Page 125 of Black to Light

He didn’t seem to care.

His eyes darted all over the road, moving faster than any human or seer eyes could move. His vampire eyes could see a lot more too, I knew, even in the daylight. He could see spectrums of light human beings couldn’t see at all.

Alisha had managed to tap into the Parisian police network.

She and Nick got footage of Jem and the girl leaving via the Metro station below the airport, which they took to the center of Paris.

They’d been on foot ever since.

Now Alisha was walking, head-down, moving surprisingly fast as she wove around pedestrian traffic. She never seemed to take her eyes off the tablet, which she’d connected to her hand with a magnetic glove. Her eyes followed lines and dots along the screen that should be showing her the location of Jem and the girl.

She’d used the city’s facial and gait recognition software to create a profile, nailed it down after the next few hits in the sunlight, then at various angles, and once she was confident, she turned them into different-colored tracking dots to make them easier to follow now that we were out on the street.

We’d been following them for over an hour.

We’d followed them here, to theAvenue des Champs-Elysées, which was crowded and filled with open stores. The streets were full of people, likely in part due to the lovely spring weather, which still carried a bite of cold in the air, but coupled with enough sunlight and blue skies, it was enough to lure people out of their winter hiding.

I would have killed to be like the rest of them, tourists and Parisians alike, window-shopping and ducking in and out of stores with no real place to be.

As it was, I barely saw faces or window displays as we moved like ghosts through the crowd. I knew at least two seers in our group were pushing people, here and there, not to notice us, and especially not to notice Nick, who stood out significantly more than the rest of us.

We’d finally, nearly, caught up with them.

“Nick?” I murmured, knowing he’d hear me.

He didn’t look back, but a muscle in his cheek twitched.

“No,” he said, his voice a touch hard.

His eyes were a lot better than the rest of ours.

How was it he couldn’t see them?

“Could they be in one of the stores?” Angel murmured from next to me.

Alisha heard her and looked over. “This won’t show elevation, but that might explain why the trackers are no longer moving. It’s likely the program simply froze the dots where they were last seen on the street…”

She trailed, her eyes intent on the screen.

“Wait!” she called out suddenly. She held up her other hand. “Wait! Stop!”

She looked around, her eyes scanning both sides of the wide avenue.

We were getting close to theArc de Triomphe,which was now only a few blocks away. The iconic arch loomed over Black, Nick, and Dex’s heads as we all slowed our progression northwest on the busy street.

“One of the dots is moving again,” Alisha said, her voice louder, sharper, so the rest of the group would hear her. “It’s back on the street. I think it’s the girl.”

She stared for another second, manipulating the map with two fingers.

“There’s some kind of interference,” she muttered. “And I’m still not sure about the lag on the ID, but a street camera last caught her… there!”

She pointed straight ahead, on our same side of the street, where I only now noticed a crowd of people clustered around the windows and doors of a massive building with stone columns out front. They looked like they were waiting to get inside, pressed eagerly towards doors that hadn’t yet opened. Some event appeared to be happening there, likely a grand opening, given the red, gold, and black balloons that covered the entrance.

My eyes shifted up the stone columns, then I flinched, staring at one of the higher walls in disbelief.

“Black!” I said.

He looked at me sharply, and I pointed at the moving and shifting insignia on the side of the stone building. It was a flaming R, the animated sign surrounded by a circle that rippled and sizzled in the crisp morning air. Blood red with black details and gold highlights, it looked like a cross between a sign for a futuristic spaceport and a burning cattle brand.

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