by Chloe Neill
It hadn’t even occurred to me that dropping her guise actually expended magic. It clearly had occurred to Nix, given the indignation in her voice. “The—wait. What? What do you mean, it’s insulated?”
Frowning, Liam rose, moved through the labyrinth of furniture to the window. He pushed it open, climbed onto the balcony outside. I waited, nerves firing and body prepared to run again, if he found the light outside had changed.
After a moment, he climbed in again, closed and locked the window. I waited impatiently for the verdict.
“The monitor hasn’t been triggered.”
I blew out a breath through pursed lips, tried to slow my racing heart. And I thought of the falling star, of the lifted gear, of the fact that neither of those little bouts of magic had signaled the monitors outside. It wasn’t because there hadn’t been much magic, or I’d gotten really lucky. It was because they couldn’t have. Because someone had fixed it so magic couldn’t be detected here.
“I said that already,” Nix said. “Someone has insulated the house for magic—made it impermeable.”
“That’s not possible.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “I would not have dropped the shadow if it wasn’t.”
“Someone would have had to perform magic on the building,” Liam said, joining us again.
“Like I said, that’s not possible. This store has been in my family for more than a century.”
“Are any members of your family Sensitives?” Nix asked.
“No.”
“Then they must have had a friend who was.”
She said that as if it was the simplest thing—that my father had had friends who were Sensitives. But that wasn’t likely. My dad didn’t involve himself in magic, although there had been times when it was unavoidable.
“The building took a hit from a flaming sword during the Second Battle,” I said. There was still a dark streak of soot across the brick wall that faced the alley. Soapy water and elbow grease hadn’t made a dent. “Maybe that’s why.”
“Maybe,” Nix said.
“So, what does this mean?” I asked. “I can do magic in here and Containment won’t know it?”
“Theoretically,” Liam said. “But that doesn’t make it a good idea. You don’t want to make the problem worse.”
“No,” Nix said. “She does not. The house is insulated. Your body is not.” She pointed to the box. “Try.”
I wiggled on the floor, adjusting my seat, and leaned forward again.
To put the bystanders out of my mind, I closed my eyes, imagined everything in the world was dark—except for the glimmering magic that had situated itself in my body, an irritating cancer that would eventually destroy who I was.
I reached in, grabbed a handful of those stars, and yanked.
Dizziness racked me, and cold sweat trickled down my back, while everything inside my body felt cold, heavy, and completely disorganized—as if every organ were in the wrong place.
“Oh, crap,” I said, bearing down hard against a wave of nausea that almost had me tossing my lunch in front of Liam Quinn. Which I didn’t think I’d ever live down.
I tried to ignore it. I opened my eyes, squeezed my palms tight against the magic I’d metaphysically grabbed, and imagined pushing the magic into the box.
It worked as well as stuffing my previous tightrope-walking elephant into a water bottle. Neither one of them would be superpsyched about the idea.
The magic flashed back, sparks arcing through the air—and this time, they were real. Liam stamped a few out, looked back at me with obvious concern in his eyes. But I couldn’t worry about him. Not right now.
I tried again, winced as magic flashed back again, stinging me like a shock of static.
“Damn it,” I said, shaking my hand, bracing against another wave of nausea. “This isn’t working.”
“Maybe she needs a break?” Liam said.
“She doesn’t need a break. She needs to focus. If she can gather magic to move things, she can gather magic to do this. She just needs to concentrate.”
“I don’t know how to concentrate,” I growled. I could feel irritation growing. I was hungry, tired, and running on fumes.
“Come on, Claire.” This time, Liam’s voice was harder. “You can do this. I know you can. Get it together and get it done.”
I nodded. Tried to center myself. Thought about the box, how I wished the box was bigger. Big enough to encompass the entire building, so I could shove a lifetime’s worth of magic in there . . .
That was when I realized I was going about this completely wrong. If magic didn’t have mass, the size of the box didn’t really matter. It didn’t matter.
