by Chloe Neill
He shook his head. “I’d seen the staff—the monstrance—when it was upstairs with the other items. And I’d seen the glint of red, but hadn’t put together exactly what it was until we saw the sketch. I don’t know how it ended up in this world, or in your father’s possession.”
“What was the stone for?” I asked. “In the Beyond, I mean?”
“In the common history of the Beyond, it was a relic of a great battle.” Malachi turned it over in his hand. “When the world was created, the two great gods—darkness and light—fought for control of the land, for the hills and rivers, the trees and stones, the riches and jewels.
“In particular, they both wanted a garnet from the Great Hill that shone bright as a beacon. Darkness wanted to take it because he believed the darkness should be complete. Light wanted to take it because he wanted no competition. In their fight, they damaged the stone, causing it to crack and creating the inclusion.”
“How did the battle end?” I asked.
“In a draw,” he said with a smile, “which is why we have night and day. Some say their battle continued in the sky, which is why days and nights grow longer and shorter.”
Liam frowned. “So, what does it do? Why is it so important for the Devil’s Snare?”
“On its own, very little. It has no innate power. But that’s not to say it does not have value. Let’s go upstairs.”
When we had, he put the stone on the kitchen counter, glanced at me. “Use your magic to lift it.”
I knew there was a trick—he didn’t need me to pick up a stone he’d just held—but I wasn’t sure what it was. So I followed the instruction I’d been given.
I closed my eyes, reached out a hand, and found plenty of magic inside the station from the accumulation of magical objects. I grabbed threads, silver and glimmering, and pulled them taut around the stone—and felt them snap into place, lock around the stone like the stone itself was pulling them back.
“Oh, wow.”
I opened my eyes at the sound of Liam’s voice . . . and stared.
The stone glowed a brilliant red—and sent shafts of glimmering gold through the air to the far wall, where they made a delicate pattern of shimmering and lace.
“Wow” was the only thing I could think to say, too. I dropped my “grip” on the magic and walked across the room beside the beam. It looked like someone had tossed delicate glass glitter into the air—and then frozen time to hold it in place.
“It’s a prism,” I said. “Not of light, but of magic.”
“Exactly,” Malachi said. “The effect will fade as the magic fades. It would require a continuous supply of magic to keep the effect going.”
“It’s beautiful,” Liam said, staring at it a few feet away.
“Can I touch it?” I asked, looking back at Malachi.
“It’s your magic,” he said. And even Malachi, who was generally hard to impress, smiled contentedly as he stared up at the beams.
I extended my hand toward the light, and nearly shivered at the strange sensation. The magic was warmer than the surrounding air, and seemed to thicken it, if that was possible. Not unlike the sensation of the fog the Seelie had created, probably because both were physical manifestations of magic.
“It’s amazing,” I said, and nodded at Liam so he’d try it, too. He lifted his hand, skimmed fingers along the edge of the beam, and smiled brilliantly.
“It’s . . . like good wine. Complex. Dark and light. Sunshine and shadow.”
“That’s Claire,” Malachi said, a corner of his mouth lifted. “Not the stone. You’re feeling her.”
Liam’s grin widened, and he winged up his eyebrows in what would have been a perfect imitation of Gavin. “Am I?”
I rolled my eyes, and turned my gaze back to the beam, watching until it faded, the glitter drifting away into the air. The stone itself grew darker, the shine fading, until the garage was normal again.
“Powerful,” Liam said.
Malachi nodded. “It need not have magic to have a profound effect.” He picked up the stone, slid it into his pocket. “That is half our mission.”
Liam nodded. “Then I guess we better see about the other half.”
* * *
• • •
By the time we got back to the store, Gunnar and Darby were already waiting.
“You find it?”
“We did,” Malachi said.
“Good. We’ve got approval to talk to Blackwell.” He looked at me. “Right now. I’ll drive us over.”
I guess I wasn’t going to freshen up before seeing her. Not that I cared what she thought of me, but an estranged daughter liked to make a good impression.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go see her.”
A T-shirt would have to do.
* * *
• • •
She was being held in Devil’s Isle, and the irony didn’t escape me. A prison for Paranormals, now also a home for refugee Paras and a prison for a human who’d tried to eradicate them.
Gunnar drove us to a low building, and not very large. Three squat windows, and a door right in the middle. The rusting tin roof was pitched high toward the back, and the exterior had been a shade of dusky green, at least based on the peeling strips of color that remained. DIXIE BEER had been painted in enormous white letters across the front. A steal at forty-five cents a glass.
“We’ve used it for solitary confinement,” Gunnar said. “Mostly for humans who need to be kept apart from the Paranormal population.”
He pressed his hand to a plate beside the door. Locks opened with a click, and he pushed inside.
Containment had left the original exterior, probably to disguise the building’s purpose, but remodeled the inside. The front room was small and Spartan but well lit, with an old desk and a few chairs. A Containment officer at the desk rose to attention when Gunnar entered.
“Sir. I received the memo that you’d be visiting.” He glanced at us and made a quick visual inspection, and his eyes widened when he reached me.
