CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I got up before dawn, snuck out of the station before the sun was up, and hopped on the scraggly bike I’d found in an alley behind the station and fixed up. The bike had been my consolation prize; I’d found a motorized Simplex in a warehouse off Canal Street, but didn’t have the parts to get it running again.

We had picked a house as a neutral meeting spot for our Icarus building surveillance. It was halfway between mine and Moses’s, although only Malachi and Liam knew enough about the gas station to understand that geometry.

Since Malachi had stayed behind today—figuring someone needed to stay with Moses, just in case—I met Liam and Gavin there, at the low cottage overgrown with palm trees, a years-old For Sale sign still hanging by one corner in the front yard.

“No one’s going to buy this place now,” Gavin said quietly as I climbed into the Range Rover he’d parked at the curb.

“No,” I agreed.

Even in the milky predawn light, it was obvious the house was in bad shape. The roof had caved into the middle of what had probably been the living room, and plants had grown in the void, a few stalks and branches already reaching up and out toward the sky, searching for sunlight.

If that wasn’t a metaphor for those of us who’d stayed, I don’t know what was.

The humidity was oppressive even though the sun hadn’t yet risen. Since we were possibly heading to a Containment building, I tucked my hair under a cap, the damp tendrils that escaped blowing in the breeze from the SUV’s rolled-down windows.

Liam seemed more relaxed as we drove toward ADZ, but his eyes still held that spark of intensity, of interest, of possessiveness.

“How’s your arm?” he asked.

“Sore and bruised, but okay. Thanks.” I’d have a scar, but I figured that just added to the mystique.

Gavin glanced at me in the rearview. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“She got shot yesterday.”

Gavin’s eyes went wide, and the vehicle wobbled as he jerked the wheel. “You got shot? By Containment?”

“It just grazed me. I mean, it didn’t feel good, but I’ve done worse to myself in the store.” My dad had done a pretty good job of teaching me how to repair things instead of throwing them out and buying something new. Learning to use saws and hammers brought plenty of cuts and bruises with it.

Since I wasn’t ready to walk down memory lane with my dad, I put the thoughts aside.

Gavin whistled. “Figures you didn’t tell your guardians. They wouldn’t have let you out of the house.”

I snorted. “They’d have tried not to.” I thought I could probably get around Malachi and Moses, although Malachi would have a pretty easy time finding me. He could surveil from the sky.

“You talk to Gunnar?” Liam asked.

“Not directly,” Gavin said. “Passed along a message about Caval, signed it with an alias he’ll recognize.”

“Beau Q. Lafitte?” I guessed.

“Mais, you aren’t still using that name?” Liam asked.

“Damn right I am. It’s got years of life left in it. Unlike this eyesore of a building,” he said, driving slowly past the address on the invoice.

He was right; it wasn’t much to look at. Low and squat, made of white-painted brick with long horizontal windows. Probably built in the 1970s, with lots of orange and avocado on the inside. There was no landscaping to speak of, just a long strip of low grass behind a strip of parking spaces. The sign in front, equally squat and unimaginative, read ADZ LOGISTICS in plain black letters. If this was some kind of Containment outfit, maybe they wanted to be unassuming.

“Doesn’t exactly look like a hub for innovation or research,” Gavin murmured.

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But if you’re involved in the murder of a Containment agent, you probably try to keep your work on the down low.”

“Probably so,” Gavin agreed.

“We’ve got more information about Caval,” Liam said, and told him what we’d learned from Blythe.

“Blythe gave your knife away?” Gavin whistled. “That’s cold-blooded.”

He drove to the next stop sign, then headed across the neutral ground to the southbound lanes of Elysian. He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned insurance agency and positioned the car so we could see the building.

ADZ’s parking lot was empty, and the building was dark. Hard to tell if anyone actually used the place now. We’d have to wait to learn that truth.

And wait we did.

Dawn began to color the sky after twenty minutes of sitting in the car, twenty minutes of listening to Gavin eat a granola bar louder than I’d have thought possible of a human.