I gathered up the magic again, pulling at the twisting filaments that crowded my body even now. I imagined the box was the red dot in the middle of the target and shoved. Cold spilled over me again as the magic twisted, fought back, tried to slip through my fingers like wriggling fish. But I ignored what it wanted and settled my mind on where I wanted it to be.
Slowly, carefully, I moved it toward the box, the box that could be as big as a room. And then I released it.
Nix reached forward and slapped the lid closed.
Dizziness hit me again. I closed my eyes and counted backward from ten, just as I’d done on car trips as a kid when I was a few miles away from barfing all over the backseat.
“Are you all right?” Liam’s voice sounded far away.
“She’ll be fine,” Nix said. “She has pulled magic away from herself. It has left her disoriented. The feeling will pass.”
It might pass, but I wasn’t thrilled it existed at all—or that I’d need to do this for the rest of my life. “Will I get used to it?”
“Possibly.”
Not the ringing endorsement I was hoping for.
I opened my eyes again, blinked. “Did I at least do it right?”
“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t feel like that. But if you want to know, look for yourself.”
I growled, wished I knew a few Cajun curses, and closed my eyes again. This time, instead of imagining the magic in me was the source of light, I ignored everything except for the box’s eight corners and its small, shiny interior.
The light was faint, like a far-off star, but if I relaxed just enough, I could see it pulsing with magic and energy. Satisfaction filled me. I’d done it.
And I was going to sleep like a baby.
CHAPTER TEN
Thirty minutes, three attempts, and one more successful round of casting later, the bell clanged downstairs, followed by the sound of shuffling footsteps.
“Claire? You up there?”
Damn. I glanced at a grandfather clock that stood in the corner. It was seven thirty, and Gunnar was prompt as usual. I was a little dizzy and a lot ravenous.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I called out, then looked at Liam and Nix, waited for their images to come into focus. “They’re here for dinner. You might want to put the—what did you call it? your human shadow?—back on.”
Nix sighed, but waved a finger, and her disguise whirled and reformed around her body like bark replacing itself again.
“Who is it?” Liam asked.
“Tadji Dupre, Gunnar Landreau, Will Burke. Gunnar’s the Commandant’s adviser. Tadji’s a grad student. Will works for Materiel.”
Liam whistled. “That’s a lot of Containment in one place.”
“Yeah. So be careful,” I said, glancing between them. “I don’t want either of you getting into trouble.”
“More trouble, you mean,” he said, and we headed toward the stairs. “A Sensitive, a dryad, and a bounty hunter walk into a bar,” he murmured.
Gunnar, still in his dark fatigues, stood with Burke and Tadji in the store’s front room. Burke had a large enamel pot in hand, and he’d worn fatigues, too. Tadji had opted for snug jeans, a T-shirt, and boots today. And based on the body language, she didn’t look especially thrilled about Burke’s presence. Not a love match, I guessed. We’d h
ave to talk.
“Dinnertime!” Gunnar said. “And you have . . .” He trailed off as Liam and Nix appeared behind me. “Company.”
“Yeah,” I said brightly. “Company. This is Liam and his friend Nix. They’re, um . . .” Damn. I hadn’t actually though that part through.
“I’m a bounty hunter,” Liam said.
I guess he didn’t see the point in easing into it. Everyone’s eyebrows lifted with interest.
“For wraiths?” Gunnar asked, and Liam nodded.
They looked at Nix like they were daring her to say something even more interesting.
“I don’t do anything nearly so exciting,” she said. “I’m a gardener.”
I wasn’t sure if that was the truth. But if so, it made sense for a wood spirit.
“Cool,” Gunnar said. “I’m glad to hear there’s still ground that can be planted. You have to stay for dinner. Burke brought plenty of food.” He glanced at me for support, and I felt bad that I hadn’t thought to ask them in the first place.
