Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Abstract: An argument in favor of why Psychometry should be moved in the Psy power charts to sit next to Foresight and the subcategory of Backsight. F-Psy see the future, while those with backsight see the past. Ps-Psy also see the past—the only difference is that their visions of the past are anchored to an object.

— Psychometry and Its Placement on Psy Power Charts by Faith NightStar and Tanique Gray, paper submitted to the Académie de la classification des Psi run under the aegis of the Ruling Coalition, June 2083

REMI FORCED HIMSELF to look away from the woman who was so lusciously enjoying food that he'd brought her—and who'd just murmured that he was like a "comforting purr."

Not the kind of thing he'd ever thought he'd want to hear from a beautiful woman, but yeah, it was a good feeling to know that she felt safe with him. Safe enough to tell him that, and to allow him into her haven.

Woman was food drugged so he should probably take the entire thing with a grain of salt, but damn if he didn't want to actually purr. She took another bite, moaned. His cock threatened to react . You'd have thought he was a wolf or a bear with the feral depth of his response. Courtship via food wasn't a cat thing.

Not that he was courting her.

First, Auden didn't need to be thinking about him putting the moves on her when she was in the final trimester of her pregnancy. Second, he still didn't know her motives or anything of who she was beyond being a pregnant psychometric.

Third—and most important—was her mental state and ability to consent.

His incipient arousal dying under the grim reminder of her personality shift and associated memory loss, he made sure to wipe off his boots on the mat outside the front door. It was obvious from the pristine shine of her wooden floor that she didn't wear outdoor shoes inside, and he felt bad doing so even though she'd given him the go-ahead.

Despite her statement that she liked his imprint, he took extreme care not to touch any other surface as he made his way to the sink. It wasn't hard to find—the place was all one bedroom, except for a closed-off area at the back that he assumed led to the toilet and shower.

Auden's home was almost militantly basic. She had a simple futon— what the hell —with white sheets and a white comforter. A single wonky chair and a narrow dresser sat beside the futon. The kitchen table was small and round, and had no chair.

There were no rugs on the floor, no cushions for her to shove behind her back when it began to ache.

As for entertainment, he saw a small mobile comm and a single organizer.

That was it. Nothing in here spoke of the woman whom he'd taught to shoot, or who was currently making little noises of pleasure that he could hear even through the cabin walls. Too bad she was in no state to play—even his cat understood that. As it understood that he couldn't allow her to keep avoiding the sobering subject.

Once back outside, he sat in his chair and waited until she'd taken a good long drink of the water before offering to hold the glass so she could finish her intense consumption of the cinnamon roll. He wished he'd brought more things for her now, wished he could sit her down and feed her delicious tidbit after delicious tidbit.

Only…this wasn't a simple playful date between a man and a woman.

Gut tight, he let her enjoy herself, finding a profound and primal joy in having given her that. Only after she'd finished the roll, licked her fingers, and emptied the glass of water did he talk. Or more accurately—growled. "Why the fuck are you on a futon?" Not even a proper one with a low base. A literal mattress on the floor. "Isn't it hard to get up and down?"

She nodded, her full lips turned down at the corners "Takes hours . Or that's what it feels like. But furniture has imprints and the bed, so close to my sleeping brain…the noise is unbearable."

Remi wanted to ask if she always slept on a futon, but that wasn't important. "We have a small mech facility—you know that. But we can do larger pieces. What if we printed a frame for you?"

"People still would have to handle it."

"I'll do it. Only me."

Auden stared at him, her motionlessness speaking of a creature wary and on edge. "Why?"

"Because you should not be sleeping on the floor!" He threw up his hands. "Will you try and see if it works?"

A slow nod.

Exhaling, he moved on to a far more problematic topic. "You know we have to talk about what happened this morning."

Her spine grew stiff, her features a plastic caricature of Silence. "You know I have mental problems," she said at last, her tone flat. "You saw that when you first met me."

"This was more than that." Remi could still taste the distasteful metallic layer to her scent even though it had vanished after she had her seizure. "You didn't know who I was, and you smelled wrong."

Frown marring her brow, cracking the plastic, she turned toward him. "What do you mean I smelled wrong?"

