The Sight (11 page)

They whispered about the bombing as they moved from table to table, but no one confessed to knowing about it before the fact, or knowing anyone involved. On the other hand, no one spoke out against them, either.

Still . . . I had a feeling something was brimming here, something under the surface that we couldn't see. Something had made the Campers tense. Maybe the attack had made people nervous, afraid war was coming again. I didn't think that was the only issue—I had a sense emotions ran much deeper than that—but we'd given it three hours, and we hadn't seen any hard evidence.

I got a brainstorm and dug my fingers into the center of a beet I'd cut open as a sample, coating my hands in dirt and juice. I made a show of wiping my hands on my apron, holding up stained fingers and dirty fingernails.

“Damn it,” I muttered, frowning as I looked at them. “I should have brought a scrubber.” I put my hands down again, looked apologetically
at Lonnie. “I don't suppose there's a place I could wash up? Maybe a spigot where I could rinse off my hands before we head back?”

She looked at me for a minute, then pointed toward an alley between tents that led deeper into the camp. “Wash station's down that road. Four lanes in, and take a right.”

“Thank you,” I said, showing plenty of relief. I looked down at my hands. “Looks like the first time I dyed towels. That was a big, bloody, beety mess.”

Lonnie chuckled lightly, and I turned back to Liam, so only he could see my face.

“I'll be fine,” I mouthed. His face showed clearly that he didn't like the idea of our separating. I understood the sentiment, but I had a purpose, which I was sure he'd figured out. A trip to the wash station would at least get us a look inside the camp—maybe the only one we'd get today. And we'd invested too much time to walk away with no information.

“I'll go ahead and pack up what's left,” Liam said.

“I appreciate you,” I said cheerfully, then headed for the labyrinth of canvas.

—

The “road” was about fifteen feet wide and lined with canvas tents that faced one another. The tents were the same—square canvas with a pitched roof and a roll-up door in the center. But most of them had been fixed up or customized. Many were “shingled” with pieces of plywood; a few had wind vanes. Plywood had also been propped upright between some of them, probably to add at least a little privacy. Tarps were thrown over a few tents that had been connected together, their side panels cut and sewn open into hallways to make bigger spaces. Tidy rows of bricks peeked beneath some of the tents, where people had paved over dirt floors.

I kept my eyes peeled for anything unusual, tried to stay alert to any suspicious sounds—anti-Para chants, bomb-making supplies, general plans for mayhem and chaos. Instead, I heard the sounds of normal life—babies crying, people laughing and arguing, music, snoring. People probably borrowed sugar or eggs, fought about noise and smells and space, worried together about heat and food and hurricanes.

It seemed impossible to be alone in Camp Couturie, while most of the Zone had the opposite problem. But no one seemed to take any notice of me.

I counted down the lanes, turned when I reached the fourth. The tents should have had X-Code addresses, but they'd long ago faded.

A few yards down, the space between the tents had been widened into a square. A contraption of steel and pipes stood in the middle, with spigots of varying heights. A boardwalk kept the ground from getting too muddy.

I stepped onto the boardwalk, dunked hands into water that was ice-cold despite the heat. I washed my hands slowly, taking care to scrub under each fingernail, while I looked around, scanned the tents around me for any sign of Reveillon. Once again, I saw nothing. I turned off the water, dried my hands on the back of my apron.

A large rubber ball rolled past, and a boy of six or seven came running behind it, a grin on his cute, freckled face. He had brown hair and pale skin, and a gap between his two front teeth. He wore dirty jeans and a short-sleeved Saints T-shirt. He picked up the ball, smiled instinctively when he turned my way . . . and then froze.

I could practically see “stranger danger” written on his face.

“Hi,” I said, and waved a little.

The boy stared at me like I was a monster from a foreign land. If his world was limited to Camp Couturie, to familiar faces in close proximity, I might have been.

He turned, grabbed up the ball, and sprinted back in the direction he'd come from.

I was here with permission, but if he sounded the alarm, I might not have much time. I kept an innocent smile on my face, turned, and walked back in the direction I'd come—and “missed” the turn that would have led back to the fountain.

I passed one lane, then two, then three. If Reveillon had a presence in Camp Couturie, they weren't advertising it. Maybe we'd been wrong about the tattoo's meaning, or Ezekiel was smart enough to recruit and spread his gospel quietly. Loud enough to pull in members. Not so loud that he could be easily found by Containment.

