Yes, Ivy?
It was strange how quickly his mental touch had become familiar. Can you tell the changelings about Rabbit in case he accidentally breaches the perimeter?
I’ve already done so. They have promised to herd him back if he does.
A deep warmth uncurling in her abdomen, she said, Thank you.
No response, no polite words. “Because he only says what is necessary.” And, she reminded herself in an effort to fight the temptation to draw him out further, he was working. “Come on, Rabbit. Let’s go find that stream we can hear.”
Tail wagging happily, Rabbit padded beside her through the sun-dappled spaces between the trees. His first winter with her, she’d tried to keep him inside, but her pet had made it clear he loved the snow. Now it was only on the coldest days that she left him snug inside their home.
A couple of minutes of easy walking later, the two of them stood beside a stream that looked like a picture she’d once seen in a children’s storybook, the water creating a quiet music as it ran over smooth pebbles as large as her palm.
Hearing the crackle of fallen branches underfoot behind her, she turned to see Chang. “Hello.”
The distinctive night-sky eyes of a cardinal, white stars on black, focused on Rabbit. “Is that a pet?”
“Yes.” Ivy had made a decision to own her new life, no matter where it led. No lies, no half-truths. Not even from herself. “My Silence is fractured to the point of being nonexistent.” And no one, she decided at that instant beside a sunlit stream, would ever make her feel lesser for it; she wouldn’t permit it.
Ivy?
Yes, Vasic? she said in a deliberate echo of the way he’d answered her earlier . . . and it felt like the beginnings of a secret language.
Are you at ease being alone with Chang? I saw him head in the same direction as you.
Something twisted in her heart. Yes. Thank you for checking.
Your safety is my priority.
Chapter 12
Empaths thrive in communities. Extended periods of solitude are known to be damaging to their mental well-being.Excerpted from The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows by Alice Eldridge AN HOUR AFTER she’d met Chang by the stream, Ivy found herself seated on one of the large rocks at the open end of the clearing, the sun having warmed the stone. Around her sat the other empaths, the ten of them having gravitated toward one another.
Three men and six women, they ranged in age and geographic localities. Chang had come in from a research station in Kenya, while the blonde woman who wasn’t comfortable with Rabbit—Concetta—helped run a family business in Paraguay. Petite Lianne hailed from Kuala Lumpur, Teri from Houston, and Jaya from an atoll in the Maldives. Tibet born and raised Dechen sat next to Scottish Penn, the two of them across from Brigitte, a German based in Amsterdam. The final male, Isaiah, was from the tiny island nation of Niue.
Chang and Brigitte, both on the cusp of forty, were the oldest. “Apparently,” Chang had said to Ivy as they walked back from the stream, “anyone older is apt to find it more difficult to become active within the necessarily truncated timeline.”
That made sense to Ivy, as did the fact that there was no one younger than Jaya at twenty-one. A younger empath could well be too erratic—because while Silence was a terrible cage, it also taught strict mental discipline. Ivy’s conditioning might not have held, but she’d used the skills she’d learned under Silence to shield herself and to exert control in situations where betraying a fracture could’ve led to dangerous consequences.
“Woof!”
Glancing down at Rabbit, Ivy said, “Shh,” but his excitement made her smile. Her pet had investigated every corner of the compound by now, sniffed at everyone—even the Arrows—but remained full of energy.
“Your conditioning”—Isaiah’s dark eyes zeroed in on her smile—“it’s totally fragmented?”
Ivy was trying very hard not to dislike the male near her own age, but there was just something so smugly superior about him that it was near impossible. Now his question sounded like an accusation—but Ivy wasn’t about to apologize for who she was. “Yes.” It was true enough, given that the malfunctioning lock on her abilities, the source of her nosebleeds, was scheduled to be removed tomorrow.
It would leave her free of mental restraint for the first time in her life.
“My Silence, too,” Jaya said softly, her dark brown skin glowing in the sunlight, “is close to complete failure.” The pretty young woman, tall and with a quiet elegance that belied her years, petted Rabbit when he wandered over. “I was certain I’d be forced into a deep reconditioning . . . then Councilor Krychek mandated the fall of Silence.”
“I’m here because I’m being paid to be here.” Isaiah stared at the Arrows visible on the other side of the clearing, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. “I don’t believe in a hidden E designation. It seems pointless.”
Ivy couldn’t understand his attitude. “Did you talk to Sascha Duncan?”
“No.” Muscles worked in his jaw. “Councilor Duncan’s daughter has deluded herself into thinking she has some kind of an ability when she’s nothing but a flawed cardinal.”
Since Isaiah’s Silence was cracking like an eggshell to anyone who had eyes, Ivy decided to leave him to his theories and directed her words to the rest of the group. “I believe.” She spread the fingers of one hand over her heart, thinking of how she’d never, not once questioned her parents’ love or commitment, not even during her early childhood—when Gwen and Carter had adhered more strictly to the tenets of Silence. “Looking back, I know I’ve sensed emotion my entire life.”
Big-boned, her hair a tumble of dark blonde, and her skin pale cream, gorgeous Brigitte spoke with a distinctive, raspy voice. “Two months before I was contacted for this,” she said now, her accent that of a woman who’d lived all over Europe, “I witnessed a car accident. It was on a largely untraveled road through the Pyrénées, and I was the only one nearby to offer assistance.”
No one spoke when she paused, her throat moving.
“After calling the authorities”—she tugged her white shawl snug around her shoulders—“I ran down the bank to where the car had come to a violent stop against a large tree, and managed to open the driver’s-side door. The man inside was covered in blood and trapped by the way the car had crumpled around him.” A long, deep breath, air releasing softly from her nostrils.
“He was human, and he was so scared that it felt like nails being driven into my flesh.” Vivid, brutal, the image hit hard. “When he grabbed my hand, I didn’t retract it, and I thought that if only he wasn’t so afraid, his heart rate would calm, his breathing would even, and he’d have a higher chance of survival.”
“What happened?” Ivy whispered when the other woman stopped to stare at the ground, as if once more alone with a dying man on a lonely mountain road.
Cornflower blue eyes met Ivy’s. “The terror, his terror . . . it drained away . . . then it was inside me, choking me with a panic that blinded.” She shook her head. “I excused the experience as being brought on by the stress of the situation. But a week after the accident, the hospital forwarded me a note from the injured man.” She twisted her interlinked hands. “He thanked me for being there, for taking his fear.”
A whispering quiet, the trees waving in the breeze.
Bearded Penn was the one who broke it, his big body throwing a shadow across the ground. “I haven’t had a comparable experience, but the idea of a mind healer makes rational sense to me. We’re a race defined by our minds—it would be illogical not to have a designation focused on psychic injuries.”
Isaiah’s biceps bulged beneath the thin fabric of his thermal pullover as he gripped his left wrist with his right hand, but even he had no words to refute Penn’s statement.
“I’ve felt the darkness,” Concetta blurted into the quiet. “The rot in the Net.”