Unbound

So she’d be able to read connections between them and the Kairos…if there were to be any.

“I figured there was no harm in introducing her to the others as she’ll give up the memory anyway. It’ll give Tekla a rare opportunity to talk shop with someone who shares her talent, but on the mortal side.” He smiled at Tonya. “She’s our troop’s Seer.”

“I know,” Tonya said, eliciting a truncated snort from JJ. He sobered when her sharp eyes found him again. “We can start with you.”

“Start what with me?”

“The readings.” And she held out her hand for his palm.

“Wait.” JJ turned back to Warren to find humor threading the man’s mouth. “I thought we were questioning her. Not the other way around.”

He didn’t think a mortal Seer could rival their world’s psychic in skill, but with a secret life, and his lover’s touch so recently on his skin, it was best to stay away from Seers altogether…which was why Tekla’s impending appearance was so disturbing. He’d been avoiding her as well.

Warren sobered. “Just give it a try. You may have a residual connection with the Kairos.”

JJ wanted to ask how it could be residual if it hadn’t happened yet, but knew better from his sessions with Tekla. Ask one innocent question and you’d get a weeklong lecture on the intricacies of quantum physics. He had long since learned to keep quiet.

Still, he remained skeptical of Dane.

“I don’t know—” JJ began, but Warren was done.

“Jay, please. I know it’s not much to go on, but we need every available advantage. Okay?”

He clenched his jaw, but nodded. “Sure.”

Tonya reached for his hand as soon as he settled across from her. “It’s better if I touch you.”

It’s better if you don’t. “I don’t like to be touched.”

She reached out anyway, her cool fingers as fragile as a sparrow’s foot in his tensile palm. He couldn’t help but compare her touch to Sola’s. Though undeniably female, his love’s form was merely a streamlined version of his own, as if tendons and veins, bone and muscle, were all concrete-filled. Tonya, in contrast, was air.

Her tone, though, gave her weight. “You’re a singularly driven man, which isn’t rare of your kind, but you’ve a compulsiveness that drives you harder, farther, and deeper. You fight where others will stop.” Which was when she stopped, her body jolting slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to pull away, but then her voice deepened, the cadence altered. “In many ways, and for many years, you will be the perfect superhero.”

So much for her preternatural abilities, he thought, starting to draw away. He’d already screwed that up. “Thank you.”

Her airy fingers constricted, catching his again. “You harbor a strong sense of duty, but entertain a private restlessness. Your gift, a talent with your hands, steadies you and helps you to live more in the moment, but it doesn’t entirely quiet the internal dissension.”

JJ sat straighter, warier now, but intrigued. He was the troop’s weaponeer, had been even prior to metamorphosis into a full agent, and was responsible for making the conduits that could kill agents, something mortal weapons could not do.

“You have a tragic past, not unusual for one dealing in evil matters, but yours has shaped you in a strange way. You are attracted to things you fear, and desire to understand them. You have friends, you’re well liked, but the one who will know you best is drawn in by your fallibility.”

Warren stiffened at that, though he remained turned away, pushing aside the curtain to look out the window. Tonya spoke faster, as if rushing through the words could lessen their impact. “Saving ‘all of mankind’ isn’t enough to motivate you. It needs to be personal. You strip away a person’s labels and see the individual. It’s very admirable.”

“It’s very dangerous,” said Warren, who always saw things in terms of black and white.

“Yes,” JJ agreed immediately, knowing too well how his leader felt. Cohesiveness was desired, the good of the whole came first, the troop was more important than the individual.

“Can be,” Tonya said, knowing none of this. “But you desire a deeper involvement. You want to feel more. People, their ability to choose—”

“That’s enough,” JJ jerked away, her pseudo-strength giving way to his will. “None of this is useful in finding the Kairos.”

But her voice continued to rasp from between those frosted lips. “This will allow you to see her. She is a mystery to you. A dark—”

Matter.

The greatest mysteries are destined to remain a dark matter.

Dane wasn’t talking about the Kairos, he suddenly realized. She was speaking of Solange.

“You will know she is meant for you before she does.”

“No more.” JJ shot from his chair, heading straight to the door. He needed air.

“You will recognize her immediately—”

“Later,” he said, thinking, Shut up, shut up, shut up.

“There is no later. Not for you. Not even for me,” she said, tone darkening as JJ threw open the door. “There is only now.”