And then I stopped short, glancing into the open flap of the tent I'd just passed. It was a rectangle of space with a wooden-plank floor, a big rug thrown over it. Ladder-back chair in one corner, simple bed in another. No blankets on the bed, nothing personal in the tent. It didn't look like anyone lived here, but if that was the case, why hadn't the neighboring tents taken the floorboards? The rug? The chair?

After ensuring that the coast was clear, I stepped closer, peering deeper into the shadowed darkness . . . and spotted blood on the floorboards. Large drops and long streaks, as if someone had been dragged across the floor. And on the opposite wall, smeared in blood or mud or both, was a single word:
EDEN
. Ezekiel had said Reveillon would bring about a new Eden. Was this supposed to be a reminder?

“You shouldn't be here.”

I jerked back, turned to find a woman behind me. She was pale and thin, with delicate features and brown hair pulled into a topknot. Her bangs were long, and almost covered the bruise around her left eye.

And she wore the same homespun fabric as the Reveillon members.

I pasted on a clumsy grin. “I'm sorry—a lady at the market showed me where to wash up, and I am completely turned around. I'm trying to get back to the fountain?”

She watched me for a moment, fear and wariness in her eyes. I didn't think I was the one she was afraid of, and I put money on the possibility Ezekiel—or those like him—might have been. But then she nodded.

“I'll walk you back.”

“I'd appreciate it,” I said, and fell into step beside her. Her movements were swift, every step delicate, like she was used to being quiet, trying not to make a sound. Trying not to be noticed.

The road she'd picked, probably on purpose, faced the back sides of two rows of tents, so I couldn't see into them.

“There are roads and lanes,” she said. “Roads run north-south. Lanes run east-west.” That was undoubtedly a federal system created by someone who wasn't from New Orleans. Otherwise they'd have been lakeside-riverside, and downtown-uptown.

“Right,” I said. “I think I came down a road, then turned right onto a lane? But I got turned around.”

“Yeah, you passed your turn.”

“How do you remember where you're going?” I asked. “All the tents look the same.”

“They aren't the same when you've been here long enough.”

I guessed the plywood and tarps became markers, signaling where you were.

“Why not move into empty houses around the city?” I wondered, thinking how little privacy they had, how unprotected they were from bad weather—or anything else.

“Houses belong to other people,” she said simply, turning again onto a wider road, this time faced by the fronts of several tents. “Camp C belongs to us.”

A thin man with dark, weathered skin and deep lines around his face looked out from the tent flap, nodded as we walked by. The woman nodded back.

I couldn't really argue with that. What was Royal Mercantile but something—the one thing—that truly belonged to me? “I understand. Have you lived here long?”

“Since it opened. I was part of the First Wave.”

They were the first group of New Orleans evacuees. They'd lost their homes in Uptown in one of the first attacks of the war, when a flight of Valkyries burned a path through the neighborhood. The attack was only a couple of days into the war, which meant she'd been here since the beginning. I guessed her age at twenty-four, the same as mine. And I guessed our last seven years had been very, very different. Tadji had been right about that.

I blinked as we emerged into the space near the fountain. I was relieved to be in the open again. Community or not, there was something unsettling about being in that labyrinth. I wasn't the only one who felt relief—it was clear in Liam's expression.

“We made it!” I said cheerfully, and turned to the girl. “Thank you for the help. I was getting a little claustrophobic in there.”

She smiled lightly. If she worried that I'd seen too much, she didn't show it. “It can be disorienting at first. It gets easier.”

I was happy to take her word for it. “You know, I've got some extra greens we didn't sell.” I walked the rest of the way to the table, giving Liam a little nod of acknowledgment, and picked up the last bundle. I turned and held them out to her, looked pleadingly. “I don't suppose you'd be willing to take them off my hands? There's not really much of a market for them in the Quarter.”

She'd done me a kindness. And she looked like she needed them, and didn't have the resources or confidence to ask.

“Okay,” she said more confidently. “If you're sure you won't use them.”

“I won't,” I assured her as she took them. “You're doing me a favor.”

“Greens are disgusting,” Liam said, stepping behind me, offering her a smile. “That's why nobody will touch them.”

“No,” she said with a smile. “A piece of ham, maybe, and some pepper vinegar. They're delicious, and the pot liquor that's left over will cure pretty much anything.”

