his mind. Eerie opened her eyes, and they were close enough that he could see his own reflection there, his own dazed and hungry face. For once, he didn’t have to wonder what she saw. The world spun and danced pleasantly as he lay beside Eerie, pressed together on the small space of the couch.
“Wow. That’s just…”
Eerie laughed, a sound like small glass bells breaking.
“That is how you make me feel,” she said, sounding satisfied. “That is how I know I like you. You can feel it now, too, can’t you?”
“I can,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure what to make of it. It isn’t like before, in San Francisco.”
“We aren’t like before,” Eerie said firmly. “You aren’t.”
Alex lay there, watching little multicolored motes of light consume the ceiling, filling his vision with self- devouring, brilliant fractals. He kissed her neck, and her sweat tasted like honey and the ocean, and her skin smelled of sandalwood. When he touched her thighs, her tights crackled with static electricity.
“Once I am back from field study, will you take me dancing again?” Eerie asked, clinging to him.
“Sure,” he said easily. He would have agreed to anything she asked.
“But this time you have to dance,” she ordered, her eyes sparkling playfully.
“How could I ignore you, Eerie?” He spoke softly, feeling as if the couch were floating on the surface of a gently rocking ocean, as if his hand was trailing along in blood-warm water beside them. “What is wrong with me?”
He wondered if the music was still playing. He felt like it was, but somehow he couldn’t be certain. Eerie sat up, brushing her hair back from her face and looking at him with obvious concern.
“Do you feel better now?”
Alex was about to be confused, about to ask what she meant, when he realized that he did feel better. The heaviness, the confusion, the fog that had been following him for days, so ubiquitous that he had stopped even noticing it, was gone as it quickly as it had come. His head was brilliantly, marvelously clear, washed clean by the euphoria of their contact.
“Holy shit! This is so weird. I must have been half-asleep for days. How could I have not seen it?”
“You didn’t want to,” Eerie said, shrugging, and then laying her head down on his chest. “I don’t blame you. She’s pretty, and you feel guilty every time you see her. That’s okay, but it makes you stupid and easy.”
He should have known. He did know. Of course. How could it have been any other way? Alex remembered Emily holding his hand under the dinner table and felt a little queasy. However, on Eerie’s couch, her head tucked comfortably beneath his chin, her chest moving against his when she breathed, there was no possibility of anger, and there was no implied criticism. He felt shame, but that was entirely his own. Alex realized with startling clarity that the only person he had been failing was himself.
“Oh, God,” he said dully, his lips numb. “Eerie… I told them that I would go on vacation to Anastasia’s place over the break. With Emily.”
“Yeah, I know. Margot told me,” Eerie said, with an unconvincing shrug that he could feel more than he could see. “That’s okay. I have to go do field study in Central anyway, for the whole break. We wouldn’t be able to hang out anyway, even if you stayed. Besides, I trust you…”
“Why?”
He asked the question before he thought about it, and then it hung there, out in the air, in the space that he had suddenly created between them.
“Because I don’t think that I trust myself,” Alex continued hurriedly. “I don’t know even know why I’ve done the things I’ve done recently, and now I find out that maybe they weren’t even my ideas to begin with. What if Emily… What if things get all weird again?”
“It isn’t like that,” Eerie said quietly. “Emily gave you a little nudge, that’s all. She made it easier for you to do what you already wanted to. She is not enough of an empath to make you do something that is actually against your will. Now that you know what she was doing, you should be able to avoid it in the future.”
“Really?” Alex buried his face in her hair. “So, I am an asshole.”
“Sometimes,” Eerie said, her lips brushing his neck. “I like you anyway.”
“Why would Emily try and manipulate my emotions this way? She had to know I’d find out eventually.”
Alex had no idea why he felt compelled to ask the question. Eerie shrugged in response.
“Rebecca might be able to tell you exactly what happened, you should ask her,” Eerie suggested. “Alex is interesting. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“But what do they want?” Alex asked, puzzled, his hands resting comfortably on the flat of Eerie’s back, warm skin through a thin layer of cotton. “Why interfere with… you know. This. Us.”
“You keep talking that way, and I’m going to get ideas,” Eerie said, smiling.
That shut Alex right up.
“They all want you for their own reasons,” Eerie said mischievously, levering herself upright so she was sitting across his lap. “I’m not that different, I guess.”
“I don’t understand,” Alex said softly, looking at the blue-haired girl, surrounded by a corona of soft, honey- colored light, everything gone thick, sweet, and slow. He reached for her without thinking and she melted into him, into his arms as naturally as if she had always been there. “I don’t understand anything.”
“Stop trying,” Eerie suggested, kissing him, nibbling on his lip.
They stayed like that for a while, pressed together on the couch, their hands and lips exploring each other tentatively. Eerie smiled at him, and she looked soft and lovely in the flickering orange light…
Orange light?
Alex sat up slightly, so that he could look out the bedroom window that had also caught Eerie’s attention. It took him a little while to processing what he was seeing.
“Ah, Eerie? This may sound dumb, but is Anastasia’s house on fire?”
“Brennan?”
“Yes, milady?”
“Is Renton still occupied?”
“Yes, milady. He is currently engaged in combat near the dormitory buildings. There are currently three separate engagements happening across campus that we are aware of, and I am afraid he is at the epicenter of the largest. Shall I send reinforcements?”
“I doubt he needs the help. Warn me if he comes back this way. And get Katya on the channel for me.”
It took a moment for Brennan to manage the switchover, with another delay while he relayed the instructions. Brennan was not half the telepath that Renton was, but she was going to have get used to doing without his prodigious talents in the near future. Such a shame, she thought, clucking her tongue. What a waste.
Anastasia smoothed the billowing skirts of her dress carefully before she sat down, perched on a moderately level rock, careful not to stain or tear the fabric. She had worn the white dress because she knew Timor liked it, but now she rather wished that she had not. She had a good view from here, at the edge of the trees, so that she could watch Timor work under the moonlight. It wasn’t often, after all, that one had the opportunity to see a combat precognitive in action. Given the rare nature of their abilities, precognitives worked almost exclusively in support pools, but Timor was an exception. A Class C Operator, Timor had enough precognitive ability to see a bare second or two into the future. That was surely the reason that his parents had tithed him to the Black Sun, and that Anastasia’s father had in turn pawned Timor off on her. Fortunately, Anastasia saw value in what other people discarded. In combat, after all, a single second was an eternity, and Timor had learned to use his foreknowledge ruthlessly. She had helped him become deadly long before anyone had realized their mistake in casting him aside.
She was not overly worried about the attack itself. She had already warned Brennan, Svetlana had spirited away the staff, and both the Black Sun’s critical documents and her own wardrobe were safely locked away in fireproof safes. Still, Anastasia had to admit that she hadn’t expected anything quite as uncouth or mundane as the Molotov cocktail they threw at the roof.
“Oh, no,” she said, burying her head in her hands. “All my things…”
“Milady?”
“Yes, Brennan?”
