“Interview with Connolly, Claire,” Phelps continued. “And Quinn, Liam. Now, you said wraiths, plural. There was more than one?”

Relief rushed through me. If Containment didn’t know how many wraiths had been there, Liam had been right—they hadn’t watched the video. Yet.

“Two,” Liam confirmed.

“Where’d they come from?”

Liam gestured toward me, the move utterly casual and mildly bored. “She saw them first. I was behind them.”

“Near the Supreme Court,” I said. “They were in the foliage on the south side. They were attacking a woman. She got away, ran me over, and then moved into the street. The wraiths followed her there.”

“Wraiths don’t hunt together.” The second agent had stepped forward. He was older, with pale skin, shorn silvering hair, and a dark mustache over a wide mouth. His eyes were deep-set and brimming with suspicion. “Thomas” was the name on his uniform tag.

I shrugged. “I don’t know about that. Just telling you what I saw.”

“And then what happened?” asked Phelps, sounding irritated by his partner’s interruption.

It would have been too easy to get lost in lies, so I decided on the truth, or at least as much of it as I could tell.

“They started to attack her. I yelled to scare them off, but it didn’t work. So I grabbed a tree limb and tried to scare them away. When that didn’t work, I hit them with it.”

Phelps’s eyebrows lifted. “You beat two wraiths with a tree limb?”

“I didn’t beat them. I hit them. And they ran away.” And a few things in between about magic that I didn’t really want to mention.

Phelps gestured at my arm. “They gave you those scratches?”

I looked down. Fear of Devil’s Isle had numbed the pain, and I’d forgotten about the scratches. “Yeah. One of them had pretty long nails.”

“What about the sign on the ground?” Thomas asked.

The back of my neck went hot. “The sign? What sign?”

“There was a store sign on the ground, pretty well cracked.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe one of the wraiths knocked it down? They were moving all over the place. They kind of”—I hunched my shoulders over—“lurched around when they moved?”

“And where did they go?” Phelps asked.

“Uptown, toward the CBD.” We let the Central Business District keep the acronym, even though there wasn’t much business there these days.

“And the girl?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know about her, either. I told her to get up and run, and she did. I didn’t see the direction. I was watching the wraiths.”

Phelps nodded, glanced at Liam. “And when did you pop into this fight?”

“After it was over.”

“You looking for a bounty?”

“Always,” Liam said coolly. “But it wasn’t to be this time.”

“You could have chased them,” Thomas said. “Why are you still here?”

“Because right now I want information more than I want bounties.”

“Information about?”

“Why two wraiths attacked a human together.”

“They didn’t.” Thomas’s tone was flat. “That’s not something that happens.”

Liam lifted his hands. “Like Claire said, I’m just telling you what I saw. You can watch the tape yourself. Matter of fact, I’d appreciate a copy of it when you’re done.”

Just the mention of the tape made my stomach twist with anticipation. I thought I knew what Liam was doing—acting just the way a bounty hunter might act in this scenario—but the request still rankled.