"Smells are powerful identifiers to changelings. I can recognize people from scent alone—it's like an ID. Each one unique." When he saw he had her full attention, he continued, "Your scent changed. It wasn't perfume or body lotion or anything surface level. It was your base scent, the scent that is you no matter what else might layer itself on top. You had two. This one and another."

···

AUDEN had no idea what Remi was talking about, and told him so. "I can't think of any reason for a shift in my scent, but I'm not changeling. I don't know what can alter a scent signature." She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. "Could it be the baby?"

"No. Babies don't develop their own scent until after birth. Until then, it's the mother's." Remi rubbed his face, his hand scraping against the beard shadow that darkened his jaw.

"But I don't know how Psy work well enough to guess why your scent might have changed." Shifting so that he faced her, his body on a right angle to hers, the warmth of him a near-physical touch, he said, "Even if we leave that aside, you were a whole different person—and you didn't remember any of our conversation afterward."

Auden struggled to think back, only to come up against the same black wall she'd already faced so many times after these incidents. "No one's ever reported a personality shift…but it's possible they didn't notice. I'm not this emotional at home." The words had escaped her mouth before she realized what she was admitting.

"I get that," Remi said. "I've heard that a lot of the older and more entrenched families prefer to continue on as if nothing's changed."

Auden gave a curt nod, her lips pursed.

"Do you want to know what you were like?"

No , Auden wanted to scream, no, she didn't want to know. Because the more she knew, the more she had to confront the fact that her mind was broken in ways that couldn't be fixed. She'd gotten lucky with what capacity she had now; this was never going to get any better.

But…She stroked her belly, a fist in her throat. This wasn't just about her. She needed to know so she could make decisions about her baby. So she swallowed the lump of fear in her gut and said, "Yes."

"Remote and cold enough to make me question if it was even you." Remi's words rumbled with the leopard's growl. "Silence so perfect it was unbreakable."

The hairs rose on the back of Auden's neck, her tongue going dry. She'd never come close to perfect Silence. Being a psychometric made that impossible. Even the best of the best among Ps-Psy only passed the Silence tests at around seventy-five percent—which was considered an acceptable score but one with plenty of room for improvement.

She'd barely scraped through with sixty-two percent.

Her father had put her in remedial school for Silence, and she wasn't sure he'd ever shared her results with her mother. As for the remedial school, their drills had pushed her scores up to seventy percent by the skin of her teeth, and that had been good enough for her to graduate to adulthood, leaving behind the lessons of Silence.

"Auden?"

Her hand clenched the chair arm. "I need to think about this." Needed to figure out if she'd gone beyond neural damage and into instability so bad that her personality had split in two.

Bile burned her throat.

She couldn't do that kind of life-altering thinking with Remi here, his presence so big and wild and dominant that it pushed against her senses in primal demand. "Please go. I need to be alone."

"I'm going to send patrols this way to check on you." His tone said she had no choice in the matter.

And since she'd had not one but two seizures in the past twelve hours, she had no will to argue. "Fine. They can look in the window if I'm not outside."

Expression dark with a scowl and eyes leopard, Remi nonetheless rose to his feet. "One more thing—thanks for sending the indi-mech deal our way. That was you, wasn't it?"

Her nod was jagged. "You were the best option. But the final decision will be based on your proposal." The words flowed off her tongue, as if she'd been running business operations for years.

A chill wind over her skin.

Some of what she'd been doing of late might be explained by things she'd observed in her years of blurred awareness, but not this, how her mind had begun to make calculations without thought in terms of business, how the right words just bloomed in her brain and took shape in her mouth.

"We get that." Remi glanced over at her cabin, then back at her. "Call me when you decide you've had enough aloneness, and we'll talk. I'll print you a bed in the interim."

···

TWO hours later, Auden got into her jet-chopper and flew herself home. Once she'd calmed down, she'd realized she had no choice. If she'd had a seizure bad enough that it had nearly wiped out all memory of her flight to the cabin, then her piloting the craft again was a huge risk, but it wasn't a deadly one.

