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.

And I wasn’t the only one affected; Liam’s groan was a low, deep rumble. Then he stepped away, putting space between us, and ran a hand through his hair.

“What’s going on?” I even sounded breathless. “Tell me what happened to you—what happened at the battle.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I didn’t think he meant to hurt me. But that didn’t matter much. “What wouldn’t I understand, Liam? Magic? What it’s like to run from it?”

“This is different.”

“How?”

Liam shook his head, the war he was waging clear on his face.

“I don’t know who you are right now,” I said. “And I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want nothing. And everything.” He took a step closer, heat pumping from his body, muscles clenched like a man preparing for battle. “I haven’t stopped wanting you. But it’s inside me like an organism, a living thing full of fuel and anger. You think I’m going to bring that to your door?”

“I don’t need protecting.”

“Don’t you?” He grabbed my hand, pressed it against his chest. His heart pounded like a war drum. “Feel that, Claire. That’s because you’re here. Because I see you, and I want to claim you like a goddamn wolf.”

I stared at him while heat pulsed between our joined hands, and goose bumps rose along my arms. And it was long seconds before I had the composure to pull my hand away. I fisted my fingers against my chest, like that would cool the burn and diminish the power of his touch.

“Tell me about your magic.”

My question had been a whisper, but it still seemed to echo through the garage.

I watched him shut down, shutter his expressions. But there was something he couldn’t hide, a flash of something in his eyes. Not just anger, and not just stubbornness. There was fear. I recognized a man facing down his demons, because I’d faced down demons of my own. I was still facing them down.

“If you won’t tell me what you’re going through, I can’t help you. And I can’t fight your monsters on my own.”

When he stayed silent, although it made my chest ache to do it, I walked out and left him behind.

•   •   •

The air had already been heavy with humidity, with heat. Now it was heavy with things left unspoken, things that weighed on both of us.

When we reentered Moses’s house, everyone turned to look at us. To gauge what had happened—and what might happen next.

“Power supply,” I said, walking to Moses and handing him the box. “You need anything else, you can find it yourself.”

His gaze narrowed, but he turned it on Liam. “I’m so glad the trip was productive.”

“Install the damn thing,” Liam said.

Moses muttered something under his breath, then hopped off the stool and began to tinker with parts in the case. Plastic, now charred and black, went flying, as he made room for the new piece. He hooked it up, plugged in the system, and looked back at the screen.

But there was only silence. No whirring motors, no bright letters.

“Hmm,” Moses said.

“Maybe it was corroded,” Gavin said.

“Might have a trick,” Moses muttered, then reared back and whopped the case with the side of his fist.

The entire tower shuddered, let out a belch of grinding plastic, and then whirred to life.

“And away we go,” he said, and we all moved closer to watch the screen. Liam slipped in beside me, putting his body between me and Malachi.

That was fine. He could do whatever he wanted.

And so could I.

It took Moses a few minutes to get back into Containment-Net, and Gavin cast wary glances at the tower the entire time, waiting for another round of sparks. But the system held together, and Moses made it back to the stub of the file Broussard had reviewed.

“Here we go,” he muttered. “File was called . . . Icarus.”

“Isn’t that a myth?” Gavin asked. “The guy who flew too close to the sun and his wings melted?”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s the myth.”

“That mean anything to anybody in this context?” Gavin asked. “Regarding Containment or New Orleans or Paranormals?”

When we shook our heads, Gavin looked at Malachi. “The theory is that a lot of our myths come from the Beyond. That we anticipated your existence, or were visited before.”

“I know the theory,” Malachi said. “And I know the myth. But there’s no comparable story in the Beyond. We don’t need wings made of wax.”

“Fair enough,” Gavin said, and glanced at Moses.

“I don’t know anything from my corner of the world, either,” Moses said, turned back to the screen, pressed a couple more keys. “Presuming Containment’s telling the truth about when he died—and who knows if it is—Broussard opened this file less than an hour before he kicked.”

“Coincidence?” Gavin asked.

“Maybe,” Liam said quietly. “But it’s the only lead we’ve got.”

“Did Broussard create the file?” I asked.

It apparently took a moment for him to check. “He did not. The stub doesn’t show who created it, only that it wasn’t Broussard. It’s some kind of binary security feature. ‘Yes’ if the creator looked at it, ‘No’ if a stranger to the file’s looking at it.” Moses traced a finger across the screen, following a line of letters. “I can tell you he sent this file to someone. Can’t tell who, but based on the metadata, he looked at it, transmitted it. And that’s the last task he performed.”

“Can we see the stub again?” Liam asked. “Or what was left of it?”

“You got it,” Moses said, then clicked keys emphatically. There was a music to his typing, like he was building songs with the percussion of stubby fingers on keys. “Here we go,” he said, and swiveled back so we could see the screen.

“No flames,” Gavin said, stepping forward. “That’s a good start.”

“Har-dee-har-har,” Moses said as he frowned at the screen.

“I can’t make heads or tails out of it,” Gavin said.

The numbers and letters didn’t mean anything to me. But the longer I stared at it, the more I thought I could make out a shape.

“It looks like part of a model,” I said.

“A model of what?” Gavin asked.

“A molecule, maybe?” I frowned at it, trying to remember something of Mrs. Beauchamp’s chemistry class. “We had to make one for our eighth grade science fair with painted foam balls and straws.”

When they all gave me blank looks, I waved it off, then pointed at two clusters of letters. “Here and here,” I said, “like these are foam balls, and see how they’re kind of linked together by these things?” I pointed at the lines, now crooked, that I thought were supposed to connect them. “But instead of balls and straws, there are numbers and letters.”

“A molecule,” Gavin said. “So this is something scientific.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t think any of us are scientifically inclined, other than Balls-and-Straws over here, but anybody got any ideas?”

“None,” Liam said.

“Science in the Beyond is differently constructed and imagined,” Malachi said. “But even so, this doesn’t look familiar. We need to talk to Darby.”

This would be right up her scientifically minded alley.

“I think I can clean it up,” Moses said, fingers busy at the keys again. “Let me do that, and I’ll get you a hard copy. She can work her scientific magic on it.”

Malachi nodded. “All right.”

“It’s also probably time to go see Gunnar,” Gavin said. “Tell him what we know, and find out what he knows.” He glanced at me. “I assume you want to go?”

“Of course. It would be good to see him.” The thought of it made me simultaneously excited and nervous. I was pretty sure we had the kind of friendship that could make it through an absence, but this was the first time we’d been apart for so long.

“I’m going to dig around here a little more,” Moses said. “Maybe I can find something else.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Identity of the person who created the file, when, maybe a note about related docs. I’ll see what else he worked on, in case this is a blind. Lots of information to look through. Whoever among your ilk invented metadata gets a thumbs-up from me.”

“We’ll be sure to tell him or her,” Gavin said, then gestured to the door. “Saddle up.”