“So the perps can cover their tracks?” Burke suggested. “You want to open the Veil. You’re interviewing Sensitives who might have been involved, and you find one who wasn’t. You don’t want her talking about the interview, about the questions. So you discard her. If you turn her into a wraith, she can’t talk.”
“Not to be grim,” Liam said, “but why not just kill them?”
“Maybe you don’t like Sensitives and Paras,” Malachi said. “Letting Sensitives become wraiths, or making them become wraiths, puts more monsters on the street. Proves how dangerous they are.”
“Then why open the Veil?” I asked.
“Perhaps to attack,” Malachi said. “To be the first through the gate this time.”
To initiate war, he meant.
Something occurred to me. “The Sensitives who worked with PCC—they have control of their magic?”
Burke nodded.
I looked at Liam. “Maybe that’s why our wraiths are able to think and communicate to a higher degree—because they’ve kept some of that control. But who’s this cold-blooded?”
“We don’t know,” Burke said. “Someone who wants the Veil open, and who has access to PCC files—they’d need those to identify the potential Sensitives. To find the seven, they’d have to work their way through the list. That seems to be what they’re doing.”
“It needn’t be a human,” Malachi suggested. “It could be a dispossessed Paranormal. They aren’t opening the Veil to wreak havoc here, but to open their own doorway. And they don’t care who they hurt in the process.”
“Could be a human cult member,” Liam suggested. “There are still humans who think they can prompt the Second Coming by opening the Veil.”
Malachi nodded. “There are any number of theories. But we don’t have any concrete evidence of who’s behind it at this point. That’s what we need to find out.”
“Can you tell who else they might target?” Liam asked, moving incrementally closer to me, as though he could protect me from harm just by being nearer. I didn’t really mind.
“So far,” Darby said, “it looks like they’re targeting any Sensitives who worked with PCC.”
“Surely Containment knows about all this already?” I said. “About the Veil fluctuations? About the Sensitives?” I couldn’t believe Containment—Gunnar’s organization—would be so clueless.
Burke shook his head. “We’ve had to be careful what information we pass along, and how we do it. But we’ve figured out how to share the information with contacts inside Containment and two of its contractors—SecuriCrew and ComTac. They don’t think the fluctuations matter. And no one wants to believe there’s a risk the Veil will open again, that they’d have to face the trauma of war again. It’s easier to say we’re overreacting.”
They needed help. I’d heard everything I needed to hear. “I want in. I want to help.”
They all looked at me. I could feel Liam tense beside me, but he didn’t object. He’d have known better by now. Recklessly brave, and all that.
The last few days had changed my circumstances—they’d changed me. And it was going to be next to impossible to go back to just selling dry goods in the Quarter.
I didn’t know if my father had thought he’d lived a “big” life. I knew he was proud of what he’d done to keep the city fed and supplied during the war. I knew he was glad he’d been able to make a contribution. And yeah, I’d done the same thing, helped keep New Orleans alive, or at least my small corner of it. I’d stayed quiet. I’d worked hard.
But would that be satisfying forever? Now that I knew the truth, or at least some of it, about Paranormals and Containment, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure I could go back to that life.
Yes, it was a life I was thankful for. It was a life that helped me get over loss, and feel less alone when my family was gone. It gave me normalcy and routine, and kept me focused on whether we needed more needles or thread, instead of on what I didn’t have.
But it was way too late to honor my father’s request that I not intervene; at least I could fight on the right side.
“Why?” Malachi asked, head tilted. I didn’t think he was judging the question, but checking my motivation.
“Because if things don’t change, if we don’t change the way Containment deals with Sensitives, make them acknowledge we don’t have to turn into wraiths, I could be next.”
“I’m in, too,” Liam said. “She just beat me to it. Whoever is doing this has blood on their hands. My sister’s. Marla Salas’s. And they aren’t the only ones.”
Burke blew out a breath. “Good. We hoped you’d both feel that way.”
“For the record,” Darby said, “the pay sucks, because there is none, there are no benefits or sick days, and Containment could be on your ass at any time. But there is a lot of glory in keeping the Veil closed—saving humans from the monsters of the Beyond. No offense, Your Wingedness.”
“None taken.”
Speaking of His Wingedness, “If the Veil was opened,” I said, glancing at Malachi, “you could go home. You don’t want that?”