof of the front porch. Plastic beads, which would probably never degrade, still hung from the gingerbread at the house’s corners.
I tested the steel chain, the slats of wood. And when it held, I sat down, pushed off with my feet. The swing rocked back and forth, then back again. I closed my eyes and let myself grieve, let sadness cover me like the dark water near Montagne Désespérée.
I heard him walking toward me, his footsteps on the sidewalk. Liam walked purposefully. Not slowly, but intentionally. He took his time.
The porch creaked when he stepped onto it. I kept my eyes closed, let him look me over.
“I’d ask if you were all right, but that seems like a stupid question.”
“I don’t know what I am.” I rubbed my hands against my eyes, my damp cheeks.
Silence, then: “Can I sit?”
I opened my eyes, scooted over to one side of the swing, wrapped a hand around one of the chains. The swing shivered when he sat, but it held.
“I’m disappointed,” I said. “Does that make sense?”
He pushed the swing back. “It does.”
“I feel stupid saying that. Disappointed about my mother. I thought she was gone, that I’d never have a chance to so much as see her. And now I’ve had that chance, and she’s not what I wanted. Not even close.”
“She never was,” Liam quietly said.
“I know. That’s what hurts the most.”
“It’s okay to grieve.”
“I guess.” I rested my head on the back of the swing, looked up at the porch’s ceiling. Someone had painted a mural there—a second line marching down the street behind a bride and groom, all bold colors and slashes of paint. There was water damage in some spots, flaking paint in others. But it was still a beautiful representation of what had been.
“Before the war,” I heard myself saying, “when other kids went shopping with their mothers, or their moms dropped them off at school, or whatever, I wondered what that was like. My dad tried hard to keep me from feeling different. But I did. I did feel different, but I didn’t grieve, because I hadn’t exactly lost anything.”
“It was already gone,” Liam said.
I nodded. “Yeah. And now, I got it back, but that’s almost worse. I’ve learned that my father lied to me—probably to protect me. That my mother was cold and didn’t care anything about me. That she was still in town and apparently working for Containment, although I’m not certain if he knew that. And that’s on top of learning he was a Sensitive, collected magical objects, and was dating Erida. And he didn’t tell me about any of it.”
“You’ve had a hard few weeks.”
My sigh was half exhaustion, half laugh. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Silence fell again, the only sound the creak of the swing as Liam pushed it back and forth, back and forth.
“Magic killed Gracie,” Liam said. “Now I’m magic. I’ve had to deal with that, to accept it.”
“You’re just wrong.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get it, Claire. Your magic is different.”
“Magic is magic. It isn’t good or bad any more than that tree”—I pointed to a magnolia overtaking the postage stamp of a front yard—“is good or bad. It’s entirely what we make of it.”
The swing was perpendicular to the run of the porch, so we faced the side of the house next door, a cottage not unlike this one. He kept his gaze on that house, with its blue paint and rotting wood.
“You didn’t inherit evil from Ezekiel,” I quietly said. “That’s not the way it works. And magic didn’t kill Gracie. Ignorance did. Ignorance and fear that kept the wraiths who killed her from getting help when they’d needed it. Wraiths didn’t cast a spell on her, and no spell was cast on them. They were victims of human ignorance just like she was, because we refused to let them control their magic. They were victims of the war, just like Gracie.”
I nudged him with a shoulder. “Once upon a time, you introduced me to Moses so I’d understand that not all Paras were bad. I’d say that operates for humans, too.”
“It’s impolite to throw my words back at me.”
“Yeah, it is.”
We rocked in silence for a few more minutes. And when Liam put his hand over mine, I didn’t pull away.
• • •
By the time we made it back to Moses’s house, Darby had joined them, her utility vehicle parked in the narrow space between his house and the one next door.
Her ensemble—a red top and circle skirt with white polka dots—was a big contrast to her grim expression.
“We were waiting for you to get back,” Malachi said kindly, then nodded at Darby.
She didn’t waste any time. “They were definitely synthesizing something.”
“Who was?” Gavin asked, obviously confused. I couldn’t blame him.
“Whoever created the Icarus file. I was right about it being the plan, for lack of a better word, for the synthesis—the creation—of something biological.”
Malachi’s brows lifted. “What kind of something?”
“A virus.”
“Oh, shit,” Gavin said.
No details necessary to think a government department creating a virus was a bad thing. A very, very bad thing.
“What kind of virus?” Liam asked.
“Call it what you will,” she said. “It’s a completely new virus. A virus that was created in the lab from scratch. Thus, the term ‘synthesized.’ It’s got elements of other viruses. Protein structures borrowed here, phage structures borrowed there, but the makeup, the totality, is completely new.” She lifted her gaze to Malachi, and she looked absolutely bleak. “And the research isn’t just theoretical.”
