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31

THE AFTERMATH

W e pushed our way through the crowd, fighting the panicked mob to get closer to the place where the smoke and the choking fumes originated.

The rhythmic crack of rifle shots had stopped.

The window above the designer clothing store had fallen silent.

Alisha was staring down at her tablet again, but she was no longer using different-colored dots to track their movement down the streets. She was looking for any trace of where they might be now, and she was looking for Nick along with Dalejem and the girl.

To do that, Alisha had actual footage from the CCTV cameras filling most of her screen, with smaller inserts showing faces flipping through the software and looking for points of comparison with the faces being picked up by the cameras. Alisha was basically watching the program scan faces in real time, which she said synched faster.

Mostly, she was scanning the area around the explosion, but she was gradually widening the circle and adding more cameras.

“Can’t you just run all of them in the city?” Dog asked her.

Alisha didn’t look up from the tablet, keeping one arm up to shield it from being knocked too hard by anyone shoving into her.

“It would slow down the program,” she said, distracted.

“You’re sure it was the girl who was last seen walking on the street?” Black asked her, his voice loud over the clanging sirens of police and emergency vehicles. We were close enough now, the shouting of cops and the screaming were both getting louder, too. “She was alone? The girl? Without Jem?”

“Unless he had his face covered, and he changed his gait enough to fool the surveillance, and he wasn’t walking next to her… she was alone,” Alisha answered, also in a near-shout, yet still sounding distracted.

“Can I see it?” Black asked.

“Yes…” she said, still staring down at the screen. “One moment.” I saw her fingers skate over the top of the tablet. “I’ve only got the one angle,” she added. “I saved it as a clip.”

Black came to a stop once he received the link.

Without me having to ask, she sent it to me, too, and probably to every one of us, given how many in the group stopped and appeared to stare into space.

Cowboy and Angel came to a stop, too.

We could all see the girl walking across the busy street, wearing a dark backpack.

She looked almost comically young in wine-colored jeans and a white sailor top with a dark red tie. Metallic pink heart earrings dangled from her ears. On her feet were brand new sneakers I doubt she or Dalejem had paid for, and she had a brand new designer watch wrapped around her wrist. Everything she wore looked very new and very French.

“The backpack,” Black said. “Can we get eyes inside?”

Alisha sounded doubtful.

“After the fact? Sorry, boss. There’s nothing on this street that would be using X-rays, or even infrared to look for heat signatures. They’ve probably got laws about that in a non-law-enforcement situation. Is it possible some of your people could I.D. the contents through a different means? Yarli, maybe?”

We all knew what she meant.

She meant via the Barrier.

Unfortunately, Black sounded as doubtful as Alisha had. “It’s likely Jem is blocking her, but I’ll pass it on to Yarli and see what they can do.”

I saw Black give a longer look to Alisha as he finished speaking.

I saw him measuring her with his eyes in that stare, like he was trying to determine how she was doing. She’d been on his team for years now, but the thirty-something, ex-C.I.A. tech analyst and programmer wasn’t usually out in the field. She wasn’t used to dead bodies and bombs and being shot at and panicking crowds.

We normally used Jem for field operations.

I’d always liked Alisha, and felt like I’d gotten to know her pretty well.

Despite her time with the C.I.A. at Langley, she’d always struck me as kind of a quintessential San Francisco tech nerd. Even now, her blond hair was twisted in knots on either side of her head, one dyed sky blue, the other bubblegum pink. She wore nondescript clothing like the rest of us, but a Transformers watch wrapped around her thin left wrist, and she had blue Doc Martens on her feet.

“You’re doing good work,” Black said, after his assessment of her. “Really good work, Alisha. You deserve a raise. And I’m going to find someone to spend more time teaching you the theory and design of organic machines.”

She blinked at him in open surprise, but he’d already looked away.

His eyes found Ace and Mika next.