We looked alike, Laura Blackwell and I. I guessed he’d noticed that.
“Problem, Officer?” Gunnar asked mildly, stepping just enough to put his body in front of mine—and break the soldier’s line of sight.
“No, sir,” he said, quickly looking back at Gunnar. “No problem. You’ll find the detainee down the main hall and to the right.”
“Thank you. Does she know we’re here?”
“No, sir. She was apprised that someone from Containment wished to speak with her, but not about the details or the individuals. For what it’s worth, she’s still angry about being incarcerated. And conditions are not to her liking. She has . . . many suggestions.”
Of course she did.
“Not a surprise,” Gunnar said. “But thank you.”
He nodded, and we walked into the narrow hallway, which was dark except for a light on the far right-hand side. A guard stood at the end beneath a pinpoint spotlight.
Gunnar stopped, looked back at me. “You ready?”
I breathed once, nodded, and slipped my hand into Liam’s. He squeezed back. “Let’s get this over with.”
The walls on both sides of the hallway had been replaced with bars, creating small cells that were currently empty of prisoners. The light, I assumed, was hers.
As we moved, lights in the ceiling turned on, casting a soft glow through the hallway.
We reached the end, turned to look into her cell.
It was a square, with a small bed on one side and a desk on another. No sink or toilet, so I assumed they let her take care of necessities elsewhere. She wasn’t a physical threat. Just an intellectual one.
She sat at the desk, back straight and feet on the floor as she read the book open in front of her. She was a lovely woman, with pale skin and long hair in the same shade of red
as mine. She looked more drawn now; there were hollows in her cheeks, shadows under her eyes, and the dingy gray uniform didn’t do her any favors.
She glanced over at us, measuring Gunnar, Darby, then Liam and me in turn. There was no emotion in her gaze, just mild curiosity twined with what I thought was boredom.
“What do you want?” Her words were clipped, efficient.
“Ms. Blackwell,” Darby said. “I’m Darby Craig. I’m a research scientist with Containment. You know Gunnar, Liam, and Claire. We need to talk to you.”
She rolled her eyes, turned back to the book. “I’m under no obligation to speak with anyone without an attorney.”
“We’re not here about the charges against you,” Gunnar said, “and we’re not trying to garner information to be used against you. We’re here about one of your Containment projects.”
With a sigh, she put a slip of paper in the book, closed it. Then she turned in her seat and crossed her legs and arms, giving us her attention. She looked bored—unless you noticed her eyes. There was a spark there she hadn’t quite managed to hide.
“Which project? I was involved in many.”
Darby pulled a copy of the Devil’s Snare drawing from her folder, held it up against the bars. “This one.”
Blackwell’s gaze shifted from Darby to Gunnar to Liam to me, and the calculation in her eyes was obvious. I knew what she was going to say before the words fell away.
“You have to pay for information.”
I nearly objected, but a look at Gunnar prevented me. There was a glint in his eyes I appreciated. “Ms. Blackwell, considering the charges against you, the accommodations are nicer than you deserve. You should be in Devil’s Isle with the Paranormals you worked so hard to destroy. If, however, you’d prefer to stay here, consider these accommodations your prepayment for the information you’re about to provide to us.”
Blackwell’s mouth worked, but she didn’t speak. I’m sure she was smart enough to understand the threat. “What do you want?”
Gunnar tapped a finger against the paper Darby still held up. “Tell us about the Devil’s Snare.”
“A weapon created by Paranormals to fight Paranormals. Cannibalistic, but there you are. It’s intended to nullify magic.”
“How?” Gunnar asked.
“Magic is energy, and energy can be manipulated. The Snare was very clever. It utilized magic to counteract magic, much in the way an electromagnetic pulse affects electronic devices.”
“How did you find out about it?” Darby asked.
“Not all Paras were located when the war was over. During the first several years after the Veil was closed, Containment would occasionally find Paras who’d evaded capture. They were brought in for questioning—to find other Paras in hiding, to get information about the Beyond, about whether the Paras would try to open the Veil again. We had means to obtain the information we needed.”
“They were tortured.” They were the first words Liam had spoken, and they were powerful. But my mother was a hard woman, and her expression stayed mild.
I had to work to keep my expression blank, to keep from reaching out and throttling that blasé look off her face. Lives were at stake. And she hardly seemed to care.
She slid her gaze to Liam, her expression almost prim, and looked at him for a moment. “You were a bounty hunter. You know how the system works.”
“I returned only enemy combatants,” Liam said. “And then only to Devil’s Isle. Never for intelligence, and never for rendition.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. These were also, as you say, enemy combatants. Individuals waging a war against us. We took what information we could by whatever means were necessary.”
“They were combatants,” Gunnar said. “You admitted this was after the war was over. And as you’re certainly aware, many who fought didn’t do so by choice. They were magically conscripted.”
“Many humans were drafted into wars that shouldn’t have been waged. That doesn’t change their culpability.” She waved away the concern like she was flicking away an insect.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen proof of her total amorality, her sense that facts were more important than people. But it was still chilling. And it made me worry about how much of that was inside me. How much of her apathy I’d inherited.
