Mos whistled. “Cutting it close, Quinn. Cutting it close. They could have accessed it by now.” He kept clicking.
“But you’re in luck,” he said. “They haven’t.” And when the wraith’s image filled the screen, activated by his emergence, he shifted to the side so we could all watch the video.
The wraith dodged out from the trees around the Supreme Court building, followed seconds later by the second one.
“There aren’t cameras around the building,” Liam said. “It’s too dark, and there’s too much greenery. So the camera would have been triggered when they emerged into the street.”
“Why not just clear out the brush?” I wondered.
Liam crossed his arms, eyes narrowed on the screen as the camera jerked and followed the wraiths’ movements toward the girl. “The state owns the building and the land. They don’t have the money. Containment didn’t want to get into a big federalism argument, so they left it alone.”
The camera panned out, caught me at the edge of the frame hitting the wraith with the limb, then getting flattened by his backhand. A little interim fighting, and then I disappeared into the alley.
“Hold on,” Mos said. “There are two other cameras that track that sector.” He flipped through files until he found the right one, then loaded the video. The camera was across the street. It wasn’t close enough or high-quality enough for a lot of detail, but the wraiths moving toward me were plenty visible.
I watched carefully, wondering whether I’d imagined that moment of communication I thought the wraiths had shared. But if it was there, I didn’t see it on the tape.
Liam hadn’t spoken, and I glanced at him, found his gaze intent on the screen as I pulled the sign toward the alley. Not just watching, I thought, but measuring. My abilities, my performance, my style.
It was an odd feeling to be judged for something I’d been hiding for so long.
When the wraiths ran off, the video stopped. Mos tapped a few more keys, looked back at us. “So here’s the deal: I could borrow clips from earlier that don’t show wraiths—just the empty street. I can splice ’em in. But Containment’ll be expecting to see the fight, and when they don’t see one, they’re going to ask questions about the tapes being altered.”
Liam frowned. “So what do you suggest?”
“Better to introduce some noise, make it look like an electrical failure. Cameras are on the regular grid, not the gennies. Both fail, but the grid fails more often. So it’s a possible scenario.”
“Do it,” Liam said. “Probably better get the sign, too, if you can.”
“If I can,” Mos muttered.
It took him less than a minute. He pulled up all three videos, found the fight, tweaked a small panel of dials and knobs until the images waved and fuzzed on screen. He replaced the files, got an answering beep.
And just like that, my criminal past was erased, the evidence I’d used magic, that I was anything other than a normal human.
I closed my eyes, felt some of the tension finally sliding from my shoulders. Now I could get back to the store and back to work. Life would go back to normal again. That was a definite mood lifter. “Thank you, Mos.”
“Sure. That was entertaining. Feel free to call me again for your future hacking needs.”
“Let’s hope there won’t be any. Come on, Claire.”
Liam headed for the door, but I stopped, smiled back at Moses. “Can I tell you something?”
Moses’s eyes narrowed, and I could feel Liam’s concern at my back. His fear that I’d do something completely asinine to insult the man who’d just helped me.
“Okay,” Mos said carefully.
“You’ve got a really great shop. Thanks for letting me see it.”
His face blossomed with pleasure, which was as disorienting as his horns. I guessed he hadn’t had much practice at it, because it looked really awkward. The smile was lopsided, his eyes slightly bulging, too much tooth on display. But that he’d tried so hard to do something that hadn’t come naturally made me like him even more.
“You take care out there, Red.”
I nodded, and we left Mos to his electronics.
CHAPTER SIX
“You handled that well,” Liam said when we were on the sidewalk again. “About the store, I mean.”
“It was the truth. He’s got a lot of cool stuff in there. Scavenged from the houses around here?”
“Some scavenged, some traded. There’s a pretty extensive bartering system.”
I stopped, looked at him. “It doesn’t bother you that he’s fighting against Containment? I mean, by doing what he does? By breaking into their computers, or whatever else he can do in there.”
“You wouldn’t be safe if he hadn’t done it.”