The Sight (21 page)

She looked me over, one perfect eyebrow lifted in amusement. “Yeah?”

“Who's at the—” Liam began, then stepped into the doorway, pulling a T-shirt over his planed abs, then running a hand through his hair to straighten it again.

“Door,” he finished, stepping beside her.

I wasn't entirely sure who this woman was, or why she was answering Liam's door while he was getting dressed. Nor was it any of my business. But that didn't stop the hot spike of jealousy that buried itself in my chest. I
felt
like I had a claim on him, and a better claim than the woman draped casually in the doorway.

My first thought was that she was revenge for Malachi's
maneuvering the night before. That Liam, in some kind of “I'll show you” rage, had found a woman, come back to his apartment, and given her a very nice wake-up call. And that made me absolutely furious.

“Claire,” Liam said, “this is Blythe.”

Wait. I'd heard that name before . . .

She smiled lazily, draping herself in the doorway. “Pleasure.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Come in,” Liam said, and Blythe turned to the side, hands in the air, and waited for me to pass.

The memory surfaced—the first time I'd met Eleanor, she asked about Blythe, who I'd assumed was Liam's girlfriend. He hadn't said anything about her then or since, and I'd never seen any sign of her.

“Claire owns Royal Mercantile,” he said, closing the door again. “Blythe is a bounty hunter. She's also the woman I hired to keep an eye on Eleanor and Moses.”

Of course she was,
I thought, and felt a stirring of relief. That explained why she was standing in Liam's doorway. Except . . . “If she's here, who's at Eleanor's?”

“Gavin,” Blythe said. “He relieved me a few hours ago.”

“He'll go with us back to the store,” Liam said. “He wanted to be along for the ride, just in case. How was the clinic?”

“I never got there, but the home visits we did instead were fine.”

“You want something to eat?” Liam asked. “Something to drink?” He looked at me while he asked, but it was Blythe who walked to the kitchenette on the other end of the room.

“I'd love something—thanks,” she said.

She pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, bumped the door closed while she uncapped the bottle and took a drink. “So, this is Saint Claire?” she asked, crossing her arms as she leaned back against the window ledge.

Slowly, I turned my gaze to Liam. “Saint Claire?”

“My words, not his,” Blythe said, pushing off the window. “She's pretty,” she added, looking me over.

“She's in the room,” I pointed out.

“Blythe,”
Liam warned, but she ignored him, smiling as she walked toward me and sized me up again.

“It's all right, Liam. We're both grown-ups. Aren't we, doll?”

“Yes, we are,” I said, and took the bottle from her hand, drank, and handed it back to her. “And I prefer Saint Claire to doll.”

Blythe smiled appreciatively. “Well played.”

I ignored the compliment, slid my glance to Liam. “Are you ready? It's time to go.”

“Ah yes,” Blythe said. “Time for the big, noble plan.” She walked to the bar, picked up a worn leather jacket that had been tossed onto a stool and exchanged the water for rum. “That would be my cue to exit.”

I found it curious that he'd told her. But then again, he'd trusted her with Eleanor.

“You aren't going to help?” I asked.

She pulled on the jacket, raised flat eyes to mine. “I work for a living, and I like working and living. I'm not out to make an enemy of Containment. But you two have fun.”

She walked to Liam, pressed a kiss to his cheek. It looked chaste enough, but the fingers she dug into his chest said she was ready and available for more. “Maybe next time,” she said to him with a wink and disappeared, closing the door behind her again.

The silence that fell between us prickled against my skin. I was bristling when I looked back at him. Claim or not, I didn't like being baited.

“She seems . . . ,” I began, but couldn't think of a very nice adjective.

“Blythe is very good at her job,” Liam said, but his voice was tight
and his jaw was clenched in irritation. She hadn't just been baiting me; she'd been baiting him. Teasing him, maybe, about our relationship.

“Is she trustworthy?”

“Interpersonal skills aside, I trust her completely.”

I'd let him do the trusting. “Good,” I said, and walked to the door. “Because Malachi left me a note this morning, and we're a go.”

