Considered a rare offshoot of the F ability, backsight, her mind recited, bore enough similarities to the kind of telepathy utilized by Justice Psy that there was continuing debate within academic circles as to its proper placement. The most significant difference between the two designations was that unlike the J-Psy, those in subdesignation B did not go into a living mind and retrieve a particular memory.
Rather, they could be hit by flashes about the past without warning, independent of their physical proximity to the locations or individuals involved—though, like their F brethren, a B could “prime”
her mind to seek knowledge about a particular past event. And similarly to a J, they could project the entire piece of backsight to another mind. As a result, one of their uses was that at times, they could act as witnesses to events that left no survivors. Subdesignation B had also been consulted in situations where critical data had been lost due to a sudden injury or accident.
“Testing,” she added as the facts continued to scroll in her mind, “puts me at 8.1 on the Gradient.”
Kaleb nudged her forgotten glass and waited until she’d drunk half of the cherry-flavored supplement before saying, “Those were your stats at sixteen, but you hadn’t plateaued and been assigned your permanent position on the Gradient. I’d guess you’re now between 9.5 and 9.7.”
“Is that why you want me?” she asked, the tears inside her forming into an aching knot. “For my backsight?”
The clean line of his jaw caught her eye as he spoke, her fingers spreading on the table. “I have no use or need of a B.”
His words gave her pause, her mind on the dangerous shadow ability that existed below her backsight and, unbeknownst to those who had tested her, was the true reason for her position on the Gradient. Her backsight was, at most, only a 3 on the scale used to measure psychic ability. However, the error didn’t speak to the skills of the testing staff but to the stealthy nature of what existed inside her—to the extent that she herself hadn’t become aware of it until she was twelve. And then, she’d learned to hide it, because it made her a target.
“If you don’t need my backsight,” she said to Kaleb, “then why am I here?” Regardless of her question, she was dead certain he knew what she could do—there could be no other reason he’d gone to such lengths to find and capture her.
The black depths of his eyes devoid of stars once more, an endless night that threatened to suck her under, he rose to his feet and, placing his hands on the table, leaned toward her until she could’ve reached out and run her fingers along his freshly shaven jaw. “You are here,” he said in a tone that made her heart thump wildly against her ribs, “because you belong to me.”
TEN minutes later, Sahara sat on the edge of the bed that was her own, Kaleb’s words gleaming against the wall of her mind. They made as little sense now as they had when he’d spoken them. One thing, however, was patent.
She was not free to leave this house. Neither was she free to enter the PsyNet.
Considering those facts in the abnormal calm that insulated her from her perilous situation, she decided she didn’t want to do either at present. The instant she slipped outside the obsidian of Kaleb’s mental protection, she exposed her naked, vulnerable mind. Further, she had no idea of where she’d go, what she’d do upon escaping him. As proven by the hazy distance between her and her emotions—until it felt as if she were looking out at the world through a wall of water—her mind remained bruised, her thinking processes flawed.
NightStar.
An option for sanctuary, except, with her fragmented memory centers, she had no way of knowing if her clan hadn’t in fact worked hand in glove with her captors to harness her ability to their own ends, giving her up to soul-destroying loneliness. The guards in her prison hadn’t seen her as an individual, hadn’t even seen her as a sentient being. She’d simply been a task, nameless and without identity.
Had one shown her even the smallest kindness, would the labyrinth have begun to unravel? Sahara would never know, because the instant the individual in charge of her incarceration had discovered the labyrinth—too late to halt the process—her normal guards, who occasionally spoke to her, had been replaced by men and women so icily Silent it had never occurred to them to deviate from their assigned duties . . . whether those duties were to force-feed her or to strip her to the skin while lowering the room temperature to freezing.
Kaleb, in contrast, had thus far done nothing to cause her harm. He’d given her privacy, free access to clean clothing and a shower, as well as food that made her taste buds sing and her parched soul shudder. Neither had he commented on or challenged her broken Silence. It would be stupid and premature to leave his protection until she was in a better mental state, able to judge friend from foe.
As for Kaleb himself . . . the responses he aroused in her were raw, disturbing, painful. Even now, the knot of tears lay rigid against her breastbone, as if simply waiting for her to surrender to an emotion that was wholly without reason. To cry for Kaleb, she would have to know him, and he was a stranger . . . who knew she adored cherry-flavored drinks and that she felt the cold more acutely than most people. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the entire sprawl of the house was now at a temperature she found most comfortable.
