Maybe I’m a little too emphatic about it. The guy sputters and coughs, apparently on the verge of choking on his caffeinated beverage.
My eyes widen. “Um, sorry, are you okay?”
He waves off my concern and swipes his hand across his mouth, appearing to recover. “What was that about bombs?”
I point toward the military area of the camp. “Colonel Hueber is trying to get permission to drop bombs on the city. That’ll only?—”
Like the first reporter, this one doesn’t let me finish my story, even though I’ve already given him a juicy part of it. “I can’tbroadcast anything about impending military action unless they release the information to the public. Our instructions on that are very clear.”
“But—”
“I’m not getting arrested! I’d look awful in orange.”
He scrambles away into the van as if he’s afraid I’m going to voodoo him into doing my bidding.
My shoulders slump. Jonah clasps my arm reassuringly. “We only need to find one person.”
Raze shifts out of the shadows, a frown darkening his face. “But if the soldiers have threatened all the reporters… Humans are very scared of other humans with guns.”
Having seen what those guns can do even to shadowkind, I guess that’s reasonable. We can’t stand around and twiddle our thumbs, though.
Any minute now, Rollick is going to come rushing in with his own plans that might cut humans right out of the equation.
Mirage pops into being at my other side and cocks his head. “Do we need reporters? It’s the cameras and satellites that send the message to the TVs, isn’t it?”
My hopes lift and plummet in the space of a heartbeat. “But we don’t know how to use them.”
Jonah clears his throat, looking suddenly awkward. “Er, I might. I helped out a lot with the A/V equipment when I was in high school, and I was in the broadcast club for a couple of years. I actually… always wondered about getting word out about the shadowkind somehow or other.”
His gaze slides to the flood of murkiness at the other end of the camp. “I didn’t think it’d happen because the shadow realm was about to collapse all over our world, but that part’s already done. Desperate times… I guess we’d have to break into one of the vans to get the equipment, though.”
His uncertainty flows into me like a gulp of over-sour lemonade. Jonah isn’t really the criminal type.
He’s only offering for me.
Guilt clamps around my gut. “You don’t have to. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
A rough chuckle tumbles out of Jonah. “It seems like there’s going to be a lot more trouble for all of us if we don’t do everything we can. Come on. The first thing we need is a van no one’s monitoring so we have plenty of time to do our work.”
He tips his head to Mirage. “Can you have a look around for a news crew where the employees aren’t wearing protective badges? Your illusions work better than any other distraction.”
Mirage grins. “Easy as pie.” He flips through the air and into the shadows with a whoosh of his tails.
The rest of us shadowkind duck into the darkness as well so we don’t draw unwanted attention from the humans around us. It only takes a few minutes before Mirage comes dashing back to us, pulling himself into solid form just long enough to give Jonah directions.
The fox shifter must have paid attention to all the reasons the reporters might have to balk. He can’t pull off anything concrete, but vivid and startling is his wheelhouse.
Within view of the cameraman who’s lounging outside the van, he conjures the impression of a few glowing figures darting past the nearby tents. Their bodies pulse with light as if they’re radioactive.
The man jerks to attention. He snatches up his camera and calls to the reporter he’s working with—in a hushed version of a shout, because he doesn’t want anyone else getting in on the story if they can break it first.
The reporter scrambles out the back of the van, dabbing lipstick on her mouth as she comes. She shoves the tube intoher pocket and hustles with the cameraman in the direction the glowing figures appeared to be running.
Mirage flits away through the shadows to lead them on his wild goose chase. Or I guess a wild fox chase?
The second the news team is out of view, I leap through the tiny, dark gap around the van’s doors.
They locked automatically when the reporter shut them, but there’s an easy switch to flip over. I nudge them just wide enough for Jonah to scramble inside. Hail, Fen, and a few of the other shadowkind dart in after him.