“Absolutely,” I said, glancing at Liam, then Nix. “We’d love to have you. Liam brought us some bread,” I added. “Homemade.”
Not surprisingly, Nix begged off—all the better to keep her away from two PCC agents—and Liam walked her to the door. When he made it back to the table, he paused beside me.
“Please be careful,” I whispered.
He leaned forward, his breath just a whisper. “I’m not the one with skills. Keep yourself in line, Claire.” He’d meant magic, obviously, but there was still something in the rumble of his voice that sent a spark down my spine.
I slipped an arm into Tadji’s. “Tadj, maybe you could help me in the kitchen? And, Gunnar, can you please set the table?”
I gestured to the cypress table on the left-hand side of the store. It was absolutely beautiful, with a bumpy edge of raw bark. A shame it hadn’t sold, but there weren’t many who needed a fifteen-foot-long table these days, or could afford it. I took advantage and used the store as a dining room when Gunnar and Tadji came over.
Gunnar grinned. “She says ‘set,’ but she means put away the price tag and find some chairs.”
“The less furniture I keep, the more furniture I can sell,” I reminded him.
“Like that’s ever stopped you before.”
I left them to their sarcasm and hustled Tadji into the kitchen, snapped the curtain closed again.
“Details,” I whispered as I pulled out a tray to carry necessaries to the table. “Gunnar says you aren’t feeling it with—” Since the curtain was thin, I pointed toward the room where Burke stood.
“He’s a nice guy,” she said. She’d let her hair curl into ringlets today that bobbed when she moved her head. “But I’m just not sure there’s chemistry. I don’t think we have that much in common. He’s a football kind of guy. I’m an OED kind of girl.”
I nodded, moved to a drawer, pulled out a bread knife and spoons. “That might be the nerdiest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Grammar isn’t nerdy,” she said with a grin. “It’s important. And my point still stands.” She shrugged. “He’s not going to be here forever, so it wouldn’t even make sense to get into something.”
“You aren’t going to be here, either,” I pointed out. When she finished her research, she wasn’t likely to find a job here. There weren’t a lot of professorships in the Zone. “If that’s your standard, you can’t date anyone.”
“And I’m okay with that, Claire. I’ve always been an introvert, and I’m not afraid to be alone. Besides, I’m focused on my work right now. I don’t really have time for dating.”
Those were perfectly legitimate reasons. She was entitled to be happy, whether with or without other people. And if being alone made it easier to track the “Etymological Origins of Paranormal Designations in Post-War French Louisiana”—I think I had the title right—more power to her. But I still worried she was making excuses. Because of her childhood, she’d never felt like she fit in anywhere, and she hated that feeling. I hated to think she was avoiding a potential love interest because of it.
“Your call, Tadj. As long as you’re happy, it’s your life to lead. But I’m still a smidge bummed. He seems so nice. And he brought dinner.”
“So why don’t you date him?”
I smiled. “Because he only has eyes for you.”
She patted my arm. “Let it go.”
“It’s gone. Will you grab some napkins?”
While I searched for enough bowls and cups, she pulled out a long drawer, took out a stack of folded napkins. Good food might have been hard to come by, but in an antique store, good linens weren’t. The monograms and embroidery didn’t match, but that hardly mattered now.
She put the napkins on the tray next to the glasses I was gathering. “And who are the new kids?”
“The bounty hunter or the gardener?”
“Let’s start with the bounty hunter. Is this related to the wraith thing? Gunnar told me about that.”
Good. Saved me trying to remember what I’d told him and match up the stories. Lying was filthy, complicated work.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“And you two are . . . ?”
I frowned. “Friends. Kind of.” I pulled the bread from the sleeve, placed it on the tray. “But he brought bread. And it looks really good.”
The tray assembled, we looked down at it. Mismatched silverware, mismatched bowls, mismatched cups. Linen napkins, bread, bread knife.
