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Eleri emerged back into the conversation to realize Mi-ja had moved on to another topic altogether, but she didn’t interrupt until it became clear the other woman wasn’t going to return to talk about the Psy in town.

Eleri nudged her back to the topic with a couple of subtle questions.

At the end of it, she realized Raintree had far more Psy residents than she’d guessed. Per Mi-ja, the Dewdrop Diner was the best place to meet at least a few of them.

“Sally—she’s the owner and chief cook—well, she went ahead and made up a whole Psy-friendly menu. She’s like me, getting ready to welcome a lot more Psy visitors. Psy menu’s real light on any kind of flavorings. You should try it.”

“Thank you,” Eleri said. “It sounds like the ideal place to get a meal.” In truth, she ate like a machine these days—just enough calories to keep her going, keep her strong enough to do her self-imposed work.

Nutrition bars made up her entire meal plan.

Unlike many of her brethren, she hadn’t chosen to bury herself in the sensation of taste after the fall of Silence.

There was no point, when her brain’s ability to process sensation was profoundly damaged.

Cinnamon or nutmeg, salt or sugar, it all tasted the same.

Eleri had tried each at Saffron’s insistence.

Mi-ja opened her mouth as if to carry on, then glanced suddenly out the open door.

Eleri had caught the movement as well—a small red car had just stopped by the office.

“Oh! That’s Mary, here for our morning catch-up.” The innkeeper bustled out, saying, “Remember, I’m just a call away!” as she hurried off the small porch area surrounded by flowers and down toward the office, all the while waving to catch her friend’s attention.

After shutting her door, Eleri opened up the small case she’d brought inside and consciously pushed aside any and every thought to do with the falcon she’d met only once and never forgotten. That confrontation would come; whether she’d survive it was another matter, to be left to the future.

For now, she had a monster to hunt.

She got to work upgrading the room’s security. Accustomed as she was to working on the road, and to motel rooms with flimsy locks, this was second nature. The inn proved to be much more solidly built than most of her temporary residences; it wouldn’t surprise her if it was over a hundred years old.

No one would be able to break down that heavy door, but as for the rest…

She placed her own removable locks on every window as well as the door. Linked to her integrated comms device—the best on the market because Eleri never spent her wages on anything but necessities and had plenty of funds—the locks would alert her to any attempted entry.

She also placed multiple all-but-invisible sensors on the walls that sent out beams of light imperceptible to the naked eye and that would, once she set the system to live operation, tell her if a teleporter had ’ported inside, or if someone else had managed to gain entry via a route she’d either missed or not considered.

It had been Reagan who’d taught her to accept that she couldn’t foresee everything and to prepare for the impossible. “Once,” he’d told her, “I had a psychopath who didn’t want me on the case book the room below mine and literally cut his way in to create his own trapdoor.

“Only reason he didn’t succeed in surprising me with his murderous little hatchet when I got in is that another guest called management about the use of power tools that early in the morning—despite his liking for implements, said psychopath wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed, the emotions tangled up with Reagan’s memory so deeply embedded in her psyche that not even her increasing descent into nothingness could erase them.

Even today, so many years after she’d held his dying body in her arms, her eyes locked with his scared and lost ones, pain stabbed through her insides—born of the anguish of knowing they’d never finish the fight they’d been having for over four years at that point, ever since she’d realized what he’d done in that courtroom filled with broken dreams and bloody rage.

“I hope you never lose the piece of you that’s innocent enough to believe that good should always win,” Reagan had said when she confronted him, an exhaustion in his features that had dug hollows into his cheeks and turned his skin ashen. “Sometimes, Eleri, evil wins.”

He’d been in his early thirties when he’d taken her on as his trainee, and only forty when he died. The only man who’d come even close to holding the role of father in her life had died not even a third of the way into the projected average life span of their time.

Except, of course, it wasn’t the average life span for Js, was it?

She snapped the tight band on her wrist when she felt the memories begin to take hold, unravel one by one.

So many nights she and Reagan had sat across from each other as he taught her how to scan a memory into her own mind, then how to project that “impression” to others.

So many days she’d sat beside him in the courtroom as he waited to go up into the witness box.

The sting of the elastic band was just enough to snap her out of the loop.

It wasn’t the pain—she’d experienced far more pain in her life.

It was the fact that she’d been doing the same thing for years, ever since she took her first involuntary step on the path to becoming a Sensitive.

A little dissonance loop she’d built for herself outside the laws and rules of Silence.

Most of the time, the memories that threatened to drown her were those of the monsters, but every so often, it was her own memory of Reagan as he’d been at the very end.

Blood, so much blood, his throat gurgling and hand clutching at her as he gasped for breath.

Allowing Reagan to be sucked into the black hole of the past with the snap of the band, Eleri considered her next steps.

With the room secure, she could leave her clothing and other items here—other than the mobile comm, which was always on her wrist, she had nothing worth stealing.

But she could as easily unload her overnight bag after she’d taken a first pass at the diner.

Decision made, she left the room, engaged her security system, then crossed over to her vehicle.

Once inside, she thought about peeling off her gloves but decided against it.

Much as she craved time without that physical shield on her hands, the diner wasn’t far per the search she’d just run.

She’d only have to put them back on again, and no doubt people would be watching her as soon as she pulled up.

Small towns loved to watch outsiders.

The cypress trees that lined the drive to the inn threw dappled shadows across her vehicle as she drove out, and without thought, she lowered her window to listen to the silence.

Adam.

He’d caused this crack in the wall between her and the world today, a fracture that might yet take her under.

She snapped the rubber band again…and rolled up the window.

Turning left out of the drive, she found herself looking down the deserted road shadowed by trees to a vehicle parked up ahead.

A man in jeans and a short-sleeve white shirt leaned against it.

His skin glowed in the sunlight, his silky hair dark and just long enough to flow around his face, and his body far more muscled than it had been ten years ago.

He’d been younger then, his body lankier and not quite finished.

Her pulse accelerated though she’d long ago stopped being nervous with anyone. Js were too often in the minds of the dregs of civilization for their Silence to stay in any way perfect, so the nervousness itself hadn’t disqualified her from her job. Reagan had just taught her to think past it.

Then it had dulled and dulled again, each reconditioning stealing a little more of her soul—if she’d ever had one to begin with.

Until at last, she felt nothing at all when she sat across from the most vicious criminals the world had ever seen and waded into the fetid swamp of their minds and memories.

But today, her tongue dried up, her pulse kicked, and she found herself driving slower and slower as she neared the man who had once, long ago, made her wonder if she could have another life, an existence devoid of murder and violence and a relentless march of screams.