Sometimes it didn’t pay to be friends with a woman obsessed with words. “Har-har. The point is, there are a lot of sweaty people in that crowd.” I glanced back, surveyed the mass of people. “I think the party’s even bigger than last year.”
She nodded. “The population’s actually gone up a little in the last few years. Some people think it’s safe to come back, that there’s no chance the Veil will open again. And some people are fascinated by what happened, really hope that it will.”
Her voice had gone quiet, and I glanced at her, found her gaze on the high wall that surrounded Devil’s Isle, visible at the other end of Bourbon Street, the sky orange above it from the glow of the electrified mesh that covered the neighborhood and kept the Paras from escaping upward.
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like in there?” she asked.
I had wondered, and hadn’t liked what my imagination had come up with. A few thousand Paranormals and Sensitives interned for our protection—and because the government had no idea what else to do with them. We’d closed the Veil, after all. That made them prisoners of war from a world we could no longer access.
That made me think of uncomfortable things. I wasn’t bad, and Containment still would have tossed me into Devil’s Isle. If I wasn’t bad, what about the other Sensitives who’d been locked in?
“I try not to think about it,” I said honestly.
“It’s a complicated issue. But man, what I wouldn’t give to get in there. Can you imagine the vocabulary they’ve developed? The Paranormals probably had to create a completely new language just to describe what they’re going through.”
She was probably right, and I could admit it was intriguing. But I still didn’t want any part of Devil’s Isle, and I had no interest in going in there. Not when the odds were good that they wouldn’t let me out again.
While Tadji watched the parade, bouncing to the music, I checked out the street. There was a former walk-in daiquiri shop on the corner. It was missing a front wall, but an off-duty Containment agent—a man I’d seen in the shop—stood behind the bar and poured red liquid into plastic cups. His version of Drink, probably, and an opportunity to make a little extra money. Couldn’t fault him for that.
A handful of his uniformed Containment colleagues looked on from the sidewalk, gazes moving suspiciously between the parade and the patrons in the make-do Drink shop.
Most of the agents who worked in the Quarter had been in the war. They’d seen its horrors, and knew about its tragedies. Others came from outside the Zone, or were too young to remember battle. They’d missed the fighting, the injuries, the sweet and bitter smells of death and battle. Maybe because they hadn’t seen the horrors for themselves, there was fervor in their eyes. They’d learned to hate Paras, and wanted their own chance to fight magic.
I looked away, torn as usual between who I was and what magic would have made of me, and let my gaze skim the rest of the revelers. The couple whose pale skin sheened with sweat, whose eyes were filled with love as they drank greedily from plastic cups. The friends who sat in a line on the curb, shirts soaked through, but all of them grinning. A man who stood alone, arms crossed, watching the party.
He was tall, with a long, taut body, and wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that snugged over muscled arms and chest. His hair was dark and short, his eyes sharply blue and topped by thick eyebrows, his nose a sharp, straight wedge. He blinked long, dark lashes that fell like crescents across his tan skin.
“Handsome” didn’t seem nearly a good enough description. His attractiveness was nearly visceral, bladed and sharp, like a weapon he could draw. He probably had women at his beck and call, probably had every romantic skill a woman might imagine.
And because I lived in a war zone, I had a very active imagination.
A casual glance would have said he was bored by the shenanigans. But boredom hadn’t tensed his body like a panther posed to attack, or put that intense gleam in his eyes. He was coiled energy, and his gaze was on the crowd, tense and watchful, as if he was waiting for something big to happen.
His gaze suddenly shifted, those sapphire eyes streaking toward mine and locking on.
Something settled low in my gut, like my soul had rearranged itself, changed and shifted to account for him. For this man I’d never seen before.
Each dull thud of my heart ticked off another second, and still he didn’t move or look away. The intensity of his gaze didn’t diminish, and that made cold sweat skitter down my spine. Why was he focused on me?