Midnight Marked: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (30 page)

Ethan closed his eyes ruefully.

“She killed him,” I said, and all eyes turned to me. “Her plan—her long-term plan to get free—to become queen, failed. Killing him, taking the money, running. She’d have considered that a consolation prize.” It didn’t fit with the Sorcha I’d seen on Reed’s arm, but it fit with the one I’d seen at Towerline.

“We’ll see what the evidence says,” my grandfather said. But there was a flatness to his voice that indicated he didn’t disagree.

“What if she comes back?” Mallory asked.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Catcher interjected, putting an arm around her. “Just as we’ve dealt with everything else.”

“And we’ll help,” Ethan said, and looked around the crowd, got nods from his vampires, from the shifters.

“All for one and one for all?” Catcher asked.

“All for Chicago,” Ethan amended. “Because that’s what this is really about. Not vampire, not shifter, not sorcerer, not human. A man and a woman who believed they were entitled to more than they’d earned and were willing to use people to get it.” His eyes sparked like fire. “She tries something here again, and she’ll see how hard Chicagoans will fight.”

And until then, I thought, as he took my hand and squeezed, we had each other. And we’d try to make the best of it.

Read on for a look at the first book in Chloe Neill’s new Devil’s Isle series,

THE VEIL

Available now wherever books and e-books are sold

T
he French Quarter was thinking about war again.

Booms echoed across the neighborhood, vibrating windows and shaking the shelves at Royal Mercantile—the finest purveyor of dehydrated meals in New Orleans.

And antique walking sticks. We were flush with antique walking sticks.

I sat at the store’s front counter, working on a brass owl that topped one of them. The owl’s head was supposed to turn when you pushed a button on the handle, but the mechanism was broken. I’d taken apart the tiny brass pieces and found the problem—one of the small toothy gears had become misaligned. I just needed to slip it back into place.

I adjusted the magnifying glass over the owl, its jointed brass wings spread to reveal its inner mechanisms. I had a thin screwdriver in one hand, a pair of watchmaking tweezers in the other. To get the gear in place, I had to push one spring down and another up in that very small space.

I liked tinkering with the store’s antiques, to puzzle through broken parts and sticky locks. It was satisfying to make something work that hadn’t before. And since the demand for fancy French sideboards and secretaries wasn’t exactly high these days, there was plenty of inventory to pick from.

I nibbled on my bottom lip as I moved the pieces, carefully adjusting the tension so the gear could slip in. I had to get the gear into the back compartment, between the rods, and into place between the springs. Just a smidge to the right, and . . .

Boom
.

I jumped, the sound of another round of fireworks shuddering me back to the store—and the gear that now floated in the air beside me, bobbing a foot off the counter’s surface.

“Damn,” I muttered, heart tripping.

I’d moved it with my mind, with the telekinetic magic I wasn’t supposed to have. At least, not unless I wanted a lifetime prison sentence.

I let go of the magic, and the gear dropped, hit the counter, bounced onto the floor.

My heart now pounding in my chest, the fingers on both hands crossed superstitiously, I hopped off the stool and hurried to the front door to check the box mounted on the building across the street. It was a monitor with a camera on top, triggered when the amount of magic in the air rose above background levels—like when a Sensitive accidentally moved a gear.

I’d gotten lucky; the light was still red. I must not have done enough to trigger it, at least from this distance. I was still in the clear—for now. But damn, that had been close. I hadn’t even known I’d been using magic.

Boom.

Already pumped with nervous energy, I jumped again.

“Good lord,” I said, pushing the door open and stepping outside onto the threshold between the store’s bay windows, where
MERCANTILE
was mosaicked in tidy blue capitals.

It was mid-October, and the heat and humidity still formed a miserable blanket across the French Quarter. Royal Street was nearly empty of people.

The war had knocked down half the buildings in the Quarter, which gave me a clear view of the back part of the neighborhood and the Mississippi River, which bordered it. Figures moved along the riverbank, testing fireworks for the finale of the festivities. The air smelled like sparks and flame, and wisps of white smoke drifted across the twilight sky.

It wasn’t the first time we’d seen smoke over the Quarter.

On an equally sweltering day in October seven years ago, the Veil—the barrier that separated humans from a world of magic we hadn’t even known existed—was shattered by the Paranormals who’d lived in what we now called the Beyond.

