The Hunt

  “You don’t, actually,” Gunnar said. He was as calm as Liam was agitated. “You’re a suspect in a particularly gruesome murder, and you are absolutely not allowed to contaminate the scene.”

  “Or risk adding your DNA to the evidentiary mix,” I said. “You’d implicate yourself.”

  “Claire has a point.” Gunnar held up his hands. “I’ll work as quickly as I can. But you’ll only make things worse for yourself if you go without my okay.”

  “I’m not making any promises.”

  “Stubborn ass,” Gunnar muttered.

  “It’s genetic,” Gavin said, then looked at me. “Since we’re wrapping up here, you want a ride back?”

  Thank God. “You can take me to the alley. That’s as far as you can go.”

  “If I had a nickel . . . ,” Gavin said.

  “I’ll go, walk you the rest of the way,” Malachi said.

  “You know where she lives?”

  Gavin’s question was pouty; Liam’s gaze was downright hostile.

  “He’s already public enemy number one,” I said. “Not much harm in his knowing. And there’s no need to add anyone else to the list.”

  • • •

  After the dark ride back to Mid-City, Gavin turned into the alley.

  “Thank you for the ride,” I said as Malachi and I climbed out.

  “Sure thing,” Gavin said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yep.”

  Liam looked at me through his open window, a challenge in his eyes. “Be careful,” he quietly said.

  The tone of his voice, the possessiveness in it, lifted goose bumps on my arms even while it irritated me. “I’m always careful.”

  “Claire.”

  I looked back at him, watched gold flare in his eyes. “I told you what I need, Liam.”

  His jaw clenched, but after a moment the stubbornness in his expression faded, shifted into clear regret. “Claire,” he said again, this time an entreaty.

  I shook my head. “I get all of you. Or you get none.”

  He looked away. That I knew we were both hurting was the only reason I wasn’t more angry with him.

  • • •

  “Humans, sometimes, are just the worst,” I said, when the Range Rover’s lights disappeared around the corner. It didn’t help that I was tired and feeling helpless. And already missing Tadji, and feeling a little hopeless about that.

  “No argument there,” Malachi said.

  We walked quietly to the gas station. We stopped across the street, where Malachi would wait and watch for me to get safely inside.

  Maybe it was time to make a gesture. To take a chance on doing something big. Something right.

  “Come on,” I said, motioning toward the building. “I want to show you something.”

  He looked surprised but intrigued. “All right,” he said.

  We waited to ensure that the coast was clear, and then I headed for the door. “With me,” I said.

  “You want me to come in?”

  “It’s only fair,” I said, and unlocked it.

  We walked inside. I closed and locked the door behind us, then flipped on the overhead lights.

  Malachi stared at the room, walked slowly to the first table, looked down at the objects there. “Claire,” he said.

  “My father saved them from Containment fires,” I said.

  He walked to the middle table, long and narrow and hewn of thick, dark planks, and picked up a golden bow, ran the tip of his finger down the sinewy string.

  “You’ve kept this secret.” He put it down again, then looked back at me, considered. “To ensure that Containment doesn’t find out about it.”

  I nodded. “And that no one gets hurt because they try to find out.”

  Malachi nodded, looked back at the table. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “Welcome to my world. They’d destroy the weapons if they could. Containment, I mean.”

  “Or use them for their own purposes.” He walked around the table, surveyed the objects on the next one. “I can hardly take it all in.”

  “I said the same thing the first time.”

  Malachi frowned at some objects, smiled at others. “There are Consularis and Court objects here.”

  “Are there? I’d wondered. I don’t know anything about how my father gathered these things, but I figured he’d take whatever he could get. I started to catalog it, but I don’t know the proper names of everything, and I felt a little stupid writing down human ones.”

  Malachi was looking at what appeared to be a square tambourine—a rigid form hung with tiny cymbals and bells. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Tambourine?”

  He smiled. “Something like that. It’s called an Ilgitska. It’s used in a sexual ceremony.”

  “A sexual ceremony?” I asked, giving it a second look.

  “We liked our ceremonies,” he said with a smile, probably because of the flush in my cheeks. He picked it up, slapped it against the palm of his hand.

  The sound was complex, from the delicate and pretty ping of bells to the deep, hollow tones of small brass spheres. I could admit there was something sensual about it, as if each tone had been carefully modulated to stoke desire.

  What a weird day this had been. And what a weird night it had become.

  “Sound has power,” he said with a smile, setting the instrument on the table again. “Your father has done a great service, saving these things.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. I’d like to think so. I only learned about this a little before the battle. He didn’t tell me when he was building the collection, and I didn’t know until after he was gone. That hurts. But I know why he kept me from it.”

  “To keep you safe,” Malachi said.

  “Yeah. One of the many things he kept from me.” I took a deep breath, readied myself, and turned to him. “I need to ask you about Erida.”

