Chapter 4

Dear D,

It’s so good to hear from you. I’m sorry I missed you when you visited Mom and Dad. My trip to Paris got extended because I’ve been promoted to supervising engineer! I’m now in charge of the entire Paris project. I’m so excited I might self-combust!

I’m going to call Mom and Dad tonight. But I had to tell you first! I would’ve never passed my exams without your advice and support. I’ll never forget your patience as you helped me find my feet. I wouldn’t be the confident woman I am today without having such an amazing big brother.

I hope you and Marian are having the best week. I can’t believe my big brother is mated!! And at only 24! That ceremony was amazing. Now that you two have had six months of mated bliss, I want you to seriously consider visiting me in Paris. I’ll be here for at least two more months, and they’ve given me a spacious two-bedroom apartment. There’s plenty of room. Do come, D!

Your favorite little sister (who I hope you’ll notice is writing you an actual paper letter in her terrible penmanship, and who will be paying the exorbitant rates for a telekinetic courier, rather than sending you a message via the Internet).

P.S. The discussion about shifting the aims of Silence is really heating up. I don’t know what I think about it—what are your thoughts on it?

—Letter from Hien Nguyen to Déwei Nguyen (19 February 1972)

DAY FOUR OF the same nightmare and Yakov couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t stand watching her die over and over again! All while he lay in screaming helplessness, unable to go to her aid.

Yakov wanted to strangle someone and punch them at the same time.

Freshly showered but still pissed—and awake far too early—he went to grab coffee and pastries from the den’s main kitchen. He met no one in the hallways, and even the Cavern, the huge central hub of the den, was empty. Weird time between shifts, he realized.

Fifteen more minutes and there’d be a steady flow of people in and out.

The brawny clanmate on duty in the kitchen grunted at him before going back to his breadmaking, his biceps flexing as he kneaded the dough like he was imagining it to be his worst enemy. Yakov had no idea why someone who absolutely was not a morning person had chosen to be a baker—but he was a damn good one.

As showcased by the array of fresh pastries ready for the taking.

“Thanks, Dan.” Yakov’s whisper had Bogdan waving a flour-dusted hand that said, Get the hell out of my face, you infuriating morning person.

Leaving his clanmate in peace, Yakov went to wake his twin. He didn’t bother to knock since he knew Pavel was sleeping alone today. Pavel’s lover—and the man for whom he was head over paws crazy in love—was on the final day of a work contract for a tiny Psy family unit out of Ecuador that could surely not pay him what he was worth.

Mercants had a way of making unusual choices.

Pavel proved to be lying facedown in bed, one foot out of the blanket and his arms above his head. “If that’s not a croissant I smell, I will murder you,” he muttered before raising his head. His bedhead might’ve been extreme if not for the silky weight of his hair—it fell back into place around his face at once.

They’d inherited the texture of their hair from their denu.

After turning on the lights using the touchpad by his bed, Pavel blinked owlishly at Yakov, his eyes identical to those Yakov saw in the mirror every day, but for one crucial difference: Pavel had bad vision. He also refused to get surgery to fix it. He didn’t trust anyone with a laser near his eyes.

He slapped his hand at the shelf Yakov had built for him beside his bed, managed to snag his glasses. Vision now corrected, he sat up with his back to the headboard and his lower body covered by the blanket—but for that one foot. They might be changelings at home in their skin, and twins to boot, but it was rude to just let your junk hang out, and the two of them weren’t that rude to each other.

Yawning, Pavel held out a hand.

Into which Yakov thrust a coffee before placing the croissant in his brother’s other hand. Then he got the rest of the tray full of pastries as well as his own coffee and placed it on the bed. When he sat, it wasn’t in the single chair in the room, but at the end of the bed, in a position from which he could talk to his brother about the nightmare that haunted him.

Only his stomach lurched at the memory and he found himself searching for a distraction. “I thought Stasya offered you a bigger room in the section for couples?” Pavel and Arwen might not have mated yet, but the two were a committed pair—any bear with eyes in their head could see that.

Pavel shrugged one shoulder. “We’re not technically living together yet. Felt sneaky to switch rooms when Arwen’s still figuring things out.” His voice softened on his lover’s name.

