Psy & Changelings 01 - Slave to Sensation

continuous drumbeat in her head, a pounding echo she couldn’t block. On the outside, emotions hit at her from every angle and she saw things that were inhuman and vicious and painful. On the outside, she was breakable. It was far safer to live behind walls.
    Except now the walls were cracking. Now things were getting in and she couldn’t escape them. She knew that as certainly as she knew she couldn’t escape whatever it was that prowled the edges of her property. The predator hunting her wouldn’t rest until he had her in his claws. She should’ve been afraid. But of course, she was Psy. She felt no fear. Except when she slept. That was when she felt so much, she worried that her PsyNet shields would crack, revealing her to the Council. It had gotten to the point where she didn’t want to fall sleep. What if she died again and this time it was for real?
    The communication console chimed into the endless silence that was her life. This late at night, it was an unexpected interruption—the M-Psy had prescribed certain hours of sleep for her.
    She looked away from the window at last. As she walked, a sense of impending disaster seemed to cloak her, a sinister knowing that lay somewhere in the shadowlands between a true foretelling and the merest inkling of what might be. This, too, was new, this heavy awareness of something hovering maliciously in the wings, just waiting for her guard to slip.
    Schooling her face to show nothing of her internal confusion, she pressed the answer key on the touchpad. The face that appeared onscreen was not one she’d anticipated. “Father.”
    Anthony Kyriakus was the head of her family. Before she’d officially reached adulthood at twenty, he’d shared custody of her with Zanna Liskowski, with whom he’d formed a fertilization contract twenty-five years ago. They’d both had a say in her upbringing, though her childhood had been nothing anyone would ever label as such. At three years after birth, she’d been removed from their care, with their full cooperation, and placed in a controlled environment where her ability could be fully trained and utilized.
    And where the encroaching tendrils of madness could be kept at bay.
    â€œFaith. I have some unfortunate news concerning our family.”
    â€œYes?” Her heart was suddenly a sledgehammer. She pushed all her strength toward containing the reaction. Not only was it unusual, it was the harbinger of a potential vision. And she couldn’t have a vision right now. Not the kind of vision she’d been having lately.
    â€œYour sibling, Marine, is deceased.”
    Her mind went blank. “Marine?” Marine was her younger sister, a sister she’d never really known but had kept an eye on from afar. A cardinal telepath, Marine had already climbed high in the family’s interests. “How? Was is a physical abnormality?”
    â€œFortunately not.”
    Fortunately, because it meant that Faith was in no danger. Though having two of the rare cardinals had made NightStar a line of considerable power, it was indisputable that Faith was the biggest NightStar asset. She was the one who brought in enough income and work to place the entire PsyClan above the masses. Only Faith’s health was truly important—Marine’s death was a mere inconvenience. So cold, so brutally cold, Faith thought, though she knew she was as cold. It was a matter of survival. “An accident?”
    â€œShe was murdered.”
    The blank that had been her mind buzzed with white noise, but she refused to listen. “Murder? A human or a changeling?” Because the Psy had no killers, hadn’t had them for a hundred years, ever since the implementation of the Silence Protocol. Silence had wiped violence, hate, rage, anger, jealousy, and envy from the Psy. The side effect had been the loss of all their other emotions.
    â€œWe don’t know which. Enforcement is investigating. Get some rest.” He nodded in a sharp physical period.
    â€œWait.”
    â€œYes?”
    She forced herself to ask. “What was the mode of murder?”
    Anthony didn’t even blink as he said, “Manual strangulation.”