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On the two counts of first-degree murder, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.

Prior to walking into the inn’s small front office, Eleri had pulled on the fine black gloves that she wore in all situations where she might come into contact with another sentient being.

She could’ve chosen gloves in a shade closer to that of her pale brown skin tone, but that would defeat their secondary purpose: to act as a visual warning to others not to make contact.

The office was unattended.

After pressing the bell on the counter and hearing it ring within, she waited a good five minutes.

She pressed the bell again at that point, finally heard the sound of rushing footsteps.

A small human woman with a round face devoid of wrinkles, her cheeks red and her silver hair cut in a neat bob, appeared from the door behind the counter.

“Oh, you must be Eleri Dias! You’re here early just like you said! ”

The woman beamed. “Where are my manners? I’m Mi-ja Park, named after both my grandmothers, wouldn’t you know it? Apparently they’d get jealous otherwise, so I got Mi from one and Ja from the other and, well, Park was my husband’s name, Ju-won Park, God rest his soul.”

Eleri had long ago learned the socially acceptable things to say when dealing with non-Psy, the words rote by now. “Thank you for the welcome. Is the room ready or should I go into town to wait?” In actuality, she’d just head out to park in a private spot where she could review her files.

“Oh, no need for that.” The innkeeper waved a hand. “I’ve got it all set up for you. Come along, dear.”

The outside air was balmy, no hint here of winter’s cold breath, though they were a week into January.

Eleri’s diminutive host insisted on showing her to her room, chattering all the while. “Have you got a bit of Korean in you, too? The cheekbones say you might.”

“It’s possible.” Eleri’s genetic makeup was a mélange more complex than Mi-ja could imagine; she’d been born into a family who’d run calculation after calculation on the best genetic matches for extreme Psy ability.

They’d succeeded in that Eleri was 9.2 on the Gradient.

Too bad she’d come out a J and not a prized pure telepath to carry on the family legacy as comms specialists.

They’d have accepted a telekinetic, too, of course, even a high-level M.

But a J with only the most minor F ability?

Far too pedestrian in terms of the status Eleri could deliver to the family unit.

Housing and feeding her until she was old enough to be shipped permanently to boarding school had been—to their mind—more than could be expected of them.

The cold truth of it was that they were right; under the regime of the Council, unwanted children like Eleri had suffered an unfortunate number of convenient accidents.

“I see a bit of Scandinavia in you, too,” Mi-ja continued with a musing look. “Such lovely greenish hazel eyes. But then you have that beautiful brown skin.” She hurried on. “This here’s your personal parking spot, right in front of your room.”

She opened the door and stepped into the room before handing Eleri the old-fashioned key. “Call me if you have any problem at all, or just come to the office. My son, Dae, does all the maintenance, so I can have him over here in a jiffy and he’ll sort it all out.”

“Thank you.” Eleri fought her natural inclination to rush the older woman out the door; she needed data, and the same instinct that had brought her to this town now told her that Mi-ja Park would be an excellent source to cultivate.

“I’m here as part of a cold-case investigation run out of Nevada,” she said, because cold cases from other jurisdictions made for good cover stories.

No one could prove or disprove anything if she stayed vague.

Mi-ja’s eyes lit up. “Oh, anything I can help with?”

“To be honest, the link to Raintree is tangential at best but needs to be checked out to close the file. The primary participants are all deceased, and the DA wants it off his desk.”

“Oh.” Mi-ja made a face. “Just paperwork, then? Nothing exciting?”

Eleri nodded. “Exactly so. But Raintree strikes me as a great place to which to relocate. I’m wondering how other Psy like it. Do you have many in town?” Because her target was Psy—the victims’ brains had borne every hallmark of a vicious telepathic attack.

No changeling or human could’ve done that, not even with the most advanced weapons on the planet.

The task force had also, thanks to the lines of communication fostered by the Trinity Accord, managed to rule out anyone affiliated with the Forgotten—the descendants of Psy who had dropped out of the Net at the onset of Silence.

While the Forgotten weren’t about to entrust information about their people to just anyone, they had an innate empathy that meant they’d been willing to talk off-the-record with the task force in an effort to help catch the killer.

