She almost spewed coffee all over the table. "There are snake changelings?"
"Why wouldn't there be?" He refilled her cup. "They're rare, but they exist."
"You think a bunch of snakes created those caves?" She shivered, recalling all those times she'd been alone in them.
"Changeling snakes, Talin." A reprimand. "No more or less animal than I am."
She bit her lower lip, feeling about five years old. But this was Clay, so she admitted the truth. "I can't help it. Leopards are dangerous, beautiful. Snakes are creepy."
"I think the snake changelings would disagree." He leaned back in his chair, a predator at ease in his territory.
She felt his foot touch the rung of her chair, knew it to be a possessive act. But she was having too much fun to call him on it. "Are they as human?" She scrunched up her nose at his scowl. "You know what I mean. When you walk, it's with this feline grace. What do they take from their animal?"
His lips curved again, full, tempting. "Calling me graceful, Tally?"
"I'll call you vain in a minute." But he was graceful, lethally so.
Both his feet touched her chair now. "Snakes are very...other. They tend to scare people on a visceral level, even when in human form. But that makes them no less human."
"No," she agreed, thinking of how the world judged her children.
"A long time ago, I saw one after she shifted. She had black-diamond scales that shimmered like an oil slick does in the rain - full of rainbows."
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 underprivileged 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."