Psy understood the value of architectural tourism.

Seeing an old lady tending her winter-quiet garden a couple of houses over, he wandered across. “A pretty face doesn’t do it for me,” she said without pausing in her task. “Never has—not since Bobby Jones broke my heart in junior high.”

Max didn’t much feel like smiling—time was slipping by so fucking fast—but he made his lips curve. “I don’t suppose you know who lives in number nine?”

“She’s never done anything to hurt anyone”—a suspicious glance—“so you leave her alone.”

Max frowned. “Human?”

Her snort was inelegant, her words acerbic. “You think a Psy would live on this street?”

Max made a decision. If it was the wrong one, it could tip off their quarry—but Max had just remembered something else he’d read in Tulane’s recent history and realized the answer to this mystery might be both logical . . . and utterly inexplicable. “Thanks for your help.” Turning away, he walked to the door of number nine and knocked.

The petite woman who opened the door had arms covered by computronic black carapaces and scars on her face that still bore a hard pink shine—vivid against the naturally mocha color of her skin. “Yes?”

Gut tight with the knowledge that he was right about Tulane’s motivation for visiting this house, Max showed her his electronic ID. “Ms. Amberleigh Bouvier?” It wasn’t a guess, not given her physical condition.

“Yes. What’s this about?”

“Could we talk inside?” He could feel the gardener glaring at him.

A hesitation before she nodded and led him down the corridor and into the kitchen.

“Is this about Andre?”she asked, taking a seat at the table set by the window. When he raised a surprised eyebrow, she continued, “I figured someone would come sooner or later, but I thought it’d be another Psy.”

Max leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “I need to know the reason for Andre Tulane’s visits.”

“Penance,” Amberleigh said in stark response. “His car blew a fuse and he lost control of it on a rainy night six months ago. Unfortunately, I happened to be on the curb when he drove over it.” Amberleigh shook her head, her cropped hair blue-black in the sunlight. “I don’t understand it myself, so I can’t expect you to. Everyone—even I—agreed it was an accident, but he said he was responsible, so he paid all my medical bills, made sure I got the best treatment.”

“Your arms?”

“They’ll be back to full strength in another couple of months.” She touched her face. “And these scars are going to be all but gone after they heal enough to begin laser treatments.”

Those treatments, Max thought, hadn’t been around when Sophia had been a child. He might’ve asked why she hadn’t taken advantage of them as an adult, but he knew the answer—it was a quiet, powerful rebellion. Sophia wanted to remember the past, remember the three children who’d been lost. He was fucking proud of her for finding a way to speak even in Silence. “Why does Andre still come to see you?”

“To do any work around the house or yard that needs to be done.” Amberleigh sounded bewildered, her eyes huge in that small face. “He doesn’t speak more than three words to me, but by the time he’s done, the lawn is mowed, anything broken is fixed, and my car’s running smooth as Irish whiskey.”

Max didn’t need to hear any more. Whatever the demons that drove the quiet black man, Andre Tulane was deeply entangled with a human—in direct violation of Pure Psy’s aim of absolute racial Purity.

In the Pure Psy world, Max thought as he stepped out into the crisp afternoon air, a human cop would never meet, never love . . . and never lose a violet-eyed J.

CHAPTER 37

There’s always a price when you begin to ask questions. Sometimes, the answers aren’t what you hope to find. And sometimes, there are no answers.

—From the private case notes of Detective Max Shannon

on the file labeled “River”

Clay, having driven straight from lunch to take up a watch position around his alpha pair’s home, looked at Sascha as they walked outside her and Lucas’s cabin. He wasn’t as close to her as some of the other sentinels, but he deeply respected the woman his alpha had chosen. She was strong, and she made their pack strong.

“I didn’t say anything to Max,” he said, continuing a conversation they’d had on the phone on his way over, “didn’t want to get his hopes up. But can Noor help Sophia?” His adopted daughter—the owner of a great big chunk of his heart—was part human, part Psy. She’d also formed a soul-deep friendship with another gifted child, Keenan. And that amalgamation of factors had created something amazing.

Sascha put a hand on his arm to steady herself as they stepped over a fallen log, easy with claiming the skin privileges that were a packmate’s right—but that she’d never presumed on until Clay had told her it was okay. “I asked Faith to see if her father could get us Sophia’s medical scans after you called.”