“I'll just trust you on that,” Liam said with a grin.

“Hey!”

The girl's expression turned blank, and she cradled the greens against her chest, looked back toward the tents at the woman who'd called her name—one of the women who'd accompanied Ezekiel in the parade.

Fingers hidden by the table, I tapped Liam's leg. He nodded.

She looked back at us, then dropped her gaze and jogged back to the tents, disappeared inside them.

“And that would be our cue to exit,” he whispered. “She recognizes us and reports back, and we're going to lose our window to get out of here.”

Spurred by the comment, I stood and yawned, stretching my arms over my head. “All righty,” I said, glancing at Liam. “I think I'm ready to head back to the Quarter. You ready to go, or did you want to look around? Find some more forty-year-old music?”

“'Fraid I'm broke,” he said with a smile, then loaded the few last vegetables into the box.

I wanted to leave them on the table for folks who needed them but who didn't have anything to trade. But even assuming the residents' pride would have allowed them to take what was left, I was playing retailer. Giving away the goods would have looked suspicious.

We untied our aprons and put them into a box. I looked at the woman beside us. “Thanks for your help. Hope you had a productive market day.”

“They always are,” she said, gaze wholly on her knitting now as she added a stripe to her project in yarn the color of blood.

“W
hat did you find?” Liam asked, nodding collegially at a couple we passed on the way back to the truck.

“Whole lot of nothing. The tents look mostly the same, except one that had blood on the floor, streaks like someone had been dragged out. It had been left there—untouched. And ‘Eden' was written on the wall. In blood.”

I hadn't been afraid when I looked at it, but the memory sent a trickle of cold sweat down my back.

“A reference to the Eden that Reveillon wants to build in the Zone?”

“That was my thought,” I said. “But why empty? Why blood?”

“Maybe it's a shrine,” Liam said, brow furrowed as he considered. “Maybe a Para killed someone there, and they keep it to remind people.”

“Or it's a warning,” I said. “The person who lived in that tent was killed, dragged out, for being opposed to the Eden plan. And the tent was left as a warning.”

“There's a vibe to this place,” Liam said. “Something under the surface that we aren't seeing. Something that makes them suspicious of strangers—even humans—and tense. Like they're waiting for something.”

“I couldn't agree more.” And it had to be a vibe, because other than the girl's homespun clothing, there was nothing here that marked it as Reveillon territory. Not that they'd be advertising it now, considering they'd killed four people, not counting their own. They had to know Containment was hunting them.

We reached the truck and put the boxes on the still-open tailgate, slid them toward the back.

I turned to Liam, looked up at him. “The woman who led me out of the tents, and the one who called her back. They wore the Reveillon clothes. We could go back in, grab them, try to take them back to the Cabildo.”

Liam slammed the gate into place and slipped knots through the rope like a seasoned sailor. And then he rested an arm on the top of the tailgate.

“We could,” he said, looking back at the rows of tents. “But there are almost certainly more in there. And while I'm glad you're confident in our skills, we're seriously outnumbered.”

“Spoilsport.”

He gave me a sardonic look. “You planning to take them out with magic? Because other than the gun in the glove box, we don't have any weapons. First lesson of poker and bounty hunting: Know when to be aggressive, and when to call in the standing army.”

“I . . . am confused by the metaphor. But I take your point.”

“Good. Because if I take you home with so much as a scratch, I'll have Gunnar on my ass for a week.”

“Gunnar isn't my father.”

Liam made a noise. “No, but he's assigned himself as your protector.”

Voices lifted a few feet in front of the truck, where two men in jeans and T-shirts had begun pushing each other with
hand-to-shoulder jabs. I put them in their mid-twenties, with tan skin and dark hair, both in casual clothes.

“No, fuck you,” said the shorter of the two, a stockier man with a sturdy, square body.

Liam, in full alpha alert, looked up and over, watched them shout and shove, and turned his body at a slight angle, positioning himself—his body—between me and the threat.

The taller man threw up his hands, started to walk away, but apparently couldn't resist bumping the other guy with his shoulder.

“You asshole!” the shorter guy screamed, and threw the first punch.

“Morons,” Liam swore, then looked at me. “Stay here.” He strode forward, easily a head taller than both men. “Hey! Break it up.”

I turned back to the door, and that's when Liam's voice rang out. “Claire!”

