Page 407 of Shadowblood Souls
I nod. “Yeah. Why?”
Ajax hesitates again and then pitches his voice lower. “I think I saw Balthazar before. A long time ago, when I was really little, back at the old facility.”
My eyebrows leap up. “Really?”
He shrugs awkwardly. “I’m not totally sure. The details are fuzzy. But he gives me the same kind of feeling that man did. Do you think… if you looked in my head, would it be less fuzzy for you? It might be good to know a little more about him.”
A weird rush of gratitude sweeps through me. Ajax might only be partway through his teens, but this isn’t the first timehe’s approached me offering something of himself that we could use.
It doesn’t matter how young they are—all of the kids here know what stakes we’re dealing with.
“I might,” I say. “When I go into a memory, it’s always fairly clear. But older or shakier ones are sometimes fragmented and difficult to totally piece together. It’s worth a try. Do you want me to take a look now?”
He draws his chin up as if in preparation—as if he thinks he needs to brace himself. Really, he won’t feel anything at all. “Go ahead.”
So, for the second time that morning, I fix my gaze on someone’s head and let myself tumble in.
Unlike with Toni, I have a clear target in mind. I can focus on a specific person and dredge up only the memories connected to that figure.
Balthazar, Balthazar, Balthazar.
The first images that rise up are from two days ago in the drawing room. I shove those away as soon as I recognize them, not wanting to relive the unnerving confrontation.
I swerve straight into a memory of a brightly lit gymnasium. Ajax is sitting on an athletic mat, the tiny, childish hands of his younger self fiddling with a sliding puzzle.
A broad, burly man has just ambled over to a couple of helmeted guardians who were watching over the kids nearby.
Ajax glances up, adjusting my view through his eyes. The newcomer has his profile to us, and the thick waves that frame his face are all golden-brown with just a few tiny streaks of silver, but I recognize our current captor in an instant.
He’s too far away from Ajax to overhear their spoken conversation. After a brief discussion, Balthazar strolls through the room, veering toward Ajax first.
He says nothing to the boy, just peers down at him for a few seconds before moving onward. But one thought resonates from his mind into Ajax’s, audible as if it were spoken.
What would Peter make of that one?
Nothing else slips from Balthazar to my temporary host. The man prowls on through the room, regarding the other kids in their training—and then one of the guardians marches over to escort Ajax away.
With the dwindling of the memory, I pull myself out, more purposefully than I was able to with Toni. The Ajax of the present peers at me with a mix of apprehension and curiosity.
I offer him a crooked smile. “Thank you. It was him. I’m not sure we can do much with what I saw, though.”
How much is it safe to say about what I’ve learned, when the man himself could be listening in now? He might have worked with someone named Peter—someone whose opinions mattered to him.
It’s probably better if Balthazar doesn’t know what clues I might have gained.
It’s a piece of a puzzle. Who knows when we might find others that would pull it into an enlightening picture?
Ajax smiles back, his posture relaxing. He pauses again before speaking, this time sounding a bit sheepish. “I— You can project memories too, can’t you? Your own. I was wondering…”
He ducks his head and then meets my eyes again, the previous solemnity returning like a shadow falling over his face. “No one will tell me if Devon is okay. I know you don’t know either, but I think it’d make me feel a little better to see him again, even if it’s from before. If you don’t mind.”
Oh, the poor kid. He told me right from the start, when he offered to help us escape from the island, that there was someone he cared about, someone he’d been forced apart from.
During the chaotic couple of days when we were hacking our way through the jungle, it became obvious that he and the other boy were a lot more than friends to each other. That hectic time was probably the only chance they’d ever had to show their affection without worrying about the guardians intervening.
And then our freedom was torn away from us again. Now none of us has any idea where Balthazar has even stashed the other kids.
I can’t imagine how I’d feel if he’d torn Riva away from me. No, actually, I do have some idea—because that did happen four years ago, after us Firsts made our original escape attempt and the guardians took her away.
