CHAPTER TWENTY

“I guess we can be grateful you were reckless the last time,” Liam said as we bumped toward my mother’s house and her pretty walled neighborhood. Gavin, Liam, and I were squeezed into Scarlet’s front seat. “Else we wouldn’t know about the box or the decharger.”

“You should always be grateful I’m reckless. It’s one of my better qualities.”

I gunned it, the rebuilt V-8 under the hood roaring like thunder, then patted Scarlet’s dash. “That’s my girl. My sweet, sweet girl.”

“She ever touch you like that?” Gavin asked Liam with a grin.

“No comment.”

“You’re both hilarious,” I said. “Maybe we could talk about what we’re going to do when we confront my apparently evil mother.”

They both went quiet.

“That wasn’t sarcasm,” I said. “I’m serious. She’s evil, and though I’m still processing the emotions of learning that my mother is the scientist version of Maleficent, I’m very eager to take her down.”

•   •   •

“Well,” Gavin said when we reached the neighborhood. “She’s spared no expense for herself.”

“Being morally disgusting evidently pays well,” I said, pulling Scarlet to a stop a couple of streets away in front of a house that was obviously empty—windows open, floors and walls bare.

“I think you’re right,” Liam said, “and there’s a good chance she’s not here. But just in case.” Liam pulled his .44 from his waistband, then looked at me. “You armed?”

“No. But I’ll be fine.”

We climbed out of the car, tried to walk as nonchalantly as possible down the quiet suburban street. We strode up to the front door just as casually, found the house dark.

I knocked, waited for a response. And when nothing happened, I tried the door.

“Locked,” I said.

“Can you use magic?” Liam asked.

“No. Magic monitors are armed,” I said, gesturing over my shoulder at the pole-mounted monitors along the curb.

“Not worth the risk,” Gavin said, then pulled the gun from its holster. “Stand back.”

“That’s not exactly low-key,” Liam said.

“Yeah, neither is this bitch, and neither is her plan.” Gavin aimed, and we scuttled to the other side of the porch.

Two pops, and the door swung open.

“And I call you reckless,” Liam muttered.

“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m not the one with a gun.”

The house was empty.

I took the second floor, walking slowly through each room, taking in the tall ceilings and attractive paint colors, the crown moldings. And the complete absence of décor. The master bedroom held a bed, dresser, nightstand. The nightstand held a single lamp and an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock. Prevented her from being late, I guessed, when the power went out.

The nightstand’s drawers were empty, the dresser’s full of neatly folded clothes in tidy piles. Even the socks were paired and fitted into an organizer that looked a little like an egg crate. I didn’t see any evidence that she’d packed a bag, but how would I know?

The bathroom held the usual necessities. The makeup and bath products were high-end brands, must have been shipped into the Zone, but there was nothing extraneous. Nothing that didn’t have a specific purpose. And here, like downstairs, we saw no art, no flowers, no cocktail tables or objects. There were four smaller bedrooms on this floor; all were empty except for a yoga mat in the room closest to the master.

I went downstairs again, found Liam in the kitchen.

“Coffeepot’s still warm,” he said, checking the glass carafe with a fingertip. “She hasn’t been gone long.”

Gavin came in through another door, the orange box in his arms. “Empty,” he said. “But here. Confirms she’s in possession of PCC property and her likely intent.”

“Getting it through the Veil,” Liam said, and Gavin nodded.

“You find anything?” he asked.

“Nothing useful,” I replied.

“She gets nervous, decides to abandon this place,” Liam said, hands on his hips as he looked around. “Goes into the wind. Or she decides she’s ready, and she’s off to deploy. Doesn’t care if we know where she lives, because she’s on task, focused.”

“I don’t think she’d run,” I said. “She doesn’t seem to care what people think, and she’s got some kind of federal benefactor, maybe thinks she’s untouchable.”

Liam nodded. “Agreed.”

I glanced back, realized the laptop was still sitting on the table.