“Like a damn chipmunk,” Liam said.

“Boy’s gotta have energy. Never know what you’re going to get into.”

“The bottom of that wrapper, it appears.”

“You’re hilarious, brother. I missed your wry sense of humor and wit.”

Liam punched Gavin, and it jostled him and sent granola crumbs into the air like flakes of delicious snow.

Gavin muttered something in Cajun French that didn’t sound flattering. But I just sat in the backseat and smiled, my gaze on the road. For the little while that we’d been a group of friends—that short period between my being attacked by a wraith and the battle—I’d gotten used to their sniping. It was good to hear them irritate each other again.

But when a car turned onto the road—the first we’d seen since parking—we went quiet. We all hunched down a little and watched a white Mercedes pull into the lot.

“Damn,” Gavin said. “Nice wheels.”

“No kidding,” Liam muttered.

A woman in a suit stepped out of the car, closed the door behind her.

A woman with long red hair. The woman from the photograph.

“Merde,” Liam murmured. But I didn’t even think to respond. Before I knew what was happening, I was out of the vehicle.

“Claire!” Liam’s whisper through the open window was fierce and demanding, but I didn’t process it. The sound was only a buzz in my ears. I was striding across the street, the neutral ground, the other lanes.

This was my mother. And she’d parked at the Icarus building.

I started running, and the cap flew off my head. I hadn’t bothered to consider what I might say when I caught up to her. It didn’t seem to matter. I just wanted answers. Or acknowledgment. Or both.

She was a beautiful woman. Tall and slender, with red hair, green eyes, and pale skin. She wore a suit of burnt orange, a cream-colored camisole beneath the jacket, heels in the same shade.

She was nearly to the front door when I stepped in front of her. She didn’t flinch, just studied me until awareness dawned in her eyes.

“You’re my mother.”

She looked at me with clinical detail. “You’re Claire Connolly?”

My throat suddenly tight with emotion, I could manage only a nod.

“Then yes. My name is Laura Blackwell. I’m your biological mother.” She said it matter-of-factly, like she was confirming the humidity level.

My thoughts spun so quickly it literally made me dizzy. Laura Blackwell, the president of ADZ Logistics, the woman identified on the lab invoice, was my mother.

When I continued to stare at her, she rolled her eyes and motioned to the building. “I’m a busy woman, Claire, so while I assume you have questions, I need to get back to work.” She looked at me expectantly.

“You left us.”

“If by ‘us’ you mean yourself and your father, yes. I did.”

A full five seconds of silence followed that with no elaboration. “Why?” I asked.

“I wasn’t cut out to be a spouse or mother. Your father’s interests diverged from mine, and I realized I didn’t have the instinct for motherhood. You were a well-behaved child, but I simply wasn’t interested in you, intellectually or emotionally. Your father wanted a child, and I could admit to some curiosity about the biological processes. I considered it a kind of experiment. I hypothesized that the maternal feeling would grow, but it didn’t.”

She looked at me expectantly, as if she’d provided an entirely reasonable explanation and was confident that I would buy it immediately.

She sounded like a scientist, a woman who—not unlike Broussard—saw the world in very clear terms. In black and white with no shades of gray, even while she was talking about emotions and abandonment.

“So that was it? You decided being a mother wasn’t for you, so you walked away?”

“You’re being emotional.”

“I’m human.”

“Then try harder. As my child, you should have ample intelligence at your disposal.” She sighed. “As you didn’t appear to know my name, I assume your father upheld his end of the bargain.”

My blood ran cold. “What bargain?”

“He wouldn’t discuss me, and I wouldn’t interfere with his raising you, ask for alimony, complicate the divorce, or cause any of those other irritations. Not that I would have interfered—I had no interest in it. But giving you a ‘normal childhood’ seemed his only concern.”

Because he’d had integrity, and knew how to love, I thought. And had somehow managed to negotiate a life for me even while his heart was probably breaking.

“Did you love him?”

