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Bayani: Ran the sample through my fancy new gadget and got exactly nothing. That’ll teach me to shop late at night and fall for Internet ads about mobile geological survey devices with cutting-edge “diamond laser” tech.

Saoirse: Don’t worry. I tried to see if it’d hold against the shield disrupter we use to test the capacity of our aeronautical shields. I now have a lot of sand in the machine.

Bayani: Why are we like this?

Saoirse: We’re scientists.

—Messages in the Why Is the Canyon Weird investigation group (circa fall 2082)

Eleri stared at Adam. “How do you know Bram?”

“He came to grab your evidence—and threatened me with grievous bodily harm if I’d done anything to you,” Adam drawled with a grin. “You should give him a quick call so he doesn’t come after me.”

She’d all but forgotten that she’d asked Bram to act as courier; she appreciated her task force colleagues, but her relationship with Bram went far beyond trust. She’d wanted to see him, talk through her theories with him, just be in his presence, even if she could no longer feel what she once had when she was around him and the others.

The memory of emotion was enough.

“Bram’s…protective of us,” she said. “There are four of us—me, Bram, Saffron, and Yúzé. All Sensitives. All survivors of multiple reconditionings.”

Adam’s smile faded, his shoulders tight. “He’s not like you.”

“The damage doesn’t express in an identical way in each individual. Yúzé says it’s because the brain is so complex and that reconditioning, despite the Council’s claims to the contrary, was a blunt hammer that cut and bruised different parts with each unique pass.”

A tic in Adam’s jaw, his body so tense that she thought he would snap. But when he spoke, it wasn’t with anger. “They’re your family.”

“Yes.” She would put her life on the line for any of the Cartel, the emotional resonance so strong after all these years that she didn’t need to feel it today to accept it.

“I’ll make the call now. Bram won’t stop worrying until I do.

” She accessed her phone. “Oh, I have a hundred messages from Saffy. I’ll reply to her, too. ”

“Not Yúzé?”

“He’ll be with Saffron. They began to live together when…” She paused, her loyalty to the Quatro Cartel coming up against her need to share herself, share this precious and broken little family, with Adam.

“Saffy and Yúzé need each other,” she said at last. “It’s safer for them to live together.” So they could monitor one another, so Yúzé could ensure Saffron didn’t harm herself in her rages, and Saffron could keep an eye on Yúzé when he began to spiral in his quiet, dangerous way.

It worked because the two had chosen the arrangement of their own free will.

Eleri and Bram worried most about Yúzé even though Saffron was the more volatile.

Yúzé’s pain didn’t show; he just had a tendency to quietly investigate those who did evil without being noticed or seen, then he murdered them while sipping a cup of coffee in a café or walking past his target in the street.

Not so different from what Eleri or Bram or Saffron had done, but Yúzé couldn’t stop drawing memories once he started.

He’d once convinced himself he was a molester of the innocent after he’d siphoned another—viciously evil—man’s entire memory, and he would’ve slit his own throat if Saffron hadn’t literally knocked him unconscious with a kick to the head.

She’d been sobbing in the aftermath when she called Eleri, but she’d saved Yúzé’s life.

Now all Yúzé’s search history went automatically to the Quatro Cartel’s private chat, and he’d promised them he wouldn’t hunt on the PsyNet.

But Yúzé couldn’t always control his impulses, no matter how hard he tried, so Saffron and he had a debrief every night where he never lied to her, that a promise he’d made after he came to after the near-deadly incident to find Saffron inconsolable because she’d had to hurt him.

Saffy, in turn, was more stable because she fought to be stable for Yúzé.

Across from her, Adam nodded. “I get it. Many a falcon flies better, stronger, with a friend by his side. We all fall sometimes.”

Eleri’s entire self seemed to sigh. He did get it. Understood that at times, broken columns needed each other to prop them up.

After finishing the nutrients, she got up to make the call.

Adam didn’t attempt to stop her when she walked over to the place where the falcons sunned.

Glancing at her, they inched to the right, as if giving her a spot on the ledge.

Something bloomed inside her chest, and she looked back at Adam, wondering if he had any idea of the gift he was giving her this day.

But he was looking the other way, answering a question from another clanmate, a slight grin on his face.

