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I would argue that Justice Psy hold the highest position of trust of any of the Psy designations or subdesignations that might be called in as expert witnesses.

Js put themselves into dangerous situations day after day when they walk into prisons and other facilities to read the minds of those who have committed crimes beyond the pale. Later, they share those memory impressions with the court and authorized observers.

We see what they see.

With J-Psy, there are no gray areas.

—Editorial in the Boston Law Quarterly (Spring 2067)

Adam had parked before he got to the inn, his intention to shift and fly over to see what he could glean about the stranger who’d pulled him toward her though they were separated by air and sky.

Then he’d heard the quiet purr of a vehicle and guessed it to be hers—no other guests at the inn right now.

So he’d got out and waited, just a local who’d paused to take in some air.

The rugged all-terrain SUV turned out of the inn’s drive with the clear intent to pick up speed, but Adam didn’t flinch.

He could get out of the way without losing a feather if it came to that.

But the driver began to slow some distance out and brought the tough vehicle to a stop three feet from him.

The windows were tinted but the windscreen clear.

Her gaze was unreadable as she looked at him…and his rage a hurricane.

Her.

His talons thrust at the tips of his fingers, the raptor inside him ready to rip her to shreds.

She’d lost the softness, a sharp thinness to her face that made her look far older than he knew her to be, but it was definitely her.

The pretty J with eyes like the desert after the rains who’d made him smile in sheer joy only an hour before she stood unmoving and silent next to the man who had stolen justice from Adam and his family for an unforgivable and premeditated crime.

He could still remember each and every second of the experience that had forever altered him, destroying in minutes a life he’d only just discovered.

Justice Psy were called that because they were telepaths who could reach into the minds of Psy and humans, pull out memories to do with a specific incident or crime, then broadcast those memories out to humans and Psy.

Changelings were excluded because of their powerful natural shields. Too hard to get anything in or out without smashing their minds to pieces. But that hadn’t been a disadvantage in that courtroom where an arrogant Psy landholder was meant to be held to account for the murder of Adam’s parents.

His paternal grandmother was human, as was Jenesse, his mother’s closest friend and a woman who’d been an aunt in all but blood to Saoirse and Adam.

The two women had allowed the broadcast to reach their minds, watching the supposed “memory” from start to finish even as the court’s designated J-Psy interpreter spoke the memory aloud for the rest of them.

J-Psy were trusted because they were meant to be unable to change the memories they retrieved. They had to be trusted—once they went in and took a memory, it could never again be retrieved by another J.

That day Adam learned that the whole “Js can’t lie” thing was a pile of fucking bullshit. The J who’d stood beside the woman in the vehicle had altered the perpetrator’s memories.

And a double murderer had walked free.

He didn’t even realize he’d moved until he found himself staring straight through the windscreen at the woman on the other side, the hard metal of the car brushing his thighs as the wild creature in him rose to the surface in a blaze of rage…and things unspoken too long contained.

···

Memories and nightmares aside, nothing much affected Eleri these days, the blurred glass between her and the world an all but impenetrable shield.

That was why she’d told Sophie she would keep on doing this job of hunting serial murderers as long as she lived—because she could.

She was in no danger of being broken or damaged in ways that might alter her life.

All of that had been the pure truth…until now.

His hair was a dark brown with reddish glints that reached his nape; it was cut in silky waves that were currently tumbled, as if he’d run his hand through it. It had been much longer the first time they’d met, the waves pulled out of it by the weight of its length.

He’d worn it open, a sleek rain down the back of his perfectly pressed suit.

His stance that day had been far from aggressive—he’d likely learned to affect languid relaxation to put others at ease. Because even then, Adam Garrett had been a tall boy who gave the impression of power and strength.

He’d grown into a big man who moved with a predator’s grace.

His neutral stance against his vehicle had altered the same instant that her heart began to race, her breath catching as her hands clenched on the steering wheel.

Then she’d brought the SUV to a stop, and he’d moved with a slow and deadly intent that told her she was unlikely to make it out of this alive.

Instead of reacting to back off, drive away, she froze…

as time began to unravel at furious speed, shoving her back into the very first courtroom in which she’d stood in an official capacity, no longer Reagan’s trainee but his intern.

She should’ve remembered that day for that reason, looked back on it with what happiness she could feel through her numbed psyche, considered it a positive touchstone.

But as Reagan had once said, “Should-have-beens are the lament of those who failed.”

The courtroom had been one of the old ones, with dark wood paneling and the judge up in a high position behind a heavy bracket of wood, the jury to the right behind another barrier created of wood.

Her job had been to stand there, be all but invisible, to learn from her superior and not say a word.

There wasn’t much she could do, in any case.

Only one J could go into a mind at a time.

She’d been with Reagan to learn how to behave in court, how to act in front of a judge and jury and the lawyers.

Allowed into the courtroom by permission of the judge, who had, prior to the start of the proceedings, taken the time to welcome her to the world of Justice.

Js, considered neutral by their very nature, were expert witnesses in good standing with the court system.

Expensive and not so numerous that they could be used for all cases, or even most cases.

But for a rare few special exceptions due to people with connections pulling strings, Js were only ever brought in on the worst cases, the ones to do with violence and terrible destruction.

Bombers, murderers, serial offenders against the person, child kidnappers…a parade of depravity.

This one had been a murder case. Two changeling falcons shot out of the sky by a Psy who had never denied that he’d done it; his defense was that the sun had been in his eyes and he’d believed the birds a pair of natural raptors who’d been preying on his stock of genetically modified farm animals.

