by Chloe Neill
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me drop you off right in front, so I’ll know where you are, can keep an eye on you?”
“I will not.” I climbed out of the car, grabbed my backpack. “Thanks for the ride. If you tail me, I’ll be pissed.”
“You’re entitled to your privacy,” Gavin said. He paused for a moment, seemed to debate saying what he said next. “Look, Claire. You and Liam are none of my business.”
“But you’re going to power through it?”
“I think you should consider something.”
One arm atop the jeep, I sighed, looked back in. “What?”
“You’re cocooning.”
“I’m—what?”
“Cocooning.” He stuck his thumbs beneath his arms and pretended to flap wings. “Like a butterfly.”
I just kept looking at him.
“Jesus, you’re both being purposefully obtuse. You’re hunkering down in this secret lair of yours so you won’t hurt anybody. Gunnar or Tadji or the store.”
“I don’t have a secret lair.” But I totally did. And even if I did, wasn’t that the right thing to do?
“Don’t you think Liam was doing exactly the same thing?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he’s back now. Whose side are you on?”
“He’s my older brother, and you’re my friend. So I’m on my side, naturally. I’ll see you at Moses’s.”
I closed the door. “If I don’t show up in a couple of hours, you can come back here and start your search.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “And Liam?”
I shouldered the backpack on. “That wasn’t a question.”
“I’ve gotten him back to New Orleans. The rest is up to you. So get to it.”
CHAPTER NINE
In a war zone, a long shower was a miracle. That was especially true after a day of moving bayou residents, wandering trails, witnessing a Paranormal funeral, and getting stopped by a Containment roadblock.
I was tired, my legs ached, and I was starving. I wouldn’t have minded spending the night in the station, futzing with one of the projects I’d started to keep myself busy. The backup dehumidifier that didn’t want to turn over, or the few Paranormal artifacts that needed repair. But that wasn’t in the cards. Containment was on the hunt, and we were on the clock.
I capped off my shower by eating a can of peaches with a fork. It had been sunny when I’d arrived at the gas station, was pouring by the time I left. I pulled up my Windbreaker hood and started my second hike of the day.
By the time I arrived at Moses’s house, dusk had nearly fallen. An enormous white Range Rover was parked outside, and since I didn’t know anyone who drove one, I figured Gavin had made quick work of finding a new car.
There were still plenty of vehicles in the city, but not many luxury cars or SUVs that hadn’t been stripped or trashed, or turned into rusting hulks after seven years of sitting. And yet, he’d somehow managed to find one in a matter of hours—presumably one that ran. I hoped that kind of luck was contagious.
The beads were on the door, so I took the steps to Moses’s Creole cottage, but paused for a moment on the porch to prepare myself for round two with Liam. Whatever that might involve.
I found Gavin and Malachi in the small front room of the house. It had what rental sites would have called “Authentic New Orleans Charm.” Brick walls, old hardwood floors, floor-to-ceiling windows.
Along with narrow rooms, old plumbing, and the constant risk of flood.
Before his place in the Quarter had been torched, Moses had amassed a huge collection of electronics. He was making a pretty good dent in filling up this room around his workstation—a padded stool and metal desk. There was a couch for visitors, but unless he’d gotten into a decorating mood while we’d been gone, the race car bed in the back room was the only other piece of furniture in the house.
Because he was small of stature, it fit Moses perfectly.
“You bring me anything?” he asked from his stool, swiveling to look me over.
“Did I bring you anything?” I asked, closing the door.
Moses gestured to Gavin and Malachi. “These two take a field trip, leave me to guard the entire city, don’t even bring me a souvenir.”
Knowing an opportunity when I had one, I unzipped my backpack, pulled out two of the oranges we’d nabbed near the levee. “I guess they aren’t as nice as I am.”
“I knew you’d come through,” he said, hopping down from the stool, taking the oranges and putting them proudly on one corner of the desk.
Gavin leaned toward me. “You didn’t get those for him.”
“No comment.”
“Now that we’re all assembled,” Moses said, “shall we get to business?”
“We’re actually still missing one,” Gavin said, just as we heard a perfectly timed knock at the door. He opened it and let Liam inside.
Liam had cleaned up and changed into a snug DEFEND NEW ORLEANS T-shirt that highlighted every nook and cranny of strong muscle and taut skin.
He gave Malachi and Gavin quick looks. Gave me a longer one as a lock of dark hair fell over his face. He brushed it back, then looked at Moses, who’d hopped onto his stool again and was giving Liam a wary gaze. “Well, well. Look what the damn cat drug in.”
“Mos,” Liam said with a nod.
Moses lifted his brows. “That’s all you got to say?”
“It’s good to see you,” Liam said. “It’s just been a long day.”
“Long five weeks, more like,” Moses muttered, sending me a look I dutifully ignored. “Where the hell you been?”
“Where it’s wet,” Liam said.
“Eleanor?”
“She’s good.”
They stared at each other for a moment, and smiled, and that was that. Weeks evaporating like fog over the bayou.
“Well,” Moses said, “I’m glad to see your ugly face again. How was the trip home?”
“Malachi lost a friend,” Gavin said.