“All right,” he said. “I want us to split up. Mika, you and Dex head up the team at the bomb site. I want you to I.D. as many of the dead as you can… especially the shooting victims, and by that, I mean the ones he clearly hit on purpose.” Black’s jaw tightened. “See if you can determine if there were specific victims this… terrorist attack… was targeting, or if it was more of a generalized mayhem and blood type thing.”

I felt my throat close.

Black practically choked on the word “terrorist” in reference to Jem, but he managed to spit it out. Still, I had a feeling we knew the answer to his question already. Black was right; we needed proof, we needed names, we needed to know for sure.

But I strongly suspected this hadn’t been random.

“Take Alisha with you,” Black added. “She can ID them a lot faster.” He turned to the human with the round, pink and blue buns on either side of her head. “Ping my headset if they show up on the street. I know it’ll slow things down, but keep the scans going in the background while you run ID checks for the team. I want to know the second they resurface. Got it?”

“Yes, boss.” She still looked a little pink from his compliment earlier.

“Oh,” Black added to her. “And see if you can use the cameras to ID any fragment of that backpack she was wearing.”

Angel frowned. “Quentin––”

“You go with them, too,” Black said, without looking directly at Angel. His voice grew a touch harder. “We’ll try not to leave you down here for long. If you can’t deal with the dead bodies, then don’t… I mean it. I’m leading the team up to the shooter’s nest. You can sit this one out, Ange. We won’t be long.”

“I’m coming for that,” Cowboy said. “The upstairs.”

“No,” Black growled. He gave Cowboy a fierce look. “You’re not. I get it, brother. I absolutely do. But no fucking way. I’m handling that end of things.”

Anger flared in Cowboy’s eyes.

It was an unusual enough occurrence, I couldn’t help but stare. I only looked away when Cowboy glanced at me, that anger still dancing in his blue irises.

Black raised his voice, now very deliberately not looking at Cowboy or Angel. I might’ve been wrong, but it seemed like he avoided Dexter’s gaze, too.

“Listen up,” he said, holding up a hand. “We’re splitting up. Team Two is at ground zero. Dexter and Mika on point. You’ve got Angel, Cowboy, Alisha, Javier, Ace, Holo, A.J., Rafe, Reuben. Pick a partner and make sure you don’t lose track of anyone. See if we can get a body count and an ID on everyone who’s dead or injured. Take photos of faces and distinguishing features. Tattoos, birthmarks, clothes, scars, distinguishing marks. Bodies, if the faces aren’t usable. If you don’t have a face, be thorough. Shoes. Earrings. Nail polish. Etc. Send them directly to Alisha, nowhere else. She’s in charge of IDs. Anyone run into any issues with the local cops or first responders, make sure Mika or Holo take care of it.”

He didn’t say part of that aloud, but again, we all got it.

Mika and Holo were the two seers he’d given Team Two.

There was another unspoken understanding behind his words.

The thought made me feel sick, but I knew I hadn’t misunderstood him.

He wanted them looking for proof of death for the girl, Aura.

I don’t know about the rest of them, but I wasn’t feeling optimistic.

Jem seemed to have kept the girl alive for a reason, after all.

He’d turned her into a suicide bomber.

He got her new, chic, age-appropriate French clothes. Then he’d loaded her backpack full of explosives and sent her through the front door of a building on a busy Parisian street to blow it up from the inside. I could only assume he’d been up there with the rifle in case he missed anyone he’d been targeting with the bomb.

What the fuck, Jem?

More and more, I wondered if Nick and Black were right, and this really was Brick and Prometharis doing this. They really must have implanted him.

Nothing else would explain this. Nothing else made any kind of sense.

Anyway, a gruesome, public, suicide-bomb attack struck me as the kind of thing a vampire, especially Brick, would do. Not to mention the drama of the added sniper, and the choice to do it all on a beautiful Sunday morning in a busy shopping district in broad daylight. This was pure spectacle. Jem wasn’t about spectacle, not unless there was a strategic reason. Jem was a pragmatist when it came to anything resembling a military operation.

That definitely could be Brick, though.