  “You can ask, although I may not be able to answer. What do you want to know?”

  I still paused before saying it. “Erida and my father.”

  He didn’t answer immediately. “Was that the question?”

  “It was an opener,” I said lamely. “They were friends?”

  He looked at me for what felt like a really long time. “They were friends,” he said finally. “And more.”

  That confirmed it. “They were lovers,” I said. “I thought that might have been the case, after what she told me last night. But I didn’t know he was seeing anyone. I never saw her, and he never said anything.”

  Malachi nodded. “They were very discreet, I understand. By necessity. If they had been found out, she would have been incarcerated, and he would have been punished for harboring a Paranormal.”

  “Did you know my mother?”

  “I did not know her. I’ve apparently seen her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I did not know she was your mother at the time I saw her. Erida told me later.”

  I told him what I’d believed to be true.

  “I’m sorry your father didn’t tell you the truth.”

  “So am I.” Because that’s what we’d come to. That my father had been lying to me. “Erida said she knew her, but I didn’t know her—or anything about her.”

  “She was a lovely woman, although I understand she was cold.”

  I nodded. “Come with me.” We walked through the kitchenette, then through the narrow door that led to the basement.

  The room had probably once been storage for the gas station, and a way to access cars on the first floor via hatches that opened beneath them. It now held rows of metal shelves with water and canned goods, as well as the small cot where I slept.

  It also held the trunk that contained only one item—the photograph of the woman with
red hair.

  Liam and I had taken the photograph away the night we’d discovered this place; I’d taken it back after the battle, put it back in the place where I’d found it.

  I lifted the trunk lid and pulled out the picture. I offered it to Malachi, without looking at the image. I’d looked at it too many times already.

  “I found the photograph here,” I said. “There’s no writing on it. I assumed my father had left it, but I didn’t know why. She looks like me. And after talking to Erida . . .”

  Malachi nodded. “I understand this is your mother. She does look like you.” His voice was gentle now.

  I looked up at him. “You could both be wrong. This could be a misunderstanding or a coincidence.” But that sounded stupid and naive even to me. And I was the one who’d believed a lie for more than twenty years. Who’d been lied to for more than twenty years.

  “I understand your father told everyone she was gone. He told Erida the truth only after she found a photograph of her.”

  My stomach clenched again. “This photograph?” Is that why it had been in the trunk? Had he locked it away so she wouldn’t have to see it?

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. “Has Erida been here?”

  “I knew nothing about this place. If Erida had known, I believe she’d have told me.” He looked around. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I believe she would have told me if she’d known what it held. I don’t know how much your father told her.”

  I nodded, made myself look down at the picture. “This woman was at Talisheek.”

  His brows lifted. “Was she?”

  “Not on our side. She was with the group that had tried to reopen the Veil. Does she work for Containment?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her. I don’t believe your father spoke about her, and I don’t believe Erida asked many questions. But Erida may know more than I do, more that she hasn’t told me. You should talk to her.”

  When I didn’t speak, he looked back at me. “It’s not her fault your father lied to you.”

  I knew that, too. But that didn’t make it easier.

  “You’re right.” I put the photograph away and closed the lid of the trunk, wishing I could compartmentalize my feelings as easily.

  • • •

  I didn’t sleep. Not really.

  My brain was spinning with new truths and old lies. Liam and his unknown demons. My mother, my father and his lies.

  I tried to flip back through the catalog of memories, of every time I’d asked about my mother, and everything he’d told me in response. I tried to remember his expressions. Had he looked like he was lying?

  And that wasn’t even the biggest question. The hardest question.

  If she was alive, where had she been for the last twenty-two years? Why had she left my father, and why had she left me? Why had she willingly let me go? Did she wonder what I looked like, if I’d survived the war, who I’d grown up to be?

  Given the life I’d seen my father lead, I still believed he was a good man, a decent man. Nothing Erida or Malachi had told me changed that. But he hadn’t been an honest man. Not about this place, not about magic, not about who he’d been, not about Erida, not about my mother.

  Layers of lies, stacked one atop the other. And I was left to unravel them all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was already scorching by the time I got to Moses’s place. It didn’t help my mood when I learned it was missing one magically enhanced human.

  “Liam was supposed to stay here,” I said to Moses. “He shouldn’t be wandering around New Orleans alone.”

  “He left a note,” Moses said, offering up the small sheet of paper pulled from a notebook, the edges still frayed.

  “‘Went to take a look,’” I read aloud, then looked at Moses. “A look at what?”

  “He’s here because Broussard’s dead. My guess? Broussard’s house.”

  My eyes narrowed. “He should have stayed in the damn bayou. Should have stayed there where Eleanor could keep an eye on him. And he certainly should have stayed here with you until someone could watch his back. Gunnar told him not to go over there.”

  “If you were in his position, would you do anything different?”

