She stared at the slender, almost delicate brunette who'd appeared from the shadows of a dark-green fir. No one should've been in these grounds but her and her guards. "Who are you?"

A cold smile that did nothing to light up those pale blue eyes. "Interesting. You're so isolated that though you've done considerable work for us, you're unaware of my identity."

Memory flickered at the sound of that voice. "Shoshanna Scott." A member of the Psy Council and its beautiful and photogenic public face.

"I apologize for intruding on your privacy, but I didn't want this conversation recorded."

"You called earlier," Faith said, knowing with the sense in her that knew these things. She also knew she was in the presence of someone very dangerous, a woman who might strike without warning and with none of the control of the "animal" she'd faced only hours ago.

"Yes. We were checking the monitoring. It's extensive."

Faith waited for whatever it was that the Council wanted from her. Their requests had always been conveyed through the PsyClan, but perhaps this was a forecast they wanted to keep completely under the radar.

"Your accuracy is impressive, Faith."

"Thank you."

"Shall we walk?"

"If you please." She knew how to speak to the Council -  she might've been isolated, but she wasn't stupid. "Was there something you wanted me to try to forecast?" Try, because forecasting didn't work on command. But if Vaughn was right, she might be able to teach her mind to control the riming of the visions that did come. It was a seductive thought.

"I simply wanted to talk to you." Shoshanna linked her hands behind her back, her black-on-black suit making her fingers appear skeletally white. "Do you usually wear this type of clothing?"

Faith knew it wasn't the normal Psy mode of dress. "It makes it easier for Medical when intervention is necessary." However, the reality was that she preferred ... liked, wearing dresses.

"Of course. I've never really spoken to one of the F designation. What's it like to see the future?" Pale blue eyes bored into hers as they stopped beside a small pond.

"Having never lived any other way, I can't make a comparison," she said, reminding herself to be very careful. One slip and Shoshanna would know that something wasn't quite right about this particular F-Psy. "However, it did give me a purpose at a time when most Psy remain unformed."

"You've been forecasting since you were three?"

"Officially. But my family has records that state I was making erratic but accurate non-verbal predictions even earlier." She admitted that because she believed Shoshanna already knew her history - Councilors made it their business to know things about those they wanted to talk to.

"How did passage through the Protocol affect your abilities?"

The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature.

"My ability to fine-tune the visions grew apace with my progress through the Protocol. Instead of needing several markers to trigger them, I began to need only one or two." What she didn't say was that as she'd progressed, she'd also stopped having the dark visions.

The unexpected memory had appeared in a quicksilver flash. It was as if Shoshanna's prodding had unlocked a secret compartment within her mind, opening her eyes to the fact that there had been a time in her childhood when she'd seen darkness. Keeping her expression calm became an exercise in self-restraint.

"Interesting." Shoshanna began to walk once again.

Faith followed in silence. The other woman was beautiful, but she was part of the Council - no one reached that post without having shed blood. Her mind's eye flickered and, for one instant, she could literally see the deep red substance staining the Councilor's hands. The vision was gone as quickly as it had come, but she heeded the warning. Because she'd more than seen blood, she'd had a knowing, too.

One day soon, Shoshanna Scott was going to have Faith NightStar's blood on her hands.

Unless she could change the future. That was why F-Psy were so valued - the future they saw wasn't fixed. Businesses could head off a rival if they knew that that rival was about to put out an important invention, or buy up shares in a firm that had been forecast to rise. Faith had never before seen something that had the potential to so directly affect her.

"Are you fulfilled by your work?" Shoshanna's voice was a cool sound that cut through the whispers of the leaves in the wind.

Faith didn't know what Shoshanna wanted so she chose to answer with the truth. "No. It's become too easy. I can forecast share trends in my sleep should I need to. There's no challenge to it." The Protocol may have stripped them of emotion, but it had done nothing to stem their unabating need for mental stimulation. "I'm the best in this hemisphere. The only one in the Southern Hemisphere who occasionally challenges me is Sione from the PsyClan PacificRose."