There was alarm and fear in the word, but before I could turn again, I was slammed against the truck, the door handle catching my solar plexus.

I fought for air, kicking back against the perpetrator, but he kicked the inside of my knee, and I stumbled. He grabbed my hair, pushed my face into the door window as my wrists were bound with coarse rope that bit into my skin like live wires.

“Claire!”
Liam yelled again, fury boiling in his face as the fighters shoved him to the ground, guns pointed at his head at point-blank range. He didn't blink, didn't offer them even a glance, just kept his gaze on mine—hot and possessive and unspeakably angry.

“Liam!”
I screamed, before darkness covered my eyes.

The fight had been a distraction, a trap.

And we'd fallen right into it.

I was wrenched backward by my hands and pulled away from the truck, shoved in the direction of the hood. They'd covered my
eyes with a black cloth but hadn't tied it very tightly. If I looked down, I could see a sliver of the ground we covered as we walked back to the tents, and down a row.

“Claire!” Liam called out again, but his voice was farther away. They were separating us.

We were in trouble. Panic rose swiftly, tightening my chest so I could hear my breath whistling in and out. I wanted to sink to the ground, to clutch at dirt and grass until I could breathe again, until I was safe again.

Stop it,
I ordered myself.
Stop freaking out. That won't help you or him. You have to stay calm. You just need a plan.
I just had to take this step by step, be as careful as I could, and take whatever opportunities I could to get away, to get free.

Notice everything,
I ordered myself, and realized the ground was hard-packed beneath my feet, and a baby was crying somewhere nearby.

I was in the tents again. The sounds were muffled, so I was probably on one of the rows that faced the backs of the tents. There were people on each side of me, gripping my arms, guiding me down the row at a speed that had me nearly skipping to stay on my feet.

My toe caught a divot in the dirt and I flew forward, was hauled upright again before I could hit the ground. I caught a whiff of perfume to my right, the heavy and heady scents of peonies and gardenia, and the fingers that clawed into my arm were tipped by sharp nails. Probably a woman on my right. Thicker fingers on my other arm, the grip slightly stronger. Probably a man on my left.

We turned together to the right, and I was marched deeper into the field of tents. This time, we were on the door side, and I could smell and hear people nearby.

“Goddamn troublemakers,” yelled an older man who stood only a couple of feet away. “Gettin' in others' business.”

“Need to mind their own business,” a woman agreed.

That they could see troublemaker and busybody in me—a twenty-four-year-old with beet juice still staining her hands—was remarkable. I mean, I was both of those things, but how could they have known?

Because the woman from Bourbon Street had seen me and passed the word. And like Lonnie said, news traveled. Probably spread like wildfire through the camp. I was beginning to wonder if that was the only thing that traveled. If hatred and paranoia had spread as easily, too.

We stopped, and I was heaved into a tent, the canvas flap brushing my face. I was shoved down onto a hard chair, my arms released, yanked around the chair, and tied again.

There was shuffling around me, and then silence. And then they left me to wait.

—

Time passed, but I couldn't tell how much. Half an hour, maybe, but it seemed interminable. I couldn't see anything except occasional shifting light, and I couldn't hear anything but occasional shuffling and whispers outside.

I was alone in a tent, probably on the edge of a row, given the relative quiet. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the cloth or shift it enough to let me peek at where I was, but that only gave me a headache.

Since that didn't work, I'd have to work on the rope around my wrists. I pulled against them until my wrists were raw, picking at the edge I could reach with a jagged fingernail. I'd broken through a few strands, but it would take hours—if not days—to make any real progress. That thought only made me panicky again.

Liam was here, somewhere. We'd find each other. And if we
didn't, Gunnar knew where we were. If we didn't come back, he'd send someone. The question was whether he could find us in the spread of Camp Couturie before things got worse . . .

There were footsteps.

I turned my face up and down, side to side, trying to figure out where they were coming from.

And then someone was beside me. Fingers grazed my cheek, and the cloth was ripped away. I winced at the light, squeezed my eyes closed to help them adjust, then blinked them slowly open again.

I was in a canvas tent, sturdy camping lanterns hung at intervals along the walls, casting shadows that jumped in the breeze.

Ezekiel stood in front of me, his face only inches from mine, the blindfold in his hand. His dark hair was damp, as was the neck of his bone-colored linen tunic. He smelled like lavender, had probably just come from a shower.

God forbid he should be unclean,
I thought bitterly.

