Samantha could not stop thinking about him.
After escaping from the hospital that was a prison, she went home only long enough to change into her workout gear. She hit the street as dawn pinked the sky, and though her body cried for sleep, the only way she’d get any was to exhaust herself. She set off on a route that would take her through the park, where she could test herself on soft dirt paths and boulders, then along the riverfront and back home before the early-morning-rush traffic started.
Since starting at Wyrmwood, she’d shared perhaps a couple dozen conversations with Jed that weren’t related to his medication or treatment. The training and rules had been explicit and strict about having as little contact with the patients as possible. She’d rarely bent the rules and never enough to get any disciplinary action. There was no denying that she felt closer to him than she did any of the others, but she’d always chalked it up to the fact she’d been hired to save his life when the time came. Something like that would naturally lead her to be more...affectionate was not the right word, not even close. Concerned. Protective. Aware?
She ran harder, leaping a park bench with one foot on the seat and pushing off with the other on the back, then hitting the grass with her fingertips digging into the soft earth before she leaped again. It was ridiculous to think Jed had done anything to the guard. Though there’d been plenty of documentation about what he’d been capable of when he was younger, all the reports Vadim had given her said that Jed’s abilities had begun fading in late adolescence, becoming completely extinct over time.
It had happened with other members of the commune where he’d been born. Children born with psychokinetic or telepathic talents had been taken away from the Collins Creek farm under the guise of child protective services, but they’d been sent to places like Wyrmwood, not foster care. They’d been held, tested. Of those that had been released in adulthood, none of them had been reported as maintaining their abilities. Most of the ones the Crew had been able to track had suffered from the years of institutionalization. High rates of suicide and crime had followed. Jed was one of the last of the Collins Creek kids the Crew had been able to find.
She jumped up to grab a low-hanging tree limb and swung out, arching her back. Landing hard. She no longer smelled lavender, but the memory of it wouldn’t leave her. There’d been more than a few times when she’d thought she sensed Jed’s presence while she was at the desk, always looking up, expecting to see him there but finding only empty space. Sometimes, a joke would tickle its way into her head until she laughed aloud.
Maybe all of that had been Jed. He had come to her defense, not that she’d needed him to, with that moron Clement. Which meant that despite all the information Wyrmwood had been collecting on him, he wasn’t telekinetically dead.
But he was going to be physically dead if he didn’t reveal that truth to the Wyrmwood team, or if Samantha wasn’t able to get him out of there when Vadim gave the go-ahead. It would have to be soon, she thought, thinking of how drained Jed had looked when they’d brought him back to the room.
On the way home, she picked up a burner phone and sent off a text to the number she’d memorized.
How long?
Then she tossed the phone into a Dumpster and continued on home. She didn’t worry about how Vadim was going to answer her. He always found a way.
Persephone had stopped dreaming about Collins Creek a long time ago. If she did think about her childhood, it was only in a series of flashing memories she did her best to shove aside. She and her twin brother, Phoenix, had managed to escape when Wyrmwood attacked and took most of the children away. The two of them had grown up on the streets, running constantly from Wyrmwood’s scouts who’d found other survivors and made them disappear. The rumors about what was done to the Collins Creek children had circulated. Phoenix and Persephone had always managed to stay a few steps ahead of them, and in many ways the memories of the things they’d done to survive had been much worse than anything she could truly remember from her first ten years on the farm.
Now, though, she couldn’t stop herself from looking over her shoulder everywhere she went. She couldn’t prove the guy from this morning had been from Wyrmwood.
Twenty years had passed since the raid. Why would they suddenly be looking so hard now? Turning over in her bed, she thought of calling Vadim. He’d offered her and Phoenix sanctuary, but her brother had refused, not willing to throw in his lot with a group that, to him, seemed as likely to turn out to be as awful as Wyrmwood. Persephone had not been quite as convinced of that. She had, in fact, done a job or two for Vadim over the years. Never anything serious or long-term. The money was fantastic, but like her brother, she’d never wanted to commit to it.
Vadim would know if there was anything new going on with Wyrmwood, though. Restless, Persephone got out of bed and paced through her apartment, checking as always the exits. One door in, one door out. The only window a single transom on the alley side of the building. She could get through it if she had to, but her real escape was the service elevator, a dumbwaiter, in a closet off the kitchen.
Running through her escape plan calmed her a little, but she was still not going to sleep. She needed something else, and she knew exactly where to find it. She dialed a familiar number.
“Leila? Girl, what are you up to?”
Leila was up to going out and causing trouble, as she almost always was. Persephone didn’t hang out with her very often for just that reason—any kind of trouble Leila wanted to get into usually ended up bad. She didn’t have the sense of self-preservation that Persephone had, or even Phoenix, who admittedly could be way less worried about keeping his ass out of the fire. Leila’s skill was in counting. Her brain was an abnormally brilliant calculator that could figure the most complex equations with little more than a blink or two. She had not yet managed to use this Collins Creek–created skill for much of anything, though. Maybe she never would.
Still, it was good to get out, go dancing. Get a little drunk. Grind on a handsome guy or two or three. Persephone and Leila hit the town, dressed to...well, not to kill, Persephone thought absently as she scanned the crowed for likely prey. She never wanted to kill anyone ever again.
All at once, there he was from across the room. Kane Dennis, the cop who lived in Persephone’s building. He was the one with the hot water problem. He was leaning against the back wall, a cup of beer in his hand. Scanning the room, back and forth, as though he were looking for something. Or someone. It didn’t look like he’d seen her yet.
She began to layer herself, homing in on his mind. One at a time, that was the only way she could do this. He would have no idea that he was looking at a different woman from the one everyone else could see.
“I’m glamouring for that guy,” Persephone said to Leila with a discreet point toward Kane. “You’ll be okay here?”
Leila was already tonsils-deep into a make-out session with a guy she’d picked up a few minutes before, and waved Persephone away. Why, exactly, Persephone was doing this when there was a club full of dudes she didn’t have to see in front of the mailbox every morning, she could not say. Only that he was there and she was here, and a curling flicker of need was rising inside her that she wanted to sate.
Maybe it was because he was a cop. She would be safe. If someone broke in and tried to take