“Computer,” I said. I pulled out the chair, sat down in the same spot where my mother had sat with her coffee and orange juice, and turned the machine on.

It wasn’t even password-protected. The computer’s desktop blinked on, showing a photograph of Jackson Square after dusk.

“She left her computer behind?” Gavin asked, moving closer. He and Liam stood behind the chair, looked over my shoulder.

“She was in a hurry,” I said. And that made me worry even more.

The computer’s desktop was immaculate. No random files, no temporarily stored documents or gifs. Just a neat line of links to the hard drive and important folders.

I spent ten minutes opening documents and folders, searching the hard drive for anything that might give us a clue about her location. Plenty of scientific documents that I didn’t understand, but I figured Darby would be interested in them.

I skipped those, opened up the Internet browser, then pulled up her search history. And my heart stuttered.

The last phrase she’d searched had been “sola fluids.”

“What’s a sola?”

“A what?” Liam asked, moving closer.

“Sola. It’s what she searched for last. ‘Sola fluids.’”

“Not ‘sola,’” Gavin said, walking toward us. “So La. As in ‘Southern Louisiana.’” He peered over my shoulder. “SoLa Fluids. It’s a petroleum processor on the river. One of the few still operating in the Zone.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Near Belle Chasse.”

“The Veil runs through Belle Chasse,” Liam said. “There was a skirmish there during the war. A few Court Paras tried to go back through.”

“I remember.” Their effort hadn’t worked, but the fight had been the topic of conversation in the Quarter for weeks.

“Belle Chasse,” I murmured, thinking it over. The Veil ran through it, it was close to New Orleans, and it was probably a place she’d heard about before. She wouldn’t want to leave this to chance. And there was nothing else on the computer that looked like she was trying to nail down the geographic part of the search.

“I think that’s the best we’re going to do from here,” I said. “Let’s find Gunnar.”

Gavin was already striding to the door. “Moral of this story?” he said. “Murderers should always clear their browser history.”

I grabbed the computer and followed them out.

•   •   •

There were days when it was nice to be free of the burden of cell phones. There were no three a.m. e-mails, no social media stress, no worries about Internet arguments with strangers.

And no way to easily arrange for the arrest and capture of a homicidal maniac.

We dropped Gavin off near Moses’s house so he could find a vehicle, then drove directly to the Cabildo, Containment’s HQ. We waited outside while Gunnar talked to the Commandant about what we’d found and where we thought she might strike.

The guards outside the building gave us the stink eye. But whatever Gunnar had said to them on his way in had them staying in position, weapons still holstered.

Fifteen minutes later, he came out. And he didn’t look happy.

“Senator Jute McLellan,” he said, climbing into the truck and slamming the door. The truck vibrated from the ferocity of his anger. “Go back to Moses’s.”

“Which is who?” Liam asked when I put the truck in gear and drove away from the Cabildo before the agents could change their mind.

“The head of the subcommittee that’s been sneaking funds to ADZ. War disrupts the economy, and Senator McLellan doesn’t care for that. So he and his friends decided Icarus was a wise investment.”

“No more Paranormals, no more war?” I asked.

“Pretty much.” He smiled slyly. “Capital police are now on their way to have a very long talk with Senator McLellan.”

“Good,” Liam said. “Assuming they can make it stick.”

“No evidence to date that he’s involved in the research, just the funding, so his lawyers will probably have a field day. But the money was appropriated, and that’s got his mark all over it. He’ll have plenty to answer for.”

“And closer to home?” Liam asked.

“Commandant has scrambled jets out of Pensacola,” Gunnar said. “And there are a few troop carriers on the ground with some fancy ordnance that the army’s been working on. But we might still beat them to the spot.”

“And in the meantime,” I guessed, “we do what we can.”

“We do what we can,” Gunnar said. “So drive fast.”

•   •   •

Refusing to give up after the loss of his briefly beloved Range Rover, Gavin pulled up to Moses’s house in an enormous red Humvee.

“Only in a war zone, where gas is hard to get, would my brother drive something like that.”

