“I’ll keep watch,” Raze tells us, flexing his sinewy shoulders.
Jonah nods and peers at the equipment on the built-in shelves. “I’ll make this as quick as possible.”
He sits on the rolling stool in front of the displays mounted across from the shelves. Sucking his lower lip under his teeth in a way that looks adorable, he taps a button here and another there, and then speeds his fingers across the keyboard.
“I’ve got contact with the news station. Telling them we have an urgent story, breaking news, that they’ll want to show live so we can get it out right away. We need to be ready. Grab that other camera there.”
Shanty ripples into view and snatches the device in question off one of the shelves. Jonah jumps up to plug it into the control board, I guess so it’ll transmit its recording to the waiting studio.
I’m going to need to talk. I’m going to need to talknowandfast. Because who knows how long the station will keep broadcasting once they see what we’re sending them.
I drag in a breath, and Jonah lifts his hand. “We’re on in one minute. I’ll count you down. Peri, are you going to talk alone?”
Before I need to answer, Hail steps in. His stance is stiff, but he holds his head high. “No. I think we should give them plenty to look at so we keep their attention.”
With a glimmer over his body, he shifts into his fae form. The icy pallor and blue-tinged veins flow over his skin while his antlers sprout from amid his thickening hair.
Jonah blinks at him, never having seen this version of the winter fae before.
Fen jumps in too, scales sprouting over her arms and face, her hair rippling longer down her back like a waterfall. “I’ll be in it too. You’ve got this, Peri.”
I face the camera Shanty is holding, bolstered by the support I’m being offered on both sides.
Jonah starts counting. “Ten, nine, eight…”
He gives me the last three seconds with his fingers, in silence. Then a light flares on high on the control panel.
I launch myself into my appeal. “Hello, humans! I have urgent news for all of you. We’ve learned that the soldiers here at Jackson City are planning to drop bombs on it. They want to blow the whole place up! All those people’s homes, all the living beings still stuck there. But even worse—aggression seems to rile up the shadows that’ve drowned the city. If the buildings are bombarded, the murky stuff could be tossed all over the place, all over the country, every other city and town! Please don’t let that happen. I promise there are better ways to?—”
Jonah lets out a grunt. “They cut us off.”
Shanty lowers the camera. “You got most of the message out. Good job.”
The administrator’s praise barely touches the tension inside me. “What now?”
Jonah smiles crookedly. “We get the hell away from this van before they call the police. And then we wait and see what people made of your news.”
27
Jonah
The comments pop up under the news clip faster than I can read them.
We’re going to bomb our own city with no idea how that’ll solve the problem? Yeah, that sounds smart. /s
Did anyone tell the military bozos that bombs don’t fix things, they destroy them?
Why the fuck are the monsters on our side more than our own soldiers? Come on, people!
Sure, there are a few comments mixed in that are supportive of the military plans—people saying no one should trust the “monsters” and that they’re only looking out for themselves, others claiming it’s all a big conspiracy and the shadows hazing the city are actually a top-secret experiment by humans that’s gotten out of control. But that’s to be expected.
Peri comes up behind me and leans her arms against my shoulders, peering past me at the laptop screen. “You feel relieved. Is the response good?”
One corner of my mouth kicks up. “Nothing’s resolved yet, but if the military tried to suppress that broadcast, they didn’t manage to. The clips that’ve been uploaded on video-sharing sites have gotten millions of views. Most of the commenters areveryagainst blowing cities up.”
I catch a whiff of Peri’s delight through our bond. “It worked, then! Colonel Hueber will have to rethink his plans if people are upset, won’t he?”
“I hope so. It seems like he was figuring he could slip the bombing mission under the public’s radar, and no one would mind the destruction if it got rid of the problem at the same time. With people already knowing about it and raising an outcry… Especially when you pointed out that it’s likely to make the situation even worse instead of better… I think we’re going to be okay.”
