“True,” Darby said. “But there are fluctuations, and there are fluctuations.” She looked up. “We don’t have the full range of monitoring equipment that we used to. But as far as we can tell, and based on some triangulation, the energy currently looks like this.” She drew another line, and this one moved wildly above and below the baseline. The rises and falls were bigger, and they looked much more random.

“What would make them different?”

“The Veil didn’t open cleanly,” Darby said. “It wasn’t surgical; it ripped. So closing the Veil meant pulling those ragged ends back together. Seven Sensitives did that, and they encrypted the ‘seam’ to keep it closed. They used their particular magic to create an encryption—one that consisted of magical keys—that would act as an extra protection against someone trying to open it.”

“Which Sensitives did the encrypting?” Liam asked.

“We don’t know,” Burke said. “No one knows except the Sensitives who did it. That was part of the deal—so the knowledge couldn’t be used against them in the future.”

“We fear the Veil is fluctuating more wildly because someone has managed to break some of the seals,” Malachi said.

“Can you tell how many?” I asked.

“We cannot,” Malachi said. “This is the first time in history the Veil was, to our knowledge, resealed in this manner.”

“So you think the missing Sensitives and the Veil fluctuations are connected?” Liam asked.

Malachi nodded. “Yes, but we aren’t sure how.”

“How many Sensitives are missing?” I asked.

“Twenty that we know of,” Burke said.

Liam and I exchanged a glance.

“What?” Burke asked.

“Since my sister’s death,” Liam said, “I’ve been tracking wraith attacks across the city. They’ve doubled over the last several months.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-four,” Liam said. That was pretty damn close to twenty. “Was Marla Salas one of your missing Sensitives?”

“She was,” Darby said. “She was a good friend of mine.”

“How long was she gone?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t thought to ask Mrs. Salas.

“Thirteen days,” Darby said. “And she was fine when I last saw her.”

Fear bolted through me. Marla had gone from Sensitive to wraith in less than two weeks. That wasn’t very much time—and it suggested there wasn’t much of a defense to whatever was happening here.

“So could the missing Sensitives be ‘missing’ because they’ve been turned into wraiths?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t know how that would be possible,” I said, really meaning I didn’t want to know how it was possible. “But the numbers match up.”

The Delta folks exchanged glances.

“Not a theory I like considering,” Burke said, then looked at Darby. “Is that possible?”

She pursed her lips, considering. “If you denied them the ability to regulate? Or maybe forced magic into them somehow? Increased the absorption rate? I’d have to think through the precise mechanics, but like Claire said, the numbers are awfully close.”

On the upside, if someone else had done this to Marla—if it wasn’t some sudden failure on her part—there was still a chance I could control my magic.

“So assume you can do it,” Liam said. “Why would you want to?”

“So the perps can cover their tracks?” Burke suggested. “You want to open the Veil. You’re interviewing Sensitives who might have been involved, and you find one who wasn’t. You don’t want her talking about the interview, about the questions. So you discard her. If you turn her into a wraith, she can’t talk.”