“She’s doing it because I need something.” Maurice cuts him off. “You see, there’s a particular guérriseur spell, or whatever you would call it, that I’ve been searching for ever since Violette mentioned it to me. It doesn’t seem to be among the data entered into the C2C.”

Like I suspected, Liv gave him access to our databases. Alarm bells ring in my mind. How much does he know?

“I was hoping we would find it in the Flame-finger archives,” he continues. He shifts his gaze to me. “I’ve already tried to access them from the other side of the wall. I recruited some volunteers from my Numa Army to dig through the catacombs to get there. Didn’t work. Now Siaka here refuses to fetch the notebooks for me, and we revenants are barred from going in through the door.”

At this, he pokes the empty space in the wall. There is a crackling sound, and sparks fly from his fingertip.

“Ow!” He shakes his hand and laughs. “See? Protected by guérriseur juju. And Liv can’t go in because she’s not a Flame-finger.”

“Yet,” she corrects him, looking hatefully at Siaka.

“But you don’t even want the gift!” I say. “You told me you wouldn’t like working with the bardia, saving people’s lives.”

“I don’t plan on being Flame-finger for the bardia,” she says, and takes Maurice’s hand. “I’m going to work with Reece.”

When she told Siaka about Maurice, she had conveniently left out the part about his being a powerful numa. One who, I remembered, was close to Lucien, Violette’s predecessor as head of the numa. Like Lucien, Maurice had been convicted of horrific war crimes during World War II, one of those historical figures whose transformation into a numa was no surprise. I wonder how much Liv knew of that story. Or if she even understood what the numa were.

“Let me guess,” I say to Maurice. “You’re after a way to turn humans into revenants. You’re trying to build an army.”

“Bingo!” he says. He draws his sword and moves toward Siaka. I realize he’s been blocking the tunnel entrance so Siaka wouldn’t dash inside for safety.

“Okay, fine.” I lay my sword on the ground, hold my hands up, and take another step forward so that we’re standing in a triangle. Maurice and Liv are in one corner: Siaka and I at the other two angles.

Maurice glances approvingly at my sword. “Now we can handle this like reasonable adults. Siaka, give Liv your power...or I’ll kill you both.”

“What?” Liv says, glancing up at him doubtfully, but Maurice doesn’t look at her.

“No,” Siaka says.

“Fine.” Maurice shoves his sword back into its hilt. Then, with a lightning-speed gesture he whips out a knife and holds it to Liv’s throat.