They wanted our world, and they didn’t have a problem eradicating us in the process. They spilled through the fracture, bringing death and destruction—and changing everything: Magic was now real and measurable and a scientific fact.

I was seventeen when the Veil, which ran roughly along the ninetieth line of longitude, straight north through the heart of NOLA, had splintered. That made New Orleans, where I’d been born and raised, ground zero.

My dad had owned Royal Mercantile when it was still an antiques store, selling French furniture, priceless art, and very expensive jewelry. (And, of course, the walking sticks. So many damn walking sticks.) When the war started, I’d helped him transition the store by adding MREs, water, and other supplies to the inventory.

War had spread through southern Louisiana, and then north, east, and west through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and the eastern half of Texas. The conflict had destroyed so much of the South, leaving acres of scarred land and burned, lonely cities. It had taken a year of fighting to stop the bloodshed and close the Veil again. By that time, the military had been spread so thin that civilians often fought alongside the troops.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t lived to see the Veil close again. The store became mine and I moved into the small apartment on the third floor. We hadn’t lived there together—he didn’t want to spend every hour of his life in the same building, he’d said. But the store and building were now my only links to him, so I didn’t hesitate. I missed him terribly.

When the war was done, Containment—the military unit that managed the war and the Paranormals—had tried to scrub New Orleans not only of magic but of voodoo, Marie Laveau, ghost tours, and even literary vampires. They’d convinced Congress to pass the so-called Magic Act, banning magic inside and outside the war zone, what we called the Zone. (Technically, it was the MIGECC Act: Measure for the Illegality of Glamour and Enchantment in Conflict Communities. But that didn’t have the same ring to it.)

The war had flattened half of Fabourg Marigny, a neighborhood next door to the French Quarter, and Containment took advantage. They’d shoved every remaining Para they could find into the neighborhood and built a wall to keep them there.

Officially, it was called the District.

We called it Devil’s Isle, after a square in the Marigny where criminals had once been hanged. And if Containment learned I had magic, I’d be imprisoned there with the rest of them.

They had good reason to be wary. Most humans weren’t affected by magic; if it was an infection, an illness, they were immune. But a small percentage of the population didn’t have that immunity. We were sensitive to the energy from the Beyond. That hadn’t been a problem before the Veil was opened; the magic that came through was minimal—enough for magic tricks and illusions but not much else. But the scarred Veil wasn’t as strong; magic still seeped through the rip where it had been sewn back together. Sensitives weren’t physically equipped to handle the magic that poured through.

Magic wasn’t a problem for Paras. In the Beyond, they’d bathed in the magic day in and day out, but that magic had an outlet—their bodies became canvases for the power. Some had wings; some had horns or fangs.

Sensitives couldn’t process magic that way. Instead, we just kept absorbing more and more magic, until we lost ourselves completely. Until we became wraiths, pale and dangerous shadows of the humans we’d once been, our lives devoted to seeking out more magic, filling that horrible need.

I’d learned eight months ago that I was a Sensitive, part of that unlucky percentage. I’d been in the store’s second-floor storage room, moving a large, star-shaped sign to a better spot. (Along with walking sticks, my dad had loved big antique gas station signs. The sticks, at least, were easier to store.) I’d tripped on a knot in the old oak floor and stumbled backward, falling flat on my back. And I’d watched in slow motion as the hundred-pound sign—and one of its sharp metallic points—fell toward me.

I hadn’t had time to move, to roll away, or even to throw up an arm and block the rusty spike of steel, which was aimed at the spot between my eyes. But I did have a split second to object, to curse the fact that I’d lived through war only to be impaled by a damn gas station sign that should have been rusting on a barn in the middle of nowhere.

“No, damn it!”
I’d screamed out the words with every ounce of air in my lungs, with my eyes squeezed shut like a total coward.

And nothing had happened.

Lips pursed, I’d slitted one eye open to find the metal tip hovering two inches above my face. I’d held my breath, shaking with adrenaline and sweating with fear, for a full minute before I gathered up the nerve to move.

I’d counted to five, then dodged and rolled away. The star’s point hit the floor, tunneling in. There was still a two-inch-deep notch in the wood.

I hadn’t wanted the star to impale me—and it hadn’t. I’d used magic I hadn’t known I’d had—Sensitivity I hadn’t known I possessed—to stop the thing in its tracks.

I’d gotten lucky then, too: The magic monitor hadn’t been triggered, and I’d kept my store . . . and my freedom.