“A friend?” Moses asked, and Malachi told him about our visit to Vacherie and the death of the Paranormal.
“Damn,” Moses said. “Can’t stay in Devil’s Isle, can’t leave it, either.”
“Roadblock on the way back into the city,” Gavin said. “Nearly got pinched. They wanted Liam, wouldn’t give us details. We also met a couple of bounty hunters on the way down there. They said Containment had a bounty for Liam, wanted to talk to Claire.”
“Talk, my ass,” Moses said. “They want to haul you away.” He pointed a finger at me. “I didn’t go to all this trouble for you to get rounded right up.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “What trouble, exactly, did you go to? And be specific.”
He just snorted, glanced at Liam. “Looks like they didn’t waste any time coming after you, either.”
“Evidently not.”
“And since that’s why we’re all here,” I said, “you find out anything about Broussard while we were gone?”
“Lizzie doesn’t know a damn thing,” Moses said. “Plenty of people have plenty of things to say about him, none of it friendly, but none of it specific. Usual complaints, far as I can tell.”
“He was an asshole,” Liam said. “Pretentious. Narrow-minded. But that’s not unusual among humans, much less agents. I will give credit, say he usually thought he was doing the right thing. He and I just disagreed about what was right.”
Including, I thought, whether I’d been harboring magic-wielding fugitives.
“But that’s not our only source of information. While you’ve been frolicking through the meadows, I’ve also been working on this gorgeous girl.” Moses waved a hand at the electronics on the desk.
It was shaped vaguely like an elephant, but I was pretty sure that was just a coincidence. Large gray body on a platform with four
feet, power cords serving as the trunk and tail. A couple of monitors were squeezed in beside cases full of dangling wires and what I thought were speakers and fans.
“Does it work?” Liam asked.
“Does now that I found a power supply a couple houses down. In the damn garage, if you can believe that. People hid all their good shit before they left.”
“How dare they?” I asked with mock outrage. Moses ignored the question and the tone.
“Since we’re all here and this machine is up and running, I think it’s time to see what we can do with it.”
“What are you going to try?” I asked, moving closer.
“Try? I’m not going to try anything. I’m going to do. In particular, I’m going to worm my way into Containment-Net and see what we can see about Mr. Broussard.”
“Should I mention that’s illegal?” I asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d hacked his way in; he’d done it the very night we’d met in order to erase evidence that I’d used magic. In other words, he’d saved my ass.
“Of course you shouldn’t.” He typed furiously, one screen replacing another as he worked through Containment’s systems. “Figured we’d check Broussard’s files, take a look at what he’s been working on.”
“In case what he was working on got him killed,” I concluded.
“That’s it,” Moses muttered as he typed. “Added some new security, think I can’t make my way through it? Assholes. Gunnar’s the only good one in that entire group. Not counting you two,” he said, glancing back at the Quinn boys.
“Technically,” Gavin said, “I’m an independent contractor and Liam’s”—he glanced speculatively at his brother—“in his post‒independent contractor stage.”
Liam grunted his agreement.
“All right,” Moses said. “Recent docs.” He clicked on a folder with Broussard’s name on it, revealing another set of folders.
“Put his docs in reverse chronological order,” Liam suggested. “Let’s see what he was viewing before he died.”
“On that.” Moses moved from folder to folder, pounded keys, then repeated the process. “Here we go,” he said after a moment, when the screen filled with bright green text.
If that text was supposed to mean something, I didn’t get it. It was a mishmash of letters and numbers and symbols, like someone had simply rolled a hand across a keyboard.
“Is it encrypted?” Gavin asked, moving forward with a frown and peering at the screen.
“Don’t think so,” Moses said as he continued to type. He did something that made the text shrink, then rotate, then expand, then shrink again. “Huh,” he said. “Not encrypted. Just not the entire file. It’s a stub.”
“A stub?” I asked.
“What’s left of a file after someone tries to delete it.” He looked back at us. “Deleting a file doesn’t really destroy it, at least not completely, and sometimes not at all. There’s almost always at least something left—the stub.”
He swiveled back to the screen. “This looks like someone tried to do a pretty thorough delete, dumped a lot of the bytes, but not all of them. This is what’s left.” He typed, then hit the ENTER key with gusto.
One of the tower’s panels flew off, followed by a fountain of orange sparks and flame. The panel hit the brick wall and bounced to the floor, and the machine began to whistle.
“Shit!” Moses said, swatting at it with his hand.
The brothers moved faster than I did. While Gavin grabbed a towel from a nearby stack and covered the flames to block access to oxygen, Liam yanked the power cord—overstuffed with plugs—from the wall.
Without power, the screens went dark, and the hum of electronics went suddenly silent. Gavin futzed with the towel and the case until he was satisfied the fire was out.
The room smelled like burning plastic, and a haze of smoke gathered near the ceiling.
“Huh,” Moses said after a moment, brushing smoke away from his face and leaning around to get a look at the case.
“Do try not to burn the house down,” Gavin said. “Tends to make Containment pay attention.”
“You think that bus you’ve parked outside won’t?” Liam asked.
