It was so unexpectedly sweet that it cut through the heaviness in Bowen’s gut. “Bowen,” he said, holding out his hand to the other man. “Good to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Dex’s handshake was firm. “You want to join us?”
“Thanks, but I could do with some alone time.”
“Yeah, I get that—I’d lose it if I couldn’t escape into the black now and then.”
Bo had the thought that Dex could become a friend; the rough-hewn male reminded him of Cassius. Bo’s best friend, too, didn’t mince words. “I’ll leave you two to enjoy your lunch.”
Getting himself a fresh plate of food and a mug of coffee, he’d just sat down right next to the seaward wall when Scott limped over with a plate holding a generous slice of blackberry pie. “Kaia messaged and said this was for you.” The boy lowered his voice to a whisper even though Bowen had chosen a seat far from Dr. Kahananui and Dex. “How did you do that to Alden? He’s so big and you were sick and everything.”
“Being big isn’t an advantage if you don’t use your brains.” Scott, he sensed, had plenty of the latter—the boy’s deep green eyes burned with a thirst to learn. “Intelligence and strategy have won far more fights than might.”
Scott’s expression turned quietly thoughtful but he didn’t ask more questions, leaving Bo to his meal. And to the slice of pie to replace the one that had splattered on Alden’s body. The ache in his chest expanded to encompass everything he was. “You’ll drive me crazy, Kaia Luna,” he whispered before taking a bite of the pie.
He didn’t know what made him glance into the deep five minutes later, when the pie was only a memory entangled with the scent of his siren. Two large shapes moved beyond, flowing closer and closer . . . until they formed into the shape of humpback whales. One came to swim right alongside the seaward wall, seemed to be looking straight at him. It had different markings from the one who’d swum by earlier . . . including a small patch under the eye right where Carlotta’s beauty spot had been.
Wonder a glow under his skin, Bowen pressed his palm to the glass. “Good swimming, Carlotta.”
He watched after her until she disappeared back into the black with her mate, then searched the water for more glimpses into wonder until he had no more time. Going back to his room, he opened up the window, then went to borrow a chair from Dr. Kahananui’s lab to place by it. She examined his cut again before she’d let him leave, seemed satisfied with what she saw.
He’d just put the chair down by the window when he looked up to find a bunch of obviously juvenile-sized sea creatures pressing their noses to the transparent wall. After laughingly waving at them, he took a seat and waited until the kids had swum off before he pulled out his phone and began to read the files Lily had sent through. He focused first on the file to do with the assassination attempt that was the reason his heart was now a high-tech construct instead of flesh and blood.
The Mercants, it turned out, had dealt with the problem because the same individual had also targeted their scion, Silver. Then they’d forwarded all relevant data. It appeared the Alliance now owed the Mercants a favor, but it’d be worth it to have a strong line of communication with the influential Psy family.
Word from Bowen’s spies was that the Mercants were considered the most powerful information brokers in the PsyNet. If you needed information, it was the Mercants who either had it—or knew how to get it. But, oddly for a Psy family, they’d remained a cohesive and tight-knit unit throughout Silence. Mercants, it seemed, didn’t let go of their own.
The final file in the packet was titled Krychek. He opened it to read that the cardinal telekinetic had been in touch after the shooting. He’d told Lily she had access to the resources of the Ruling Coalition of the Psy should she need those resources.
Your brother is critical to the Alliance, Krychek had written, and the Alliance is critical to the success of Trinity. We can only outmaneuver and crush the Consortium if we stand as an unbreakable triumvirate.
As Bo had expected, Lily hadn’t taken Krychek up on his offer, but that the other man had made it had Bowen wondering. Since he was officially dead, he couldn’t reach out to Krychek, but Lily could. He sent her a message: Ask Krychek if he’s thought about what I asked him during our last meeting. To help create a psychic shield for humanity for nothing in return, simply because it was the right thing to do.
I’ll do it now, Lily replied. He gave me his direct contact details.
Sliding away the phone, Bo decided to walk this habitat, stretch out his muscles further while seeing if he could discover more about the wider station. He’d reached the atrium and was in the process of figuring out whether to go in the direction Kaia had headed, or take the opposite way, when he caught a sense of movement with his peripheral vision.
A rather large sea turtle, its greenish skin tightly wrinkled, was walking purposefully—if in slow motion—across the carpeting toward him. And it was walking, not dragging itself on flippers. He couldn’t see enough below its shell to figure out how. A semi-shift?
