The Psy-Changeling Collection (133 page)

The image was startlingly beautiful. “If they were there, under the farm,” she asked, “why would they leave?”

“A hundred things—maybe the colony disbanded or they decided to migrate elsewhere.” He shrugged. “Now, tell me about the dead children.”

That quickly, their little interlude was over. No more talk about mysterious changeling snakes and the quaint beauty of corn-farming country. But his feet remained on the rung of her chair. Taking strength from that, she began at the beginning. “I left the Larkspurs at age sixteen to enroll in a scholarship program at NYU.” Somewhat to her shock, she had proven very bright once given a chance, so much so that she’d graduated the purgatory of high school two years ahead of schedule.

Clay sat with such feline stillness, she couldn’t even see him breathe. “You never gave the Larkspurs a shot, did you?”

“No.” The simplest and most painful of truths. “The scholarship was one provided by the Shine Foundation.” She looked up to see if he recognized the name.

“Human backed,” he said. “Financed by donations from a number of wealthy philanthropists.”

“Its aim,” she picked up, “is to support bright but under-privileged children who might never otherwise have a chance to shine. That’s what the brochure says and I guess they really
follow it. All the kids I look after are disadvantaged in some way.”

“What did you study?”

She folded her arms. “Child psych and social work.”

“You hated the social workers.”

“Ironic, huh?” She made a rueful face. “I thought I might be able to do a better job. But I never got into the system. I graduated at twenty-one, and was offered a position in the foundation’s street program.”

He didn’t push her to get to the point, and for that, she was grateful. She had to approach the horror obliquely, wasn’t sure she could survive full-frontal exposure. “We help get kids off the street and into school or training. Devraj—the director— makes sure there’s no corruption, no favoritism.”

“Sounds very worthy.” Open cynicism.

Her hackles rose. “It is! The foundation does so much, helps so many.” He had no right to mock them. “I work with the eleven-to-sixteen age group.”

“Tough crowd.”

“Tell me about it.” So proud, so unwilling to accept the helping hand she offered. “I get all sorts. Runaways, nice but poor kids, gang members who want out.”

“What’s your success rate?”

“About seventy percent.” The other thirty, the lost ones, they broke her heart, but she kept going. She couldn’t afford not to or the ones she
could
help would suffer.

“You said Mickey was yours.”

She gave a jerky nod. “So was Diana. She was found this week, around the same time as Iain. He belonged to one of my colleagues in San Francisco. Thirteen and already able to speak seven languages—can you imagine what he might’ve become?”

“Three Shine kids? Interesting coincidence.”

“Not really. The killers and the foundation work in the same pool—marginalized and vulnerable children.”

He nodded. “True.”

“And the other seven Max told me about were scattered across the country. None were Shine scholars.”

“So there’s no specific connection to San Francisco. Why come here?”

“To set up Jonquil. He’s fourteen, ex-gang. This was a new start.” Her voice broke.

Getting up, Clay walked around the table and tugged her to her feet. The simple contact destroyed her center of gravity even as it gave her courage. “Clay.”

“What happened to force you to come to me?”

The turbulence of his renewed anger was a wall between them. “I finally confirmed you really were here two weeks ago but—”
No
, she thought. Enough. Clay deserved absolute honesty, even if that meant she had to rip open every painful scar. “Jon disappeared.” And all she’d been able to think was that she needed Clay, the same thought she’d had a thousand times before. Except this time, he had been within reach.

He curved his hand around the side of her neck. “Why are you sure the killers have him? One of your feelings, Tally?”

A knot in her throat at the way he understood her without words. Nobody else ever had. “Yeah.” Instead of fighting the blatant possessiveness of his touch, she found herself leaning into it, soaking up the heated strength of him. “We had a fight before he ran away. I lost my temper, Clay.” She’d just had another small sign of her medical degeneration, had been so scared she’d run out of time to help that bright, hurt boy. “I took out my frustration on him.”

“Teenagers are good at getting on your last nerve.” Pragmatic. Oddly comforting. “So he was pissed at you?”

“Yes, but my gut says he would’ve contacted me by now if he had been able to—even if was to flip me off. He was no angel, but he was mine.” The things that boy had survived, the things he had done and still come out sane, it humbled her.