“It’s New Orleans,” Gavin said matter-of-factly. “Anything goes in the Big Easy.”
Moses hopped off the stool, gave the case a thump with his fist. When nothing happened, he peered inside it, began fiddling with parts.
He yelped in pain, and we all jumped forward to help. But he pulled his hand out, perfectly fine, and wiggled his fingers. “Humans,” he said affectionately, and shook his head. “So gullible.
“This is the problem,” he said, then extracted a black box—probably four by four by three inches—with a very melted corner. “Power supply. Hoped it would last a little longer. If you wanna get back into the file, I need another one.” He looked at me and Liam speculatively, which put me instantly on my guard. “I need a favor.”
“What?” I asked.
“This,” he said. He tossed the box at Liam. “House down the road’s got a pretty good stockpile of parts, and I think I saw another one of these in there. It’s a Boomer 3600. Number will be written on the side.”
“Which house?”
He gestured vaguely to the left. “The one with the shutters.”
“Mos,” I said with remarkable patience, “it’s New Orleans. They all have shutters.” When he opened his mouth, I held up a finger. “And don’t say the one with the balcony.”
He grinned. “Got me there. It’s the butter one.”
“The butter one,” Liam repeated.
“I think he means yellow.”
I asked Moses, with brows lifted.
“That’s it, Sherlock. Two houses down, in the garage.”
“Be more specific,” I said.
“There’s a house, with a garage, and there’s a pile of damn computer parts in said garage. It’s just like that box Liam is currently holding, and it will be inside a case that looks like mine.” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb at the stack of ten or fifteen empty computer cases, which didn’t help narrow things much.
“You’ll know it when you see it.” He turned back to the pile of tools beside his keyboard, pulled out a screwdriver, tossed it at me. “Go,” he said emphatically.
The order given and screwdriver in hand, we headed for the door.
• • •
It was pretty obvious he was setting us up, putting us together so we’d have to talk to each other. I didn’t disagree that the conversation needed to be had, but it had been a long day, and I didn’t feel much like being manipulated. If Liam wanted to talk, he could damn well open his mouth.
After checking that the coast was clear, we walked down the block. It was quiet out compared to the bayou. Maybe the city’s wildlife was also waiting to hear what we’d have to say to each other.
But we didn’t say anything. We just walked, and I worked really hard to pretend being out here with Liam was no big deal. To pretend I couldn’t sense him beside me, strong and cruelly handsome.
“This one,” I said, coming to a stop. Even in the dark, the color was clearly buttery. There wasn’t an attached garage, so we walked down the driveway—two strips of gravel nearly covered now by grass—to a courtyard behind. The entrance to the garage was on the other side of the courtyard, a narrow box just big enough for one car. It had a pull-down door with a row of glass panels across the top and painted white handles along the bottom.
We each took a handle, lifted, then turned on the skinny flashlights we’d borrowed from a stash in Moses’s living room.
“Damn,” I said, staring at the volume of junk stuffed inside the narrow space. There were boxes, crates, electronics, and bundles piled to the ceiling.
“Stockpiler? Or hoarder?” Liam asked.
“Who knows?”
I said, glancing around. “Doesn’t look like it’s been disturbed much, except for that.” I pointed the flashlight at the narrow path that wound through the piles. “Probably Moses’s trail.”
Liam nodded, and I stepped into the path, followed it around a pile of busted bikes and television sets.
“I bet he picked this house because of this garage,” Liam said, shifting things behind me.
“Probably. Electronics without corrosion are hard to come by.”
The trail spiraled into the center of the garage, where the junk shifted to electronics. Cases, wires, connectors, screens. There were a lot of cases that looked like Moses’s, so I started to pick through those.
He must have heard me moving around. “You got something?”
“Maybe.” I shone the light into the cases, one after the other, until I saw a dusty box similar to the one Moses had had, with 3600 in red letters across the side.
“Found it,” I said, and set about unscrewing it from the case. After a moment of work, it popped free into my hand. I didn’t see any corrosion, but it was hard to tell with just a flashlight.
Prize won. I put away the screwdriver and began to weave my way back to the garage door. I stopped when I came to an old metal sign. SNOBALL was written across the rectangular piece of metal in pink three-dimensional block letters, each topped with a mound of snow. Flavors—strawberry, rainbow, praline—had been punched across the bottom.
Snoballs were the New Orleans version of shaved ice, a summertime tradition that hadn’t survived the war. I hadn’t seen a sign like this before, and I loved the memory it triggered.
My first instinct was to grab it for the shop, either to hang in the store or sell to someone looking for tangible reminders of the city’s history.
But I didn’t have a store to hang it in.
“Are you okay?”
“Just feeling nostalgic.” I held up the power supply. “Got what we needed.”
Liam nodded. We walked back to the garage door, and both reached for the same handle. Our fingers brushed, and the shock of hunger that arced through me left me nearly breathless.
Proximity shouldn’t have made me suddenly ravenous, weak with want and need. I shouldn’t have wanted to grab fistfuls of his hair, meld my mouth with his. I shouldn’t have wanted to fall into his arms, to feel safe—and understood. But I did.