“I’m in a war zone,” Gavin said through the open window. “I’m driving a vehicle that’s ready for war.”

Admittedly a better argument.

The rest of us stood outside Moses’s house, preparing to stop my mother. Moses watched us from the top step of his front porch.

“She’ll be there,” he said, pointing generally southeast and toward the ninetieth line of longitude. “Or somewhere along here. We go in teams, secure the virus, take her down. In whatever order necessary.”

He glanced at me, concern in his eyes.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. She’s not my mother. Not in any way that counts.”

It was the first time I’d said it, and it was absolutely true. We had a biological connection. Shared genetic material. My origin story was connected to her, but that was the only thing between us. She hadn’t been my mother in any way that mattered then, and she wasn’t now. She wasn’t confused, or lost, or whatever fairy tale I might have told myself growing up. She was just a woman.

Saying it aloud lifted the rest of the weight from my chest.

Liam reached out, squeezed my hand, and didn’t let go.

“Claire, Liam, Darby, and I approach her directly,” Gunnar said. “We aren’t entirely sure where she’ll be positioned, but I’d like two teams—Rachel and Malachi, and Erida and Gavin—to approach from the other directions. We’re at six o’clock, you’re at two and ten.”

The split made sense—one Paranormal and one human on each of those teams—but no one looked happy about their particular team. Which was probably fine by Gunnar.

“Darby, tell us what we’re looking for.”

“The decharger’s pretty small,” she said, and held out her hands to form a small square. “Maybe four by four. It’s a black disk, about two and a half or three inches thick. You’d press it flat against the Veil,” she said, mimicking the move. “It’s powered by the Veil itself.”

“And the virus? The aerosolizer?”

“She could be bringing the virus in any kind of container. It depends on how it needs to be stored and how much she was able to process. Probably a canister. Something that would fit into a generator, or gun. And the mechanism has to be small enough to fit into the window created by the decharger.”

“Disk, canister, generator, gun,” Gunnar said. “Generally, keep an eye out for metal and plastic.”

“Pretty much,” Darby said with a nod.

“We’ll take the virus and the decharger, and give them to Darby. She’ll secure and transport.”

Darby held up an old, dirty Igloo cooler, patted the side. “High-security transport, right here.”

“Claire, Liam, and I will ride in the truck. Gavin will take Darby, Rachel, Erida. Malachi will fly in. Any questions?”

We all shook our heads.

“Then let’s hit the road.”

•   •   •

Ten minutes later, Gunnar was practically jumping in the front seat of the truck. “Can this thing go any faster?”

“I’m driving eighty on a postwar highway,” I said. “Unless you want me to flip the truck”—we all grimaced as I hit a bump and we went momentarily airborne before thudding down again—“then no, we aren’t going any faster.”

Like the road to Houma, the road to Belle Chasse was mostly empty. Empty businesses and houses, then a stretch of green on both sides of a pitted highway. And somewhere ahead of us, a woman and a weapon of mass destruction.

We slowed as we neared the target area, the white towers and spires of the Apollo refinery looming in the distance like a twisted Oz.

Gunnar and Liam peered through the windows as I drove, looking for a vehicle, a sign, a woman with red hair.

But I saw her first.

“There,” I said, and slowed the truck, pointed to the field on the river side of the road.

She stood on the levee half a mile up the road, the wind whipping her hair like Medusa’s snakes. Scientist that she was, she’d traded in the sharp suit for cargo pants and a trim tank.

There was something small and black in her hands. There was a plastic box also at her feet, and a canister hanging from a strap around her neck. Aerosolizer and virus, I guessed.

She was staring in front of her, as if trying to locate the Veil, figure out what she was looking at, how exactly to accomplish her work. That meant we weren’t too late. There was no sign of Lorenzo Caval, but there wasn’t time to wait for him.

We had to move.

The Hummer slowed behind us, then pulled up alongside. A shadow passed over, wings momentarily blocking out the sun, and then Malachi landed on the road in front of us, ivory wings casting sharp shadows on the asphalt.

