"Liam Black, are you going to stay on your ass or help?"
He puts on a grumpy face, but I ignore him. This is something I must do for myself anyway. I take a deep breath and keep looking around. If only I had that magic circle thing to show me where to look, or even Spark. Now, I'm searching blindly with no idea what I am even supposed to look for…
Would Sylviana have used a magic circle as well? I don't see anything that could have been of use for that… I don't dare go upstairs; based on the layout of this house, it would be the bedroom. Although I'm doing my best to be open-minded, I am not ready to see the place where she and Liam had… whatever was going on.
"Have you ever seen her do actual magic?"
"Yes, but it depends on what you are looking for."
"Something like a magic circle?"
Liam frowns, looking a bit unsure, but he eventually shakes his head.
"No... Wait. She didn't have a circle, but she did use something like a map. Would that help?"
"A map?"
He gets up and goes upstairs; I don't follow him, though, and wait until he comes back, carrying something that looks like an oversized… painting? I am a bit confused until he lays it down on the floor. Wow… It's beautiful. This painting is entirely acrylic, with gentle colors. It takes me a few seconds to observe it and realize that it's… an actual representation of Silver City?
Chapter 14
I take my time to observe the map. It isn't as simple as an actual map, but if I look at all the details carefully enough, this is obviously some representation of Silver City. I recognize the forests, an apple-green area, and the sea, some indigo blue. Silver City is split into different colors and shapes too, like a wide circle. They are probably representing the different neighborhoods or werewolf territories? It would seem so; what I think could be the White Moon territory is a bright orange… Moreover, there are some figures and shapes that make it easier to figure it out.
The hospital, first, is represented by little squares, and I see the park I would occasionally be allowed to go to. It's like Sylviana picked some landmarks of the city and represented them as if she was seeing them through a magnifying glass. One big black rectangle must be a company headquarters, maybe the Black Corporation? I keep looking. Why did she pick those spots in particular? There are over twenty, including one little greenhouse that must be here, her house. So how do I figure out which ones are important?
I am tempted to try and burn that painting, to see if something stays behind like with the leaves, but there isn't any ivy on there, so it might be risky to assume this will be the same kind of system... My pyromaniac tendencies might cause trouble again. What, then?
"How did she use this?" I ask Liam, who has been observing me for a while.
We laid the map down on the floor for me to see it all, but while I'm on my knees and almost on all fours to try and decipher this, he is just standing on the side, arms crossed and looking at a loss.
"I don't know!" he says. "That thing was always hung in her room, I don't know if this is actually useful, or how... I know she did use it, though, she would add some important places as time went on."
"Like what?"
"Like the Sapphire Moon House from the former Blue Moon Clan, our company building, Selena's hideout in the forest, East Point Ground where Nora's powers appeared for the first time, that kind of stuff. The hospital, and the… the location of the war too."
Oh, I can see it. A big red zone in the northwest area… So that’s where it happened? According to the scale of the city, it was a very wide area. No wonder they all consider it a big war. Of course, she chose red to represent it… It's kind of sad and depressing to think about. Probably not too useful either... I spot something else too.
"This white mark, it has to be her magic tree."
Liam nods, although a bit sour.
"Yeah, that's right at the border and on the right spot too."
He comes to sit next to me on the floor, and once again, I feel that little spark between us. Is it really just me? Whenever he's near, I feel like something is waking up inside… His smell, mostly, drives me nuts. I never thought I was particularly sensitive to smells, but it's like a conditioned response whenever he's near. I keep staring, losing my mind for a second. I don't know how ridiculous I am, staring at him and being struck like this, but I feel like if I don't learn his facial features by heart, I'll be losing something. His straight jawline, that eye between a gray and a blue sky, his thin lips…
"M-Mara?"
Crap, I really did end up staring! I'm so dumb... I feel like an idiot, and he probably thinks I'm some weirdo too. With his strange attitude toward me, I still can't tell how he feels about me, and this is not even the right place to think about it! I shake my head and look at the map again, blushing and feeling dumb as hell. The only thing that makes me feel a bit better is that I am pretty sure Liam was blushing too…
"Alright," I say, clearing my throat a little, "help me out, I don't know this city that much yet. There's a lot of stuff I don't recognize, you're the specialist here. Anything else you can point out?"
We are both happy to change the topic to something else. For a while, Liam helps me figure out what is what, and we try to understand why she pinpointed those buildings in particular. As it turns out, a lot of them are actually important buildings in the city overall, like the two hospitals, the cemetery, a few parks, and buildings. Some are related to Nora or Selena and the packs they were raised in too, or the Blacks Brothers' past like the cemetery their mother lies in, or the docks his older brother apparently used to work at, the same one we ate at for lunch…
"So you recognize everything," I sigh.
"Yep. I grew up here, Mara, what were you expecting?"
