The Sight Read Free

speculatively.
    â€œâ€˜We’?” he asked. “You went with him?”
    â€œBounty hunter in training,” I said, offering him a salute. “It still makes for good cover.” And gave me a chance to be sure that any wraiths taken into Devil’s Isle were treated as well as possible. We owed them that much, at least.
    â€œNo sign of the wraith,” Liam repeated, “but we found something else. Giant billboard on Claiborne. ‘Death to Paranormals’ painted over it.”
    â€œLovely,” Gunnar said. “I’ll have someone take a look.”
    â€œWho has that much free time on their hands?” Tadji asked.
    â€œThere are plenty of people out there with delusions aboutParanormals,” Gunnar said. “Plenty of people who believe in conspiracies, or who think the government owed them something after the war.”
    In fairness to those people, the government did know about the Veil. But it hadn’t known who’d waited for us on the other side.
    Speaking of angry humans, loud voices began to fill the air with what sounded like chanting.
    â€œWhat is that?” I asked, glancing at the door.
    â€œMaybe protestors?” Liam asked with a frown.
    â€œCould be,” Gunnar said. Liam, Tadji, and I followed him outside, then to the corner and down Conti.
    About a dozen men and women, most in their twenties or thirties, but a few older, a few younger, stretched across Bourbon Street. They all wore nubby, homespun fabric in bulky and shapeless tunics and dresses.
    Their arms were linked together, and they sang as they walked, their voices woven into an eerie, complex harmony. I didn’t recognize the song, but it sounded like a hymn, with lyrics about death and smiting and Calvary. If this had been a different time, they might have been congregants walking to a country church. But I hadn’t seen many churchgoers carrying bright yellow signs with CLEANSE THE ZONE OR DIE TRYING in searing red paint.
    Leading the group was a man with pale skin, dark hair, medium build, and a heavy beard. He was flanked by two women—one pale, one dark, but both with dark eyes that looked across the French Quarter with obvious disdain.
    It wasn’t the first time there’d been protestors in the Quarter; there’d been plenty during and shortly after the war, when it was popular to complain about how the war was being fought, or how it had been won. But the war had ended six years ago, and as a Sensitive, I wasn’t feeling very sympathetic to antimagic arm waving.
    Liam shifted, moving a protective step closer to me while watching the group with narrowed eyes.
    Gunnar’s expression was cold and blank. That was a particular skill of his—that level stare that showed authority and said he wouldn’t take shit from anybody.
    The man in the front glanced in our direction, stopped, and lifted his hands. Like an orchestra following a conductor directing his symphony, the protestors stopped behind him, and silence fell again.
    He walked toward us. He wore an easy smile, but there was something very cold behind his dark, deep-set eyes.
    â€œGood morning,” he said, in a voice without a hint of Louisiana in it. “Can we talk to you about the Zone?”
    Gunnar didn’t waste any time. “You have a permit?”
    The man’s eyes flashed with irritation, but his smile didn’t change. “I don’t subscribe to the notion that citizens of this country require a permit to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
    Gunnar didn’t even blink.
    â€œOf course,” the man said, “we also respect human laws. It’s just that we believe those laws should be enforced to their logical conclusion.” The man pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, offered it to Gunnar.
    â€œAny law in particular?” Gunnar asked.
    â€œThe Magic Act,” the man said. “All magic is illegal. And all magic should