Clay’s hand tightened on her neck, warm, solid … suddenly dangerous. “When did this boy disappear?”

She didn’t move, though her mind wanted to panic at her vulnerability to this predator. “Four to seven days ago,” she said, trying to focus. “I traced him after the foster family reported him missing and had fairly reliable sightings for the next three days, then nothing. It’s like he vanished into thin air.”

Clay’s head lifted without warning. “We’ve got visitors.”

An odd kind of fear clamped over her chest and she could feel her heartbeat accelerate. “Your pack?” People who mattered to him, but wouldn’t necessarily like her. Probably wouldn’t.

“Yes.” Clay released her. “Wait here. And, Tally, try not to hyperventilate.” He was gone through the trapdoor in the blink of an eye, moving with inhuman speed—because, of course, he wasn’t human. He was changeling. He’d heard her racing heartbeat, smelled the sweat beading along her spine. Sometimes, she thought, being human sucked.

Unable to sit still, she cleared the table and was about to wipe it down when Clay called for her. Taking a deep breath and feeling very vulnerable, she went down, not looking up until she was standing beside Clay. As it was, she didn’t know which of the two strangers shocked her more.

CHAPTER 11

Even at rest,
leaning against the wall, the male—tall, dark, startlingly handsome—exuded a sense of lethal danger. Once you added in the savage clawlike markings on the right side of his face, well, it made her want to take a wary step back and hide behind Clay. Except she had a feeling that her long-ago playmate posed far more of a threat to her than this watchful stranger with eyes a paler shade of green than Clay’s.

Still shaky, she turned her attention to the woman who stood in the loose circle formed by the male’s arms. Black hair in a braid, skin a deep honey, and eyes of midnight with pinpricks of white. “You’re Psy.” Not just any Psy. A cardinal. Those eyes …

“I’m Sascha.” Her expression was guarded. She turned slightly. “My mate, Lucas.”

She recognized both names. Lucas Hunter was DarkRiver’s alpha, Sascha Duncan the daughter of Councilor Nikita Duncan. Talin had heard reports of Sascha’s defection from the Psy, but hadn’t credited them. “Nice to meet you,” she said at last, very aware that neither Sascha nor Lucas had made any overtures of friendliness.

Clay shifted to lay his hand against her spine. She went
stiff without meaning to and knew everyone had noticed. But he didn’t drop his hand, and for that, she was grateful. It was obvious his packmates didn’t approve of her. Usually she would’ve shrugged off their reaction, but this time it mattered. Because these people were important to Clay.

“Talin’s been told she’s sick,” he said to Sascha. “Can you check her out?”

Sascha’s eyes widened. It disconcerted Talin to see such open emotion on the face of a Psy, but not as much as when Sascha spoke and she heard the warmth and affection in it. “Clay, I’m not an M-Psy. I’m not sure—”

“Try.”

Lucas raised an eyebrow. “She gets mean when you give her orders.” Though his tone was amused, his eyes never moved off Talin.

She leaned more heavily into Clay’s hand.

“Please.”

Talin was still trying to swallow her shock at the word that had come out of Clay’s mouth when Sascha stepped out of her mate’s embrace. “Out. Both of you,” she said, imperious and clearly sure of her power. “I need to be alone with Talin.”

Lucas dropped a kiss in the curve of his mate’s neck, the action speaking of an intimacy that ran deep and true. Talin wondered what Clay’s lips would feel like against her own neck. She swallowed, inner muscles clenching. That was when Lucas raised his head, breaking the spell. “Come on,” he said to Clay. “I have to talk to you about something anyway.”

Clay scowled down at Talin before leaving. “Cooperate.”

“I take it you didn’t agree to let a strange Psy poke and prod at you?” Sascha’s tone was wry, but Talin didn’t drop her guard. This woman had no loyalty to her.

“No.”

“Would you like to tell me what he’s worried about?”

Since Clay already knew, she saw no harm in sharing the information. “An unknown disease is messing things up, maybe killing off cells, in my brain. I’ve had the diagnosis, such as it is, confirmed three times over.”

The cardinal’s face grew pensive. “Will you allow me to see if I can help?”

