Heart of Obsidian

“That,” Tatiana said, putting down the stylus, “is why we’d make an unbeatable team. Neither one of us has any flaws in our Silence.”


Kaleb thought of the woman who slept in the house he’d built for her, of the man with a broken neck who had burned to ash in a crematorium incinerator hours ago, and knew his Silence was far more complex than Tatiana could imagine. “I insist on loyalty in my partners,” he said. “I do not believe you capable of it.” Even Nikita, ruthless as she was, would not stab him in the back as long as he kept his end of their bargain.

“I’ve never had a partner who deserved loyalty,” Tatiana responded. “You, however, would.”

“Now you flatter me.”

“Truth is the best defense.” The stylus in her grasp again, tap-tapping. “What do you want in exchange for the item?”





Chapter 16





“NOTHING YOU CAN’T afford,” Kaleb said, his blood calm and as cold as death as he gave Tatiana more rope with which to hang herself. “A piece of information.”

She waited.

“I want to know why you had the item in such a secure lockup in the first place.” No privacy, no air, blinding light. “Backsight isn’t, after all, a particularly useful ability.”

“Backsight? You’ve lost me.”

Clever, so clever, not to fall for his trap. “Exactly.” As if making a decision, he rose, doing up the buttons on his jacket as he did so. “It appears I was mistaken. The item isn’t yours—there is only one individual left to whom it could belong.”

Tatiana continued to maintain her relaxed pose, but he saw the fine lines form at the corners of her eyes. “Who?”

“Anthony, of course,” he said, well aware Tatiana utilized NightStar’s forecasting services on a regular basis to increase the financial status of her empire. She could not afford to be blacklisted. Not only would it put her at a severe disadvantage in the Psy financial world, but her current investments would dive in value once the news leaked. And NightStar—Anthony—would make certain it did. The F-Psy clan understood loyalty, too, in a way Tatiana never would.

The tapping paused, the tendons in Tatiana’s hand standing out against her skin. “No.”

“No?”

Eyes connecting with his, chips of agate, she nodded at the chair. “Perhaps we can do business after all.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He sat down, waited.

Tatiana took her time in replying. “I acquired the item intending to use it as a hostage should NightStar ever attempt to blacklist me, but it was never needed.”

A lie, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the confirmation.

Tatiana gasped as she was shoved backward, her chair crashing to the floor as invisible manacles pinned her to the wall, her feet at least a half meter off the ground. One sleek black pump landed on the carpet with a dull thud, while the other drummed against the wall as she struggled to break free.

He hadn’t expected such useless panic from Tatiana.

Put immediately on alert by her uncharacteristic lack of control, he looked into his mind—and saw the insidious tendril that had already penetrated the first three layers of his shields. Slamming outward with violent force, he sealed up the surgical holes she’d created as a drop of blood, dark and viscous, dripped out of her nose.

“Very smart.” He’d made a near-fatal error in the grip of the black rage that lived below the shell of his Silence. Another half a minute and she’d have been inside his mind.

“What do you want?” she said when her ruse failed to distract him, her body now motionless and her voice frigid.

“I want to know why you took her,” he repeated, relaxing into the chair without ever taking one eye off his shields.

“She’s malfunctioning, of no use to you.”

Kaleb sighed. “That’s not the question I asked.”

“You can’t kill me,” Tatiana said in that same icily composed tone. “Regardless of the rumors of the Council’s demise, the psychic shock wave caused by the death of another Councilor will cause the Net to destabilize to a dangerous extent, especially given the current violence.”

“Yes, that’s true.” And Kaleb hadn’t yet decided if he wanted the Net to fracture on that level. “But there are worse things than death.” With that, he used his telekinesis to dislocate her left knee the same way Sahara’s had once been dislocated, according to the information caught by the scanner when he’d inspected her for tracking devices.

“I apologize,” he said after Tatiana stopped screaming. “Where were we? I believe you were about to answer my question.”

“She was given to me,” Tatiana gasped, her left knee beginning to swell up.

“And who was your generous benefactor?”