“I was fond of him, of course, but that’s hardly the point. There’s no logic in tying yourself to someone else if you aren’t happy. I wasn’t happy, so I moved on.”

With a slender manicured finger, she pushed back her sleeve, checked the time on a delicate gold watch, then looked at me again. “I’ve given you all the time I have. It will have to be enough. I hope you know that I don’t regret having had a child.”

She said it like she was making an offering, like her lack of regret was a gift. As consolation prizes go, it wasn’t much.

The anger rose so quickly I had to clench my fingers to keep from striking her, from slapping that smile off her face. How dared she talk about regret? She’d broken my father’s heart, walked out on him, walked out on me without another look. She might not have felt regret, but she also apparently hadn’t felt any sense of honor, any sense of obligation to follow through on the commitment she’d made by having a child in the first place. She’d just, apparently, moved on to better things.

It wasn’t the first or last time a parent had walked out on a child. But it had never occurred to me that someone could be so cold about it. She was a blank canvas, and seemed baffled, or maybe exasperated, that I didn’t see it her way.

For a moment, I felt like I was floating outside my body, watching myself try to sort through my roiling emotions. I knew, as I seemed to watch myself watching her, as I stared down at mother and daughter, that it would take time to process the emotions. To accept who she was, and be grateful that my father had shielded me.

That unleashed another torrent of emotions—but this time on his behalf. She had no idea what he’d gone through as a single parent, to keep me safe and alive and fed, especially after the war started, when the money dried up and he had to get what he could from selling MREs and bottled water.

“How could you just walk away, like you had no responsibilities?”

“I did have responsibilities. Important ones. I made good on those.”

“Like Icarus? Is that one of your responsibilities?”

Her body went rigid, her face very controlled. And there was something else in her eyes—something I didn’t know her well enough to assess. But it was a lot darker than the bafflement it had replaced.

“I have nothing more to say to you. And since you seem like a relatively intelligent person, perhaps you’ve gotten lucky and have more of my brain than your father’s.” She plastered a smile on her face, a bitterly cold smile. “Icarus is none of your business. It is mine, and I protect what’s mine very, very carefully. You can walk away right now, or I can call a Containment agent and have you taken out.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“I’ll just be going,” I said, and it took every ounce of control I had to say that civilly.

She nodded. “I assume I won’t be seeing any more of you. I don’t need the distraction.”

Five-to-one odds said she’d be calling Containment whether I walked away or not. So I planned to head in the opposite direction of Gavin and Liam, to keep attention away from them.

But the plan didn’t matter.

They came around the corner, three Containment agents with comm devices in hand, stunners on their belts. They’d gotten ahead of me. She’d signaled them somehow while we were still in the parking lot. While we were talking, while she was meeting her grown daughter for the first time, she’d called them.

Betrayal was a knife in my heart, but she was unapologetic. If anything, she looked irritated by my response. She held up her palm, showed me the small device she held. A panic button of some sort.

“You’re disrupting my work,” she said flatly. “I don’t have time for this. And if you’ve run afoul of Containment, that’s not my problem. You’re your own responsibility.

“George!” she called out to one of them without taking her eyes off me. “We have an intruder.”

“You called Containment on me?” I could barely force the words out.

“You’re interrupting my work.” Again, that irritation.

“Hands in the air,” one of the agents said, and for the second time in as many days, I lifted my hands. But this time, I kept my gaze on my mother.

“I’m glad you left us.”

Her jerk was so small, so minor, that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But I did.

“I don’t have time for this. I have work to do.” She looked at one of the agents, tall and slender with dark skin and deeply brown eyes. “You’ve got it, Chenille?”

“Ma’am,” Chenille responded. Her gaze kept flicking back and forth between us, obviously noticing the resemblance. But it didn’t change the grim determination in her expression.

“We aren’t done,” I called out as she opened the door.

She glanced back at me, one perfect red eyebrow lifted dubiously. “Aren’t we? It certainly appears to me that you’re done, Ms. Connolly.” With that, she slipped inside, leaving me alone with the agents.