The fact that Brick hated Dalejem probably more than any person alive, apart from Charles, only added plausibility to the theory.

But it also begged a few more questions.

Had all of the deaths we’d been investigating for the past week been orchestrated by Brick? Had Dalejem pulled the trigger on Frasier and Ungerman, too? Was that the real reason he’d volunteered to go to New York? Had he sat up on that balcony on Oyster Point Boulevard and blown Lucian Rucker away with a high-powered rifle, too?

In light of recent events, it seemed likely.

Yet nothing about any of this felt likely at all.

The Dalejem I knew wouldn’t deliberately kill a child.

He wouldn’t kill another seer, especially not one so young, so damaged, who’d already led such a tragic life. The Dalejem I knew was a huge softie. He was a sucker for a hard case, and even a lost cause. Like Nick, he collected strays, especially the human, seer, and vampire variety. He looked for the good in people everyone else had given up on.

Like Nick.

Everything in me knew that about Jem, down to my bones.

There’s no way this was him. The blackouts, the missing time, the odd behavior. Jem hadn’t struck me as insane, but he’d struck me as out of control, as someone afraid, and confused, and powerless to stop whatever was happening to him.

When my vision cleared, I found myself looking at Black.

He cocked his head, studying me openly.

“Everyone else is with me,” he said, blowing me a pulse of warmth. “That means you, too, doc.”

Angel started to speak, but Black raised a hand, silencing her.

“Stop,” he growled. He turned on her, his gold eyes sharp. “I mean it, Ang. Or I’m sending you and Javier and that pissed-off husband of yours back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep and maybe a few tumblers-full of bourbon.”

He aimed a finger at Cowboy without looking away from Angel’s face. “That fucker was stalking the plane last night like a caged lion, imagining ways of skinning Dalejem alive, so there’s no way in hell I’m letting him get anywhere near this thing. He’s too close…”

Black’s eyes darkened a shade.

“…and he hurt you, Ang.” Black visibly swallowed. “So there’s no way in hell I’m letting Dalejem get near you again, either, not while he’s like this. Not until we break the hold Brick… or whoever else… has on him.”

Angel started to open her mouth, but Black talked over her.

“I don’t know why the fuck you’re arguing with me about this,” he growled. “You and Javier are dead on your feet. You shouldn’t even be here, but if you won’t go rest, then help the team down here and stay the fuck out of my way. Help the EMTs, if you must. Then you’re going somewhere to eat and chill the fuck out for a while, even if that means I have to knock you both out with a damned frying pan. Understand?”

Angel shut her mouth with a snap.

I saw a faint irritation skim her light brown eyes, but I also saw understanding there, even agreement. She nodded once, and I could almost feel her drop it.

I doubted Cowboy would be so understanding, but Angel didn’t give him the chance to fight with Black a second time.

She slung her arm through her husband’s and began to lead him firmly away.

I watched them fall into step just behind Mika and Dex, who’d already started leading the bulk of our team towards the wreckage of the burning storefront. One by one, the rest of the names on the list Black just rattled off followed after Cowboy and Angel. I didn’t envy them their job. I didn’t envy whichever one of them ended up finding the girl.

Honestly, I preferred facing possible death at Jem’s hands to digging her small body out of the smoking rubble.

“Follow me,” Black said, his voice grim.

Another spark and coil of flame came out of the building behind us, causing the voices of the watching Parisians and emergency workers to rise in alarm. I looked over, too, but none of our team was close enough to be in danger. A few first responders backed up out of caution, but no one in the emergency services group seemed to be in the fire’s direct path, either.

Black scarcely glanced that way. He gave one last stare up and down the wide avenue, then began to cross, gliding along the pavement like a great cat.

The rest of us began to follow, walking fast to keep up with Black, forming an uneven line across the Champs-Elysées .

I gave one last glance at the Arc de Triomphe.

I couldn’t help wishing, yet again, that I could come to this damned city just once without a seer shooting someone, or blowing something up.