The air seemed to leave the room completely.
“Vacherie,” Malachi said.
She nodded. “I tested the vials.” She pulled a folder from a vintage leather satchel on top of one of Moses’s stacks, then took out a sheet of paper that showed two graphs.
She came toward us, pointed to the graph. “That’s from the stub file—the bit we found on Containment-Net.” Then she pointed to the graph on the right. “That’s the test of the Vacherie Paranormals’ blood.”
The lines on the graphs were almost exactly the same.
“Merde,” Liam said as Gavin crossed himself.
“Icarus involves a virus,” Malachi said. “A virus that sickens and kills Paranormals.”
But not just Icarus, I thought as sickness overwhelmed me and the edges of my vision went dark. I reached out for the wall with a hand, let myself slide to the floor so I wouldn’t keel over.
“Claire!” Darby said, and I heard her voice move closer. “What’s wrong? Are you all right? Are you sick?”
“Tell her,” I said, staring at the floor. “I can’t— Just tell her.”
“Claire’s father told her that her mo
ther was dead,” Liam quietly said. “Turns out, she’s not. She’s the president of ADZ Logistics. She’s part of Icarus.”
Even Darby went pale. “Oh my God.” She held up a hand. “Wait, just wait. Let’s not panic. Just because she runs ADZ doesn’t mean she was involved in this.”
“She’s involved. She’s Laura Blackwell.”
“What does she look like?”
I gave her the description.
“PCC Research,” Darby said. “I remember seeing a woman like that at PCC Research, or before I left, anyway. She was very beautiful. A striking woman. She wasn’t in my division, and we were very segmented, so I didn’t know her. I just saw her around.”
“What division?” Liam asked.
Darby’s milk-white skin went somehow more pale. “Biologics.”
My mother was alive.
My mother was a scientist.
My mother was a murderer.
“I need a really good Cajun swear,” I said miserably.
“Start with ‘fils de putain,’” Gavin said. “Means ‘son of a bitch.’”
I repeated it back to him, and only slightly mangled it.
“Not bad,” he said. “We need to work on the accent, but that’s not bad.”
Liam slid to the floor beside me. He didn’t touch me, probably could sense I wasn’t ready for that. But the fact that he’d literally moved down to my level just to be supportive nearly wrecked me.
“How does the virus work?” Malachi asked. “How did it kill them?”
Darby stood up, looked at Malachi. “Given the symptoms you’ve described, I’m thinking it acts like a bacterial infection, triggers the crazy immune response—the septicemia or septic shock.”
“How could Containment have infected them?” I asked, looking at Malachi. “You said they got boosters before they left Devil’s Isle, right? Shouldn’t that have protected them from illnesses, even this one?”
“Wait,” Darby said, throwing out a hand. “What do you mean, ‘boosters’?”
“Immunity-boosting injections,” Malachi said, “given to the few Paranormals who got passes just before they left Devil’s Isle.”
“Maybe they weren’t immunity boosters,” Liam said darkly, then looked at Malachi. “Did all the Paras at Vacherie receive the injections?”
Malachi was quiet for a moment, but his expression seemed frozen with rage. “All but one. He was late to the clinic check-in and missed it.”
“Is he sick?” Darby asked.
Malachi shook his head. “Not him. But all the others received the injections. And they’re either sick or dead.”
“It’s a small sample,” Darby said. “Too small to be certain, but awfully coincidental if the one guy who didn’t get the injection also didn’t get sick. Is anyone in Devil’s Isle sick?”
“Not according to Lizzie,” Liam said.
“If you want to hurt Paras, why inject only the ones who are leaving Devil’s Isle?” Gavin asked. “You could do more damage administering injections to those staying behind.”
“Because Devil’s Isle is in the middle of New Orleans,” Liam said. “It’s surrounded by humans. And Containment doesn’t want them sick.”
“Where the Paras are in isolated areas,” Malachi said, “there are only a few humans around.”
“So maybe they’re still testing it,” Gavin said, “or very carefully deploying it.”
Liam nodded. “You deploy first to Paras heading outside New Orleans until you confirm it’s not contagious, that it won’t spread to humans.”
“Gunnar wouldn’t have let this happen.” They were the first words I’d said in a while, and they were twisting my stomach into knots. I looked pleadingly at Malachi. “He wouldn’t have.”
“She’s right,” Liam said. “Gunnar’s a stand-up guy. He’s part of Containment, but chain of command isn’t as important to him as integrity. He wouldn’t have authorized the intentional infection of Paras, and certainly not their murder. And if he hadn’t authorized it, but someone wanted to do it anyway, he’d have spread the word.”
“Which means he probably didn’t know about it,” Gavin said. “So either Containment’s not in it, or they’re in it up to their eyeballs, but only a very few people have access.”