Hair tousled from the flight, he looked like an avenging angel. And today, that probably wasn’t far from the truth.

“He is just . . . gorgeous,” Gunnar said, his voice a little gravelly.

That broke the tension in the car by a long shot. “I thought we had to focus on the mission?” I said.

“He’s part of the mission,” Gunnar said. “A very admirable part.”

As Malachi retracted his wings, Rachel and I rolled down our respective windows. But her gaze didn’t move from him as he strode toward us.

“You got her?” I asked.

“On the levee,” Gavin said, leaning forward.

“Caval?” Malachi asked.

“No sign of him,” Liam said. “Could be Blackwell decided he’s disposable.”

“Or maybe he’s completely AWOL,” I said. “Got smart, relatively speaking, and decided it was better to bail before she did this thing.”

Gunnar didn’t look convinced by either option. “A man willing to kill his own brother out of a completely warped sense of priorities isn’t worried about being caught. He’s worried about the mission. We go as planned,” he decided, “but stay alert.”

“We’ll keep going,” Gavin said, “come up from behind.”

“I’ll circle around, come over from the river side,” Malachi said.

Gunnar nodded. “We aren’t going to wait for you to get into position. We go now, secure the virus before she attempts to deploy it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to no one in particular as we climbed out of the car. “I’m sorry for whatever she’s about to do.”

“You didn’t make her choices for her.”

I looked up at Malachi, saw understanding in his eyes, and nodded.

“You’re right,” I said, looking back at my mother again. “But I’m going to be the one who stops her.”

•   •   •

“I want to talk to her first,” I said as we walked across the field—which was at least a couple of acres wide. Laura had descended from the levee and was walking in small circles, probably trying to nail down exactly where she needed to aim.

She’d been near the Veil at Talisheek, but didn’t have magic, so she wouldn’t be able to sense it or see it. She’d have to rely on longitude to find it, and even then it waved back and forth across the line of longitude.

But I could sense it fine. It was difficult to grasp the sheer size of the Veil. It wasn’t a curtain drawn between us. It was a split in our world, extending up and side to side infinitely. It shimmered high enough to reach the atmosphere, far enough that it disappeared across the horizon. It was big and it was powerful, and it was holding back the river of magic and Paranormals on the other side.

In preparation for her work, Laura had pulled out the decharger. She held it in one hand while inserting the virus cartridge into a device shaped a little like a fire extinguisher.

“Laura.”

She froze, turned back, aiming her biological weapon. I didn’t think it would do anything to me—no humans had gotten sick yet—but I still lifted my hands.

I was getting sick of doing that lately. Of feeling like a criminal.

Her lip curled angrily. “I don’t have time for you. I have work to do.”

I could see them moving in my peripheral vision. “Your work is over. You’re surrounded, and we’ll be taking the decharger, the virus, and the weapon.”

“I’m not turning anything over. I have work to do. A job to finish.” She turned around to face the Veil, lifted the decharger.

“And did I mention Containment troops are en route? You turn them over to us now, and this will go a lot easier for you.”

“Goddamn it.” I heard Gunnar’s voice behind me. “Ms. Blackwell, I don’t want to shoot you, but I will. If it’s between you and the Veil, I’ll take you out.”

She didn’t move for a moment, then glanced back over her shoulder. “Why are you being irrational? This is science. The culmination of years of research.”

“And you’d destroy a civilization that was millennia in the making.”

She turned back, gasped as Malachi landed in front of her, wings extended and golden fury in his eyes.

She took a stumbling step backward, and Gavin was there to grab her. He pinned her arms while Malachi strode forward, not bothering to hide his wings, and wrenched the decharger away from her.

“You are a disgrace to humans, and to your daughter.”

“Darby!” Gunnar called, and she ran forward, holding the cooler open, held it out while Liam removed the canister from the gun, laid it carefully inside the box.

“Got it,” Darby said, and slid the cover back into place. “Virus container contained.”

“That’s my work,” my mother said vehemently, struggling in Gavin’s grip. “That’s a lifetime of work.”

