CHAPTER FIVE
Miriya hated Mardi Gras, an unusual sentiment for a native New Orleanian, but not for an alpha telepath to whom all unshielded minds were as transparent as glass and as noisy as a flock of male Moluccan Cockatoos in mating season. Mental migraine aside, the stench of alcohol mixed with human waste was appalling. Fetid and pungent, it rose from the drains in spite of hard rains and power washes, and hung like a toxic miasma over New Orleans, as inseparable from the identity of the city as cafe' au lait and beignets at Café Du Monde.
And it was only seven in the morning.
She had Decatur Street largely to herself, with the exception of the city sanitation crew working hard to purge the worst evidence of the prior day’s excesses. Miriya stifled a sigh. Little surprise she had run away so many years prior. As a city, New Orleans had little to recommend it. Except that it had once been home.
She lifted her head and looked to the northwest. In a way, the city was still home. Were her father and mother still living together in their home by Lake Pontchartrain?
Her jaw tensed. As an alpha telepath familiar with the minds of Louise and Anton Durand, she would have no trouble locating them. As their daughter, she was not certain she wanted to find them.
Her grandmother had been the only person who had truly cared about her, and after she died, Miriya lost her only reason to linger in her dead-end life on a Louisiana bayou. She ran away then, and spent seven years away from home. She did not exchange a word with her parents in all that time—no e-mails, no phone calls.
No reason to break that trend now.
Besides, she had less than twelve hours to come up with a plan to crash the Mistick Krewe ball.
Miriya had no doubt she would be suitably attired for the ball that evening.
Her gown, a silver satin sheath elaborately embroidered with gold thread, had been purchased with Jake’s government credit card, together with a matching gold mask, fringed with tear-shaped seed pearls and bedecked with seven feathers in varying shades of silver and gold. She had then spent another two hours selecting shoes and accessories to match.
The core of her disguise however was neither dress nor mask, but her psychic shields and a whole bunch of telepathic lies. Both, fortunately, were right down her alley.
With a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand, she wandered through the familiar streets of the city. New Orleans felt eternal—unchanging in its charming decay. She supposed it would go on decaying forever, never entirely falling apart, yet never relinquishing its stubborn right to the old ways.
The old ways, which included secret societies and invitation-only masked carnival balls held within ancient buildings with thick walls and clandestine corridors.
Walls and corridors, cold, dark, moldy, and just downright icky.
Personally, she preferred fiberglass and steel.
She glanced up at a building distinguished by its tall gray walls and narrow, stained-glass windows. It was far better maintained than most of the buildings in that section of the French Quarter, which, she supposed, should have been a dead giveaway if she had paid attention.
A tiny frown twisted her lips. She had become too reliant on her telepathic abilities to the detriment of her overall powers of observation. If she were to become an enforcer—
What the hell was she thinking?
She did not want to be an enforcer. She did not want anything to do with the council.
All she wanted was to find Charles.
It was not for love; no, nothing so trite. The obligations of friendship, as she well knew, could occasionally bind tighter than love. Besides, he did pay for a year’s rent in an expensive Santa Barbara condominium, in addition to the lease on a flashy yellow Corvette—ah, she had loved that car—and provided her with a generous stipend.
Charles had been good to her. The least she could do was peek around for him.
She pushed out with her mind in the direction of the building, skimming as she always did over the thoughts of others. From what she could tell, most of the people were hard at work preparing the building for the party later that day, though few people actually had their thoughts on what they were doing. She brushed over the usual catalog of human miseries; the endless disgruntled whining about life and its lack. Come to think of it, considering the amount of negativity that assaulted her mind daily, it was a miracle she was upbeat at all.
Chalk it up to tuning it out. It was the key to sanity and survival.
Instead, she focused on the search for the familiar imprint of Charles’s mind.
Jake had attempted to explain the science behind psychic energy, something about brain waves—alpha, beta, gamma, and theta waves, constructive versus destructive inference—before giving up with a shrug at her uncomprehending expression. “Just go with your gut feeling,” he finally said.
She intended to. She saw little point in trying to ramrod a scientific explanation into a phenomenon that was at least as much art and still largely inexplicable. All that really mattered was her ability to tell one mind from another. Leaning against the outer wall, she sipped coffee from her cup as her mind roamed, sweeping through the space around her in ever wider concentric circles.
Jake had assured her that it was the most certain way of covering a great deal of ground while not missing anything. Miriya smirked faintly. She was certainly picking up a few tricks from Jake and reaping the benefits of his training with the Mutant Affairs Council. No question, there was a great deal more to being an alpha telepath than she had suspected. The talented amateur status, it seemed, did not count for much in a high-stakes situation where there was more in play than just dinner and a bed for the night.
Her mental sweep of the Mistick Krewe building continued. A tiny frown creased her brow. A surprising number of minds were protected behind psychic shields, far more than she usually encountered in the general population. The brief contact of minds was little more than a breath of motion as she passed by. She finally understood the true value of Jake’s suggestion on the swift, sweeping circles; she left only the ghost of a psychic impression, too fleeting to be detected by any other than the most sensitive and well-trained telepaths.