Another boom sounded, pulling me through memory to my spot on the sidewalk. I jumped, cursed under my breath.

“I think you’re good, guys!” I yelled. Not that I was close enough for them to hear me, or that they’d care. This was War Night. Excess was the entire point.

Six years before, the Second Battle of New Orleans had raged across the city. (The first NOLA battle, during the War of 1812, had been very human. At least as far as we were aware.) It had been one of the last battles of the war and one of the biggest.

Tonight we’d celebrate our survival with colors, feathers, brass bands, and plenty of booze. It would be loud, crazy, and amazing. Assuming I could manage not to get arrested before the fun started . . .

“You finally losing it, Claire?”

I glanced back and found a man, tall and leanly muscled, standing behind me. Antoine Lafayette Gunnar Landreau, one of my best friends, looked unwilted by the heat.

His dark brown, wavy hair was perfectly rakish, and his smile was adorably crooked, the usual gleam in his deep-set hazel eyes. Tonight, he wore slim dark pants and a sleeveless shirt that showed off his well-toned arms—and the intricate but temporary paintings that stained his skin.

“Hey, Gunnar.” We exchanged cheek kisses. I cursed when another
boom
sounded, followed by the sparkle of gold stars in the air.

I smiled despite myself. “Damn it. Now they’re just showing off.”

“Good thing you’re getting into the spirit,” he said with a grin. “Happy War Night.”

“Happy War Night, smarty-pants. Let me check your ink.”

Gunnar obliged, stretching out his arms so I could get a closer view. New Orleans was a city of traditions, and War Night had its own: the long parade, the fireworks, the spiked punch we simply called “Drink” because the ingredients depended on what was available. And since the beginning, when there was nothing but mud and ash, painting the body to remember the fallen. Making a living memorial of those of us who’d survived.

The intricate scene on Gunnar’s left arm showed survivors celebrating in front of the Cabildo, waving a purple flag bearing four gold fleurs-de-lis—the official postwar flag of New Orleans. The other arm showed the concrete and stone sculpture of wings near Talisheek in St. Tammany Parish, which memorialized one of the deadliest battles of the war, and the spot where thousands of Paras had entered our world.

The realism lifted goose bumps on my arms. “Seriously amazing.”

“Just trying to do War Night proud. And Aunt Reenie.”

“God bless her,” I said of Gunnar’s late and lamented aunt, who’d been a great lover of War Night, rich as Croesus, and, according to Gunnar’s mother, “not quite there.”

“God bless her,” he agreed.

“Let’s get the party started,” I said. “You want something to drink?”

“Always the hostess. I don’t suppose there’s any tea?”

“I think there’s a little bit left,” I said, opening the door and gesturing him in.

Gunnar was a sucker for sweet tea, a rarity now that sugar was a luxury in New Orleans. That was another lingering effect of war. Magic was powerful stuff, and it wasn’t meant to be in our world. Nothing would grow in soil scarred by magic, so war had devastated the Zone’s farms. And since there were still rumors of bands of Paras in rural areas who’d escaped the Containment roundup and preyed on humans, there weren’t many businesses eager to ship in the goods that wouldn’t grow here.

There’d been a mass exodus of folks out of the cities with major fighting—New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mobile—about three weeks after the war started, when it began to look as though we weren’t equipped to fight Paras, even on our own soil.

There were plenty of people who still asked why we stayed in the Zone, why we put up with scarcity, with the threat of wraith and Para attacks, with Containment on every corner, with Devil’s Isle looming behind us.

Some folks stayed because they didn’t have a better choice, because somebody had to take care of those who couldn’t leave. Some stayed because they didn’t have resources to leave, anywhere to go, or anyone to go to. And some stayed because they’d been through hard times before—when there’d been no electricity, no comforts, and too much grief—and the city was worth saving again. Some stayed because if we left, that would be the end of New Orleans, Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville. Of the culture, the food, the traditions. Of the family members who existed only in our memories, who tied us to the land.

And some folks stayed because they had no choice at all. Containment coordinated the exodus. And when everyone who’d wanted to get out was out, they started controlling access to the Zone’s borders, hoping to keep the Paras and fighting contained.

No, staying in the Zone wasn’t easy. But for a lot of us—certainly for me—it was the only option. I’d rather make do in New Orleans than be rich anywhere else.