Yakov felt for his brother. But he also understood Arwen’s need to know himself before he dove headlong into the mating bond that hovered in the air between him and Pavel. Unlike Pavel and Yakov, Arwen hadn’t grown up free to live his life out in the open; this, now, was the first time in over a hundred years that E-Psy like Arwen weren’t only accepted but treasured.

A cataclysmic shift even for a man who’d been brought up in the heart of a fiercely protective family. “I was raised in love,” Arwen had said to Yakov once, “but I had to hide my truth from everyone outside my family.”

“Arwen still enjoying his work in Ecuador?” he asked his brother now.

But Pavel scowled. “You didn’t wake me up at the ass-crack of dawn to chitchat about my love life like a nosy babushka.” His brother gulped coffee. “Spill.”

Yakov exhaled, made himself say it. “I’m having flashes again.”

His brother’s sleep-hazy eyes sharpened, and suddenly he wasn’t a lazy bear anymore but one of their alpha’s top people. “Like when we were sixteen?”

“Yeah—but more intense.”

“Back then, we were on our own,” Pavel said, half the croissant already gone. “Now I’m sleeping with a Psy, and so is our alpha.”

Yakov rolled his eyes at his brother’s shit-eating grin. “TMI, bro,” he said, even as his bear smiled at seeing his twin so happy. “But yeah, we have avenues for info. You think any of them know a foreseer?”

“Ena knows everyone and their ancestors,” Pavel said dryly, referring to Arwen’s powerhouse of a grandmother, then shoved the rest of the croissant into his mouth.

Sounds of bliss followed.

Yakov fiddled with his mug. “It’s her.” Quiet words.

“The woman of your dreams?” Pavel whistled. “Damn, she must finally be on the way to you.”

“It’s an echo of Denu’s memories. We decided that, remember?”

“We were hormonal kids who knew shit,” his twin pointed out. “Does this dream girl still look like a girl?”

Heart thumping, Yakov shook his head. “She’s grown-up . . . and I see her bleeding, dying.”

All humor erased from his face, Pavel said, “Tell me.”

Because this was his brother, his best friend, he did, down to the most agonizing detail. “It’s fucked up.”

“Yes,” Pavel agreed. “But if it is foresight, then it’s also a warning. Remember what Babulya Quyen told us about what Denu always said.”

“That the greatest gift of foresight was the chance to alter the trajectory of events terrible and dark.” He sat forward, his arms braced on his thighs. “But, Pasha—she was so fucking scared and I could do nothing to help her.”

Pavel took a long drink of his coffee, picked up a second croissant, and nodded. “Right, we start from the top. Work out why you might be immobile—then work out how to circumvent that.”

HIS twin’s idea had been a good one—until they’d run headlong into Yakov’s lack of any detailed information about the blood-drenched situation. As a result, he was still in a foul mood when he drove into the city to meet with Silver. His alpha’s mate had gone to her office in the middle of the night to coordinate an emergency response to another catastrophic PsyNet collapse.

Yakov knew the Psy needed the PsyNet to survive. All their minds were connected to it, and it provided critical biofeedback to their brains. People like Silver who were linked to others outside the Net would survive a collapse, but the vast majority of the psychic race was unconnected to anyone on the outside.

And now, their PsyNet was failing.

Each time the Net fractured, it forcibly ejected Psy minds from it. People died, crumpling on the streets, in their workplaces, at home. Yakov had witnessed it once—seen Psy go down like marionettes with their strings cut. No warning. No way to assist unless you were a Psy with a mind powerful enough to throw people back into an undamaged part of the network before they went terminal.

It had been horrific.

So when Silver shot him a message asking him to come in, he’d figured the fallout must’ve hit a nearby area and she needed more brawn on the ground. Worst case, it would be to help with body retrieval. Best case would be to provide security because the collapse had been caught in time, but people were injured and agitated.

Turned out he was wrong about that.

“It wasn’t a major fracture,” Silver told him from where she sat at her desk, while he sprawled in a chair on the other side, Moscow waking to a misty morning in the floor-to-ceiling window behind her. “Nothing compared to the chaos of the incident that led to the creation of the PsyNet Island.”

