We walked into the living room, where beautiful lamps cast shadows along walls papered with toile. Emme lay on a long sofa in the living room, her skin pale, white bandages across her neck and forehead. She was tall, nearly six feet of slender girl, but tonight she looked as small and delicate as a doll.
Liam stood beside me a few feet away, and I felt his body jerk, probably with the sharp and painful memory of his sister. I reached out, squeezed his hand. That made him jerk, too, so I pulled my hand away again and focused on standing there awkwardly.
“Damn it,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. Of course he didn’t want sympathy from me. I was a Sensitive. If it wasn’t for people like me, his sister would still be alive.
I tried for a nonchalant smile, but I wasn’t sure if I pulled it off. I made myself focus on what was in front of me.
Gunnar knelt on the floor beside the couch, replacing Zach, who stood up, wincing. I guessed he’d been there for a while. He walked toward us. He was clearly a Landreau, with his crooked mouth and dark hair. Tonight, he looked exhausted.
He reached out, gave me a hug.
“How are you doing?”
“Not great.”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry. She’s stable?”
Zach nodded. “For now, yeah. Dad has her on some pretty stiff painkillers.” He rolled tension from his shoulders. “I never saw a wraith before. It was—not good. I was here during the war, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been so scared.”
“They’re pretty horrible,” I agreed.
His gaze fell to Emme again, heavy with guilt. “It took me a moment to move—if I’d gotten there faster, maybe . . .”
Zach suddenly realized Liam was standing there, blinked. “Who are you?”
“God, I’m sorry,” I said. “Zach Landreau, this is Liam Quinn. I don’t know if you heard, but I happened upon a wraith attack last night. Liam helped me. He’s a bounty hunter.”
Gunnar looked back at me. “The wraiths you saw—weren’t there two of them?”
“Two males,” I said with a nod. “They were headed uptown.”
“So it could be the same ones,” he said.
Liam nodded. “It’s a possibility. They could have bedded down in the meantime, then gone out again tonight.”
“And had Containment done a damn thing to stop them, this wouldn’t have happened.”
The voice was deep, Southern, and very, very angry. Cantrell Landreau stood in the beautifully arched doorway, fury and worry warring on his face, in the deep lines around his mouth and eyes. He’d been a handsome man, was still handsome in his way, but the war had taken a toll on him, put bags beneath his eyes. But he still wore pressed khaki pants, an immaculate button-down shirt. He wasn’t a man to let war come between him and the finer things—things he’d undoubtedly worked hard to achieve. And a house in the Garden District was a long way from a cinder block motel.
Gunnar’s mother, Stella, stood behind him. She had dark, frizzed hair and wore a belted robe over long pajamas. I guessed she’d woken up to find her daughter injured.
“Dad,” Zach said, moving to intercept Cantrell. “Not tonight. This isn’t the time or the place.”
“It’s my house,” Cantrell said. “And if not tonight, when? We gave this city to Containment. We gave it to them because they promised to make things normal again. Because they promised to give our city back to us. Bullshit. What has Containment done? Squandered it. Let Paranormals roam free.” Gunnar might have been on his knees on the floor beside his injured sister, but Cantrell didn’t care.
Gunnar’s expression was nearly mutinous. “If you think we don’t try to stop this, try to prevent it in every way that we can, you’re insane.”
“Then why did my daughter nearly die tonight?” Cantrell asked. “Containment certainly didn’t stop this.”
I knew he didn’t mean Gunnar personally, but since Gunnar was the only Containment agent in the room, it would have been difficult not to take the remark that way.
I’d seen arguments like this all the time during the war. People wanted to believe there was a reason for everything horrible that happened. There was no such thing as being in the wrong place at the wrong time; everything was someone’s fault, traceable back to that bad person or bad decision.
Life didn’t usually work that way. But since Liam was on the same type of quest, I had to hope he’d have better luck.
“You know there aren’t enough people to have a Containment agent on every block. That just couldn’t happen. But they’re here now, investigating, and so am I. I’ll do everything I can,” Gunnar replied.
When they started yelling over each other, Liam put two fingers in his mouth, whistled. The crowd quieted, heads snapping to him.
“I’m very, very sorry for what’s happened,” he said. “It’s a horrible thing. But blaming each other isn’t going to help.”
“Who the hell are you?” Cantrell demanded.
“He’s a friend,” Gunnar said. “A friend with experience.” That Gunnar had called him a friend so quickly made me want to reach out and hug him.