Taking a deep breath in an effort to fight the compulsion to go to him, to demand answers to questions she couldn’t articulate, she picked up the book he’d given her the previous night and decided to walk to the terrace. The sunshine, the cool autumn wind, she craved it against her skin . . .
as she craved contact with another living being, her body starved for far more than food.
Her thoughts scattered when she caught the fleeting reflection of a woman with a tangled dark mane. Blinking, she stared at the window, but it wasn’t the best mirror and only served to frustrate.
Since her room had no mirrors—a vague memory of shattered glass, shards slicing a fine, bright line across her cheek—she walked back down the corridor and entered the room across from her own.
The clean, fresh scent of soap and aftershave that held a hint of pine.
Since Kaleb had left the door open, she decided it wasn’t off-limits and continued deeper inside, placing the book on the bed while she explored. Barren of anything but the bed and a small bedside table, the closet built into the wall opposite the sliding doors that led out onto the terrace, the room was military neat, not a single piece of clothing or other ephemera scattered around.
The bathroom was the same, Kaleb’s personal grooming gear stored efficiently inside the mirrored cabinet above the granite countertop that housed the sink. Fascinated, she picked up his aftershave, drew in the scent that made her skin ache, then examined the slick black device he used to shave, unable to imagine the ice-edged man who considered her his doing such an intimate act.
Touching her hand to her own jaw, she thought back to when he’d leaned over her in the kitchen. It had taken every ounce of her will not to brush her fingers over the hard angles of his face.
It had been so long.
She shook off the bone-piercing thought, knowing it to be a creation of her damaged mind. A cardinal Tk would have had no reason to be in the circumference of her life as a girl—NightStar was famously insular, and Tks were trained in special schools for reasons of safety. No, she had never touched Kaleb Krychek, regardless of what might be termed the birth of a dangerously obsessive compulsion toward the man who was effectively her jailer.
Putting the shaver back in its spot, her fingers lingering longer than they should have, she closed the cabinet doors . . . and looked at who she’d become. At sixteen, she’d had a little more fat in her cheeks, a softer curve to her jaw. Right now, she was all bone. Her increased calorie intake would ensure a return to a healthier appearance—but not to the extent that she’d carry the baby fat in her cheeks again. The finer line of her face was a natural result of adulthood and she liked it.
Her hair, however . . .
Taking a tangled hunk, she brought it to her nose, caught the scent of citrus and something softer.
So, she hadn’t imagined taking a shower and scrubbing her hair three times over. Clean though it was, it was also knotted to the point of making her appear a madwoman— “That was the goal.” The labyrinth had been only part of her plan to hide herself from those who would turn her into a trained animal poised to perform on command. “It’s not necessary any longer,” she whispered and clawed back another piece of herself.
Chapter 6
IT TOOK SERIOUS concentration, her arms aching by the end, but her hair hung straight and thick down her back an hour later, as she made her way through the house again. Peeking inside the large room situated right beside the main doors to the terrace, she saw Kaleb sitting at a desk. In front of him was a transparent—from her point of view—computer screen apparently functioning in comm mode.
Steel—platinum?—cuff links at his wrists and a tie of chrome blue at his throat now, a sharp contrast to his white shirt, he was focused on someone on the other side of the screen, but he curled his fingers to her in a “come in” motion. Drawn toward him on a level that threatened to overpower her ability to reason, until it felt as if they were connected by an invisible thread, she walked in.
His desk was a hunk of highly polished wood, the edges jagged, as if the roots of a forest giant had been cut in slices then smoothed, the flowing lines within telling the story of centuries past. It was beautiful, and not what she might have expected of him . . . but there was something in the primal nature of the choice that suited him. As did the bitterly clean surface of the desk, unmarred by even a single pen or piece of paper.
The walls opposite that desk held shelves that housed a number of expensive hard-copy books on a myriad of subjects, from changeling society to physics to construction manuals and geological research, with a number of separate volumes dealing with earthquakes and volcanoes.
She could understand the eclectic collection compiled by an intelligent mind, could even comprehend the reason a cardinal Tk might be interested in the movement of the tectonic plates— though the idea that he might have that much power made her heart stutter—but here and there on the shelves sat things jarring in their incongruity. Like a polished blue pebble beside the book on South American volcanoes. Lapis lazuli, she identified after rubbing the pebble between her fingertips.