Blaze of Memory by Nalini Singh Page B

his defenses as if they didn’t exist.
    Katya gave the slightest of nods. “Hello.”
    Aubry appeared a little startled at the formal greeting. But he recovered fast, gentling his smile, tone. “You need to eat more, darlin’.” The slow music of Texas wove through every easy syllable.
    Dev was aware of Katya shifting closer to him, even as she nodded. “Dev keeps putting food in front of me and saying eat .”
    The calm shook, threatened to break. He drew more metal, letting the chill work its way down to his very bones. But then Katya’s fingers brushed his, and the metal boiled, a sudden, violent heat he’d never before experienced. He should’ve moved away. Instead, he allowed her to tangle her fingers with his, closing his hand firmly around hers.
    Aubry chuckled. “Sounds like the boss.” His eyes shifted to Dev.
    Tempering the unfamiliar internal heat with more metal, Dev met the other man’s gaze, knowing he couldn’t give Aubry the answer he wanted—he couldn’t promise to take care of the woman by his side, no matter that she aroused his most primal instincts. “Did you need me for something?”
    “Yeah.” Aubry frowned. “I wanted to go over some new—”
    Dev cut him off before he could reveal anything sensitive in front of Katya. “Later. We’ll set up a comm-conference. I’m heading out of town.”
    For all his lazy charm, Aubry was nothing if not intelligent. Picking up the subtext, he closed the small electronic organizer he’d flipped open. “I’ll e-mail you the details—we can talk after you’ve had a chance to look things over. See you later, beautiful.”
    As Katya said, “’Bye,” Dev sent a message to his car’s onboard computer, telling the vehicle to meet them in front of the building.
    Katya didn’t speak again until they were almost to the curb. “That man—”
    “Aubry,” he said as the car rolled to a stop in front of him, the computronic system purring smoothly in the back of his mind.
    “Aubry was very handsome.” She sounded almost puzzled.
    Dev used his thumbprint to unlock the car though he could have as easily used his link with the computer. Only a very few trusted individuals knew of his gift with metal, even fewer of his developing affinity to machines. “Hop in.” As she settled in beside him, he answered her earlier comment. “Women like Aubry.” Age, culture, class, none of it mattered. The other man walked into a room and women smiled.
    “I can see why,” Katya murmured, watching him guide the car out into the traffic. After almost a minute of silence, she added, “A true Psy wouldn’t have noticed his looks.”
    “Why not?” Dev suddenly realized he’d stopped drawing metal the instant he had Katya to himself.
    “True Psy are Silent.”
    “Correction,” he said. “Psy in the Net are Silent. Psy outside the Net are not. Both are Psy.” And none of them affected him as viscerally as this woman who’d been dumped outside his home like so much garbage.
    “The Forgotten,” she whispered in a voice so soft he had to strain to hear her through the rush of protective anger. “I remember... the boy, he was one of yours. One of the Forgotten.” Scrunching up her face, she paused for several seconds before uttering a sound of absolute and utter frustration. “I know something, but I can’t reach it yet. Something about the boy.”
    Dev could guess exactly what she was trying to remember—Jonquil’s ability to literally sweet-talk people into doing whatever he wanted would be considered the most perfect of weapons by Ming LeBon and his fellow Councilors. Psy in power killed with cold-blooded precision when necessary, but they preferred to work under the radar if at all possible—it made it far easier to disclaim all responsibility for the brutal acts they put in motion.
    Glancing over, he saw Katya press her fingers to her temples, as if trying to still an ache—or force open the locked vault of her memory, no matter that it might