Psy & Changelings 01 - Slave to Sensation

about your patterns. Perhaps a visit to Medical is in order.
    Fear and betrayal gripped Sascha around the throat. Nikita had to know what was wrong with her daughter, had to have seen her before she’d been old enough to conceal her mind. Yet she was giving advice that could lead to Sascha’s exposure. Did she suspect how far her offspring had gone from the accepted Psy path?
    Are you sure that’s necessary? she asked. It appears to be a minor problem.
    As the head of the Duncan household, I received a notice from Medical noting your lack of physical examinations since you reached adulthood. Nikita’s tone didn’t change but Sascha thought she heard a thread of warning. It might be politic to get a scan done before they pull you up for a random check.
    Her relief was almost crushing. Whatever else she might be doing, at least Nikita wasn’t trying to serve her daughter up to the authorities. It wasn’t much but it was something. I’ll do it as soon as possible.
    You haven’t reported on the DarkRiver project for a couple of— She paused. I have to go. Something’s just gone wrong with two of the main information relay points. Things are already becoming gridlocked. With that, Nikita’s mind was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
    Sascha felt the information backing up on the Net and breathed a sigh of relief. Sienna and Judd had come through. Every Psy surfing the Net in this location would be streaming toward those points, looking to fix the damage before it cascaded into chaos.
    Likely, they’d already fixed it, but the backlog would take hours to clear. In the tumult, her odd signature would hopefully gain no real attention . . . except from one very dangerous Psy.
    These things were thought by the hidden part of her that was a fountaining rainbow inside unbreakable walls. Outside those walls, she was cool and remote, protecting herself from disclosure even when most people, including Psy, would’ve considered themselves safe.
    A whisper of violence swept by her. Every one of her senses screamed and she felt the rough edge of a growl in the back of her throat. Lucas’s personality was alpha, too strong. It shouldn’t have been coming through this clearly but it was and she had to use it. Thinking quickly, she merged the anger into the tendrils of thought going out into the Net. These women would have the capacity for anger. Anger was a kind of passion.
    Her race had tried to delete anger, rage, hate, but they hadn’t understood that anger could spring from deep love, the most complete need to protect. Lucas was furious because she was putting herself at risk, enraged at the thought of her being hurt. There was nothing evil about those emotions. They were so pure they burned.
    Unlike the emotions now coming slowly closer. This violence was sly, cunning in the way of jackals or vultures. Most Psy probably never understood why this outwardly “normal” mind made them slightly uncomfortable, because most Psy no longer had the ability to recognize evil, even if it stood right in front of them. What a perfect hiding ground for a killer, Sascha realized.
    The scent of rotting malevolence abruptly stopped approaching and then disappeared altogether. She frowned. Had the murderer been scared off? A second later, she felt another familiar presence and almost cursed. Enrique’s cardinal blaze was obvious a mile away. No wonder the killer had run.
    She wanted to scream in frustration. Something deep within her flexed its claws and it felt good. Right at that instant, she itched to tear into Enrique’s interfering arrogance, arrogance that might cost Brenna her life.
    He didn’t contact her when he reached her, not seeing her presence on the Net. Instead, he examined the manufactured flaw with the utmost care. Sascha wondered whether he even understood what he was looking at.
    She’d have suspected him for the murderer, except that she knew there was no emotion in Enrique. None. Even for the Psy, he was the coldest creature she’d ever met. Nothing in her empathy reacted to him. That, she realized at last, was why he’d constantly rubbed her raw.
    Her mother was cold, but Sascha’s senses had always picked up a low-level emotional feedback from her, as they did from other Psy. Her race might’ve buried their emotions but they were there. In Enrique’s case, there was nothing to indicate he’d ever had the