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Her fingers hover in the air for several seconds. Then they twitch to the right.
As she drops to her knees to follow the pull, a surge of exhilaration wafts out of her. She’s excited that she’s pulling this off.
A softer smile curls my lips. Even if I’d rather be working my own power than passing it on to her, I do love seeing her take charge. Watching her put all the strength she sometimes doubts to good use.
She’s been through more than any of us, had to grapple with knowledge we can barely imagine, but she’s still just as committed as she’s always been.
Her hand drops, and her eyes pop open. She peers down at the map.
“He’s in… Tunisia? Around the middle of the country.”
Toni, who’s stood back near the doorway, stirs with a frown. “As far as I know, Mr. Balthazar doesn’t own property in that country. But it could be a newer acquisition he didn’t tell me about.”
Rollick hums to himself and shuffles through the paper maps he set on a side table. “It’s not too far a jump from Italy, where he was last holed up. I don’t think I have anything specifically of Tunisia here… Ah, this’ll give us a closer view of the western Mediterranean. We can at least narrow down the governorate, maybe even a specific city.”
One of the shadowkind, the squat man with metallic scales on his forehead who Rollick has called “Steel,” lets out a brief scoffing sound. “And then we’ve got to hunt down maps of the entire terrain of that country?”
“Once it’s narrowed down that much, I think a digital map should work all right,” I say.
A slim shadowkind woman with bark-like patches on her forearms shifts her weight restlessly. “How sure are we that this process is accurate? Even his lackey doesn’t think so.”
Riva lifts her head before I need to speak. “He’s there. I canfeelhim.” She grimaces. “It’s not a good feeling. I wouldn’t be imagining it out of nothing.”
The traces of doubt I’m picking up on don’t vanish, but in the face of Riva’s certainty, the shadowkind don’t argue.
Rollick folds up the world map and spreads out his Mediterranean one. As Riva steps to its edge, I let my gaze drift from her over the spectators.
A few of the shadowkind are totally on board with our presence. Pearl watches Riva work with genuine eagerness, and her friend Billy stands nearby, wide-eyed with curiosity. Sorsha the phoenix looks more concerned about keeping an eye on her fellow shadowkind than worrying about what us shadowbloods are doing.
I suspect Rollick has told her about how his people treated my friends in the past, just as my friends have told me. I wasn’t there when a bunch of his allies abandoned them and later tried to kill them, but I can taste hints of animosity among the others gathered in the room with us.
There’s no outright aggression in their moods—or what I can read of their stances. They’re more uncertain than hostile. But most of them still appear to see us as a potential threat, something to monitor.
They don’t trust us. They just trust their boss enough to tolerate his involvement in our lives.
And maybe it’s also that they realize they’re better off bringing the rest of the shadowbloods over to their side than letting Balthazar run wild with his new creations.
I could nudge them toward feeling happier about our presence. Send waves of calm or friendliness through their minds. But I’ve only worked my powers on a shadowkind being once before, and then I didn’t have time to be subtle about it. I don’t know what my limitations might be, how big a push would be necessary and when it’d be going too far.
Or how easily they might notice my interference. They definitely won’t trust us if they realize one of us has attempted to manipulate their emotions.
I suppress a grimace of my own. That’s really all I’m good for in this war we’ve found ourselves in: intruding on people’s minds, bending their perceptions of their desires and fears.
I’ve helped in other ways. I’ve used my talent to remind Riva of her convictions, to reassure Jacob of the love they share.
But when the people I care about are emotionally healthy, I can’t contribute anything other than messing up that carefully won balance. Almost every time Ihaveused my powers on them, it was to serve people I should have realized were our enemies.
The pang of guilt comes with another jolt of conditioned pain. I gird myself as Riva points to a specific spot on the map. “Right here. In or near Kairouan.”
Rollick is already bringing up a city map on the tablet he had ready. He adjusts it so it includes some of the surrounding area and then glances at me. “We can simply keep zooming in as we go, I assume?”
I shake off my pensive thoughts. “Yes. If you follow her directions quickly enough, she won’t even need to refocus, just kind of chase after her sense of him deeper into the map.”
Riva’s eyes have brightened with renewed confidence after her first two successes. She taps on the northern part of the city, and then in the middle of the zoomed-in area Rollick offers.
There, she hesitates, a frown crossing her face. “It feels like… he’s moving. Like when I try to narrow in on his location, it shifts before I can totally lock on.”
Dominic comes up beside her to study the map. “Every inch on that screen is still about a mile. Even a car wouldn’t be moving that fast.”