I stopped and put a hand on his chest, batted my lashes the way Blythe had. “Maybe next time,” I said, then walked into the hall.

“Saint Claire, my ass,” was all I heard muttered behind me.

—

By the time we walked outside, an oversized golf cart was parked in front of Eleanor's house. Three rows of plastic, cushioned seats for our treasonous pleasure.

Inside, Foster guarded the first floor. He padded slowly and carefully into the living room when Liam opened the door, verifying us before trotting forward to say hello.

It hadn't occurred to me that we'd be leaving Foster alone in the house, and the thought of him pacing around an empty house made me unbearably sad.

“Gavin's going to take him,” Liam said, crouching to scratch Foster's chin. “He'll be okay alone for a few hours until we can get Mos and Eleanor settled.”

“Good,” I said, when Foster padded to me, brushed his muzzle against my leg like a cat. “I'm glad. Maybe he can teach your brother some manners.”

Liam snorted. “He fought a goddess of war, and lived to tell the tale. There's no saving him now.”

We took the stairs to the second floor and the hallway to Eleanor's room, which had been mostly reset after yesterday's incident.
She sat on the bed, her delicate feet propped on a chair, all of her covered in a blanket despite the heat.

She looked a little better than she had yesterday. Still pale, and with a wrap around her wrist, but some of her color had come back. Her cheeks were pink with what looked like excitement.

Moses stood in the middle of the room, an old-fashioned buckle suitcase on the floor beside him, its leather a vibrant, pukey green.

Liam walked to Eleanor, kissed her forehead. “Where's your other grandson?”

“Making lemonade,” Gavin said, appearing in the kitchen doorway. He walked to Eleanor, handed her a glass.

“Thank you, darling. Claire, how are you this morning?”

“I'm good, thank you. How are you feeling?”

She smiled cheekily, an expression she'd probably passed on to Liam and Gavin. “Truth be told, I'm very excited about our adventure.”

I nodded. “I'm excited, too.” Nervous as much as excited, but there was no point in telling her that. No point in making her carry both my fear and hers.

“What's that?” Liam asked, pointing at Moses's suitcase.

Moses looked down at it, brow furrowed. “My valuables. The stuff I managed to salvage from the store after it burned to the ground.” He stuck up his chin. “If I can't take them with me, I'll just risk it. I'm spry on my feet.”

I doubted all three and a half feet of him had ever been spry.

“And you didn't think your running around carrying a suitcase would look suspicious?” Liam asked.

Moses narrowed his eyes. “You sayin' I can't be careful? That I can't dodge and weave with the best of them?”

“I'm sure you can,” Liam said. “But today we're on a mission with
a short trigger. If the guard at the gate decides he wants to search the suitcases, I imagine he'll have a few questions about what's in it and why Eleanor's carrying it. And that will slow us down.”

Moses growled.

“You can't take the suitcase this trip,” Liam said firmly. “But—
but
,” he added, when Moses bared his teeth, “if you leave it here, I'll come get it later, make sure it gets to you. That way, I'm the only one taking a risk.”

Moses didn't look convinced, and he moved a step closer to the avocado monstrosity. I couldn't exactly blame him. His opportunity for freedom, or what he could find of it in a world where his very existence was illegal, meant leaving everything behind.

“How about this?” I said. “You can have an unlimited credit at the store for anything Liam loses or breaks.”

Moses looked suspicious. He was a retailer at heart, and probably thought the offer sounded too good to be true. “You got cable? Wires and such?”

I smiled. “Dozens of spools.”

He considered. “Okay, yeah. That would work.”

“Crisis averted,” Liam said, moving the suitcase to the far wall under Moses's gimlet stare. “Is Malachi in place?”

Malachi walked into the room in jeans and a fitted white T-shirt. “Yes, he is.”

We stared at him. The Consularis general had apparently walked right into Devil's Isle. Of course, getting into Devil's Isle had never been the hard part. The trick, as we were about to prove, was getting out again.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Liam asked.