"Yet you've never applied for entry to a higher position."

Faith began to get an inkling of what this visit was about, but couldn't bring herself to believe it. "As it happens, I have been considering it recently. But since my age would be a barrier, I thought to wait and learn."

"Very efficient." Shoshanna actually sounded impressed by the lie. "No one would think to monitor an F designation cardinal for that kind of shadowing. Learned anything interesting?"

Faith decided on honesty one more time, on the basis that Shoshanna almost certainly already knew. "There are signs of dissent in the PsyNet. The loss of Councilor Santano Enrique in somewhat mysterious circumstances has engendered an unstable level of speculation."

"What do you think we should do to stem the speculation?"

Faith wasn't sure she wanted it stopped - debate and change had to be better for the Net than stagnant obedience. But to say that would be to attract the wrong kind of attention. "I'm sure the Council has thought of a solution far better than anything I could offer."

Once again, Shoshanna smiled that cold Psy smile, something Faith had never adopted. If she felt no amusement or hope, why should she smile?

"Don't worry about offending me, Faith. I want to know what you'd do."

"I'd give the masses an answer. A concrete answer. Nothing stops conjecture as quickly as an irrefutable truth." But what she'd glimpsed in the Net had held murmurs of a deeper dissatisfaction. The Council had already lost ground, important ground. No matter what they said now, some people would remain unconvinced.

Shoshanna stopped and Faith realized they'd circled back to their original meeting spot. "Your view is one I happen to share. Perhaps we can further discuss the subject in the future."

Recognizing the dismissal, Faith nodded. "I look forward to it, Councilor." Then she turned her back on the woman who'd one day have her blood on her hands and returned to her home with unhurried steps. Good thing Shoshanna wasn't a cat like Vaughn or the erratic beat of her heart might have given her away.

However, one good thing had come out of this encounter - she could lie to her father with a straight face and request privacy for "reasons previously discussed." She did exactly that upon entering the house.

"Have you been contacted?" Anthony asked.

"In a sense," she hedged, beginning to accept that her original lie had never been anything that simple. "I don't believe it's wise to talk of this on the general communications network."

"Of course. Let's meet."

That was the last thing she wanted. "Not yet, Father. Arousing any suspicion at this stage could be detrimental." To her health, certainly. She'd heard of the kinds of things aspirants did to get rid of the competition.

Anthony nodded. "Keep me updated. Next time, use the PsyNet."

"Yes, sir."

That night, the darkness didn't come. But neither did Vaughn. The rational part of Faith told her to use the respite from his constant assault on her Psy shields to tighten and bolster those lines of conditioning at risk of total failure. But that rational part stood no chance against her memories of the night before - bone-crushing terror and the dangerous safety of a jaguar's touch.

The truth was, she'd expected him to be here after the intensity of the previous night, had come to rely on his physical presence - she, a woman used to no one else in her space. And now he wasn't here. Not that it mattered. She was Psy, she told herself as she kicked off her blanket and punched her inexplicably uncomfortable pillow into better shape. She didn't feel anything. Certainly not disappointment and anger.

Chapter 13

Having used up all his self-control the night before, Vaughn was waiting for Faith and he wasn't doing it patiently. Though he was in human form, he'd taken to the trees, crouching above the fence to keep a lookout. Her feminine form should've appeared by now.

Five more minutes dragged by. He was considering going in after her when he finally spotted her in the pitch black of the cloud-heavy night. She climbed the fence as easily as she'd done that first time and was nearing his position mere seconds later. He decided to let her go in a little farther before jumping down, so she wouldn't be startled into a scream.

Reaching him, she stopped and looked straight up into the branches. "Vaughn? I hope that's you."

The cat was annoyed she'd discovered him. The man wanted to know why. "Don't make any woman sounds."

Her eyes were cutting as he dropped down to face her, feet bare but everything else covered in jeans and a T-shirt. "I'm hardly likely to do that after taking so much trouble to get here without alerting anyone." Pure, haughty female.

He wanted to bite her. Hard enough to mark. To claim. "How did you know I was up there?"