Demonsense: Demon Master Part 25

When Bree woke up in her own bed, afternoon sunlight slanting in the windows, and Hanroi tromping on her hair, it took her a moment to register where she was. She still felt groggy from her lack of sleep last night. She'd managed to get maybe an hour's rest in the ICU waiting room, but had been woken up by first Dion, then Daniel coming to. Dion had left shortly thereafter, as he had another night s.h.i.+ft coming up and needed to go home and get some sleep. She and Daniel had stayed on, along with Sophie, Bruce and Steve, until they got word that Kevin's vital signs had improved and his doctor was cautiously optimistic about his recovery. Kevin had been conscious briefly as Bree and Daniel said their goodbyes. He'd seemed confused and weak, but he'd had a smile for them.

She and Daniel had both been quiet on the drive home, partly out of exhaustion, and partly out of unresolved tension. When he got out of her car, Bree had finally given into the tears that had been threatening for hours and cried all the way home.

She got dressed in her yoga gear and did a good half hour of yoga, followed by a half hour of meditation, before making herself a late dinner. She called Steve to get another update on Kevin, and was relieved to hear he was looking better and that they were talking about removing the breathing tube tomorrow morning. Steve sounded tired but far more hopeful. Their friends Hank and Georgia were taking a turn at the hospital with him, and Bree felt good about him not being alone.

She cleaned up her dinner dishes, let Hanroi out for his last evening ramble, and wandered into the living room, unsure what to do next. The calm engendered by the yoga and meditation were wearing off. She was feeling melancholy and a little fragile. She had just reached listlessly for a book when she heard a knock at her door.

Involuntarily, the hope that it was Daniel sprang first to mind. She hurried to the door and looked out the peephole to find Leander Rayne standing on her doorstep. She was fl.u.s.tered at the sight of him. She'd been avoiding calling him back. She considered for a minute pretending not to be home, but decided that was cowardly. She was done with being a coward. So she dismissed the ward on the door and opened it.

"Hey, I was over at Bruce's store and thought I'd stop by. I heard about your friend being hurt. I hope you don't mind, Bruce gave me your address," Leander said with a sheepish smile.

Did he now? Bree thought with some speculation. What was Bruce up to? "It's okay, come on in," Bree told him, stepping back to let him in. She pointed out the hooks in the hall for him to hang his coat, and said over her shoulder as she led him into her living room, "Can I get you anything? Water? A beer? Some tea?"

"Tea sounds nice."

"Why don't you come on in to the kitchen then while I get it ready." Leander followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the counter as she filled the kettle and got out some mugs. It felt strange to have him there, in her s.p.a.ce. He looked gorgeous as usual, red hair clean and s.h.i.+ning, his teal b.u.t.ton down s.h.i.+rt bringing out his blue-green eyes brilliantly, and a tentative smile conveying a certain nervous vulnerability at odds with his confident posture.

He got the conversational ball rolling by saying, "I like your place. It's got that feeling of someplace you can really be comfortable, like someone who bakes cookies lives here."

Bree laughed. "I'm afraid that wouldn't be me. I'm not much of a baker. And frankly, not that much of a cook either."

"Well, I noticed you have a nice garden as I was coming through your yard. So I guess you're not a complete failure in the domestic arts."

Bree laughed again, and Leander smiled in response, eyes crinkling. Almost in spite of herself, she felt her mood lifting. "Not a complete failure," she agreed.

"And you've got a bit of flair for decorating," he went on. "Kind of shabby chic meets hippie chick. But in a good way."

"Well, d.a.m.n me with faint praise," she replied.

"Hey, I don't know what you're talking about. That was genuine admiration!" Leander protested.

They were interrupted by the tea kettle whistle. Bree took it off the burner and offered Leander his choice of herbal or black tea. He chose Irish Breakfast while she went for Earl Grey. She put the tea bags in the mugs and poured on the hot water, then handed Leander his cup. "I do have some cookies here somewhere. Not home baked or anything. Mola.s.ses ginger cookies. Interested?"

"Always," Leander replied. So she got down the cookies, put a few on a plate, a carried it, along with her own mug of tea, into the dining room. Leander sat down to her left. He dipped his tea bag up and down in his mug as he said, "I really was so sorry to hear about your friend Kevin. I remember him from Bruce and Sophie's party. He seemed like a great guy. What's the word on how he's doing?"

"Better. As long as there aren't any other medical complications that crop up, they're pretty sure he'll make it."

"Well, that's good news then. I take it you were at the protest down at Westlake last night. I wish you'd called me in on it. I would have liked to help."

There was something in Leander's voice that made Bree want to read him to check how sincere he was about that, but she reminded herself it would do no good. "I guess I felt like I dragged you into something last time that you didn't really want to be involved with," she admitted.

