others, each more dangerous than the last. I held my tongue.
“Oh, I’m supposed to meet Lady Ying in twenty minutes to go shopping. You want to join?” Catarina asked.
I repressed a shudder. Shopping with Catarina was a masochistic endeavor if ever there was one. The girl could spend seven hours in a single store. Seven. Hours.
Luckily for the rest of us, Ying Yamado was always game for a shopping trip. She and Catarina were close friends—as close as the daughters of two High Houses could be, at least.
“I’ll pass, thanks. I’d like to make it home before tomorrow,” I said.
Catarina rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not that bad.”
I just raised my eyebrows until she cracked and broke down into giggles.
“Okay, maybe I am. But you’re missing out,” she said as she stood. She kissed the air next to my cheek and then she was gone. I disabled the silencer, and the communication signals around me rushed in, overwhelming and nauseating.
After all of this time, I should be used to it, but Gregory’s gift just kept on giving. He’d been a brilliant scientist and a horrible husband, wrapped together with a morally bankrupt bow. I don’t think it ever occurred to him to not experiment on me.
Now I could mentally intercept and decrypt wireless signals, whether I wanted to or not, and I had no idea how. Gregory’s lab had been destroyed, taking most of his secrets to the grave.
He had tampered with both my brain and my nanobots, the infinitesimal robots in my blood that were supposed to aid healing. Father would dearly love the tech, so much so that he would absolutely approve more experiments on me if he found out about my abilities.
I’d been a test subject for long enough.
So I kept my secrets to myself and became a grieving widow in public. It kept Father from pushing me to remarry—which I would never do—and covered some of my new eccentricities.
I attended teas and lunches and balls when I would’ve preferred staying home. But staying home would not let me find other young women who could use my help, so I sucked it up and played the idle aristocrat.
At home, I earned my keep by using my network to track down information for House von Hasenberg. Father didn’t know exactly where my information came from, but he knew that if he needed something found, I could find it.
I finished my lemonade and pretended my head didn’t feel like it was being stabbed with stilettos. The headaches were worse when I was in an open public space, as my piddly human brain couldn’t keep up with all of the information flowing to the implant from my modified nanos.
My com lit up in my mind’s eye a second before it vibrated in my handbag. Because I was attuned to it, I knew I’d received a message and what it said without looking at the device itself. Decoding transmissions, even the secure transmissions my com received, was almost comically easy. Whatever else Gregory had been, he truly had been a gifted scientist.
I’d taught myself to tune out most transmissions so they became ignorable background noise. It didn’t help with the headaches, but at least I didn’t have to constantly hear strangers’ messages in my head all day. Now they burbled along like a distant stream in the back of my mind. I could hear individual messages if I focused, but mostly they were white noise.
I was Gregory’s fantasy of an ideal wife, forced to listen to everything without being able to respond. I didn’t know if he’d planned to add transmission abilities later or if he’d designed it this way as a cosmic joke. If it was the latter, the joke was very much on him. I smiled in grim satisfaction.
I pulled out my com to read and respond the old-fashioned way. The message was from Ian. It was short and to the point. You were scheduled to return home, not split from your sister. The security detail followed her. Remain where you are until the replacement detail arrives. I have eyes on you until then.
My smile morphed into a grin as I typed my reply. I was just leaving. I’ll be home before they arrive.
STAY PUT. The reply was so fast, I wondered if he had pretyped it. I’d hate to think I was so predictable.
I didn’t bother with a reply. If he was actually monitoring the cameras, he’d see me leave. Otherwise, he’d certainly notice when my tracker