The Island, as everyone was terming it, because it was the only one in the entire PsyNet, had been created in a maelstrom of violence. From what Yakov understood, that piece of the Net now floated in the network but was separated from it by “dead” air.

“The best metaphor we have for non-Psy is that of a moat,” a talking head on the local newscast had explained. “The dead air around the Island creates that moat. The only difference is that we can’t build a bridge over it, nor can we swim to it. There is no way to the Island, or off the Island.”

Yakov’s brain hurt at times when it came to PsyNet information, but the moat reference was an excellent one and had allowed him to visualize the situation. “I saw on the latest newscast that it’s considered stable now.”

“Yes, Ivan’s done an excellent job in only two weeks,” Silver said, pride a hum beneath the words, “but there’s so much he doesn’t know, and we can’t help him, since none of us can even get to the Island.”

“Well, the man is a Mercant,” Yakov said in an effort to ease her concern—because he got it. The Mercants were as much a clan as StoneWater. Not being able to help a clanmate? It hurt. “I’m sure a member of Spies R Us will find a way to get the data he needs.”

Silver’s lips twitched. “Do not repeat that around my grandmother or I can’t vouch for your safety.”

Despite the amused warning, there was no hiding the worry that hovered near-constantly in the silvery blue of her eyes.

“You should go home,” he muttered. “You need the embrace of clan. I’m surprised Valya didn’t just haul you back when you tried to leave.” A reference to her first stay with StoneWater when they’d all assumed that Valentin had given in to his basest bear instincts and kidnapped her.

“He tried to make me stay.” Silver’s smile was subtle. “I, however, am made of sterner stock—and he has duties in the den today. Several of the tiny gangsters are starting school and you know how much strength they gain from him.”

“Yes. They need him.” Changeling bear cubs might be ninety percent feral and utterly fearless most of the time, but they were babies, too, and going to school—even the small school in the heart of bear territory—for the first time was scary. Valentin literally held their tiny hands and walked them in, cuddled them if they needed it, and hung around until they’d settled in with their friends.

Of course their parents or guardians were also present, taking pictures and gushing, but Valentin’s presence was far from an intrusion. Every adult in the den knew that for a predatory changeling, an alpha’s touch and guidance was, at times, a stark necessity. And their Valya was a good alpha not only for his strength and intelligence but because of his enormous heart.

“I can’t remember my first day of school,” he told Silver, “but my father says that Pasha and I exchanged glances on the doorstep, hitched our daypacks up our backs, and strode in like we were trouble and we knew it.” Akili Stepyrev’s hazel-brown eyes had been bright with laughter and pride against the warm brown of his skin as he told that story.

Today, Silver’s expression grew even warmer. Look at her like this and you’d never know her for the ice-cold telepath Valentin had first courted. “Funnily enough, my grandmother says something similar about me. That she’d never seen such a small and determined child—I appeared ready to take over the class.”

Yakov grinned. “Ena’s heir in more ways than one.” Silver Mercant wasn’t the director of EmNet because she was anything less than ruthlessly organized and meticulous in her goals. “So, what do you need me for?”

Silver told him.

Making a face, he folded his arms across his chest. “Izvinite, Siva,” he said, though he wasn’t really sorry—his parents had just raised him to be a polite bear. “That’s a big nyet from me.”

Silver Mercant was well used to dealing with growly and uncooperative bears, didn’t bat an eyelash at his response. “Even if it gains you entry to a highly secure facility with the warrant to poke about at will?”

Yakov scowled. “You fight dirty.”

That was when she pushed across the box of fresh donuts he’d been smelling since he walked into this meeting that was really a cat-sneaky ambush designed to make him spend a lot of time with a person he most assuredly was not going to like.

“I hate you,” he muttered with zero weight behind his words as he picked up one of the glazed circles of fried goodness and finished it off in two bites. “So,” he said now that his stomach was happier, “you want me to babysit a Psy who might be a psycho?”

Silver rubbed her temples as she had a way of doing when dealing with recalcitrant bears. He might actually buy it along with the pinched expression in her eyes except—

“You like us.” He grinned and spread out his arms. “You are, in fact, enchanted by our beariness.”

Lips twitching in one of those still-rare expressions of emotion, Silver dropped the act. “I need help,” she said simply.