She traced the line from his shoulder, up his neck, to his jaw, and found herself thinking about what it might feel like to touch that powerful body, feel those tendons and muscles under her fingertips.

A wave of air, a flutter of sound, wings unfurling.

She turned back just in time to see the falcons taking off. At first, she thought they’d disappeared because of her…but then she saw four others swoop in from the right, then watched as her three fell into formation with them, not a feather out of place.

A fighting unit, she realized. The group of lazily sunning creatures had all been soldiers trained to defend the clan.

A sense of wonder struggled to break through the wall of numbness inside her. Failed.

Sensitivity level at maximum. Exposure imminent unless all psychic abilities kept at a permanent flatline.

She’d thought she’d accepted that diagnosis and its impossible “cure,” but today, she realized she’d been numb to the possibility of any other life when she’d done so. Numb to the world in which she could live if she only had the chance.

Instead, she was locked in a state of permanent dull equilibrium, unable even to experience the wonder of this moment where she stood on the lip of a cliff watching a wing of falcons begin to practice maneuvers.

Inputting Bram’s code, she lifted the phone to her ear. “I’m alive,” she said in greeting. “Any results from the evidence Adam passed on?”

“No fingerprints or DNA,” came the expected answer. “How are you, Eleri?”

“Not good,” she admitted to this member of the Cartel who was the force that had brought them and kept them together.

Then, for the first time, she spoke the truth she’d hidden in her heart since she was seventeen and a beautiful boy had smiled at her. “I want more than this life, Bram.”

“Adam Garrett seems pretty determined to figure out a solution to your Sensitivity,” Bram said, but unspoken was that they’d been through the entire gamut of possibilities and come up blank.

Because the Cartel wasn’t fatalistic by design—they’d fought for her, as she’d fought for them. Without success.

“Saffron, Yúzé?” she asked.

“Yúzé managed to talk her down from her manic state after I assured them both you were safe, and he’s focused on her for the time being, so stable enough.”

“You?”

A short pause. “Going in for a meds change today.”

Translation: he hadn’t slept last night, and possibly the night prior. “How long since your last switch-up?”

“Two months.”

At this rate, he’d run out of all possible drug interventions within the year. And then what? How would Bram sleep? “Have you spoken to an empath?” she asked, thinking of Sascha Duncan and the other Es who’d assisted Jacques.

“It’s a neurological issue, El,” Bram reminded her. “Not psychological or emotional. The part of my brain that regulates sleep no longer functions as it should.”

She knew that, but she couldn’t help grasping for hope through the wall of reconditioning. “Tell me what the medics say,” she said. “You…matter to me, Bram.” She’d never told him that, never verbalized it, and it seemed very important she do so now. “You’re my family, my brother.”

Bram’s answer was quiet. “He’s good for you, that falcon. Take the time, El.”

She would, she thought as she hung up the call.

At least today. She could justify stepping away from the hunt for the killer while her brain was at flatline, so vulnerable that she couldn’t fight him off if he assaulted her.

And there was no reason for him to escalate to another kidnapping so soon after his last one.

But first, she’d reply to Saffy—who loved messages far more than calls: I’m in a falcon aerie, watching a wing fly in front of me against a backdrop of reds and oranges and desert gold.

I flamed out after a psychic event, but I’m healing.

I’m also surrounded by changelings with natural shields—it’s the best place I could’ve found to heal.

The response came back at lightning speed: I would think you were delusional if Bram hadn’t told us you were with the falcons. Is it really like that?

Eleri took a photo, careful not to reveal anything that wouldn’t be visible to someone on the ground looking up. Falcons in the air, against the wild blue sky.

Saffron’s response was about ten exclamation marks followed by more curious questions, all of which Eleri answered, because she knew that Saffy just wanted to talk to her.

If Bram was the glue that held them together, Saffron was the little sister who’d always brought light and color into their lives.

It didn’t matter that, in biological terms, Eleri was younger than her by a year—Saffy had always been softer, sweeter, younger in the heart.

Left alone to bloom, Eleri had always thought their Saffy would have become an artist, a designer of clothes vibrant and eye-catching.

At seven, she used to sketch pretty dresses and fancy hats.

Until the teachers and trainers had crushed the color out of her, taught her to live in a world of shadow memories.

When they signed off today, it was with a promise to chat again the next day.