I wasn’t sure who Liam was talking about, but Eleanor seemed to get it. And this time, her response was closer to a snort. “Liam, dear, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

•   •   •

Maria was another no-nonsense nurse, which I guess was probably a job requirement, considering where she worked. With dawn nearly breaking, we left Eleanor with Maria and promised to visit her again. That I was hoping to avoid returning to Devil’s Isle made me feel a little guilty. But Liam could pass along a message to her.

Telling him I wanted to be done made me feel guilty, too.

When we’d said our good-byes to Foster, which took more scritches than it probably should have, we walked into the night again. The sky was still dark above the wall, but it wouldn’t be dark for much longer. I’d have to open the store in a few hours. The length of the night, of everything that had happened, was beginning to weigh on me. I was tired.

“So, how did you meet Eleanor?” I asked Liam as we walked back toward the main gate and the freedom I was really looking forward to.

“She’s my grandmother.”

“Your . . . ,” I began, but stopped, thought back about what he’d told me of his family. “Your grandmother is Eleanor Arsenault?”

“She is.”

Since the last names didn’t match, she must have been Liam’s maternal grandmother. “And the man who taught her how to tango?” I asked with a grin.

“That would be my Arsenault grandfather. And a mildly uncomfortable conversation.”

I smiled. “So where did the Cajun come from?”

“My father,” Liam said, and there was much less enthusiasm in his answer.

I nodded, and we walked a few feet more. “Was Eleanor incarcerated here?” I asked the question softly, as if that would give me a secret defense against it happening to me.

Liam shook his head. “No. I brought her here after my parents died. It wasn’t an easy decision, but sometimes it’s better to be strange among strangers. In the outside, even if Containment didn’t sense her magic, didn’t find her, she’d be on her own. She’d be different from everyone else. She needs people who understand her.”

“People—you mean Paras?”

He nodded. “Moses knows, and he visits her. They’re actually pretty good friends. He’s taught her a few games from the Beyond.” Liam chuckled. Amusement looked good on him. “He told me she cheats when she thinks she can get away with it.”

I couldn’t help laughing, too. “I like that idea.”

“So do I, especially since he was probably doing the same thing. ‘It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught,’” he said, in a pretty good imitation of Moses’s thick drawl.

“Not a bad impersonation,” I said. “You ever do that in front of Moses?”

Liam snorted. “Hell no. He’d blow a gasket.”

Yeah, that seemed about right. “What about Containment? Don’t they care that she’s here?”

“Being an Arsenault has its advantages,” he said. “I have a couple of allies in PCC, which helps. And she has allies, friends, across the country. Her money doesn’t go far in the Zone, but it matters to the rest of the world. She has, let’s say, protectors. Containment thinks she’s here so I can keep an eye on her. That’s right, in part. They know she’s blind, and that she’s getting older. They think that makes her harmless. They’d be very, very wrong about that.”

I kicked a pebble down the sidewalk, then again, watching it skitter in front of us. I accidentally sent it too far to the left, but Liam caught it with a toe, sent it moving again. It was a little thing, but I put it in Liam’s “win” column. Finding whimsy in a war zone wasn’t any easy thing to do.