If she kept learning from Jake at such a ferocious rate, she might actually have to seriously consider his offer of a permanent job with the council—at least until she learned everything she needed to know.
She would just have to grit her teeth against everything else the Mutant Affairs Council stood for. Ostensibly, it was a beacon for mutant rights, but everyone knew it was a flunky of the government, a heavy-handed tool for controlling and oppressing mutants, especially alpha mutants.
The thought of being controlled by others sent a shudder through her.
Miriya shook her head. The concept of employment by the Mutant Affairs Council was premature. She would get Charles out and then worry about how to handle the council’s unwelcome advances. She refocused on what she was doing. Her posture was relaxed, the expression on her face one of absent-minded contentment as her mind churned through space, unlimited, unfettered—a joyous, even exultant sensation of effortless flight.
Was there anything more amazing than the gift of telepathy? Despite all its inconveniences, including the burden of other people’s depressing thoughts, nothing was more precious, more liberating than realizing that her mind had no limits. Miriya smiled, reveling in her freedom. Telepathy was a gift, one she had come to appreciate and even treasure.
Unconstrained by walls, her mind flicked through the building, until she found exactly what she was looking for.
Charles Brandon.
A smile teased her lips. Gotcha.
Her telepathic power whipped out. Like psychic tentacles, it laced into Charles’s mind, joining the both of them in a way she had never attempted before.
She jolted. The intimacy jarred her.
Her connection with Jake was different. He was an alpha telepath. He could shield large swathes of his mind even while maintaining a close psychic connection wit
h her. Jake had a choice as to how much intimacy he would permit.
Charles, on the other hand, could not limit her access to his mind.
Miriya sucked in a deep breath and braced herself against the rawness of the contact. It was one thing to read another’s thoughts and provide telepathic prompts, which was no more than she had previously attempted. It was another thing to fully access another’s mind. She wasn’t sure she liked it; in fact, she was certain she did not. It was more insight than she wanted into the dark corners of someone else’s mind.
Miriya was not delusional enough to believe that her mind was devoid of dark corners, but at least those corners were hers. She shuddered and pulled back gingerly, maintaining enough contact to track Charles without delving too deeply into his shadows. She would never have guessed that Charles, the seemingly moral scion of the wealthy Brandon family, was sexually fascinated and aroused by prepubescent bodies, both male and female.
She pushed away from the wall and strolled down the street. Her jaw was tight.
Jake’s voice whispered through her mind. Miriya?
What?
Are you okay?
I’m fine. Get out of my head.
I would, but your mind is practically rippling with tension. You sure you’re okay?
I found Charles.
Really? That’s great. Where? Is he okay?
Somewhere inside the Mistick Krewe building. I’ll have to wait until I’m actually in the building to find him, but he’s in there.
Awesome. So what’s the problem?
I…found out something about Charles. I think I could have lived without knowing it.
Ah. Jake was silent for a moment. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The problem with other people’s secrets is that there’s usually a reason people keep them secret.
Miriya sighed. What do you do about it?
Usually? Nothing.
Nothing?
Has he done anything wrong? Anything illegal?
No, not yet, but he really wants to.
Give some credit to morality and willpower, Miriya. If I listed all the illegal things I’ve ever considered doing, you’d never get to the end of the list.
But—
We’re not here to judge them.
Her eyes widened. Definitely not what I expected to hear from an enforcer with the Mutant Affairs Council.
Seriously, we’ve got way more important crap to deal with. You’ll need to learn to put some emotional distance between you and the minds you touch. Don’t get sucked into their lives, or they’ll drag you down into their personal hells. Not worth it. Never, ever worth it, not even for the ones you love.
Miriya drew in another breath, filling her lungs. Yeah, you’re right. I…I’ll get through it.
Did you figure out a way to get into the building yet?
Still working on it. She raised the cup to her lips and scowled. Her coffee was getting cold, and she had yet to complete a loop of the area. Her pace casual, she sauntered past bars and shops. Most of the doors were still closed, but occasionally, she caught a glimpse of an early rising shopkeeper hard at work behind the glass windows.
A man sweeping out the front steps of his store threw her an amused look. Crazy tourist.
To maintain her façade, she peeked in at the storefronts even though she, as a rule, hated window-shopping. More importantly, she paused frequently to look up at the ornate balconies that characterized the French Quarter. The balconies did not quite connect between the stores, but the three-foot gap looked almost manageable, under most circumstances. Better yet, one of the third-floor windows on the Mistick Krewe building lined up fairly well with a balcony on the store next to it.
It was, however, a long way to the ground.
Miriya swallowed hard and moved on. Ten minutes later, she completed her stroll around the block and found herself back at the Mistick Krewe building. She tossed her empty cup into a trash can. I might have found a way in.
That didn’t sound nearly as confident as I would have liked, Jake said.
Well, it requires climbing, which would be hard to do in a ball gown. She gulped, forcing saliva down her dry throat. And, did I mention, I’m afraid of heights.