My mother turned me in to Containment.

I closed my eyes, thinking this was it—my last moment of freedom. I’d be taken into Devil’s Isle to waste away until the magic took me. Destroyed me.

I willed Gavin and Liam to leave, to stay in the vehicle and drive away. To get themselves to safety. Maybe they’d be able to come up with a plan to get me, too, or maybe not. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about them.

But then things got more complicated.

A truck zoomed down the street and pulled up to the curb. Big and green and jacked up on enormous tires, with angry guitars blasting through the windows. There were two men in the cab, two men in the back. And two of them looked very familiar—Crowley and Jimmy, the hunters who’d attacked us outside Vacherie. They’d come back to New Orleans. Had they guessed we’d show up here? Did they know about her, or about ADZ?

They jumped out, the man from the front passenger seat holding up a piece of paper and pointing at me.

“I’ve got a duly authorized bounty on that woman,” Crowley said, in that unusual gravelly voice of his. “On Claire Connolly!”

Every system in my body seemed to freeze at the word “bounty.”

Before, I’d been just a person of interest, a human with an outstanding warrant. Creating a reward for my capture would bump me right up on the hunters’ priority lists. It wasn’t much of a surprise that they’d done it, not after what had happened at Broussard’s house. But it still sent a wave of sickness through my stomach. It was one thing to live quietly, to stay out of Containment’s sight. It was entirely another to know that hunters had been actively searching me out.

Apparently refusing to abandon me, Liam and Gavin ran across the street. Gavin waved a piece of paper in the air like a competing bounty. Probably registration on the vehicle. But I doubted that would stop the Quinn boys. And neither would the fact that there was definitely a bounty on Liam, and probably one on Gavin now, too.

“Hey!” Gavin called out. “Hey! Over here! She’s ours!”

Everyone looked back, their expressions surprised or confused or concerned as they moved forward. Gavin held up the paper one last time, then shoved it into his pocket. “We’ve got dibs on Claire Connolly. Agent Jackson offered us the bounty personally.”

Crowley stepped forward. “You know that’s not how it works,” he said, then slid a look to Liam. “We got here first, so we get the bounty.”

“How the hell’d you get off Montagne Désespérée?” Gavin asked.

“Shrimper,” Jimmy said, just as Gavin had predicted.

Crowley’s and Liam’s eyes narrowed as they looked each other over. “You attacked them?” Liam asked.

“I tried to bring your friends here in for questioning.” Crowley’s jaw was tight with anger. “I’m guessing this is your brother.”

“You’d be right,” Gavin said. “Bummer you didn’t figure that out when you had your chance.”

Crowley’s gaze didn’t leave Liam. “Seems like I’ve got a pretty good chance now. If you aren’t careful, the both of you, we’ll take the couple other bounties available to us for the Quinn brothers. I’m not going to do that now due to professional courtesy. Unless you get in my way.”

Liam’s features were hard, his eyes shifting blue and golden. And that hadn’t escaped the other bounty hunter’s notice. “You’re going to want to back off and walk away.”

Crowley’s stare stayed steady. This was just business for him—a lot of money and probably a little pride. “Why should I?”

“Because she’s mine.”

Crowley’s brows lifted. “So that’s how it goes, is it? And what if I don’t walk away? You going to kill me, too?” Several heads in the group turned to stare at Liam. “Or maybe we should just cut to the chase and execute all our bounties right now.”

“Everyone step back,” Chenille said. “We’ve got the prisoner, and we’re taking her in.”

“Can’t step back,” Crowley said. “You don’t even have a wagon here. Rules are, we locate a target at the same time as Containment, the one with wheels wins the prize. We got transpo, we get the bounty.”

“We’ve got a superior claim,” Gavin said again, shaking his head.

“Bullshit,” Crowley said, slid his glance to Chenille. “How about a trade? I’ll take Connolly, and you can take the brothers Quinn.”