Which was why Eleri knew that the Forgotten had been intensively tracking their descendants over the past few years.

“There are zero indications of anyone connected to our people in that region,” the liaison had said, “but even if we’re wrong on that point, you’re talking about someone with enough psychic power to need to be in a neural network. I can confirm that we have no one in our network in that area.”

Someone could be traveling in and out, but that didn’t make sense; the entirety of the crimes spoke to a killer with intimate familiarity of the region.

That left only one option: Vivian, Kriti, and Sarah had been murdered by one of Eleri’s own kind.

Mi-ja clapped her hands—delicate, the skin fine with blue veins beneath—in renewed excitement. “Oh, how wonderful! I told Dae that now the Psy don’t have that strange Silent thing anymore, they’ll travel for leisure. So many more potential visitors!”

She leaned in a little closer. “My view,” she said, tone conspiratorial, “is that Raintree’s exhausted the market in the state and nearby areas—the tourism would be so much stronger if the falcons did an air show, but they just say no whenever the town council asks.”

Eleri couldn’t imagine the boy she’d met putting on a show for anyone, but she nodded along with the innkeeper. “So there aren’t any Psy here already?” That’d derail her entire theory of this being the Sandman’s base of operations.

“Oh no, I never meant that!” Mi-ja corrected at once. “There’s Ralph out by the far canyon wall—I think the man is half-crazy, but he’s not the only one like that around here. Got a few full-crazy old human coots, too.”

Then, as Eleri listened, the innkeeper ran through a number of other Psy who called Raintree home—including two young teachers who’d landed jobs at the local high school around the time of the first murder, and several more who worked in a facility at the other end of town that made high-tech components for flying craft.

“Owned by the falcons,” the innkeeper was saying. “Biggest employer in town, and they don’t discriminate on who they hire as long as you have the skills. Been around, oh, twenty years at least.”

Despite Mi-ja’s belief in the falcons’ hiring practices, Eleri had a feeling that if she dug deeper, she’d find firewalls built into the system to ensure no proprietary information ever leaked to the Psy—which meant no Psy with high-level access inside the facility.

Its success over a long period confirmed the latter for her—because prior to the fall of Silence and the Council, the Psy had had a bad habit of not just stealing the work of others, but believing it their right due to their status as the “superior” race.

Whether that deep-rooted sense of superiority would change after the fall of Silence was an open question—but the current dangerous instability in the PsyNet would seem to make any such delusions moot.

Their “superior” race was in danger of total extinction.

Eleri should have been concerned about the fall of the psychic network she needed for survival, but that would’ve required a depth of feeling of which she was no longer capable. All she had left in her was the drive to finish this last task, a droplet of penance in an unfillable bowl.

“Do the falcons build aircraft?”

“Oh no, not here. Though I think Adam’s people do own part of a company way out in…I can’t remember where. They…”

The rest of the other woman’s words faded in the static inside Eleri’s brain.

My name is Adam.

She’d known WindHaven called this place home, had guessed the boy she’d met a decade ago…not a boy now, not anymore, might be in residence, but the confirmation still hit like a punch to the gut, the reverberation strong enough to seep through the wall of numbness inside her mind.

Then she realized what Mi-ja had implied. “Adam’s people? He’s the alpha?” Eleri had access to multiple databases, could have long ago searched for his name, but she’d never been able to make herself take that step.

It would’ve simply been further acid dripping into an already open wound.

“Wing leader,” Mi-ja corrected. “Yes, took over from Aria when she passed.” Her face fell. “She was a good friend to me, his grandmother. Used to complain I talked like a myna bird.” A shaky smile. “But she never minded, said she liked how I always managed to draw out even the shyest person.”

A flicker in Eleri’s mind, a clear memory of a fierce woman with snow-white hair and a steel-straight spine wearing multiple turquoise and silver bracelets.

Her arms had been thin but strong as she took an angry and grief-stricken young man into her embrace, his long silky hair falling down her back as he buried his face against her neck.

Eleri had been too far away to hear what she’d said, but Adam had stopped his attempts to get at Reagan and Eleri, his rage banked.

“…over by the school.”