As he watched, it came to a halt two feet from him, openly judging him with its pitch-black eyes. “Good morning,” he said.
He could swear the turtle snorted at his polite attempt at communication before it turned around and walked back the way it had come.
“Don’t mind Bebe,” Oleanna whispered as she passed. “Been in a bad mood since 2032.”
“What happened in 2032?”
“She turned two hundred and decided that gave her leave to be crotchety. I swear she yells ‘Get off my lawn!’ to the other turtles who try to swim up onto her island.”
Bowen’s mind rocketed back to a conversation he’d had with Malachai. He scowled. “Is she seriously over two hundred or are you messing with the gullible human?”
Giggling, the changeling who’d made suggestive promises to him across the kitchen shrugged. “You should ask Bebe. I’ll nurse your wounds afterward—I have lots of tentacles to soothe your brow and massage your aches.”
Bowen’s increasingly dark scowl had no effect. Laughing, she winked at him before heading off in a wave of musky perfume that was perfectly fine except that it wasn’t tropical flowers and coconut and Kaia.
As for Bebe the crotchety turtle, she was still making her laborious way out of the atrium, but at least she’d turned her beady eyes on two teenagers who were studying industriously at a table. Or they were now. They’d been throwing spitballs at each other before Bebe’s arrival.
“Crotchety turtles who are apparently over two hundred,” Bowen murmured. “Tiny old ladies who turn into whales. And a cook with a mouse for a pet who turns me inside out. I’m still in a coma and dreaming.”
And yet he wouldn’t give up the dream of his siren with her tender kiss and a hidden sadness he’d glimpsed when she’d walked away—after seducing him so thoroughly that he felt tied to her with an invisible thread.
“Bowen.” It was George’s cadaverous form. “Dr. Kahananui needs to take blood samples to confirm your readings are within the acceptable limits as we prepare for the second injection of the compound tomorrow.”
Bo went motionless. “So soon?”
“Yes, the timeline is uneven.” George pulled out an organizer. “I have it here, the number of days you’ll have before the final injection, not counting tomorrow.”
“Twelve,” Bo murmured. “I’ll have twelve days.”
And a five percent chance of success.
A ninety-five percent chance of oblivion.
Chapter 26
Thanks for sticking up for me. I always know you’ll be there, that you won’t let me fall.
—Hugo Sorensen (18) to Kaia Luna (18)
KAIA ARRIVED AT the small Japanese garden in habitat two shaken and with the lingering imprint of Bowen’s hands on her body, his roughly masculine scent in her nostrils. She couldn’t understand how he’d gotten under her skin so quickly, until she couldn’t not think about him.
“Kaia!” Tansy waved from the table she and Seraphina had snagged next to a miniature Japanese maple with leaves of gold and orange.
Like all the green spaces in the station, these delicately pruned plants provided not only a way to cleanse the air, but also food for their souls. Because to be a water changeling was to have two sides to your nature. One part lived for the ocean, the other craved green and earth.
Kaia had no desire to go upside and walk on land, but—aside from her kitchen—the green areas in the habitats were her favorite spaces. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, taking a seat, Tansy to her left and Sera to her right. A large thermal carrier sat in the center of the table—food one of the teens would’ve run over from the main kitchen. Sera had probably bribed said teen with a favor only the assistant station commander could grant. “Alden wanted to go for Bowen Knight’s throat.”
Tansy and Seraphina groaned in concert.
“Here.” Tansy opened up a sleek black thermos and poured a frothy coffee into the third mug on the table, the gray-blue wool of her top a perfect contrast to the cool white of her skin. “I made it in my new machine.” She sank her teeth into her lower lip, her sharply pointed face anxious.
And though Kaia’s heart still trembled from the encounter with Bo, she cupped her hands around the mug and lifted it to take a deep breath. Coffee, chocolate, cinnamon, the decadent scents swirled around her, but did nothing to erase the taste of Bowen from her lips.
Hesitant to take that step, she nonetheless made herself sip the coffee. And shuddered inside when Bowen’s scent continued to cling to her, as if he’d sunk into the cells of her body itself. “It’s perfect, Tansy.” Creamy and rich and hot.
Tansy’s face lit up. “Sera liked it, too.”
Seraphina, generously curved and as generous of heart, tapped the side of her mug with one boldly red nail. “I could do with a refill.” Her deep brown skin glowed with health, her springy curls so glossy and shiny that Kaia guessed she’d had the morning off—it took serious time and patience and a lot of conditioner to separate out each curl so beautifully.