Unbinding Read Free Page A

to Arjenie’s car. She climbed in. He left, no doubt headed for the car he and the other guard had used. Kai grabbed the seatbelt and pulled it around her.
    “No stopping for coffee, I’m guessing,” Arjenie said.
    All Kai could see of the other woman was a dim shape topped by the red blur of her hair. Arjenie’s colors were lovely, though—lots of shifting yellow, blue, and lavender at the moment, with a few disappointed or worried gray tendrils. Lovely and intricate and . . . engrossing.
    Kai made herself look away. “Better not. Dammit, I hate having my eyes dilated. I was really looking forward to the best mocha in the city, too.”
    “We’ll do it another time. Maybe after you get back from that visit to your grandfather?”
    “Sure. If I’m still in the same realm, that is.”
    “There is that.”
    Finding a day when she and Arjenie could both get away hadn’t been easy. Arjenie worked from home, which made flex-time possible, but a lot of her work was urgent. When someone in the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division needed something researched, they usually needed the information thirty minutes ago. And for a while after she arrived, Kai had been flooded with patients.
    Nathan’s job had been over the moment he killed the artifact linked to the god of chaos. Kai’s had begun that same moment. The knife had been used to force obedience on a lot of people, and that kind of compulsion damaged minds. Not everyone affected by the knife had wanted Kai’s help, but enough had. She hadn’t been able to leave to see her grandfather.
    But she would, she reminded herself as Arjenie backed out of her parking spot. The most immediate healing was done. Several of her patients needed another session or two, and all of them should have follow-ups, but no one needed her right now. In three days, she and Nathan would head for Arizona to see the old man who was her only living relative.
    Arjenie gave her a quick glance. “That dial-it-down technique of yours isn’t working, I take it.”
    “Obviously I’m not as far along in my training as I thought.” It had been over two years since the last time she’d had her eyes dilated at an exam. A lot had happened since then. She’d been sure this time would be different—sure, but not cocksure, which was why she’d asked for a ride.
    “Or maybe it isn’t you. Maybe the drops affect your Gift directly.”
    “I’m told that isn’t likely.”
    “Oh, yes. By that woman who holds her nose oh-so-politely while she’s teaching you.”
    Kai grinned. The phrase she’d used was, “the most polite disdain possible,” when she told Arjenie about her teacher. “By Eharin, yes.”
    Arjenie snorted. “If she—shoot, I need to get that.” She tapped the steering wheel to answer her phone. It was Doug, wanting an update on where they were going.
    Much as Eharin made Kai grit her teeth, she was glad to have a teacher. Finding someone to help her learn how to manage her Gift hadn’t been easy. Fact was, there simply weren’t many mindhealers, and Kai had two knocks against her: she was human and she wasn’t willing to apprentice. The top mindhealers hadn’t been interested. Oh, a couple of them might have done it as a favor to Nathan, but she did not want him going into favor-debt on her behalf.
    Price had been a factor, too, with the least important part of the cost being counted in currency. Information was the true coin of the Queens’ realms. Nathan had handled that negotiation, of course. Under sidhe law, Kai was a minor, so the contract had to be between her teacher and Nathan. Kai didn’t mind. No one unused to the Machiavellian nature of elves should try to cut a deal with one of them. Kai’s form of the mindhealing Gift had complicated matters. As far as they’d been able to determine, she was the only mindhealer ever who actually saw thoughts. In sidhe terms, that made her a one-off, someone of mixed blood with a rare or unique Gift that was unlikely to breed