Skin Trade(103)

“I met Gregory Minns just minutes ago. You’ve seen all the interaction I’ve ever had with him.”

“You are lying,” Hooper said.

“She’s not lying,” Edward said.

“I don’t need to hear from her boyfriend.”

“Would it do any good to say that he’s not my boyfriend?” I said.

“No,” Hooper said, “the minute that weretiger called you sweet nicknames, you lost credibility with me, Blake.”

“I am sorry that my attempt to calm Gregory spread to you and Officer Sanchez, Marshal Blake,” Victor said as he walked toward us. His power was tight like a drum. I could feel the vibration of it, but that was all. He’d locked it down tight.

“As long as it wasn’t on purpose, we’re cool.”

“You’ve felt what my mother can do; trust me, on purpose would be worse.”

I nodded. I believed him.

“When did you first meet Marshal Blake, Mr. Belleci?” Hooper asked.

“This afternoon,” he said.

“When did Gregory Minns first meet her?”

Victor frowned at him. “I don’t believe they have met.”

“He called her his little queen. That’s pretty personal for strangers.”

Victor smiled, then fought not to. “Little queen is our nickname for Marshal Blake.”

“You met her this afternoon, and she already has a nickname; right. And Minns, who just met her, knew the nickname enough to use it. Don’t yank my chain. One of you, or all of you, are lying.”

“I swear to you that we just met Marshal Blake. Her rather unusual psychic abilities hit the radar for the tigers as a little queen. It’s not a personal nickname but more a title.”

“And she earned this title how?”

“By the feel of her psychic energy.”

“Sanchez,” Hooper said.

“She is a powerful psychic, Sarge.”

“I know what Cannibal said, but I need to know if her power would do what Victor here says, or whether they’re all lying.”

“She shields good. I’d have to read her on purpose to answer that question, and that’s against psychic protocol without permission of the other psychic, or except in an emergency situation where lives are in danger.”

“You sound like you’re quoting regs,” I said.

He nodded. “I am.”

“Cannibal is just outside with the doc. He could read you again,” Hooper said.

I shook my head. “I won’t give permission for him to be in my head again.”

“Then I want Sanchez to read you. I want to know if you are powerful enough to set off the weretigers like this.”

“It may not be as powerful for him, since he’s human,” Victor said.

“He’s my practitioner, and I want him to read her, and you, stay the fuck away from my team.”

I sighed and turned to Sanchez. “What do you need from me to make this work?”

“Drop your shields,” Sanchez said.

I shook my head. “I can’t drop them all.”

“Ease down, then,” he said.

“Can Victor be farther away?”

“Why?” Hooper asked.

“I seem to have trouble shielding against his clan. I don’t know why, but their power seems to fuck with me.”

Hooper said, “Georgie, escort Mr. Belleci outside the building.”

Georgie came and did it, without a question. It was one of the things that most of the cops were better at than those of us in the preternatural marshal program: following orders without debate.

Victor let himself be led out. Then the others moved back a little, as if we’d asked, though we hadn’t. Sanchez and I stood in the middle of Minns’s living room, with its dark brown carpet and nondescript living room set. People always want the houses of the preternatural to be unusual, but in truth, most of them look like everyone else’s. Going furry once a month doesn’t make you that different.

Sanchez slipped off more of his headgear, his black hair wet with sweat. “Ready?”

I took a deep breath and eased down my shields. This far from Jean-Claude and all my people, I wasn’t dropping all of it. No way. It was more like cracking a window on a car to let the breeze inside.

Sanchez took his glove off one hand and held it near me, as if he could feel heat. “God, your aura crackles with energy. It’s like if you let all your shields down, you’d burn.” Then his eyes rolled back into his head, behind fluttering eyelids. “But it would burn black, as if the night could catch fire and eat the world.”

He stumbled, and I reached for him automatically. His hand convulsed on mine, and suddenly my shields came down. We were both on our knees, as if we’d been hit. The psychic hammer had hit us both, and there was nothing we could do but ride the power. I hadn’t thought that they might have another practitioner that would scare me. I was so used to being the biggest bugbear in the room psychically that it had never occurred to me that Sanchez might be one, too. Now, it was too late, and the bear was going to eat us both.