“Suffice it to say,” Liam said, “you should have focused on something a little less nasty.”

“And speaking of focus,” Gunnar said as he cuffed her, “where’s Caval?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” Gunnar said. “And it was pretty stupid of you not to let him help you today. The two of you together could have actually accomplished your genocide. But you didn’t. We beat you.” He pointed at Malachi. “A Para beat you.” Then me. “And the daughter you abandoned beat you. But you’ll have plenty of time to think about how they beat you when you’re in prison.”

The words that spewed from her mouth were overwhelmed by the noise that filled the air: sirens roaring toward us as Containment cruisers and armored vehicles raced toward the levee.

“And here comes the cavalry,” Gunnar yelled over the din. He pulled a comm unit from his belt. “Prisoner and package are contained,” he said.

All of the vehicles visibly slowed—all but one, which steamed toward us, undeterred by Gunnar’s order. And then it lifted its muzzle and pointed the weapon directly at us.

“Caval,” I murmured, and watched, hypnotized, as a streaking star shot from the muzzle and flew toward us.

“Incoming!” Gunnar screamed, pushed me and Liam to the ground, then grabbed Laura Blackwell and pulled her down, too.

They hit the ground together, the shot flying barely inches over their heads. And it didn’t stop. The round kept on going, heading for the thing directly behind them, the enormous, invisible target.

While we watched in horror, the round hit it square on, and the usually invisible Veil shimmered and rippled like pebble-strewn water, shuddered like video from a broken camera.

“Holy shit,” Gunnar said, while we all held our breath.

The scar was small at first, so little it was nearly invisible, a bit of dust that had ghosted across my vision and would be cleared away when I blinked.

I looked back, watched Containment agents wrench open the vehicle’s door and drag a man from it. A man who looked a lot like Javier Caval.

We’d found Lorenzo.

But the hole expanded, and the char around the edge became clearer, like a cigarette burn in fabric. And it was growing larger, the circle expanding exponentially with each millisecond that passed.

“Malachi!” I screamed, and heard the thwack of wings on the wind behind me.

“No,” he said, and the horror in his voice nearly buckled my knees. “No!”

It took me too long to realize that if I could move objects, maybe I could move the separate sides of the Veil, stitch them back together with magic. After all, the edges of the tear wrought by Paranormals had been locked together by Sensitives. Why wouldn’t we be able to lock them together now?

I reached out for the power. The air was swimming with magic, but not the familiar kind. It was magic from the Beyond, from the same place the rest of our world’s magic derived. But this magic was real, original. It hadn’t been filtered through the Veil, through the atmosphere and objects of this world. It was pure, different from anything I’d felt before. And maybe because it hadn’t been filtered through the human world, it hurt.

I began to spin the filaments of magic around me, pain erupting across my arms like pins and needles in a limb that had fallen asleep.

And all the while, the gap in the Veil grew ever larger.

“No,” I said through clenched teeth, gathering every shred of strength I had, every ounce of energy in reserve. I looped magic around one side of the Veil’s breach and then the other, used magic to try to force them together.

Sweat broke out on my arms, the pain like fire across them as I desperately tried to bring one side toward the other, to stretch what remained.

I wiped sweat from my brow and tried again. But it didn’t work. I could move the Veil only when there was Veil to move. It was disintegrating faster than I could hold it together.

“Claire.”

“No,” I said to Liam, then shook off his hand. “No. I’m going to do this. I’m going to fix this. Help me, Liam. You have to help me.”

“Claire, baby, I would. But you can’t fix this.”

I didn’t want him to be right. But he was.

No matter how hard I tried, how hard I pulled, there was nothing left of the Veil to stitch together. Not enough magic to patch the hole that Containment had created.

The gap was big enough now to see through. Instead of seeing more of Louisiana, we could see glimpses of the Beyond—and the crimson uniforms of those who waited for us on the other side.

Laura Blackwell hadn’t infected the Beyond.

She’d helped destroy the Veil.