“Earth to Hanna, you out there?”
I laughed. “Why? Were you saying anything important?”
It wasn’t hard to envision her eye roll. Ginnifer Baker and I had gone through training together and had become good friends, though we weren’t always teamed together. The Society sometimes rotated their pairings to avoid “sexual distractions.” While I understood their reasoning, it was damnably naive to think rotating team members would stop sex from happening if both partners were so inclined.
Not that I ever had been, even when I’d been partnered with a male. Attraction was one thing, but sex? That meant touching, and touch... well, I knew the danger of desire overwhelming control all too well. My ex had been the only man I’d felt safe with in that regard.
“The ladies have just been joined by a man,” Ginny was saying. “I’m running facial rec, but you might want to get a little closer and check him out.”
“Will do.”
I squeezed past a couple who were dancing so enthusiastically it was a wonder they didn’t put their backs out, and finally caught sight of our four ladies. Monica Ashworth—no relation at all to the Society’s matriarch—was tall and curvaceous, with porcelain skin and the crimson hair of a royal witch. Her bridesmaids were similarly tall, but on the thinner side. Two were also Ashworths, though not of the same family line as Monica, while our third—Lanie—was from a minor Marlowe line. There might be only three lines of royal witches, but there were multiple lineages within each and very few who were actually related. The High Council was very careful about “breeding” compatibility; anyone wishing to get married these days had to do a full DNA checkandan ancestry search to ensure there were no close links.
The man dancing with them was the same height as the three women, with dark hair and thin features; instinct said he was human, but from where I stood, his eyes appeared to be silvery, which was the usual sign of a witch. Half-blood, perhaps?
“Well,” Ginny said, a little impatiently. “What says the inner seeker of darkness?”
“The inner seeker sees five people intent on having a good time and nothing more.”
“You cracked open the gates yet?”
“I have not.”
“Why not?”
Annoyance flickered through me. Ginny had never truly understood just how hard it was for me to open those inner gates—partially because I’d never fully explained the risk I took every time I did it, and partially because she, like everyone else, considered the Kang talent to connect to—and read—the energy or “spirit” of all living things to mine insights and hidden truths ultimately a benign one.
She and they were very wrong when it came to me.
“Because I’m not close enough.”
“Then get close enough.”
“Trying.”
“I’m tempted to say try harder, but I know that might be pushing it.”
“Yeah,” I replied dryly. “It might.”
I edged carefully around the bridesmaid dancing next to the stranger then tugged off the mental “gloves” that protected me from accidental touch and opened those inner gates. The energy they were emitting was stronger than I’d expected, and it hit with the force of a tsunami, sending me staggering back a couple of steps. I swore, braced, and fought for control over the inner darkness that so desperately wanted to dive headfirst into that wave; gradually, ever so gradually, I beat her back into submission. It was then that I felt it.
The nothingness. The stillness.
In the sea of vitality and life that surrounded me, it was an island of peace. Of serenity.
It wasn’t coming from the group in front of me.
I quickly swung around and scanned the nearby faces, searching for the person or persons responsible for that island. But the sensation disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and I cursed again.
“Hanna?” Ginny was saying, “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“I felt something... strange.”
“Dark strange? Dangerous strange?”
“Just... strange.” My reply was absent, my gaze still searching the area.
With the inner gate still open and the darkness back under control, the sea of people had given way to a sea of luminescence; their life forces—hues of silver and gold mostly, with the occasional flicker of red that represented intent edging toward darkness—shone so brightly it made my eyes water. Most humans thought of life energy as auras, and in some respects they weren’t wrong, because auras were the energies that came with emotions. But for that same reason, auras tended toward more vibrant colors. Life energy was the essence—some erroneously called it the soul—that flowed through all living things, be they human, plant, animal, or insect. It was the force that kept us alive, made us who we were. I’d never come across anyone before tonight who simply emittednoenergy. Not even my ex could obscure his output to the point of nothingness.
