Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Safe, they’d keep her safe.
“Oh, before I forget,” Arwen said. “I got you a present.” He shook the tote. “Brand-new blazer from your favorite designer.”
“Thanks.” Arwen had impeccable taste, so Ivan knew the piece would be one he’d have chosen himself; his cousin understood the power conveyed by clothes, understood the mask Ivan preferred to present to the world.
As for the unexpected gift, that was par for the course for Arwen.
Arwen had been a boy of only five when eight-year-old Ivan joined the family, and he’d soon started to bring Ivan things: a plant he’d grown from seed, a perfect spiral shell he’d found on the beach, his favorite study tablet, even the raggedy old scarf that he had a habit of wearing everywhere, rain or shine, sun or hail.
Ivan hadn’t understood what Arwen wanted from him until a teenaged Canto had looked at him with cardinal eyes full of stars and said, “He just wants you to be happy.” Quiet words that held a deep power. “He’s small, so he thinks if he gives you things that make him happy, you’ll be happy, too.”
If Ena had saved Ivan, Arwen had taught him what it was to be generous, to live in a world without a constant mental balance sheet, to give for no reason but that it might bring joy to the receiver. What ability Ivan had to love, the small thimbleful of softness that had allowed Soleil to sneak into his heart? It had been born courtesy of Arwen Mercant.
Ivan would never do anything to hurt his cousin. And if that meant visiting with Arwen at a time when Ivan’s soul was draped in midnight, the spider stirring, so be it. “Come on,” he said, pulling on his jacket. “Let’s go on that walk.”
After they left the apartment, he made no attempt to hide where he was going. It was no secret, after all. He’d walked there countless nights by now.
“How did you find the halfway house in the first place?” Arwen asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“After I first landed and saw there were no Jax junkies hanging around, I figured the cats had rounded up the addicts and thrown them out.” DarkRiver hadn’t held on to power here by being soft.
“Still, I couldn’t let it go—how could a city this big have no users? Didn’t make sense.” Not when Jax was a plague that had infected the Psy since the first generation born into Silence. “So I dug. Family of spies.”
Arwen laughed, the warmth of the sound an echo of another laugh, one that had dug its way into Ivan’s soul. “Spies R Us—Pasha says we should use that as our corporate name,” he said, referencing the bear with whom he was entangled. “Think Grandmother would go for it?”
“You tell her while I watch.”
“Hah.” A grin. “I’ll send Pasha in as the ritual sacrifice.”
After that, they walked on in silence. Arwen could be a very comfortable companion. Back when Ivan had been in his early teens, Arwen would sometimes come into Ivan’s room and just sit there reading his book while Ivan studied. It hadn’t been until much later that Ivan realized he’d always felt more centered afterward.
Empaths. Just couldn’t help taking care of their people.
Same as healers.
Chest tight with all the emotions he had no right to feel, he turned left, leading Arwen to the halfway house. The large residence was a place where users could choose to get clean at no financial cost—but someone with a more pragmatic mindset had also arranged for a significant open area right up against the home.
Because sometimes, junkies didn’t want to be inside, screamed at the walls, thinking that they’d lost themselves in the phantasmagoric world that existed for some long-term users.
Ivan’s mother hadn’t lived long enough to reach that stage.
It was to this open “backyard” protected by regular DarkRiver patrols that he took Arwen. A user had lit a fire in the large metal barrel that sat in one corner, and several people stood or sat around it, their faces shrunken and sallow and their eyes bright. Others sat wrapped up in blankets that looked relatively new and rocked back and forth. Still others slept under the stars, uncaring of the cold night wind.
None of them bore open wounds, or had broken bones, or showed any other signs of ill treatment or a rough life—other than, that is, the marks left by long-term drug abuse. Somebody was looking after these people.
His investigations told him that it was DarkRiver’s charitable arm in conjunction with the Psy Empathic Collective. Because none of these junkies were changeling or human. They were all Psy, Jax a drug designed for them. It collapsed Silence and opened up the mind, at least for short bursts of time. In the end, however, it not only burned out the users’ ability to speak and think, it stole the very thing that made them Psy, but by then, the junkies were too far gone to care.