“Okay.”
“Now gently reach out, barely brushing their minds, and look through the lenses.”
Lily thought about Tristan, Breakfast, and Una and ever so softly looked. “Oh my God,” she gasped, sticking out her arm and grabbing on to Rowan’s jacket to balance herself. What she saw was a sweeping, panoramic 3-D view of one particular place in the woods. It was bobbing up and down as the three of them walked.
“Okay, stop,” Rowan said, trying not to laugh. “You don’t know how to integrate what you’re seeing yet, and I don’t want you to throw up.”
Lily disentangled her mind and regained her balance. “That was freaky.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said, his eyes momentarily darkening as they usually did when he referenced Lillian.
“Can you do this with your stone kin?” Lily asked.
“No. Only witches have enough control over the minds of their claimed to make a mosaic. And you can make one for any moment in time. You can skip through the minds of your claimed at”—he waved a hand, making it up as he went along—“noon two weeks ago, and watch one person run through a crowd of them, like you’re following alongside that running person. All you need is for that person to keep running past people you have claimed.”
“I can spy on people who I haven’t claimed by using my claimed like surveillance cameras?” she asked, starting to feel uncomfortable with this ability.
“Yes. Your claimed don’t even have to be aware of the person running past. They don’t need to actively remember an incident—it could be background noise to them—but as long as they were there at noon two weeks ago, an imprint of it is somewhere in their willstones, and you can find it.”
“I can access memories people don’t even know they have?”
“Yes.”
“That’s—” Lily broke off, stunned. “The word ‘wrong’ doesn’t seem to be strong enough in this instance.”
“It’s very useful,” Rowan said with a shrug. “Say someone kidnapped a child in the Swallows at sometime between four and eight last Wednesday,” he said, making up another hypothetical time and place. “You could find that child and see who took her by using the memories of your claimed who happened to be in the Swallows at that time. Even if they weren’t aware that the girl was being kidnapped, if it occurred somewhere in their field of vision, you can filter it out and find it. Mind mosaics can save lives.”
“But it’s like being Big Brother,” Lily sputtered, horrified. Rowan obviously didn’t get the reference. “I’m not asking permission, and my claimed never know it happened. That violates their basic right to privacy,” she explained. Lily couldn’t understand how Rowan could be so accepting of this.
“Absolute privacy is one of the things you agree to give up when you let a witch claim you,” he replied, a little confused by Lily’s outburst. “Lily, you saw some of my most intimate memories when you claimed me. You knew this was how it worked.”
“Yeah, but that was unavoidable. And claiming is a one-time thing.”
“Most witches don’t see it that way. If they want general information—not an entire specific memory, okay? We’re just talking about snapshots in time. If a witch wants to see what a group of her claimed has seen, she usually just takes it from their minds.”
“Well, in the world where I grew up that’s totally wrong.”
He stared at her for a while. The look he had on his face made him seem younger than usual.
“What?” Lily asked, half a smile tugging at her lips. “Why the goofy look?”
“You’re just cute,” he said, wrapping an arm around her neck and kissing the top of her head.