"Oh, it's not that I want to be involved, not really," Leander a.s.sured her with a grin. "Who in their right mind would? But somehow, you put me to shame by throwing yourself in the middle of it. You make me feel like I should do something, like maybe I can do something to help."

Bree reflected for a moment on the irony of the fact that she appeared to be having the effect on Leander that Daniel had on her. When she didn't answer immediately, Leander went on. "Besides, I don't like the idea of you being in that much danger. You've got some good skills, don't get me wrong. I think you're a better battle Caster than I am. But I saw how dangerous things can get, and if you're going to go in, you need good Warding. That much, I can do."

"Kevin did brilliantly, you know, before he got shot," Bree told him. "Warding is his only talent, but he's got it in spades."

"Where was Daniel in all this? I'd think as a former Keeper, he'd be one of the first ones called in on a situation like that."

Bree had become enough at ease during their conversation that she found herself replying honestly, at least to a degree. "Daniel wasn't well, he couldn't come."

"Is Daniel a Demon Master too?" Leander asked with evident curiosity. Bree was completely ambushed by the question. Here she'd nearly seduced the man to keep him from asking it before, only to have him come out with it when she was completely unprepared. And d.a.m.ned if her face didn't give her away, as she knew it would with such a direct question. She was such a c.r.a.ppy liar.

"He is, isn't he? I had a feeling he was," Leander said with what sounded like satisfaction. "One thing I'm good at is sniffing out dark energy. I thought he read as a little demon burned. And to be honest, I guessed that was why you were doing the demon research together. But what I don't get is how he managed to make Keeper. How on earth has he kept this hidden all these years?"

"Leander, I can't tell you that," Bree replied, trying to control her panic. "That's Daniel's business."

Leander had been taking a sip of his tea as she responded, but he put down his cup and leaned toward her over the table, expression serious. "Bree, you've asked me to trust that you're using what Demon Master ability you have for good purposes. I've agreed not to turn you over the Ecclesias at this point. But you also promised to tell me more. I'm in an awkward position here. I want to do the right thing. I'm inclined to trust you, but to be perfectly honest, I'm less inclined to trust Daniel. There's something off about that guy."

"Funny, he says the same thing about you," Bree replied with some heat.

Leander gave her a crooked smile. "We must seem ridiculously like two strutting roosters, fighting for your attention."

"Maybe a bit." She was reeling from inadvertently revealing Daniel's status, mind racing in anxious circles like a rabbit seeking its burrow when a hawk flies by. She had to find some way to judge how dangerous it was for him to know that information. It was particularly unnerving not to be able to call on her Reader talent. Fortunately, Leander went on, giving her time to think.

"You know, I actually tried to tell Daniel I wouldn't go after you at that party. Being new in town, I didn't want to screw up a potential new friend group. He told me not to refrain on his account, that you weren't together and never had been. That's when I read him. I wanted to be sure he was telling the truth, and not just speaking out of anger or hurt pride. Bree, surely you've read the dark energy in him. Are you sure he's not Keltoi?"

Bree almost laughed at that, partly out of nerves, and partly at the absurdity of the idea. "He's definitely not Keltoi, trust me. I'll admit he's a bit demon burned. There's a unique way demon contact seems to affect him. He's more susceptible than most, although it doesn't seem to have anything to do with his character. He's a good person, very morally rigorous, I'd say."

"I've seen some pretty righteous characters succ.u.mb to Demon Master insanity. I've sometimes wondered if it isn't a certain rigidity of character that's part of the problem."

Leander reached for a cookie and took a bite while Bree considered how to reply. Was Daniel rigid? He wasn't self-righteous. He certainly wasn't closed to new ideas. But she had to admit there was something rigid in the way he kept his Demon Master and Binder talents separated off, in the discipline it took to keep the Casting active that hid those talents, in how he kept the spell up pretty much full time. "I wouldn't exactly call him rigid, not in the usual sense of the word," she told Leander. "But I have to say I'm interested in how you know so much about Demon Masters," she added with a searching look.

"Oh, I met a few when I was in the Keltoi," he replied breezily, and with a definite light of mischief in his eye. He clearly wanted to shock her, and he'd succeeded. Leander was former Keltoi? What did that mean about what he might do with the information she'd given him so far?

Bree had felt out of her depth before, and now she was in serious trouble. She was clearly not cut out for espionage. The h.e.l.l of it was, she shouldn't be surprised, because Daniel had hinted at suspicion of Leander. She realized she had blown Daniel off about it out of anger.

"Don't look so worried," Leander chided, wiping at the sugar left by his cookie at the corner of his mouth. "I did say former Keltoi."