“Containment’s in it,” Liam said. “The file was on their network. Containment guards were outside the building where Blackwell was working. The Caval brothers are involved, as is a Containment safe house.”
“I’m stuck on the efficiency thing,” Gavin said. “Why would anyone in Containment, or affiliated with Containment, do this? You want to take out Paranormals, take them out in Devil’s Isle. Hell, they could have let Reveillon have the run of the place. Why even bother fighting back?”
“Because Reveillon killed Containment agents,” Malachi said. “They wouldn’t have just destroyed Devil’s Isle and the Paras in it. They’d have completely seized power. That’s different.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but if you destroy Paranormals, you destroy the reason for Containment’s existence. No Paranormals, no federal money, no Devil’s Isle.”
Liam looked at Malachi. “Do you know how many received the injections?”
Malachi shook his head. “Not precisely. We understand there are approximately forty Paras with passes right now.”
“Forty counts of murder,” Moses said, his voice low and stained dark with anger.
“Forty-two if you count Broussard and Caval,” Liam said. “Broussard found out about Icarus, about Caval.”
“They killed Broussard because he found out too much,” I said to Liam. “And they pinned his death on you because it made sense and bought them some time. Steered the investigation away from what Broussard had been looking into.”
“Yeah,” Liam said, “that sounds about right.”
“We need to talk to Containment,” Darby said. “Stop the vaccinations immediately.”
“And how do we help those who have already been infected?” I asked.
“What about an antiviral?” Gavin asked, looking to Darby. “They’ve been developed for some viruses, haven’t they?”
“Antivirals take luck and money—and, most important, time,” Darby said. “We don’t have any of those resources right now. And that plan assumes this particular virus would be susceptible to an antiviral. Not all viruses are.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Gavin said. “You’ve got brains and a lab. It’s worth looking into.”
“I won’t refuse to help,” Darby said, “but you can’t rely on that. You’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way—you’re going to have to go to the source.”
“We have to tell Gunnar the whole story,” I said. “We have to warn him.”
“Forty targets,” Liam quietly said. “God willing we can save some of them.”
• • •
Darby would pass the message to Gunnar, this time on the way back to her lab. We decided to meet in our old haunt, an old church in the Freret neighborhood. Gunnar hadn’t been there before, but it was time to bring him into that particular circle, and we hadn’t met at the church in weeks anyway. Gavin stayed with Moses. Malachi could come separately, as he always did.
I asked Moses for a small favor before we left, and he provided it without comment. Then we drove Scarlet to the church, simple and beautiful and largely abandoned.
Two short steps led to double doors in front. The walls were planks of white wood, the paint peeling, the words on the sign out front long since worn away, except for APOSTLES. Maybe that was the only word that mattered.
We parked around the corner and took the standard wait-and-watch approach before climbing out and walking to the front steps. The doors were unlocked but heavy. Liam pushed one open, and we slipped inside.
The church had a small foyer and a larger sanctuary,
wooden from floor to vaulted ceiling. The quiet, the dark, the sameness of it made me feel a little better about everything. When it felt like everything was changing, the few places that had stayed the same were comforts.
I walked to the lectern at the front and put my palms flat on its surface, the wood smooth where other people had done the same thing throughout the church’s history. I slid my hands to each side the way a preacher might have while looking over his congregation, pondering their burdens and sins, trying to figure out how best to reach them. A hundred years of wisdom and power worn like a stain into the wood. Maybe some of it would seep into my fingers; we needed all the help we could get.
“What an absolute horror show.”
“It’s not your fault,” Liam said.
“She’s my mother. My blood.”
“And instead of making the kinds of decisions she makes, you’re doing what you can to fix the world, not tear it down.”
We heard a flutter of wings overhead, a soft coo. A mourning dove, its feathers a pale and shimmering gray, landed on one of the exposed wooden beams that held up the church’s roof.
“I’ve always thought the sound of doves was creepy,” Liam said as he looked up and studied the bird.
“Agreed. And very sad.”
Without warning, the heavy oak doors began to rattle and shake, like they were being assaulted from the outside.
“Shit,” Liam said, and pulled a gun from his pocket. It was smaller than the .44 he kept in his truck. Black and sleek, it looked like a Containment service weapon, for those who preferred guns over stunners.
I came around the lectern, stood beside him, body braced for a fight. “Containment shouldn’t know where we are. Gunnar wouldn’t tell.”
The doors flew open, bodies silhouetted against the brilliant sunlight outside.
“Whoa,” Gunnar said, his features clearing as he stepped into the room, keeping his body in front of the doorway to protect the rest of them from any violence we might accidentally do. “It’s just us.”
“Sorry,” Liam said, putting the gun away. Malachi and Erida stepped inside behind Gunnar.
“Door got stuck,” Gunnar said. “We figured we’d beaten you here, or we would have just knocked.”
