sanity. “I could be a while. You okay to hold the shield?”
“I can do it twenty-four hours a day if necessary,” Tag said. “Kid’s not fighting me—doesn’t know how. But I have to remain within a certain radius.”
“Can Tiara spell you?”
Tag turned his head but not before Dev glimpsed the dark red flush along the tops of his cheekbones. “She just got on an airjet from Paris.”
Glen’s eyes lit up with unholy glee. “You must be looking forward to catching up with her.”
“I’ll beat you both up if you don’t shut it.”
Glad for the tiny burst of amusement, even if it came nowhere close to easing the ice around his soul, Dev walked into Cruz’s room, shutting the door behind himself. The boy was curled up on his side, his ten-year-old body much smaller than it should’ve been.
His hair was dark and silky—and cut in a bowl shape that would’ve sent most kids howling to their moms. But Cruz didn’t have a mom to complain to. And, until the past few hours, he probably hadn’t even realized what he looked like. Now, the boy’s huge, dark eyes followed Dev as he grabbed a chair and pulled it forward so he was sitting at Cruz’s bedside. That was when he got the first shock.
Glen had said Cruz’s eyes were human. They weren’t. This close, Dev saw the odd flicker of dark gold in the depths of the near-black irises. Extraordinary. Why had no one noticed? Thinking back, he found the answer—it was possible the drugs had messed Cruz up so completely his gaze had gone dull, too.
“I’m Dev,” he said, and waited. Cruz was a ghost to his psychic senses, so slight as to be nonexistent.
The boy didn’t say a word.
Smiling, Dev took a different tack. “You’re not going to believe this, but I was once your age. If I’d had that haircut inflicted on me, I’d have done serious damage to the hairdresser.”
A blink. Nothing else.
“You want me to organize someone to fix it?”
Another blink, but slower this time.
Dev grinned. “Or you could keep it. Women seemed to find it cute on a kid. You’ll probably get spoiled half to death.”
Cruz raised a hand to his hair, pulling it forward as if to see the color. “My mom used to cut my hair.” His voice was quiet. . . and full of a vicious psychic power he had no ability to control.
CHAPTER 21
Katya had been through every room of the apartment. It was a generous space—bedroom, bathroom, and a kitchenette that flowed off the wide main living area. But there was no getting out of it except through the front door, no avenues of escape whatsoever. Even the knives in the kitchen were small, barely sharp enough to cut fruit.
Devraj Santos was not a stupid man.
At least, she thought, trying to find a silver lining, he respected her skills enough to put her in a place from which only a teleporter might be able to escape. Too bad that wasn’t part of her psychic skill set.
Another piece of memory slotted into the jigsaw that was her mind.
Her eyes widened. “Of course.” She’d been ignoring the very thing that made her different, that made her unique. Yes, she was a telepath—level 4.5 on the Gradient. That meant she was—just—a midrange Tp-Psy. She was also a Gradient 4.9 M-Psy.
Two midrange abilities.
What she’d just realized was that a person with two midrange abilities could sometimes create an amplification effect—usually on only one of the abilities. However, that effect was so unpredictable that it could be hidden by the user—and she’d hidden hers; otherwise, she would’ve been pressed into a very different kind of service.
That’s why, she thought, seeing a complete chunk of her past in one clean sweep, she and Ashaya had worked so well together in their rebellious activities—Katya had been able to get messages out to almost everyone in the resistance. Because when she exercised her ability to amplify, her Tp skills went from 4.5 to 9 on the Gradient.
And a level 9 telepath could talk to pretty much anyone she wanted. But—she frowned—she hadn’t, not for those last months. Why? Her hands lifted to her head, the heels of palms pressing against her temples.
A dart of pain, but it pulled the memory with it.
Katya staggered as her mind ricocheted back to the present. Ashaya had been right—the shadow-man. . .
A moment of paralysis. “No.” She tilted her chin, forced herself to breathe.
If she let fear stop her, he would have truly won. She had to go forward believing her actions were her own, trusting that she’d somehow risen from the ashes, begun to reform her personality, become the phoenix that lived in her soul.
Surely,
Taking a deep breath, she relaxed into an armchair and closed her eyes. Usually when she used Tp, she was aiming for a specific destination—a particular mind. But, as a telepath, she could also “hear” others if she opened her senses. However, like most of her designation, she kept that aspect of her mind locked tight the majority of the time—even in the PsyNet, there were individuals whose shields leaked a constant flow of thought. Multiply that irritation by thousands and you had a recipe for madness.