Chenille’s lips curled in the way of villains everywhere. “They’re wanted, too?”

“They are,” Crowley said. “Might even go without argument, if they think they’ll make it to the prison same time as Ms. Connolly here.”

“You’ll take us in over your dead body.” Liam’s voice was fierce.

“Or yours,” Crowley said. He pulled a toothpick from his pocket, slipped it between his teeth, chewed. “Makes the transport easier.”

For a moment, there was nothing but tense silence, everyone gauging the others, watching to see who’d strike first. With the sun beating down, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweeds drifting by.

We played chicken . . . until Crowley made the first move.

He jumped forward, grabbed my arm, dragged me across the parking lot, and shoved me behind him, his meaty hand still around my arm. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and I wasn’t going to dislodge his fingers by sheer force. I’d have to get creative.

His other men took that as their signal to move. They jumped out of the truck, and two of them began engaging the Containment officers. The third, either brave or stupid, headed for Liam and Gavin.

“I like these odds,” Gavin said, swinging when the man lunged for him. The man was big, but spry enough to dodge the shot. He ducked, then grabbed Gavin by the waist and tried to throw him down.

He was bigger than Gavin, heavy and bulky compared to Gavin’s lean ranginess, but Gavin managed to stay on his feet as they moved backward, hit a light pole.

Liam strode forward, chin down and a bullish expression on his face. He grabbed the man by his shoulders, ripped him away from Gavin, and tossed him bodily a few feet away.

“That’s my baby brother, asshole.”

“Oh, now you come to my rescue?” Gavin asked, using one hand to push himself up, the other to support the spot on his back where he’d been mashed into the steel post.

“Better late than never,” Liam said, adjusting his stance while the man rose again and made another lunge.

“You need better moves,” Liam said, neatly dodging to the side and avoiding the blitz. But the man skidded to a stop on the concrete, came back again, tried to jump on Liam’s back.

“Son of a—,” Liam yelled, his body bowed under the weight of the man.

Instinctively, I yanked my arm away from Crowley, but barely made a dent. “Not yet, little lady,” he said, and began dragging me toward the truck.

No way was I going in the back of that truck.

What the hell? I figured. They already knew I was a Sensitive. Seeing me do magic now was just icing on the cake.

I reached out for power, felt a few delicate tendrils in the air. By some freak of geography, there weren’t many out there, so I was going to need to make this count. Best way to threaten a bully? With his own weapon.

I wrapped magic around the butt of his gun, yanked it out of his holster, then popped it into my hand.

“You’re going to want to get your hand off me.”

He instinctively felt for his holster, and I saw the jolt when he realized it was empty. Slowly, he looked at me.

“Well,” he said with a leering grin, “looks like the bounty was telling the truth.” He raked his gaze over me, making me feel grimy. “But maybe I’ll have some use for you.”

I whipped the knife from his other holster, and when it was seated in my hand, I pointed it toward his balls. “Say that to me again, Crowley. I dare you.”

“Put the gun down!”

We looked back. Two of the agents and two of Crowley’s men were rolling on the ground. Liam was helping Gavin stand. Chenille had a gun and swung it from person to person, unsure which of us was the best target.

It was time for us to take our leave. I had a pretty good idea how to make that happen.

I put the knife in my pocket, raised the gun at Crowley. “Turn around and face her.”

Crowley muttered under his breath, but turned around.

I glanced at Liam, gave him a nod, then used the rest of the magic I’d gathered to push Crowley toward Chenille. He hit her like a bull, sending both of them to the ground.

We took our chance, running back across the street toward the SUV. Along the way, I snatched up my ball cap, rolled and stuffed it into my back pocket.

Liam was in the lead. “Keys!” he shouted at Gavin, who threw the keys over Liam’s head and into his waiting hands. Liam yanked open the door and we jumped inside. Then his keys were in the ignition and we were zooming down the street.

We were a quarter mile down the road when their engine roared behind us. The bounty hunters were giving chase. Booms echoed through the air, and we ducked as metal pinged against the vehicle’s exterior.

