Living with the Dead

ADELE



Colm stared out Adele’s bedroom window. Through his reflection in the glass, she could see his eyes, blank, his mental gaze searching for the woman. For Robyn Peltier.

He couldn’t do it, of course. He was too young. But she’d let him try, let him feel useful.

A clairvoyant didn’t read minds or see the future. Instead they got the power of remote viewing. They could fix on a subject and see through their eyes.

Unless the subject was nearby, fixing on her wasn’t as simple as picturing her and jumping into her head. The clairvoyant needed either a personal object or a personal connection, built up through exposure and effort. It had taken Adele months of constant surveillance to establish a connection with Portia. There was no way Colm could fix on Robyn Peltier after chasing her around for an hour the night before.

They were in Adele’s tserha, the house she shared with Lily and Hugh, Niko and his wife. There were four houses on the kumpania property, four tserhas—households. Colm and his mother, Neala, shared the neighboring house. Adele and Colm usually met here, away from Neala’s watchful eye.

When a door opened and closed downstairs, Adele went still. If it was Lily, she was safe—they’d been raised as sisters and Lily would never tattle on her for being with Colm. But there was no way of knowing who’d come in without looking. Only the most powerful clairvoyants—the seers—could remote-view other clairvoyants. But the footsteps receded and the door opened and closed again, and Adele relaxed.

She moved up behind Colm and rubbed his back. He leaned into her fingers, eyes closing, like a cat being petted.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “We’ll find her.”

“One minute,” he said. “That’s all it would have taken to grab her purse. I saw it there in the kitchen. Or her dress, on the bed. If we had that, we could find her now.”

Adele said nothing. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d been even closer to Robyn—having clocked her in the alley. All she’d had to do was wrench her up and grab that cell phone. But hearing the cops, she’d panicked and run. A mistake she would not repeat.

Nor would she make the mistake of admitting her failure to Colm. His resolve was shaky enough. The story she’d told him was that she’d been tracked down by a Cabal VP, Irving Nast, while Portia had been lunching with Jasmine. To avoid trouble, Adele had gone outside with Nast, promising to talk to him, planning to bolt at the first chance. Then, as she was remote-viewing Portia, she saw her snap a photo of Adele and Nast. She could only guess that Portia figured out Adele was the photographer selling those most unflattering photos of her to the tabloids. Adele couldn’t risk that photo getting back to the kumpania—the punishment for speaking to a Nast was death. So she’d tried to get it back. A plan that hadn’t gone quite as she intended . . .

Now Portia was dead. Adele had her cell phone . . . and had discovered that Portia sent the photo on to Robyn Peltier to be passed on to the tabloids. The same Robyn Peltier who’d seen her at the murder site. The same one who’d snapped her photo in the alley.

“We’ll take something from her apartment,” she said. “Then we’ll find her, get her cell phone, get that picture, and I’ll be safe.”

Colm turned, his freckles bunching as his face screwed up with worry. “What if she’s already sent it to the tabloids? If they print it, if the phuri see it—”

Adele lifted onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. He pulled her against him and kissed her, hard from the moment their bodies brushed.

So young. So eager. So hungry.

That’s what made it so easy. A fifteen-year-old boy, expected to mingle in the human world but keep himself separate. Look but don’t touch. No friends, no girlfriends. Colm had never even been on a date. Nor would he. Not with anyone but her.

The elders—the phuri—had already decreed they were to marry when he turned eighteen. It didn’t matter that Adele was five years older. It didn’t matter that they’d been raised as brother and sister. Keeping the blood pure was all that counted.

Clairvoyants were the rarest of the races. Even within the bloodlines, there was usually only a 10 percent chance of inheriting the power. The kumpania boasted odds of 75 percent, through careful selective breeding. To most clairvoyant families, 10 percent was already too high, considering the eventual sentence of madness. But the kumpania’s training methods virtually eliminated that threat. They promised all the benefits of clairvoyance and none of the disadvantages . . . except for the small matter of surrendering your free will, living in a commune, supporting the group by working as a “celebrity photographer,” marrying whomever they chose, and breeding more clairvoyants.

Adele touched her stomach. She’d done the breeding part, all right. Just not with the right partner. Her child would be a more powerful clairvoyant than she could have produced with Colm—the Cabal was certainly convinced of that—but to the kumpania, what she’d done was an atrocity, her child an abomination.

Another reason for Adele to leave the group before they found out. But if she jumped at Irving Nast’s current offer, he’d see her eagerness and take advantage.

Adele was supposed to meet Irving again that morning. She hadn’t dared—couldn’t risk him smelling her fear. So she’d called his answering service, leaving a message saying she couldn’t make it and would call to reschedule. He wouldn’t like that. The longer she postponed, the sooner he’d sense trouble and try to find her.

She had to get those photos and eliminate every trace of them. If that meant killing again—or having Colm do it for her—that was fine. After all, they were only humans. Outsiders. Inconsequential.