Caressed By Ice by Nalini Singh Page B

order. It was beginning to appear that that was one thing the Council hadn’t lied about—maybe there was no way to harness her gift that far.
    Anthony moved on to another item on the agenda. Half an hour later, they were done and she was hugging him good-bye. He didn’t return the gesture, but did pat her lower back once. Only a former inmate of Silence could have understood the incredible impact of that act. She had tears in her eyes when he pulled away and walked out the door.
    Barker, a DarkRiver soldier, was waiting to escort him out of the pack’s financial HQ. Located in downtown San Francisco, near the organized chaos of Chinatown, the building was both public and highly secure.
    â€œCome here, Red.” Vaughn dragged her into his arms, melting the lump in her throat with his rough brand of affection.
    It scared her sometimes, the strength of what she felt for him. “He’s important. The Ghost.” She’d had a knowing , not a vision as such but a hint of how things might be.
    That was when it hit her. A true vision. A split-second image of the future.
    But this one had nothing to do with the Ghost. It was about Brenna. Death. The SnowDancer was surrounded by death, her hands drenched in blood. Whose blood? Faith didn’t know but she could smell the raw-meat scent of it, the desperation, and the fear. Then it was gone—so fast she wasn’t even left with an afterimage on her retinas, much less any of the disorientation that sometimes accompanied the flashes of foresight.
    It had given her nothing concrete, nothing she could share with Brenna, but it did serve to back up her instincts about what the other woman had told her on the phone. Hugging Vaughn, she returned to the topic at hand. “Do you think I should contact the NetMind about the Ghost?” A sentience that was at home in networks of minds, the NetMind was the librarian and some believed, the policeman of the PsyNet. Faith, however, knew it to be so much more.
    â€œThis guy seems to be working fine alone. You sure you want to mess with that?”
    â€œI should’ve known you’d take the side of the lone wolf,” she teased, delighting in being able to do so.
    He growled and she felt the vibration against her cheek. “Don’t compare me to those damn feral things.”
    Tilting up her face, she smiled. “Damn wolves.” It was an imprecation often muttered by DarkRiver cats.
    â€œToo right.” He kissed her. Hard. Fast. Vaughn.
    â€œI’ll take your advice—I don’t want to inadvertently trigger something in the NetMind.” Though the developing sentience was good, it wasn’t completely free of the Council. “You know, I think the Ghost is going to be important to DarkRiver as well. Not now. But one day.”
    â€œA vision?”
    She shook her head. “Not even a knowing, really, more of a—” The words wouldn’t come.
    â€œA gut feeling.”
    â€œYes.” No wonder she’d been blocked—admitting to such a thing would’ve gotten her medicated in the PsyNet. “Oh, and, my darling cat, we’re going up into SnowDancer territory tomorrow morning for a meeting.”
    â€œWho?” He fisted her hair in his hand, but she knew it was a gesture of affection.
    â€œBrenna Kincaid.” She decided not to mention that Judd Lauren would also be present. Vaughn had a decidedly negative reaction to the tall, dark, and very dangerous Psy. Judd…no, she saw nothing about him. Of all the people she had ever met, it was Judd who was the most opaque to her foresight. So dark. So brutally alone.
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    Twenty-four hours after she’d bowed to Judd’s demands, Brenna still wasn’t sure about meeting with Faith, but it was too late to back out. They got together in a small clearing about twenty minutes from the den. Despite her misgivings about this, Brenna had to admit the DarkRiver pair had picked a