She'd put on both biometers that Dr.Verhoeven had assigned her, then locked them into the onboard system. Any major fluctuation and she'd programmed the chopper to land at the heliport behind her family home—that heliport was equipped with emergency "homing beacons" that would guide the chopper safely down.

The same wasn't possible at the cabin, which meant she'd be stuck at the house until she could figure out another way to reach the freedom of this place of mountain and trees, morning mist and creatures wild.

She kept her eyes trained on the trees as she flew, searching for glimpses of gold and black, but jungle cats were masters of the hunt. All she saw were waves of fall foliage, the canopy so verdant that she couldn't even make a guess as to where RainFire made its home.

Her heart clenched when she cleared the final trees, their leaves a cascade of oranges and reds intermingled with lime green and the odd pop of a darker shade. It felt as if she was shutting the door behind herself, giving up on her quest of freedom for her baby. "No," she vowed. "This is just a roadblock. Even if I am irreparably damaged, my baby isn't. She's going to make it out."

Auden did everything in her power to keep that thought uppermost on her mind as she landed. Charisma was waiting for her, her organizer held at her side. "I thought you were planning to stay two days," she said once Auden had made it inside the house.

"I wanted to see Dr.Verhoeven," Auden said, and almost told Charisma about the seizures.

Usually, it wouldn't have mattered, because the doctor reported to Charisma anyway, doctor/patient confidentiality no proof against the other woman's power. But Auden was changing, becoming a woman far more able to manipulate and control. The idea made her a little sick—but that didn't mean she wouldn't use her new skills if those skills would keep her daughter safe. This time, the doctor wouldn't be spilling his guts to Charisma.

Auden would make sure of it.

"Oh?" Charisma's eyes sharpened. "Did you have a seizure?"

"That," Auden said with cold precision, "is none of your concern, Ris."

Never in all her existence, had Auden referred to Charisma as Ris. It had been her mother who'd done that, the two of them having worked together since Shoshanna's first company.

Charisma was also the only one who'd been permitted to shorten her mother's name to Shanna—though that had changed as Shoshanna grew in power, the informality strictly one-sided.

Charisma sucked in air, her pupils expanding. "Sir," she whispered, with the slightest bow of her head, and that whisper…it held a kind of awe that didn't make sense.

Gut twisting, Auden said nothing else, and kept her face emotionless—that, too, came easier than it should have. It wasn't that she was unused to wearing masks. She'd been wearing one from the moment she first became aware that as a psychometric, her Silence would never reach the level of her father's or mother's.

But this mask, it was different. Not just pretending true Silence, but having to use no effort to do so. As if this was her reality. So much so that she wasn't sure she could take the mask off. Her hand twitched, wanting to reach for the food carrier she'd left in the cabin, break the cycle of her thoughts with a violent surge of imprints brimming with emotion warm and happy.

"I'll leave you here, sir," Charisma said, once they reached the building that held their private medical facilities, her tone eerily subservient.

Auden gave a clipped nod that felt so natural it scared her.

When she walked into the doctor's office moments later, she felt zero surprise to find him watchful in a way he'd never before been. No doubt Charisma had telepathed him, warned him—about what, Auden wasn't sure. But he didn't give her any orders or just take her arm as he usually did.

Instead, he spoke with utmost politeness as he said, "If you'd follow me to the examination room and take a seat on the chair, we can collect your vitals. It's critical to keep an eye on all factors as you come closer to birthing the fetus."

"That's why I'm here," she said in a crisp tone as they walked into the examination room. "It's possible I had a seizure while in the air piloting the chopper."

"That's indeed a cause for serious concern." He set her up in the examination chair that had only ever been used for Auden, after being produced when she was a young teenager and being left fallow for years so any remaining imprints on it could fade.

Once she was in the chair that monitored far too many parameters of her body, the doctor examined the feed on his screens. "I'm seeing elevated levels of adrenaline, cortisol, and other indicators of stress."

"I'm concerned about the pregnancy," Auden said, shaping her words to echo the doctor's coldness.

"I assumed as much. Such physical responses are impossible to control no matter how good our Silence." He peered closer at the screen. "There are a few other minor fluctuations, but nothing important. We'll have to do a neural scan."