“Sensitives and Paras both. It’s a collection of colors, and their magical echoes in the Beyond. I fill in the names when I find them. And over seven years, there’ve been a few.”
Satisfied I’d been recorded in her journal, she moved through the pages until green turned to blue, which faded to deep indigo. Finally, she paused, touched her fingertips to the page as, brow furrowed, she seemed to gaze into middle distance. “This, I think. The names, Liam?”
She gestured to the scripts beside each square.
Liam leaned over, read the first name. “Michael Temperly.”
“Dead, unfortunately, rest his soul,” Eleanor said, and crossed herself.
“Elizabeth Conyers Proctor.”
“Quite dead,” Eleanor said. “But not unfortunately. She was a horrible person. Wife of Senator Ellis Proctor. We invited her to a party—this was before the war—and she had the gumption to decline because we were ‘too Creole for her.’” Eleanor made a sound that hovered between disbelief and disgust, but managed to be ladylike. “As if that’s possible. Well, too late for her at any rate. Who else?”
Eleanor frowned, ran her fingers over the book. She hovered over another square, brow furrowed again, before moving back a row. “I’m afraid this as close as we’re going to get. Liam?”
As he read the words, Liam’s smile faded quickly. “Nix.”
Quiet descended over the room at the bombshell of the name, whatever it meant.
“Gavin is not going to like that,” Liam said into the lingering quiet.
Eleanor made a sound of disapproval. “Whether he likes it is no matter. She’s the right choice. It is what it is. There’s no point arguing with complementary magic.”
Liam grunted. “Like magic’s ever stopped him. I don’t disagree Nix’s a good choice, but he’s going to take some convincing.” He scratched absently at the back of his neck. “I’d be happy to let you handle that, Eleanor.”
I wasn’t sure who Liam was talking about, but Eleanor seemed to get it. And this time, her response was closer to a snort. “Liam, dear, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
? ? ?
Maria was another no-nonsense nurse, which I guess was probably a job requirement, considering where she worked. With dawn nearly breaking, we left Eleanor with Maria and promised to visit her again. That I was hoping to avoid returning to Devil’s Isle made me feel a little guilty. But Liam could pass along a message to her.
Telling him I wanted to be done made me feel guilty, too.
When we’d said our good-byes to Foster, which took more scritches than it probably should have, we walked into the night again. The sky was still dark above the wall, but it wouldn’t be dark for much longer. I’d have to open the store in a few hours. The length of the night, of everything that had happened, was beginning to weigh on me. I was tired.
“So, how did you meet Eleanor?” I asked Liam as we walked back toward the main gate and the freedom I was really looking forward to.
“She’s my grandmother.”
“Your . . . ,” I began, but stopped, thought back about what he’d told me of his family. “Your grandmother is Eleanor Arsenault?”
“She is.”
Since the last names didn’t match, she must have been Liam’s maternal grandmother. “And the man who taught her how to tango?” I asked with a grin.
“That would be my Arsenault grandfather. And a mildly uncomfortable conversation.”
I smiled. “So where did the Cajun come from?”
“My father,” Liam said, and there was much less enthusiasm in his answer.
I nodded, and we walked a few feet more. “Was Eleanor incarcerated here?” I asked the question softly, as if that would give me a secret defense against it happening to me.
Liam shook his head. “No. I brought her here after my parents died. It wasn’t an easy decision, but sometimes it’s better to be strange among strangers. In the outside, even if Containment didn’t sense her magic, didn’t find her, she’d be on her own. She’d be different from everyone else. She needs people who understand her.”
“People—you mean Paras?”
He nodded. “Moses knows, and he visits her. They’re actually pretty good friends. He’s taught her a few games from the Beyond.” Liam chuckled. Amusement looked good on him. “He told me she cheats when she thinks she can get away with it.”
I couldn’t help laughing, too. “I like that idea.”
“So do I, especially since he was probably doing the same thing. ‘It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught,’” he said, in a pretty good imitation of Moses’s thick drawl.
“Not a bad impersonation,” I said. “You ever do that in front of Moses?”
Liam snorted. “Hell no. He’d blow a gasket.”