  I growled, then glanced around. “Malachi?”

  “Sent a pigeon.” In the Zone, they were one of the most reliable ways to pass messages. “Said he was going back to Vacherie to check in on the Paras.”

  I nodded. That meant I was closer to Broussard’s place than Malachi was, so it was up to me to find Liam. At least I’d get a look at the scene of the crime.

  “You better get moving,” Moses said. “I’ll stay here in case he comes back.”

  “You get anything else out of that Icarus file?”

  “I’m still looking. Quit rushing my genius.”

  Everyone was grouchy today. “Stay here, lay low, and keep geniusing.”

  He grinned toothily. “I got canned foods and a working comp. I don’t need to go anywhere else.”

  Whatever kept him safe.

  • • •

  Broussard made a good living, if his place was any indication. There wasn’t a lot of money in the Zone, but he’d managed to get into a gorgeous house in the Garden District just a stone’s throw from St. Charles and not far from Gunnar’s.

  Broussard’s house sat behind a fenced front yard full of palm trees and hedges, and a long driveway that would have made plenty of New Orleanians jealous, before or after the war.

  The house was an ivory box with symmetrical windows and blue shutters. Double stairs curved up to a red front door. And yellow police tape marked it as a crime scene.

  I stood beneath an oak tree on the neighboring property, watching for any sign of Liam. If he was in there, he was being quiet about it.

  “At least he hasn’t lost his damn mind completely,” I murmured. I crept along the hedge that divided the properties, looking for a way in. I found a floor-to-ceiling window already pushed open. Probably how he’d have gotten inside.

  I darted across the yard and slipped through the window, which opened into a dining room. Pine floors, plastered walls with crown molding, an enormous inlaid table with curving chairs, an antique rug. The ceilings were high, as were the doorways.

  I moved into the hallway, the walls lined with paintings in gilded frames. This was the kind of house my father would have loved to live in, if he’d been able to keep an antique for more than a few days, instead of putting it in the store for sale.

  Across from the dining room was a formal living room with the same windows and molding, a brick fireplace that stretched to the ceiling, and a hearth of shiny tiles in shades of green.

  The floor above me creaked. I took the double staircase to the second floor.

  Liam stood on the landing, staring at the wall.

  I was prepared to lay into him—for leaving Moses’s house alone, for walking into a crime scene—and then I saw what he was staring at.

  FOR GRACIE was painted on the wall in what looked like blood, and there was a stain the same color on the floor in front of it.

  Liam’s body was rigid, his eyes blazing with anger, as if he might be able to burn the letters off the wall by strength of will alone.

  “Liam.”

  His body jerked, but he didn’t turn around. He hadn’t heard me come in, which proved he shouldn’t have been here alone. He might not have heard hunters, either.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Would you be?”

  “No,” I said. “No, if I saw the name of someone I loved spread across the wall, an excuse for someone else’s murder, I’d be absolutely furious. But still. You shouldn’t have come without Gunnar’s okay. Without him clearing a path.”

  He turned, looked at me fo
r the first time, and I gasped before I could help myself. His eyes glowed golden, fury and grief battling on his face.

  “I couldn’t wait anymore. They’re using me, my family, to hurt people. I want to know why.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t argue with that. And since we were already here, we’d might as well investigate.

  “All right,” I said. “What do we know?”

  He looked back at me, the question clear in his eyes.

  “I came here to find you, and I did,” I said. “I’m not going to leave you here alone with Containment roaming around.”

  I didn’t mean that as an insult, as a snipe because he’d done exactly that to me after the battle—he’d left me in New Orleans, with Containment roaming around. But it sounded that way, and silence fell again, thick and uncomfortable.

  Big-girl panties, I told myself, and walked closer to the wall. “Is it blood?”

  I could feel his gaze on mine for a minute, evaluating. And then he shifted his attention back to the wall. “Yes. Don’t know if it’s Broussard’s, but you can smell that it’s blood.”

  I could, now that I’d gotten closer. I looked over at him. “The name and the knife are the only facts that tie the murder to you. You ready to talk about the knife?”

  “No.”

  I sighed. “Then let’s bypass the evidence against you for the moment. Let’s see if there’s something here that tells us about the actual killer. Maybe we’ll find something out of place, something that suggests why Broussard was targeted.”

  His expression didn’t change much, but he nodded.

  “All right, then. The writing.” The letters were written in big, wide streaks, not unlike the way business names and slogans might have been painted onto store windows once upon a time.

  “The letters weren’t written with just a fingertip.”

  Liam looked at me. “What?”

  I held a finger in front of the wall. “The line’s too wide.” I fisted my hand, held it against the wall. “And that movement’s just awkward.”

  “Maybe they used something they found here.”

  We looked around. There was nothing on the landing, no pots of faux flowers or knickknacks that could have been adapted to the task.