she’s looking at?” Mr. Forkle asked when Fitz frowned.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, squinting at the photo and tilting his head. “I guess it’s not important.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Mr. Forkle corrected. “Do you know that for the entire five minutes and forty-three seconds of footage that I have of Lady Gisela standing there, she doesn’t look away from that spot once? Even when the wind blew back her hood—which is the moment I captured for this still shot—her eyes remain trained on that single point.”
“Do you know what she’s looking at?” Sophie asked him.
“I have my theories” was all Mr. Forkle said. “But they’re just theories. I checked the feed from every nearby camera and couldn’t get a view of that portion of the street to confirm.”
“Well that’s… also convenient,” Fitz said, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “It’s like she knows where your cameras are.”
“That does appear to be the case,” Mr. Forkle said, staring up at the sky. “And it’s not altogether surprising, considering how rarely I’ve ever captured footage of any members of the Neverseen. I’d just been hoping that was because they stayed mostly underground or in their hideouts. But it seems they might know exactly how to evade detection. Which is particularly unsettling when you consider how many cameras I’ve hidden.”
“They’re always ahead of us,” Sophie muttered, giving in to an eyelash tug.
“I wouldn’t say always,” Mr. Forkle said. “They—”
“What happened after five minutes and forty-three seconds?” Keefe interrupted, calling the words over his shoulder without turning around.
“I’m sorry?” Mr. Forkle called back.
“You said you only had five minutes and forty-three seconds of footage of her,” Keefe clarified, still without looking at anyone. “I’m guessing it starts when she shows up. But what happens at the end?”
“She’s simply gone,” Mr. Forkle told him.
“So she light leaped?” Fitz asked.
“That’s what I’m assuming,” Mr. Forkle said. “But I have no record of her raising a crystal, so if she did leap away, she must’ve used one of the Neverseen’s hidden paths—which, incidentally, is also what I believe she’s looking at, tucked into that small portion of the street that’s shielded from all of my cameras.”
“You mean like the crystal that Dex and I found on one of the lanterns in Paris?” Sophie asked. When he nodded, she had to admit, “I’ve never really understood why that was there. Why go to so much trouble to hide a crystal in a Forbidden City when you could just use a home crystal or a pathfinder to leap away?”
“Because those can be lost or damaged,” Mr. Forkle reminded her, “and the Lost Cities can only be reached through designated paths. That’s one of the many ways we keep ourselves hidden from humans—and why our registry pendants all have a crystal in the pendant. It’s a fail-safe, in case something unexpected were to separate us from all other paths. But for the Neverseen—and, admittedly, for the Black Swan as well—we have moments when our pendants must be removed in order to avoid the Council’s tracking. And we take that risk most often when visiting the Forbidden Cities. So both of our groups have made the effort to hide a few emergency paths, to ensure we never find ourselves without a means to get home.”
“So… you’re saying you think one of the Neverseen’s secret leaping crystals is hidden in London near that giant clock thing?” Keefe asked. “On a part of the street where they know the Black Swan can’t see them?”
“That would be my guess,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “And I know what you’re going to say—”
“I say we go find it,” Keefe interrupted.
Mr. Forkle sighed. “Yes, that’s what I knew you were going to say. And I think you’re misunderstanding what the crystal is—the hidden paths are not meant to go somewhere secret or significant, because they’re left unguarded. All of the crystals the Collective has hidden leap to the most innocuous locations we could think of—places where we could blend in should we arrive unexpectedly, but that also have zero connection to our order in case our enemies find them.”
“Okay, but just because you guys are smart enough to think of that doesn’t mean the Neverseen are,” Keefe argued. “And even if you’re right, isn’t it worth it to double-check?”
“Of course,” Mr. Forkle agreed. “I plan to head there in the wee hours of the morning, once the streets are empty. And no—you’re not invited to come with me. For lots of reasons, but the biggest