A counter had been built at the opposite end of the room, making a barrier between the front room and the door that led to the rest of the house.
A man sat behind the counter. He was small and pale, with green eyes, and a receding line of dark hair. Two glossy black horns popped from each temple. They gleamed like lacquer, and it took several seconds to realize I’d been staring.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Liam would be bringing me to a Paranormal. He hadn’t said one way or the other, but I’d figured he had a friend in some Containment office. I guess I’d been wrong.
“I need you, Mos.”
This must have been Moses, from the sign in the window. Which meant this was his shop.
“And what brings you to Devil’s Isle today?” He looked up, nearly smiled at Liam before sliding that glance to me. His expression became very unfriendly very fast. “You brought someone in here?” His voice was low, gravelly, and utterly pissed.
“She’s with me,” Liam said. “And I need a favor.”
The man snorted, tossed his head, light catching the horns like they were made of glass. “I don’t help clueless humans.”
“You’d be helping me. And she’s not a clueless human. She’s Sensitive.”
Moses looked at me again, head tilted with interest. “I’m listening.”
“She took down a couple of wraiths in the Quarter using magic.”
“She got firepower?”
“Telekinesis,” Liam said, then glanced at me with a smile. “Not that she knows how to use it.”
“She regulating?”
“She is not. She’s pretty much ignorant of everything magic. Containment got her on video,” Liam added. “We need that video cleaned up.”
Moses snorted. “She’s too skinny to take down wraiths.”
“I most certainly am not.”
Both of them ignored me. “She took them out,” Liam said. “My word on it.”
Moses looked at Liam. “You trust her?”
Liam’s blue-eyed gaze was cool and appraising. “I’m not sure yet. But I know Containment’s gonna make trouble if we don’t take care of her Candid Camera problem.” He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out four shining silver discs about the size of a quarter, laid them on the counter, where an image of St. Louis Cathedral, destroyed in the war, gleamed.
They were Devil’s Isle tokens, created to allow Paras to buy supplies and food from the commissary. I had a dozen in the store’s lockbox, most given to me as souvenirs by agents and officers. Too bad I hadn’t thought to bring them.
“You got cash, you’re the boss,” Moses said, then spun around on his stool. He pulled a keyboard from beneath the counter behind him, rapped his palm hard against one of the monitors.
It whirred to life, a blue screen flickering with white symbols that looked like text. Moses raced his fingers, each tipped by a long, triangular nail, over the keys with audible clicks, and the images on the screen blurred by.
CONTAINMENT-NET scrolled across the top in block letters.
I took the opportunity to be amazed that someone from a world I assumed was completely different from our own had become so skilled that he could hack into a Containment database.
And then I thought about what he was doing.
“You can’t break into a government computer,” I said. Gunnar, at least, wouldn’t have been breaking in. He’d have been using his access improperly, yeah, but that at least seemed like a slightly grayer area.
“How else did you think we were going to alter the videos?” Liam asked.
“I don’t know. But that’s not exactly legal. They find out I was involved in altering it, it’s only going to make the whole thing worse.”
Liam gestured toward Moses, stepped back. “Let her have it, Mos.”
Moses grinned, cracked the knuckles on his small fingers like a boxer preparing for a brawl. “Happy to.” He put his hands over the counter, leaned over it, glared at me. “You wanna talk about legal, honey? I been sitting in this goddamn neighborhood for six and a half years. Can’t go anywhere else. Can’t see anything else. Can’t get home again. And why? Because your government is too stupid to tell the good guys from the bad guys. And you want to whine about what’s legal? You think this is legal? Interning people for nearly a decade? You think this is due process?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just stayed quiet.
“Well,” Mos said after a few seconds, “at least she’s smart enough to keep her trap shut.”
He turned back to the keyboard and screen, began typing. A moment later, a list of files began scrolling across the screen.
“Is their security that bad, or is he that good?” I whispered.
“He’s that good,” Mos said, whapping the monitor again when it dimmed, waiting while it flickered to life again and the file list appeared on the screen.
“Where did it happen?” he asked.
“Royal and Conti,” Liam said. “Near the Supreme Court.”
“Containment says that’s Sector Twenty-seven. When?”
“About an hour ago.”