“It’s not awful,” she said. “I’d call it artistic.”
I picked it up. It was heavy, and it had been a long time since my prewar high school job at Berger’s Burgers. But I managed to keep it balanced. “I’m guessing everyone is hungry, and as long as they get a bowl and a spoon, they probably won’t care.”
“That’s life in the Zone,” Tadji said, moving the curtain aside so we could head back into the main room. “A little chaotic, but on the better days, there’s spicy food and good company.”
• • •
Dinner was pretty damn delicious. The food was brilliant, and so was the conversation.
Burke, Gunnar, and Liam seemed to hit it off, shared stories about their weirdest experiences in the Zone. Between them, they’d seen a giraffe, two alligators in bathtubs, a drunken man on a unicycle, and a riot over a doughnut truck. There were grim stories, too, of death and sadness. But we’d all known too much of that. It was part of our shared history, and not something we needed to say aloud to understand.
The best part of dinner was the watching, the listening. I nibbled the crusty end of the loaf while the stories were passed around like good wine (which was hard to come by) and hot sauce (which Liam kept in a small pocket flask for “emergencies”).
I watched Tadji and Burke, and tried to figure out if the problem was chemistry or timing. A little of both, I decided, bummed on Tadji’s behalf.
I watched Liam eat, grin, pour enough hot sauce on his dinner to set his mouth aflame, and seem totally unbothered by it. He glanced my way, realized I’d been watching him again. His expression swung from surprise to amusement to male satisfaction.
I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, but looked away casually, as if our gazes had just coincidentally met while I scanned the table, and not because I was finding my eyes drawn back to him over and over.
But I was. Maybe it was those eyes. Maybe it was his obvious strength. Maybe the fact that he’d helped me, or that I’d watched him try to protect that child in Devil’s Isle. We’d gone from strangers to mostly friends in twenty-four hours. And part of me wondered if we could be something more. That was probably a dangerous thought.
Liam opened his mouth, probably to say something sarcastic, but before he could speak, there was a loud pop. The lights went out, leaving us in darkness.
“And now we can get the party started!” Gunnar said, and we laughed as he’d meant us to do.
It said something about the Zone and Gunnar that he was practiced enough at this to know what to do, where to find what he needed. Or maybe we’d all spent too much time in this building.
I rose, moved carefully through darkness to the counter and the shelf where I kept the candles and matches. I pulled them out—two silver candelabras with long white tapers, four hurricane lamps with butter-yellow beeswax candles I’d traded for several packs of batteries. I flicked a match against the side of the box, and the flame took. I protected the flame with the cup of my other hand, brought it to the candles’ wicks. A soft glow filled the room.
“At least moonlight is flattering,” Gunnar said as we carried the candlesticks back to the table, set them down the middle in intervals.
“There is something to be said for it,” Burke agreed, with a smile that Gunnar reciprocated.
“When we were kids,” Gunnar said, “Dad would take us to this cheap motel on Pensacola Beach. Cinder block walls, tile floor. It was not fancy. This was before he made his money.”
Gunnar’s father, Cantrell Landreau, had been a very successful surgeon. His practice had bought the family’s house in the Garden District. (The Arsenaults were an old family with old money. The Landreaus were relatively new to New Orleans and newer to money. Even after the war, that difference still mattered to some.) Cantrell had been a field doctor during the war, and had refused to leave the city when the war was over.
“We’d buy groceries when we got into town, fill a mini fridge with hot dogs and milk so we wouldn’t have to eat out. The beach was gorgeous then—white sand. Blue water. Absolutely amazing. They had these little grills on the patio. Just a firebox on a pole with a grate on top. Anyway, at night, after we’d spent the day on the beach, we’d walk down to the shore, with the moon hanging above us. The sand would have cooled off by then, and it would feel so good between your toes. We’d sit down on these wooden beach chairs, watch the moon and stars, listen to the waves rush in.”