Reece gave the phone a dirty look.
Reece: Did you text just to remind me what a failure of an empath I am?
Grayson: Failure? Care Bear, a pair of gloves isn’t what makes you an empath. Your compassion never got left in the glove box of your Micro Machine and towed to Tacoma.
The knot in Reece’s chest loosened. His gaze lingered on Grayson’s text.Care Bear.Such a ridiculous thing to call an empath when the Dead Man knew better than anyone else exactly howun-caring empaths could become.
And yet. He still used it for Reece, even though he knew Reece’s secrets now.
He looked at the text another moment, then shook himself irritably. Grayson probably used that nickname with all empaths. Nothing more than habit.
A light drizzle was starting. Reece pocketed the phone and stood up from his rock, pulling the hood of Grayson’s sweatshirt up over his hair as he started back to the car.
Aisha sighed and took off her glasses, setting them on the mattress next to her so she could rub at her eyes.
Grayson had forwarded the empath’s name, and Aisha had gone to Stone Solutions Canada’s Ottawa office straight from the airport for a copy of Marie Pelletier’s records. Now she was working on two lap desks on the hotel’s king-size bed, her Stone Solutions laptop on one and her personal laptop on the other, curled up under the covers with her printed pictures and handwritten notes spread out around her on the glaringly white comforter. Night had fallen and the curtains were still open, the window a square of black glass dotted with Ottawa’s city lights.
She let her head fall back against the pillows stacked behind her and stared at the blurry TV, which she’d left soundlessly playing a station that ran old sci-fi movies.
Some creep had smashed an empath over the head and left her dead in a park. Why? Marie had been absolutely harmless, as far as Aisha could tell. The national file kept in Ottawa was slim, but it seemed she’d gone to every appointment Stone Solutions Canada had asked her to and worn gloves without complaint. She’d had one sibling, a sister, and several cousins, but no other empaths in the family.
Grayson had also forwarded Aisha the records from Quebec. Aisha read over Marie’s job history, but again nothing stood out. She’d moved to Montreal from a smaller city for graduate studies at McGill and had been a librarian at the same facility for four years. She fostered cats for an animal shelter and seemed to have spent most of her free time volunteering at food banks and senior citizens’ organizations.
The world was almost certainly worse off for her loss. Why couldn’t people just leave empaths alone?
Aisha put her glasses back on and picked up her phone. Grayson had texted to say he might have a lead on Marie’s location the night before and was checking all the clubs in Burlington. Jamey’s text had asked if she knew anything about another Canadian empath gone missing from Port Angeles.
Aisha had sent the query on to Grayson, but he would have already said something to her if he’d heard anything. Stone Solutions Canada should have already been on top of it, like they were supposed to be with Marie.
She looked at Jamey’s message again and then hit Call. “Hey,” she said, when Jamey picked up. “You hear anything further about the empath in Port Angeles?”
“No.” Jamey didn’t sound happy. “Still waiting on Stensby to send over the details. I’m planning a day trip tomorrow, leaving in the morning with Liam. Any luck in Ottawa?”
“No.” Aisha wasn’t happy either. “But we did finally confirm the murdered empath was from Montreal. I’ll probably head over there tomorrow.”
She glanced at her personal laptop, where Marie’s social media was splashed across the screen. She looked like she’d been a sweetheart, with big brown curls and glasses, smiling at the camera with a cat in her arms.
“Speaking of Canada’s empaths.” Jamey sounded a little more hesitant. “Cedrick Stone had said Cora Falcon was being sent somewhere in British Columbia. Are there any updates on her? I haven’t heard anything since the night we—well, you remember.”
Aisha wasn’t going to forget it. Jamey and Cora had faced each other in November, but they’d been too evenly matched: a corrupted empath versus the natural immunity of an empath’s sibling. Cora had tried to thrall Jamey and ended up knocking herself out; Jamey had teetered between sanity and madness until she’d finally fought off Cora’s empathy.
A lot of people would blame Cora for everything that had happened the night of Senator Hathaway’s death. But Cora had begun that night as a kindhearted therapist before a pair of rich creeps had tortured and murdered her fiancé to create a corrupted empath; Aisha put the lion’s share of the blame on Cedrick Stone’s machinations.
“Obviously it wasn’t a fun night for me, but what happened to Cora and her fiancé was—well.” Jamey sighed. “Just tell me she’s not, like, suffering.”
“She better not be,” Aisha said. “Corrupted empaths are kept at the Polaris Empathic Research Facility in British Columbia. When the Empath Initiative created the role of the Dead Man, Grayson had conditions, and several of them have to do with the living conditions at Polaris. All the rules were being followed last time I checked.”
“You’ve been there?” Jamey said, sounding surprised.
“The visitors’ list is minuscule but Grayson got me on it,” Aisha admitted. “There are only three empaths there—well. Four now, with Cora.”
“And they’re all as dangerous as Cora?”
“Yeah,” Aisha said, more quietly. “But they’ve all been hurt too. I’m not making excuses for their crimes, but none of them corrupted themselves.”
Jamey sighed. “I want to make a crack about what kind of living conditions an empath hunter would insist on for the empaths he hunts. But I’m guessing Grayson actually improved things for the empaths?”
“He definitely did,” Aisha said. “And he’s making Polaris search for a way to reverse the corruption.”