“He trusts you.” Another flood of jealousy. It made her feel
small, petty, but she couldn’t stop it—she had never been rational where Clay was concerned. “You’re Pack.”

Sascha sensed Talin’s
ambivalence, understood it. “Yes.” Clay was a leopard who chose the shadows even in the tight circle of the sentinels, but when it came down to it, they were tied together by a bond of deep, unflinching loyalty. “Yes,” she repeated.

The curvy brunette across from her bowed her head in a wary nod. “All right.”

But try as she might, Sascha found she could do less than nothing. “You have a shield.”

“What?” Talin frowned. “But I’m human.”

“True.” The lack of anything beyond the most basic shields was what made humans the weakest of the three races. That in mind, Sascha tried another push. “But not only do you have shields,” she said after being violently rebuffed, “they’re airtight.”

“I have no idea why that would be.”

Sascha raised her hand. “If you don’t mind …” The other woman didn’t pull away when Sascha went to touch her cheek. Often with changelings, contact made all the difference. But not with Talin. Breaking the connection, Sascha stepped back, her instincts telling her Talin didn’t like people too close. Yet it appeared she had already given Clay skin privileges. Intriguing.

“I’m no expert on human mental processes,” she said, “but your shields are, without a doubt, unusual. For some reason, your mind has learned to protect itself.” Her heart tripped a beat as her own words penetrated. She
had
heard of these kinds of shields before. They had been noted in an addendum to an old
Psy-Med Journal
article.

Conclusion: Low incidence in human population. No genetic components
.

The latter finding was probably why the Council hadn’t gone about eliminating the bearers of such shields. That and the fact that regardless of what the Psy did or didn’t do, these particular shields would always occur in a certain percentage of the human population. “The shields,” she continued, keeping
74her tone very gentle, “are so strong, you must’ve begun constructing them during childhood.”

“Why—” Talin froze.

Sascha could no more ignore the waves of emotion coming off her than she could stop breathing. Being an E-Psy meant she had the capacity to sense and neutralize hurtful emotion. It also meant she couldn’t just stand by when someone was in that much pain. Now she gathered up Talin’s self-hatred, revulsion, and anger—such incredible anger—in her psychic arms and absorbed it inside of herself. She had the gift to turn those destructive emotions harmless, but it hurt.

A few seconds later, Talin gave her a startled look. “What are you?” Not an accusation but the kind of innocent question a child might ask.

It surprised Sascha, given what she suspected this woman had endured. “An empath.” She explained what that meant. “I’m sorry if I intruded—I forget to ask sometimes.” The gift was too powerful, too instinctive.

“What a pure gift.” Talin’s face filled with something close to wonder. “Does that mean you’ll never be evil?”

“I’m as vulnerable to negative emotions as anyone,” Sascha admitted, “but the empathy won’t let them fester inside me.”

“Like I have?” Talin’s gaze was direct. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

Sascha felt a moment’s disorientation at the blunt clarity of that question. A sense of shame followed—after everything she had learned in the past year, it was criminal that she’d automatically equated human with weak. Talin was nothing if not strong. “It’s not a case of disliking you. I don’t know you—how can I judge you?”

“But?” Talin pushed, holding her body in a way that reminded Sascha of the vulnerable pride of the young males in the pack. However, Talin was no child—her emotions were too aged, too flavored with time.

“Clay is one of mine.” Even Sascha was surprised at the depth of protectiveness in her tone, an echo of what she so often heard in Lucas’s voice when he spoke of Pack. “He’s been choosing to walk alone more and more, and it worries me. I
was hoping his growing friendship with Faith would change things, bring him back to us.”

Talin swallowed, at once resentful of Sascha’s right to care about Clay and almost violently glad that he had friends who loved him with such fierce determination. “But now I’m pulling him under.”

“Clay leads, rarely follows.” The cardinal’s words were light, her eyes solemn. “But whatever you are to him, whatever demons you waken, they’re already blackening his emotions.”

Talin wanted to defend herself but knew Sascha was right—the things she brought with her were the very things Clay had left in the past. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Sascha’s gaze was piercing.

Talin felt her jaw tighten. “Don’t spy on my emotions.”

“I don’t have to.” The other woman tilted her head a fraction to the side. “You should see the way you watch him. Such hunger, Talin.”