Anthony Kyriakus, Clay thought, was an enigma, a Psy Councilor with an apparent heart. “He came through.”

A quick nod, a tendril of rich black hair escaping her braid to curl over her cheek. “Tammy, Ashaya, and I all had a look at them.” Her expression was bleak when she glanced up. “According to those scans, her organic brain is fine.”

Ah, damn. “That’s what the kids fix, isn’t it?”

“As far as we know—yes. But the fact is, we’re learning as we go with Noor and Keenan.” She caught a leaf that had floated down through the gold-hued forest light, worrying it between her fingers. “Js have also been a mystery since the dawn of their existence. My best guess is that the damage is psychic and cumulative. When I met her . . . I sensed this incredible will containing a vast pain.” Her voice was taut, her bones strained against her skin. “Her shields aren’t broken—they’ve been worn away by a thousand slow drips of acid.”

Clay shoved a hand through his hair. “Is there anything that can be done?” He wanted to help the cop who’d been a friend to his mate when she’d been alone, who’d shed blood in the hunt to find a monster experimenting on vulnerable children like Noor.

Sascha looked so distressed, he knew the answer before she spoke, this empath with her huge heart. “I was going to try to see if I could do something on the psychic level, but according to a note in her file, she’s a minor anchor.” A single tear streaked down her face, her sorrow so heavy he could feel it in his bones. “She’s mainlining the Net—and that Net is slowly going insane.”

Clay released fisted hands to reach out and close one over Sascha’s shoulder. “Did she ever have a chance?”

Sascha’s fingers gripped his in painful sympathy. “No.”

Max returned to his apartment to discover that Morpheus had defected for good. The well-fed cat was purring happily on Sophia’s coffee table when she let him in. “I missed you today,” she said with a smile, but he saw the shadows under her eyes, the new lines of strain on her face.

Heart tight with the force of what he felt for her, he waited only until the door was closed before cupping her cheek, before taking her mouth in a kiss that held as much savagery as tenderness. She responded with a moan low in her throat. “Max, wait.”

He bit her lower lip, furious with her for what she would soon do, the betrayal she would soon commit.

Her eyes shimmered. “Max.”

It wasn’t the tears that stopped him. It was the way she said that, the way she looked at him. Not afraid of him, but for him. “What is it?” He gripped her hips, unable to let her go.

She dropped her forehead against his chest for a moment. “Will you hate me, Max?”

“Every moment of every day.”

“Good.”

Anger whiplashed inside him, at this woman who needed him to remember her. Didn’t she know he’d never forget? “What,” he said, his voice rough with rage withheld, “did you want to tell me?”

A long breath and she raised her head. “While I was in the Net, I did some searches outside the parameters of the case.” Those unusual eyes shifted away, then back. “I found some information for you.”

He wasn’t used to this kind of evasion from her. “If you don’t know that I’ll stand by you—”

Her fingers on his mouth. “I know.” Glittering eyes, a tone that left no room for doubt. “I don’t want this knowledge to hurt you . . . and I know it holds the capacity for enormous pain.”

He took her hand, kissed her knuckles. “I’m tough. I’ll survive.” That’s what he did—survive. But this scar, Sophie’s scar, was never going to heal.

She placed her hand on his cheek in gentle affection, and he knew she understood what he hadn’t said, the hurt he hadn’t vocalized. “River may have been alive as of two years ago.”

His heart stopped. When it kicked out again, he found himself shaking his head, his hands clenching on her—he’d searched for River ever since he became a cop, through every known database and come up blank. “Why would there be anything about him on the PsyNet?”

“His path crossed with that of a human researcher doing a study on adults who’d been drug addicts as children.” Gentle words, a worried gaze. “That researcher’s paper was footnoted—and linked to—by a Psy scientist’s paper on Jax addiction.”

“Where—” he began, but Sophia was already pulling away to pick up a sheet of paper from beside Morpheus’s purring body. Taking the printout, he went straight to the part she’d highlighted.

There it was. River’s name in black and white. The citation noted that the subject had been free of addiction since his fourteenth birthday, when he’d voluntarily entered a program run by a charitable organization.