against him, allowing myself to sink into the magic of his body, so sure, so perfect, so right that it made me wonder why I’d ever felt anything other than the incredible need to be with this man, to allow myself to—
The doors of the penthouse conference room opened with a bang, and Armaeus was suddenly five feet away from me.
Literally, five feet away, looking cool and unmussed as the Fool of the Arcana Council burst into the room with a laptop and a pile of printouts bristling in his grasp.
“I dove in as soon as I got your message,” Simon said. He grinned at me as he strode forward. “How’d the hairpin work out for you in Germany?”
“Perfectly,” I said. I could do cool. I could do unmussed. “How about five more of them?”
“I can do that.” He beamed as he dumped his materials on the conference room and spread them out. Today he was wearing his usual knit cap, this one decorated with Day of the Dead skulls adorned with fat pink roses. Beneath, his wiry hair stuck out in all directions around his lean, pale face. He’d poured his slender body into a knit hoodie, ragged-hemmed jeans and Chucks, and he fairly bounced with energy. “Went low-tech to do the research on this one. It seemed…I don’t know, less rude. Given they’re kids and all.”
I recovered and looked down at where he was pointing. The posters had been recreated with exacting detail, all of them except mine. Six children stared at me from the table with their camera-happy faces. Beneath each, Simon dropped blown-up photographs of the age-progressed images.
“A few anomalies right off the bat. As you noticed, that’s not a computer-generated background behind these kids, and they haven’t been Photoshopped onto other images. These are all complete photos. And they’re photos , not computer graphics. The lighting shifts in each of them, and the quality is flawed in nonstandard areas, suggesting a snapshot. Their expressions match that theory as well.”
“So where are they?” I squinted, trying to get anything from the painted concrete wall behind the faces. “Someone simply lined them up and took their pictures? That’s a pretty basic wall. For all we know, they could be in a prison somewhere.”
“Maybe, but if they are, they don’t know it.” Simon tapped keys on his laptop and hit return. The image on his screen reappeared on the table in front of us. It was the face of the youngest girl, Mary, reimagined as if she was Pinhead from Hellraiser . “The human face is a map of trackable muscle movements connected to emotional expression. Even faking a smile maps to a highly specific series of muscle movements and skin tone reactions that are significantly different from those affected by a natural smile.” He moved his cursor, and the pinpoints went away, leaving the smiling face of the older Mary Degnan, aged approximately seventeen. “This girl is smiling naturally. Her eyes are warm and engaging, her teeth are slightly mismatched, her face is turned slightly off center. She’s not posed. If I had to guess, I would say she was caught leaning against a wall, talking to her friends, and was called to attention for a quick camera shot.”
“She’s real, in other words,” I said.
“As real as can be.” He lined up two more photos as well. One of a boy, the other a girl, both of them tilted slightly toward the other. I hadn’t noticed that before. “The camera angle is such that the movement is cut off, but these two almost certainly had their arms over each other’s shoulders, looking out toward the camera as a unit. Though they aren’t looking at each other, their smiles mimic each other’s, implying either a romantic relationship or a longtime friendship. A sibling relationship could also be indicated, and though the subjects aren’t related, forced proximity for ten years could result in that kind of a bond.”
I winced. “Okay, this is getting a little Flowers in the Attic for me.”
“But notice
The doors of the penthouse conference room opened with a bang, and Armaeus was suddenly five feet away from me.
Literally, five feet away, looking cool and unmussed as the Fool of the Arcana Council burst into the room with a laptop and a pile of printouts bristling in his grasp.
“I dove in as soon as I got your message,” Simon said. He grinned at me as he strode forward. “How’d the hairpin work out for you in Germany?”
“Perfectly,” I said. I could do cool. I could do unmussed. “How about five more of them?”
“I can do that.” He beamed as he dumped his materials on the conference room and spread them out. Today he was wearing his usual knit cap, this one decorated with Day of the Dead skulls adorned with fat pink roses. Beneath, his wiry hair stuck out in all directions around his lean, pale face. He’d poured his slender body into a knit hoodie, ragged-hemmed jeans and Chucks, and he fairly bounced with energy. “Went low-tech to do the research on this one. It seemed…I don’t know, less rude. Given they’re kids and all.”
I recovered and looked down at where he was pointing. The posters had been recreated with exacting detail, all of them except mine. Six children stared at me from the table with their camera-happy faces. Beneath each, Simon dropped blown-up photographs of the age-progressed images.
“A few anomalies right off the bat. As you noticed, that’s not a computer-generated background behind these kids, and they haven’t been Photoshopped onto other images. These are all complete photos. And they’re photos , not computer graphics. The lighting shifts in each of them, and the quality is flawed in nonstandard areas, suggesting a snapshot. Their expressions match that theory as well.”
“So where are they?” I squinted, trying to get anything from the painted concrete wall behind the faces. “Someone simply lined them up and took their pictures? That’s a pretty basic wall. For all we know, they could be in a prison somewhere.”
“Maybe, but if they are, they don’t know it.” Simon tapped keys on his laptop and hit return. The image on his screen reappeared on the table in front of us. It was the face of the youngest girl, Mary, reimagined as if she was Pinhead from Hellraiser . “The human face is a map of trackable muscle movements connected to emotional expression. Even faking a smile maps to a highly specific series of muscle movements and skin tone reactions that are significantly different from those affected by a natural smile.” He moved his cursor, and the pinpoints went away, leaving the smiling face of the older Mary Degnan, aged approximately seventeen. “This girl is smiling naturally. Her eyes are warm and engaging, her teeth are slightly mismatched, her face is turned slightly off center. She’s not posed. If I had to guess, I would say she was caught leaning against a wall, talking to her friends, and was called to attention for a quick camera shot.”
“She’s real, in other words,” I said.
“As real as can be.” He lined up two more photos as well. One of a boy, the other a girl, both of them tilted slightly toward the other. I hadn’t noticed that before. “The camera angle is such that the movement is cut off, but these two almost certainly had their arms over each other’s shoulders, looking out toward the camera as a unit. Though they aren’t looking at each other, their smiles mimic each other’s, implying either a romantic relationship or a longtime friendship. A sibling relationship could also be indicated, and though the subjects aren’t related, forced proximity for ten years could result in that kind of a bond.”
I winced. “Okay, this is getting a little Flowers in the Attic for me.”
“But notice
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