“I walked in,” he said simply, stepping toward me with a warm smile, then looking at Liam. “We practiced last night, and we believed
we managed to sync my magic and his invisibility. But we wanted a test inside the gates, just in case.”

The air shimmered, and Burke appeared beside Malachi.

Eleanor gasped, her eyes seemingly focused on middle distance as she looked at the magic only she could see. “How marvelous! You have such beautiful magic, both of you. A beautiful copper, which split into gold and blue when you separated. Absolutely stunning.”

“Malachi and Will Burke,” Liam said.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Burke said. “And thank you.”

She nodded regally. “It is truly my pleasure, young man. You are doing a very good thing for a very good man.”

Moses actually blushed.

Liam frowned, crossed his arms. “What did you learn with your testing?”

“We need proximity,” Malachi said. “Being outside Devil's Isle—outside the wall or above the grid—isn't enough. If I'm inside Devil's Isle, and nearby, our combined magic can encompass us both.”

“We need it to encompass all three of you,” Liam pointed out.

“We can do it,” Burke said with a grin, then looked at me. “We hid half the stuff in the storage room last night.”

Too bad I'd been exhausted; I'd have liked to see that.

“Don't worry about the magic,” Malachi said. “I also managed to keep us shielded from the monitors. But movement makes that tricky, and I'd rather not rely on it.” He looked at Moses. “Monitors?”

“A cinch,” Moses said, waving off the concern. “Come into my lair.”

We followed him into a small room two doors down from Eleanor's, where he'd cobbled together mismatched parts to create some kind of computer. The contraption—boxes and keyboards and monitors joined together on a low table in the middle of the room—had a central monitor that glowed with green print.

I didn't bother to ask how he'd gotten the gear. Moses was resourceful.

He walked to the system, tapped the keyboard mounted beneath it. A list of words in the same bright green scrolled across the screen.

“I accessed Containment-Net.
Again
.” He said the word with total boredom, as if he'd been given the dullest possible assignment. “Popped into the magic monitors, and I'm ready to set them all in neutral mode. The lights will stay red, like they're armed and ready, but they won't actually detect anything. But,” he said, looking back at us, “the monitors are tested and, if necessary, reset every twenty minutes. When they are, they'll be put back into active mode. When I hit this”—he pointed to an enormous red button that looked like it had been borrowed from a toddler's toy—“we have twenty minutes to get somewhere safe, or stop using magic.”

“So when we go, we shouldn't stop,” Gavin said.

“That's the ticket.” Moses hopped off the stool, toed a bundle of wires aside. “And you'll probably want to get this equipment out of here in case anyone comes sniffing around.”

“We'll take care of it,” Liam said.

We went back into the main room, and Liam lifted Eleanor into his arms like she weighed nothing. Which, if not actually true, was pretty close to it.

“That's my strong boy.”

He smiled. “My grandmother made sure I cleaned my plate at every meal.”

“Growing boy needs a good meal and a watchful grandmother.”

“You need to stay nearby,” Burke said to Moses. “And it's better if you're actually touching me. It makes the illusion easier.”

Moses groaned. “I'm not gonna hold your hand like a kid.”

“You don't have to.” He pointed at his fatigues, which had large
pockets on the legs. “Just grab a pocket. That's good enough. You stay on my right, Malachi will stay on my left, and we'll make it work.”

Moses clapped his hands together. “All right. Enough chitchat. I am itchy for freedom.”

We all looked back at him.

“No? I thought ‘itchy for freedom' was a good one.”

“No,” we said simultaneously.

“How about ‘let's get this show on the road'?”

That worked well enough.

Moses hit the timer. Liam carried Eleanor downstairs while Gavin picked up her suitcases. When we reached the front room, Liam looked at Burke, Moses, Malachi. “If we need to stop, touch my shoulder or Claire's.”

“Got it,” Burke said. He nodded, and Moses grabbed one of his pockets. They both looked at Malachi.

“Ready,” Malachi said, and touched Burke's shoulder.

The ignition of magic changed the pressure in the air. The three of them shimmered—as if their bodies were composed of a thousand tiny mirrors shifting forward in sequence—and disappeared.