And since he looked completely unscathed, he hadn't been a bomber, and probably hadn't even followed his flock into battle. Maybe he'd watched from a safe distance, or maybe he'd come back here before it began, let them start the war on their own. The coward.

Ezekiel pulled a stool from the other side of the room, set it to face me, and took a seat, hands clasped between his knees. “Hello.”

“Where is he?”

Ezekiel's smile was horribly pleasant. “This is your interrogation, Claire. You are here, and Liam is somewhere else.”

“Untie me right now,” I said, and kept chipping away at the rope. “We haven't done anything wrong, and you don't have any right to assault us, accost us, or hold us. We're here to sell food.”

“Yes, I understand that's the story.” Doubt colored each of his words.

“We are innocent. You're a killer.”

Doubt transformed to outright disgust. “You are conspirators. Enablers. Liars. Traitors. You support Containment and the Paranormals, and you make it harder for real humans.”

“‘Real humans'? You're an egotistical sociopath.”

For an instant, there was a flash of something dark and horrible in his eyes. Something hungry and eager. But it disappeared, leaving behind the shell of false compassion.

“I'm a man who has been given the gift of knowledge, of understanding. Not all believe, of course. But that's true of most of history's saviors.”

“Is that what you are? A savior?”

Ezekiel leaned forward, hands on his knees. His clothes were old-fashioned, and even his body language seemed stuck in some other era. It wouldn't have surprised me if he'd accused me of being a Salem witch.

“That's my burden,” he said. “To carry this message, this truth, across the Zone. Even if people don't believe me.” He looked hurt, as if that lack of belief were a personal insult.

“You tell people magic is the problem, that you're the solution. And yet you stand back while they kill for you.” I tilted my head at him. “Why didn't you sacrifice yourself at Devil's Isle? Because you're a coward?”

He moved so fast his hand was a blur, the
crack
of it against my cheek resounding in the quiet. Pain exploded in my cheek, and tears welled and spilled. I ignored them and kept my gaze on him.

“You have no right to show me disrespect.” His jaw was tight with obvious rage.

I could taste blood, bright and coppery. “Violence is disrespectful.”

He sat back in his chair again. “If you provoke a man to hit you, it's dishonest to call him violent.”

I was so baffled by that justification, it took a few seconds to form a response. “And what would be honest?”

“It is necessary discipline,” he said. “As for the rest, I'd think that's obvious, too. I'm the leader of this organization. The brains, the heart, the soul.” He pressed his hand against his chest, his brown eyes darkening with conviction. “Without me, there is no Reveillon. I'm the vessel through which flows the truth.”

Something was certainly flowing through him, but it wasn't truth. But he clearly seemed to believe what he was saying. So I tried a different tack. “Because no one else really gets it,” I said, mimicking his seriousness. “Because you are the center of it, the crux.”

He nodded, seemed relieved that I'd understood. “Exactly. The Zone has lived in denial for too long.”

Might as well follow the train where it led, I thought. That would keep his attention off my wrists and my escape plan. “And the others don't see it. Containment doesn't see it?”

His eyes flashed again. “Without magic, Containment wouldn't exist. Containment would have no funding, no jobs, no uniforms. They have no incentive to admit the truth.”

“That magic has destroyed the Zone.”

“And continues to destroy.”

“We don't have magic,” I said. “So why are we here?”

He shook his head, made a sound of disgust before leveling his gaze at me again. “You think I don't see why you're here? What you're doing?”

“Selling beets?”

Ezekiel moved closer, and I instinctively pulled against my bonds. Then he slapped me again, the sting hot as fire.

I looked around at the tent, the shadows of humans who walked on the other side of the canvas. Did they care that I was tied up in
here, being interrogated? Or did they agree with it? Think it was necessary for the cause, for “what must be done”?

I didn't know where Liam was, but better not to assume he'd ride to the rescue. I was going to have to save myself, so I had to give myself time to break through the rope. I had to keep him talking.

“You're spies for Containment.”

“I own a store. I have a living to make, and produce that's rotting because you scared everyone out of the Quarter. But instead of admitting I'm here to sell that produce, you've decided, what, I'm on a secret mission? Spying by way of root vegetables?”

“You operate a store near Devil's Isle. You serve Containment officers. If your display at our protest was any indication, you're friends with the second-in-command. You are a traitor to your humanity. And your friend is no better.”