Not many Psy owned farms, but Wayne Draycott had made a living from modifying animals to create more resilient strains free of diseases.

He’d been more than willing to pay the fine for attempting to kill what he’d thought were natural falcons—creatures not on the list of species that could be hunted by farmers to protect stock—but he’d maintained that it was an honest mistake that he’d shot changelings instead of natural birds.

Eleri’d had no prior knowledge of whether that was true or not; she wasn’t the one who’d gone into his memories. But she’d known something was very, very wrong the second her mentor began to broadcast the memory from where they both stood behind the bulletproof glass of the witness box.

Reagan had shared memories with her many times over the years as part of her training.

He’d begun with the less depraved ones, his aim only to teach her the technicalities of how to make the projection to a limited group.

Because while Js had a facility for it, it still required knowledge of methodology alongside practice to do it well.

He’d amped up the darkness of what he showed her when she was a few months out from seventeen, readying her for the vile assault on her senses that would be her first walk through the mind of a violent criminal.

In truth, nothing could’ve prepared her, but Reagan had done his best. All the senior Js did their best—the vast majority of them weren’t like some of the other specialists, who treated their juniors with cruelty and coldness.

The J Corps were compatriots who walked the same hell. Js understood that in the end, all they had was each other. Their loyalty to one another was absolute and the purest thing in their lives.

“Should a Councilor stand in this room and tell me to shoot you,” Reagan had said once, “I’d put the weapon to my own head. What would be the point in living if I destroy the one thing that makes me feel good about myself?”

Eleri, young though she’d been, had already understood what he meant, understood that to be a J was to be part of a family that had its own unique system of survival and protection.

It was why Eleri had quietly helped eliminate an assassination threat against Sophie from a group of Psy who thought she had too much influence on Nikita Duncan, and why Bram had formed the Quatro Cartel when they were children.

Because Js were all other Js had.

So she’d been in no way ready for her response to Reagan’s memory capture that day in the courtroom. It hadn’t even been that violent, not in comparison to the scenes of mutilation and torture he’d shared with her just the previous week in an effort to build up her tolerance.

She’d thrown up then, her stomach revolting against the ugliness in her mind.

But that day, in the courtroom, her response hadn’t come from horror and disgust at the memories. It had been born of another reason altogether. She’d barely heard the court interpreter speaking the memory aloud, her heart was thumping so hard, her face ablaze.

He’s out in the field, heading toward a corralled batch of lambs.

He has his testing kit in hand, and his long-range rifle on his back.

“I don’t care about the fines for killing species on the protected list,” he’s saying, the glossy black of a phone transmitter curved over his ear.

“I’m sick of the birds taking my animals or just leaving them mauled. ”

Shadows overhead, the sweep of wings. The sun in his eyes, blinding him. He shoots without being able to see, the scream of a falcon piercing the air even as the second arrows down toward him.

He shoots a second time, is hit by the bird as it falls on top of him.

It claws him even as it takes him down, and only then does he drop the weapon, sit up in panic. “It’s too big—this bird is too big. I shot a changeling! I didn’t know! What have I done?”

Seventeen-year-old Eleri had jerked back into her own mind and senses in a whiplash of panic. She’d known she couldn’t interrupt Reagan while he was broadcasting, but she could feel the wrongness of it, the sense of a memory twisted through a fun-house mirror until it was distorted and not right.

Reagan , she’d telepathed urgently. Reagan, something’s wrong. The memory feels—

Be quiet unless you want to end up on a slab , had come the clipped mental command, the man she trusted most in the world staring straight ahead at the judge without expression.

But the memory is wrong! She’d been taught all her life that Js never lied, that they were the truth sayers, the final arbiters in a courtroom.

It was the fulcrum of her being.

The merest glance at her after Reagan finished the broadcast. If you can sense it, then you can do it. A kind of exhaustion in his telepathic voice. Never, ever reveal that, Eleri. I did, and now here we stand.

She’d heard a commotion behind her even as she struggled to comprehend this thing that threatened to splinter her entire sense of reality.

She wasn’t supposed to turn, wasn’t supposed to make any kind of contact with the families of the victims, but she hadn’t been able to help herself.

Heart yet racing, she’d shifted on her heel and met the pale tawny brown eyes of the eighteen-year-old boy named Adam who’d smiled at her in a way that had made her world tilt sideways.

That Adam was gone.

This one had dark, dark eyes ringed by a feral yellow and was being held back by two older men as he screamed, “Liar! You fucking liar!”

His grief was palpable, his rage a heat she could almost sense against her skin…and the truth of his words absolute.

Reagan had lied .

Eleri hadn’t known Js could lie, hadn’t known they could change memories. Not until that day in a courtroom in chaos as bailiffs rushed to control a changeling whose talons had thrust out of his skin as his eyes morphed into those of a falcon.

That same changeling stood in front of her SUV on this lonely road.

And the rage that pulsed off him…it was potent, more mature than that of the boy he’d been, a thing that had grown stronger with time.

Back when she’d still understood hope, she’d hoped this day would never come, that she could make it to the end of her life without losing the final shreds of the dream she’d never been meant to have, the whispers of a future that could never be hers. But it had come, of course it had.

The price always had to be paid.

Turning off the car, she opened the door and stepped out, ready to face the reckoning that had been written in the blood-soaked bodies of Adam Garrett’s murdered parents.