The glow on his chest flickers through his shirt. The matching spot on mine dances in turn.
Hail gathers me tight against him and rolls us so I’m on top of his much taller frame. He tucks my head under his chin.
“We’re going to fix this, Peri,” he murmurs. “We’re going to fix everything that’s gone wrong. I know that because I know you. There’s no one else who’d stand a chance.”
25
Mirage
Jonah, a couple of the shadowbloods, and Sorsha lean over the city map they’ve spread on the table in the mostly empty trailer that’s become our operations room. The sites of our destruction-happy shadowkind’s mayhem stand out in stark orange against the blueish buildings and gray streets.
They don’t form any pattern to my eyes, only polka dots of chaos, but the others seem to be making more sense of it.
Riva swivels her finger around one neighborhood. “Viscera hasn’t hit too close to this area yet, even though there are a lot of the taller buildings like the other streets she’s rampaged through. I think she’d be even more tempted to take the bait here.”
Sorsha nods slowly. The phoenix shifter only arrived a couple of hours ago, but we’ve quickly brought her up to speed.
She smiles a lot and cracks jokes even when the subject is serious, which I can appreciate. But there’s a crackly, burn-ysense of heat around her even in her totally human-looking form that itches at my nerves.
Hail asked her if she couldn’t just incinerate the crocodile-tailed woman, and Sorsha gave him a wry grin and said she’d have to have Viscera in her sights first. That is the part that’s proven the hardest.
The rogue shadowkind is both pushy and slippery.
“How far away do you think the rest of us will need to stay from Peri for Viscera to feel comfortable showing herself?” Sorsha asks. “From what you’ve said, she’s been awfully cautious since that first encounter where you managed to throw her off a little.”
Jonah grimaces. “Unfortunately, I think we should keep at least half a mile back, spread out in different places and pretending we’re focused on other things. But that’s still close enough that we should be able to get there quickly when it’s time.”
Peri wanders around their cluster, peering between them at the map. Her voice shines as bright as ever. “This time we’ll have it set up so I can signal all of you as soon as I see her. Then I’ll keep her talking and calm her down as well as I can.”
A deeper discomfort crawls under my skin. Peri is the bait we’re hoping this maniac monster will take. We’re sending her out there like a minnow on a hook, hoping the crocodile will bite.
Our Rainbow is much more stubborn than the arcs of light that streak across the sky. She insisted that we don’t risk more devastation waiting to see if Rollick can track down another sorcerer whose powers might not help anyway.
I’m all for getting down to action, but what if Viscera decides she’d like to smash up shadowkind like she does windows and walls? What if she flattens Peri like she has all those cars before we can make it there?
Are we really putting our Rainbow at that much risk?
No one else seems to think there’s a problem with sending Peri straight into the line of fire. Even Peri is taking it for granted that she should be dangled in front of this unhinged being. The emotions that trickle through our connection are all determination and pride, as if she thinks this is the best help she can offer.
Maybe it is. Maybe stopping Viscera is more important than her shiny presence.
It’s not as if I can do enough to make it unnecessary to put her life on the line.
Restlessness twists through my chest all the way down to my gut. I pace in the back of the trailer as more details of the plan get tossed back and forth, but with each passing minute, my desire intensifies to tip over the table and shred the map into confetti that’ll rain down over us.
That’sdefinitely not going to bring a smile to anyone’s face, let alone solve all this solemnness.
I need to burn off some energy before it wriggles out of me in worse ways.
No one’s paying me any mind. It’s easy to slip into the shadows and dart off toward the city without a word spoken to question my departure.
I can’t sense anyone’s actual feelings except Peri’s, but an anxious vibe hangs over the city streets so thickly even I can taste it. The atmosphere quivers into me, setting my own nerves jittering faster.
Of course the humans are uneasy. A being they can hardly accept is real is popping out of thin air and playing wrecking ball with their city, and none of them have figured out how to stop her either. They have no idea where she’ll appear next, or what—or who—she might hurt.
It must be like stepping across a frozen lake hearing the ice creak beneath you, hoping it won’t crack. A game more precarious than any I’d like to play.
I watch various humans walk along the sidewalks—in a furtive rush, gazes flicking around them, eager to get back to relative safety behind solid walls.
