didn’t realize anyone thought differently until she went to live in Manhattan with her grandparents. There, during the Serials, identifying and killing empaths grew to be a popular sport. At least on the Planetoids she wouldn’t be dragged into the bushes and bashed for who she was, no matter how nervous she made them. In fact, some people appreciated her talents.
Alex, for one, who was a highly skilled empath in his own right. He had the arts of the Adept, which allowed him to see through days in ways she couldn’t. Time unfolded for him differently, which might explain his supreme patience, and the way his eyes sometimes shifted focus to see beyond the walls she tried to build against him. Spider Magus, she called him, weaving multilayered webs of finely interconnected lines, then waiting within them to see what would fall his way. In spite of that, she’d come to see him as trustworthy in almost all areas.
Almost all. There were still one or two places where the jury was out.
She didn’t knock on his office door before she entered, and it took him a few minutes to realize someone was in the room with him.
He looked up from his files and saw her standing there, dressed in a black jumpsuit, sleek and shining as the cat whose name she bore. She held her hands palm up toward him.
“What?” she asked.
He gestured at the chair on her side of the desk. She coiled herself into it, leaned back and raised her legs, resting the heels of her boots on the corner of his desk.
He tossed her a file folder. “Your next case. Let me know what you think.”
She opened it and read.
He sat and watched her, swiveling his chair back and forth, taking in the sheen of honey in her walnut hair as it slipped like silk over her shoulders, enjoying the motion of her hand as she curled it behind her ear. Her face remained neutral, even when she lifted it and stared beyond him, considering what she’d just read.
She paid no attention to him when she focused on her work. He could caress her hair, or kiss the back of her neck and she wouldn’t notice. He enjoyed the notion, and turned it this way and that in his mind as he continued to stare.
Recently he’d made it clear that he wanted to share more with her than work and the empathic arts. It was equally clear she wasn’t ready to risk what that would mean. He knew why. She could acquire lovers anywhere, but a trustworthy friend and a supervisor she could actually work with were rare commodities in her world.
He wouldn’t pressure her. His innate courtesy, the respect he had for her and for himself prevented that. Besides, he understood that people fell just as hard when they tripped over their own feet. Lately, he had the sense she was keeping a close watch on hers, as she walked around the question in ever-widening circles.
When she was done reading, she flipped the folder closed and slid it back across the desk to him.
“What did you read, Dr. Addams?” he asked.
As was their custom, she fed him back the information she’d picked up from the file, in lucid and succinct form.
“We’ve got three new female prisoners, from the same Connecticut town. Three homicides, all bizarre enough that the women are being called the Death Sisters. They have no previous criminal record, and their testing routines show none of the core complex of fears usually associated with their crimes. And their cortical scans show a positive slewing of beta weights.”
“What’s that tell you?” he asked.
“Long version, or cut to the chase?”
“Cut to the chase, by all means. Then we’ll go back and fill in the gaps.”
She turned her gaze fully up to him. He felt the pull of her eyes, as she drew him into subvocal conversation, where it would be more difficult for him to evade or hide.
You plan on handing me the ticking bomb?
She’d already leaped ahead of him by six or seven steps. No surprise there. She knew what this was.
Not quite yet, Jaguar.
A moment of silence while she made deeper empathic contact, probing his words, his tone, the shape and texture of his mind, sniffing out hidden agendas or dangers.
Empathic contact was different than simple telepathic communication. The empath shared experience directly with the person they were in contact with. It could be uncomfortable, like running through a rainstorm skinless, or a dream where you’re not sure if you’re falling or flying. Your emotions and thoughts and soul were not your own during the interaction. At such times, your only control was your capacity to block, or your willingness to consent to an absence of control. Alex believed that was why most people didn’t practice the arts, though they could be learned with varying levels of skill by anyone who made the effort. But the necessary trust, the fearless relinquishment of control, and the quiet discipline it took to practice them well took too much time, patience, and moral courage for most people to bother with.
Jaguar was the most skilled empath he’d ever met, and this made contact with her easier, but sometimes she stalked him the way a cat stalked new territory, measuring all of him against the blade edge of her suspicions. He was willing to let her, but the feel of her investigation was pretty damn intense. As if an angel raked his face with taloned fingers and asked him if it hurt. Can pleasure hurt? Is desire painful? He’d withstand both her inner and outer gaze, but she had to know it was a form of exquisite torture to him.
Jaguar, is licking my soul really necessary?
The motion of her investigation ceased. Her brief laughter moved through him and exited smoothly. She sat across from him, looking all business except for the shadow of a grin that disappeared before it could be remarked on.
“The women have phase psychosis,” she said out loud. “Exogenous. They’ve been exposed to Artemis compounds. Nothing else explains both the beta weight anomalies and their crimes.”
Alex rubbed at his chin. Okay, he thought. She read it just like he did. Now he’d take it for a test run.
“Manufacture or possession of Artemis compounds is illegal except in restricted research settings,” he said judiciously.
“Right,” she replied. “And I know a lot of pigs with little pink wings, too.”
He bit back on a smile. “Even if someone is manufacturing Artemis, there’s no absolute proof that it causes Phase Psychosis.”
“You need to hear me say it, Alex? I’ll oblige. When moon mining was legal, crime rates for women who lived near the processing plants went up almost 20 percent. Most of them used the same defense these three women did – exigent PMS or post-partum depression - and the medical tests proved them right. The term Phase Psychosis means maxxed out trouble in hormonal phases, and we haven’t seen anything like these women since they banned lunar mining.”
“And that’s your proof?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But you are.”
He folded his hands. Waited.
“Why take me off training exercises if you don’t think it’s Artemis?”
“Maybe because I count on you
