Chapter 168 - What Had Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen

Under JJ's command, Andrey easily took the blood trail of the attackers. It led us a block away and then ended. Andrey sniffed the ground around some more and then just sat down, burrowing JJ with his all too human stare.

"They must've taken a car, just like Avarice said. Several, more like, since there were still ten of them, and Anon."

"You mean, Denis," Panda said. "Why do you call him Anon?"

"Because he is very… anonymous. Sort of very average." I hummed as I explored the area further. 

It wasn't any different from any other street around at that time of the night—empty and quiet. On another day, there'd be a few people walking about, going on their night business, but with the demon on the loose, the city became much quieter.

My magic senses told me more. The attackers must've been pretty sore about their loss. Their resentment floated in the air like a visible scent cloud. Someone, I supposed, Anon, was terrified in there. This trail, unlike actual scent, didn't disappear when the shifters changed transport. "Ghost, do you think we can track them by emotional prints?"

"They have to be pretty potent emotions for the traces to stay clear," he said, scratching his chin. "We can try. Oh, and worse comes to worst, we can divine! But I'm not that good at it. I remember there's someone better back at the coven…"

"Yeah, except that they are back at the coven." And we were here. And since when I and Ghost last reported to Elena, we told her we were having a sleepover at my place, I wasn't going to call her again to admit that we lied. I doubted she'd be eager to help either way. She wasn't happy even to let me go for the night.

"I guess I will have to leave the next leg of the search to your magic expertise," JJ smiled at the two of us.

"Well, it's pretty clear for now," I gestured toward the emotional clouds. "The wide original trail forks into three, so I guess they took three cars. Anon was in that one," I pointed where his fear showed he was. "He's the only one afraid there, so it's easy to find out. Then the trails thins for some reason—"

"It's because they moved faster," Ghost inserted.

"—and goes there," I pointed down the street. "I want to try scanning farther down the trail from here. I mean… there isn't really a limit on magic sense, isn't it? We can reach the aspects of the Sun and the Moon when we want, and they are really far away."

"But there's mostly empty space between, and it's much easier to do when the object you are reaching for in sight," Ghost said. "You have to be careful, Diana. I remember very clearly how painful information overload can be. You won't know your limit until you reach it."

JJ pursed his lips, watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. "If this is something that requires talent, I trust you to have more than enough, ma chèrie," he said to me with a smile dancing on his lips, though his eyes were dead serious. It was a look that shook some core part of me until it burst and then rebuilt it stronger.

That belief—it was humbling. Then Ghost patted me on the head and beamed. "Yeah, she would, won't she? Go for it, Diana!"

"One day I will ask you to teach me about divining, too," I said and closed my eyes to limit the distractions. "Now, shhh!"

I focused my magic vision on as narrow space as I could. I shrunk it until the only thing I saw through it was the fear Anon felt when he was dragged out of his aunt's house by unfamiliar people, into their car, undoubtedly beaten into submission in the process, probably bound and gagged, too.

A powerful fear: for his life, for Avarice, for Alexey, for all their other henchmen, if he was a good enough person. Powerful enough for me to follow.

I stretched my vision and my mind farther and farther forward. The trail of fear was the only thing I've seen, the only thing I've smelled, the only thing I've heard. It twisted and turned, thinned and weakened the further it went, until suddenly, it became thick again.

Stifling, even. I realised it wasn't a trail anymore—the fear permeated the entire space it was in, and inside of it, I felt a human. It could only be Anon, though I couldn't tell one human aura from another. My heart beat faster as I continued to examine him.

I could tell that he, while wounded, was healthy enough—and alive. There was another person in the room, another human, but what was happening between them was beyond me. I could only tell that the other human wasn't afraid.

Now, the hardest part was… to find out where this was happening. I had to leave the trail behind. There was only now and here, and it could've been anywhere.

Slowly and carefully, I began to reach with my senses back to my body. I passed through several walls (of a house, I presumed) and into an open space, inched closer to myself another notch… and the hold I had on my magic vision broke.

It snapped back to me like an elastic band. No, that wasn't right. My senses didn't do the journey from point A to point B. They just blazed a trail, a path, between these points, one that I immediately saw, felt, heard. All of it, in a meter-wide column of auras. Meter wide and kilometres long.

Air, air, air, people, air, air, walls, cars, air, air, air, air… All that air, but with so many details in it! And also bugs, rats, birds, moss, grass, emotions, random bits of floating information, everything.

I opened my eyes and closed my well, but it was too late. There was no unseeing the seen.