“It’s irrelevant now. We learned what we learned.”
“Which was about the Devil’s Snare?” Darby said, driving us back to the point.
“Among other things, yes. Not much of what we learned was useful. Much of it was directed toward their internal political struggle, which wasn’t of interest to me.”
My irritation ticked up another notch. Never mind it was the reason for the war’s beginning, the reason for the death and violence and universal imprisonment, and the reason the war had started up again.
I felt Darby’s eyes on me, wondered if she’d noticed my vibrating anger, or just recognized the fury on my face.
“So, you found out about the weapon,” Gunnar said. “Then what?”
“We had the information, but we didn’t have the components. This particular girl—I believe she was a nymph of some variety—believed at least one of the components had been brought here as some sort of symbolic gesture. A stone, I believe, but we were never able to find it.”
She hadn’t known my father had it, I thought. I worked very carefully not to smile. Had he put it in the garage specifically to keep it out of her reach, to keep her from using it? I’d never know for sure, but I liked believing that he had. It made me feel a hell of a lot better to imagine him plotting against her. Actively working to keep her from succeeding.
“Since we didn’t have the objects, we tried to emulate the design with items we modeled and printed. We were in the process of building simple prototypes when our funding was stripped.” And she did not sound happy about that.
“Why was it stripped?” Darby asked.
“Containment became suddenly risk averse about fatalities. We weren’t certain how the weapon would affect humans. Containment was afraid humans would be injured because they lacked the protective layer of magic, so to speak.”
“Containment thought the weapon would be deadly,” Darby said flatly.
“It was only a small risk,” Blackwell said impatiently. “There were no humans in the Beyond, so the weapon wouldn’t have hurt them. I believed the benefits outweighed the risk.”
It was a funny thing, human calculation. The way we weighed costs and benefits, lives against other lives. And how we’d reached the same conclusion, even though we’d done the weighing so very differently.
“What about the mechanism?” Darby asked. “How is the weapon supposed to work, from a technical standpoint?”
“We never got the complete details from Paras. The key element is apparently the rotation of the center stone. That’s what spreads the effect of the outer stone.”
That explained the prism we’d seen at the garage.
“And how did they address the possibility the weapon’s reach would be too broad?” Darby asked.
Blackwell rolled her eyes, shook her head. “They said it was determined by the inclusion in the center stone—its angle relative to the Paras.” She leaned forward, hands linked around her knee. “Do you have any idea how powerful it would have been? We wouldn’t even need to use it. Just threaten the Paras with it, and we could control their behavior. I offered that as an option—using the prototype as a behavior-modification tool within Devil’s Isle. Making an example of someone for some small infraction. It would have been a powerful deterrent.” She turned her gaze, full of disapproval, on Gunnar. “But they weren’t practical enough to let us finish our work.”
“The Commandant tends to frown on harming innocents,” Gunnar said dryly, and held up a hand when she started to speak again. “And don’t lay the ‘look
where that got you’ bullshit on me. I was at Belle Chasse. I know what you did, and what you started.”
“Back to the point,” Darby said. “Containment pulled your funding, and the project was scrapped. What happened to the blueprints and prototypes?”
“Containment destroyed them.” Every word was said with disgust. “After all the research, the investigation, the work. On to bigger and better things. Or things that were easier for them to justify to the bureaucrats who wrote the checks.” Her eyes narrowed, went hungry. “Why are you asking about the Devil’s Snare now?”
“Research,” Darby said.
“No, I don’t think so. Containment is still risk averse. Too risk averse, in my opinion.” Her gaze flicked from Darby’s face to the paper, then back again. “They’ve outmatched us, haven’t they? Proven they’ll do whatever they have to do to win. And we’re finally going to play their game.”
She sounded gleeful that she’d been right about Paras, about the weapon’s need, regardless of the cost paid in the interim. It was all just a game to her. Wins and losses tabulated. Victories paid in lives.
This was what I’d come from. This was half of me.
“But there’s more.” She narrowed her gaze. “You found the components. The actual pieces. Did the Paras finally bring them in?”
Avarice flashed in her green eyes. “Let me out. Get me out of this prison. Get me a lab and some equipment, and I’ll make it work. I guarantee it. The weapon will function, it will nullify their power, and you’ll win this war. No one else has to die.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming out that we were far past the point where no one else had to die. And those deaths could be laid at her feet, because she’d set the Veil’s breach in motion.
I hated her for abandoning us, even if I knew now I was better off without her. But I’d never forgive her for war.
“First of all,” Darby said, and there was a haughty edge to her tone that gave me a nice glow, “you have vastly overrated your skills as a scientist and an investigator. You see, lady—can I call you lady?—your mistake is in thinking you’re the smartest person in the room. That’s arrogance talking. Emotion. That’s not science. Smart people—legit smart people—try to surround themselves with the best and the brightest. That’s how we learn. That’s how we improve. I’ve already translated your notes, and I’m not impressed with your schematics or your testing protocols. If Containment decides to go forward this time, I can do this better, cleaner, and with less risk.”