He glanced at the coffee table, where his box of anti-anxiety arts and crafts still sat where he’d left it. He owed Grayson a hat. He had some rainbow yarn and crochet hooks—maybe he should practice some half-double stitches. Put on the song Grayson had sent him, let the Spanish take his brain south, somewhere the nights and people were warm.
But as he was reaching for the box, an email notification lit the screen, from another gibberish sender. Reece pursed his lips, then opened the email.
We are always watching you.
Reece frowned. Was this the same jerk from earlier? It was easy to send hate to targets you imagined were weak, to those you didn’t expect to fight back. Nothing brave about punching down.
It was a creepy email, but no one could bereallywatching him. If they were, they wouldn’t be trying to scare him with stupid emails. This coward would be way too chicken to mess with Reece if they had any idea what they were really up against—if they knew what he could do.
He reached out toward the message, but the sleeve of Grayson’s hoodie slipped down over his hand again, blocking his fingers.
Reece stared at the hem for a moment, the fleece inside the sleeve soft against his bare fingers, light as a ghost but taking him back to the moment he’d gotten the hoodie, in the warm cab of the big black truck after Grayson had taken Reece’s side against the world.
He blinked hard, then shook his head.
It was good the email’s author didn’t know how dangerous Reece was now. They’d be terrified of him, and he didn’t want to make anyone feel scared. Obviously he didn’t want that.
Still, he’d gotten a similar message twice now, and maybe heshouldtell Jamey, or even Grayson. Once it was a reasonable hour and he wasn’t going to wake them up.
He swiped the notification off his screen and reached for his crafts.
CHAPTER FIVE
...welcome back toFiction with Feelings, the only podcast that focuses on empath-approved reads. Our panelists are here today with an exclusive early look atA Study in Sentiment, the historical thriller that reimagines the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes if empaths had emerged in the 1880s...
—EXCERPT FROM THE EPISODE 79 TRANSCRIPT
Grayson opened hiseyes at six thirty a.m. to a world made of white: white hotel walls, white hotel sheets, white snow outside a window with white curtains.
His dreams, on the other hand, had been gray. It was all he ever dreamed of anymore.
The hotel bathroom was closet-sized, the showerhead not much more than chin-height. He had to duck to rinse shampoo from his hair, but the pressure was good, and the hot water relaxed his shoulder, which was still a bit stiff in mornings from the bullet wound he’d taken from that FBI agent at the Seattle marina. It was healing well and quickly, though; soon all he’d have was the scar where his chest and shoulder met.
A scar Reece could obviously never see. The less he thought about that night and the mess that had followed on the Stone Solutions rooftop in the morning, the better. Empaths had no business being exposed to that much violence; Grayson knew that all too well. That was how they ended up corrupted, like Cora Falcon. Like his brother.
Reece wasn’t corrupted, but he was in a liminal state that made him dangerous to everyone in Seattle. And Seattle was dangerous for Reece right back: AMI was always there, but now Director Traynor and Vivian Marist were too. If those two ever discovered the truth, it wouldn’t matter that Reece was still a pacifist, or that Cedrick Stone was responsible for his liminal state; they’d send Reece straight to Victor Nichols at Polaris, the corrupted empath prison.
Grayson needed to be here in Vermont, to solve this empath’s murder, but it left Reece vulnerable to all the wolves circling empaths. The Dead Man could hit back where an empath wouldn’t, but Grayson couldn’t fight by text.
After the shower, Grayson shaved in front of the mirror, one of Reece’s texts rising up from his memories.
I mean, you do date or whatever, right?
That one had been a funny text. No, the Dead Man didn’tdate.
But that hadn’t been the whole question, had it?
Grayson tilted his head to glide the razor over his jaw. Bodies were also funny. You could be sitting on a chair, minding your own business, and then if someone came along and tapped your knee just right, your whole leg would jerk, all on its own, no thoughts or feelings needed.
Once upon a time, he might have looked at a person and thoughtI want to be with them because they make me happy. He didn’t think things like that anymore, but if someone hit him just right, his body still jerked. Still sat up and took notice andwanted.
And Reece? Hitexactlyright.
Grayson had, at first, done a good job of ignoring it. Sure, Reece was cute—really fucking cute, all overgrown dark hair, giant brown eyes, and fiery personality. He’d been cute glaring at Grayson from the other side of a table in the Seattle Police Department and still cute running his motor mouth in the Smart car.
Didn’t matter. Lots of people were attractive, and the Dead Man was there to do a job. Reece was a potential suspect.
Then Reece had seen a book about torture in an office at Stone Solutions and been thrown into a panic attack. No one knew the exact parameters of corrupting an empath—maybe it could happen from a graphic enough book, or maybe not—but Reece had been hyperventilating and Grayson had intervened, gotten down in front of him and tried to bring him back.
