“The corona and the tendril of shard-ness that the shard extends to the person are kind of the real-time location tracking. It’s as if they’ve got a hand on your shoulder, and if you travel halfway across the world, their hand still on your shoulder, they have an intuitive sense of where you are. With some exceptions and special cases in there. But the DNA? That’s the bar-code for the verification check.”

“I’m supposed to put my DNA inside them?” Rain asked.

I looked at Sveta, who was next to me, raising a hand to draw her attention to the line. She only nodded solemnly.

“That sounds way more kiss than kill,” Tristan said.

“Huh?” Rain asked.

“I’m pretty sure Rain doesn’t like boys that much,” Lookout said.

“Oh, ugh,” Rain said. He looked at Tristan. “Um, not ugh because boy-boy, but because Cradle.”

“I get it.”

“Also, pretty sure Love Lost is twice as old as I am.”

“I can’t believe I got Capricorn’s line before Precipice did,” Lookout said.

Tattletale butted in, “You’re getting ahead of yourselves, little miss precocious especially, you’re about three years too early to be getting that.”

“Two years maybe,” Lookout said.

“Whatever. Back to the subject at hand. Step one is confusing the signal,” Tattletale said. “Location? Close proximity, for a long period of time. Think staying within arm’s reach for days, even weeks. Probably with no interruptions, breaks, or time apart.”

“The Lady in Blue got one member of her cluster back and the transfer was immediate,” I said.

“Signal was already confused. The means of transferring power were already established. When shards kick down doors, through second triggers, some trump effects, whatever, the doors never go back to the way they were.”

“So step one is kidnapping someone and keeping them close for a long time,” Rain said.

“I can see why Foil wasn’t interested,” I said. “Sleeping next to March for a long while?”

Tattletale smiled. “Step two? DNA. When they check their paperwork and see that one person has four different powers, they check the bar-code. You want them to get the wrong ones and kick down the doors. The go-to method seems to be a blood transfusion. That’s if you’re lucky enough to be compatible. If you’re not, then you can try doing the Bathory thing, go full cannibal, you can try other things to confuse the signal like borrowing skin or other tissues, or you can be patient, and hope the signal confusion occurs without you going that far, though by the time you’ve spent weeks with someone like that, you might be ready to end it and wrap yourself in their skin, bathe in their blood instead.”

“Jesus,” Tristan said.

Tattletale shrugged. “Helps if you leave the other guy weak as part of what you’re doing. Means they can’t fight it, they dwindle, and you grow comparably.”