to a breakfast meeting with the design team tomorrow." His tone was pure silk.
Sascha didn't know if Lucas always sounded like an invitation to sin or whether he was doing it to unsettle her. That thought unsettled her. If he even suspected that there was something not quite right about her, then she might as well sign her death warrant. Internment at the Center was nothing less than a living death anyway.
"Time?" She wrapped her arms tight around her ribs and forced her voice to even out. The Psy were very, very careful that the world never saw their mistakes, their flawed ones. No one had ever successfully fought the Council after being slated for rehabilitation.
"Seven thirty. Is that good for you?"
How could he make the most businesslike of invitations sound like purest temptation? Maybe it was all in her mind - she was finally cracking. "Location?"
"My office. You know where that is?"
"Of course." DarkRiver had set up business camp near the chaotic bustle of Chinatown, taking over a medium-sized office building. "I'll be there."
"I'll be waiting."
To her heightened senses, that sounded more like a threat than a promise.
Chapter 2
Lucas prowled to the edge of his office and stared down at the narrow streets that led into the sensory explosion that was Chinatown, his mind on Sascha Duncan's night-sky eyes. His animal nature had sniffed something in her that didn't quite fit, wasn't quite... right. And yet, she didn't have the sickly smell of insanity but a delectably enticing scent that was at odds with the metallic stink of most Psy.
"Lucas?"
He had no need to turn around to identify his visitor. "What is it, Dorian?"
Dorian came to stand beside him. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he could've passed for a surfer hanging out, waiting for the right wave. Except for the feral edge in those eyes. Dorian was a latent leopard. Something had gone wrong in the womb and he'd been born changeling in all ways except one - he lacked the ability to shift forms. "How did it go?"
"I have a Psy shadow." He watched a car glide by on the darkening street, the energy cells that powered it leaving no trace of their passage. The cells had been created by changelings. Without their race, the world would've sunk into a quagmire of pollution by now.
The Psy thought themselves the leaders of the planet, but it was the changelings who were attuned to the Earth's heartbeat, the changelings who saw the intertwined streams of life. Changelings and the occasional human.
"Think you can pump her?"
Lucas shrugged. "She's like the rest of them. But I'm in. And she's a cardinal."
Dorian rocked back on his heels. "If one of them knows about the killer, they all do. Their web keeps every single one of them in contact."
"They call it the PsyNet." Lucas leaned forward and pressed his palms to the glass, luxuriating in the cool kiss. "I'm not so sure that's how it works."
"It's a damn hive mind. How else could it work?"
"They're very hierarchical - it doesn't track that the masses would be allowed access to everything. Democratic is the one thing they're not." The Psy world of cold, calm survival of the fittest was as cruel as anything he'd ever seen.
"But your cardinal would know."
As the daughter of a Councilor and a powerful mind in her own right, it was almost certain that Sascha was a member of the inner circle. "Yes." And he had every intention of finding out what she knew.
"Ever slept with a Psy?"
Lucas finally turned to glance at Dorian, amused. "You're saying I should seduce the information out of her?" The idea should've revolted him but both man and beast were intrigued.
Dorian laughed. "Yeah right, your cock'd probably freeze off." Something bright and angry glittered in those blue eyes. "I was going to say that they really don't feel anything. I went to bed with one back when I was young and stupid. I was drunk and she invited me to her dorm room."
"Unusual." The Psy liked to keep to themselves.
"I think I was some kind of experiment to her. She was a science major. We had sex but I swear it was like being with a block of concrete. No life, no emotion."
Lucas let the image of Sascha Duncan run through his mind. His panther senses stilled, sniffing at the echo of her memory. She was ice but she was also something more. "We can only pity them."