“Son of a bitch! This is my brand-new car!”

“It’s neither new nor your car,” Liam pointed out, speeding up along the straightaway.

“Plan?” I asked.

“Not getting taken to Devil’s Isle”—Liam winced as the car caught a pothole—“and not leading them to Moses.”

“I like both of those plans,” Gavin said, grabbing the chicken stick as the vehicle bounced.

“Need enough of a lead,” Liam murmured, his eyes shifting between the road and the rearview, “and then we’re golden.”

He gunned it, putting a half mile between us and the truck.

“Now we need a switch,” Liam said, and jerked the car into a hard right turn onto a side street that slung us all against the left side of the car.

“Damn it,” Gavin muttered. “I liked this car.”

“They’ve seen it.”

“I get that, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Alley coming up on your left, two hundred feet.”

Another tight turn, and Liam slid the Range Rover into the alley with scant inches on each side, then floored it over pockmarked asphalt and gravel.

“There!” Gavin yelled. “There’s a truck in the garage twenty feet back. On your right.”

Liam threw the car into a stomach-hurling reverse, and we lurched forward as he drilled backward through the narrow lane, then screeched to a stop.

He parked the Range Rover kitty-corner so it blocked the alley behind us. We climbed out of the SUV and walked past a dilapidated house and into the garage Gavin had spotted.

Weeds grew through the garage’s dirt floor. But the truck was . . . interesting. It was a Ford, probably from the forties, relatively small and plenty curvy, the original paint long ago rusted into mottled red.

Liam’s gaze narrowed. “This isn’t a truck. It’s a paperweight.”

“Probably runs better than yours,” Gavin said. “Just need to find out if it moves.”

I walked toward the cab, running my fingers over the bed. The body felt solid, and the tires were new. And there was something I liked about the narrow bed, huge curving wheel wells, and chrome details.

There was a thin layer of dust on the door handle. The truck hadn’t been driven in a while, so at least we weren’t poking around in someone’s everyday car. That didn’t give me much comfort about the mechanics, but I liked the look of it. It was love at rusty first sight.

“I want it.”

They both looked back at me.

“This thing?” Gavin asked.

“This thing. I like it, and I want it. Keep an eye out,” I said, then opened the driver’s-side door. I checked beneath the floor mats, behind the visors, but didn’t find a set of keys. Fortunately, the car was old enough to work a trick I’d learned from my father, who’d been afraid I’d find myself stuck in New Orleans without a way home.

I grabbed my hat, pulled it on and stuffed my hair beneath it. “Pocketknife?” I asked, holding out a hand to Liam. He watched me curiously while Gavin stood at the edge of the garage, keeping an eye on the street.

Liam pulled a multi-tool from his pocket, handed it over.

“Thanks,” I said, and slid onto the front seat.

Either the leather was in really good shape, or it had been part of the apparent restoration. Half the work was done for me on the hot-wiring, too. The panel that covered the wires beneath the steering wheel was gone, the wires new and labeled with tape. That was a very good sign. Even if the body was rough, someone had taken the time to replace the wires. That meant there was a pretty good chance the mechanics were good, too.

“Thank you,” I murmured, carefully stripped a bit of insulation from the ignition wires, twisted them together, and connected the bundle to the battery.

The engine roared to life, echoing like thunder in the narrow garage.

I stuffed the bundle back into the cavity, then sat up and revved the engine. “Squeeze in, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Gavin climbed in, slid over on the leather bench seat. “Damn, Claire. You are a badass.”

“I can fix things,” I said simply, but I noted the pride and interest in Liam’s eyes.

I patted the dashboard. “I’m going to call her Scarlet.”

“She’s not exactly subtle,” Liam said, but there was no disapproval in his voice. Just caution. “You’ll have to be careful.”

“Oh, I will.” Because she was mine now.

I put Scarlet in reverse, stretched an arm on the back of the bench seat, and brought her into the light again.