Bree's Reader sense reared up automatically as her stress grew, but as usual, she couldn't come up with any pattern that made sense to her. "So when was this?" she asked. She nervously picked up her cup for a drink, then put it back down without taking a sip.

"Back when I was a teenager. I was raised in foster homes, and when I was thirteen, I was stupid enough to think I'd do better on the streets. I was in a pretty bad place when a Keltoi spotted me and recruited me. He was a Reader, and noticed that weird thing where I'm not readable. He wanted to use that. And for a while, I went along with the program. That's where I learned the little bit of battle Casting I know, and where I first developed my Warder abilities. Since I was fostered with normals, I didn't know what I was. So at first, I did find a home of sorts with the Keltoi."

There was a studied unaffectedness in the way he summed up his early life that spoke to Bree of a deeper hurt. It sounded like a sad story. She was well aware that if Leander were still Keltoi, he could be playing all this up to get her sympathy, to soften her towards him. She hated having to think through all the possible layers of deception between them, so she found herself responding to the one part in what he'd told her that she could honestly relate to. "I grew up in normal family too. I was about the same age as you were when I finally found out what I was, although both my Reader and Demonsense talents came on far earlier."

"My Demonsense came in kind of late, at around sixteen or so. My Reader sense came in a lot sooner. And I had some signs of Caster ability before I knew what it was. You know, sensing the energy of certain objects, things knocking over near me for no apparent cause."

"Things knocking over?"

"I have a small talent for telekinetic spells, and that's how it first started to manifest. It kind of explains those stories of poltergeists in the house of teenagers, don't you think? Not to mention the fact that birds had started to follow me around by then. I have to say I kind of freaked out the last couple of foster parents I had."

"I find telekinetic spells seriously difficult," Bree replied, hoping to keep him off the subject of Daniel. And even though Leander might well be lying to her, it was also possible that in getting him to talk about himself, she was getting a chance to know him, to begin to get more of a sense of whether she should trust him.

"Note I said a small talent," Leander replied ruefully. At Bree's doubtful look, he said, "Here, let me show you what I mean." He pulled the tea bag out of the mug and put it on his cookie plate. Then he lifted his right hand over the mug and began slowly gesturing in a small circle with the tips of his first two fingers. Bree leaned forward in interest, and saw that the tea had begun to move in a little whirlpool. As she watched, it went faster and began to rise out of the cup, a tiny tornado of tea hovering in the air over the mug. It was a small thing, but somehow delightful. She glanced up at Leander's face and saw no sign of strain. In fact, he had a gentle smile on his face as he regarded his handiwork. He gradually slowed the gesture, and the tea spun back down in the cup until it settled into a slow swirl.

"That's a cool trick. It looks to me like it takes a very fine sort of control," Bree told Leander as she settled back into her chair.

"Well, that's more my style, power-wise. In that sense, I was something of a disappointment in the Keltoi. They tend to give preference to high power types with heavy duty Casting abilities, or to those who can sustain and survive possessions, neither of which I was good at. Still, I do have the Keltoi to thank for most of the powered schooling I got. And I'll admit, as a teenaged boy, I was pretty fascinated by the tough image the Keltoi represented. As you can imagine, as a foster kid, growing up in poor families for the most part, I was feeling pretty disenfranchised, not really a part of mainstream society."

Bree put her elbow on the table, chin on her hand. She was still uneasy about learning of Leander's Keltoi ties, but she couldn't help but be fascinated by his story. She'd never personally known someone who'd left the Keltoi. "Why did you leave?"

Leander had seemed quite casual throughout his recitation, but a shadow came over his face as he responded to her question. "Because I couldn't stomach the violence, not really. The longer I was in, the worse things I saw. And frankly, I didn't like the structure either. There's a definite hierarchy in the Keltoi, a lot of rules, if you can believe it. I guess that's how you keep a bunch of sociopathic powered in line. I got out at eighteen, once I thought I could succeed in disappearing for awhile and take care of myself without having to go back out on the streets."

"And are you still on the run from them, so to speak?"

Leander shook his head. "No, I went back to Marton after about five years, made a truce. By that time, I'd proven I'd not revealed any of the information I learned in the Keltoi to the Keepers, and besides, by then, most of what I knew was out of date. Marton always had kind of a soft spot for me, so he let me go."

Bree's ears had p.r.i.c.ked up at the name. "Marton? Marton, oh what's his name, maybe Vargas? Varga?"

"Yeah, how could you possibly know Marton?" Now it was Leander's turn to regard her uneasily.

"I don't," Bree a.s.sured him. "But I heard that he was the leader of the L.A. Keltoi. He's also some kind of distant cousin to Daniel."

"Is he really? I suppose I see the resemblance, now that you mention it, in level of power anyway. Marton is high power in just about everything, like Daniel." Leander's expression transformed into a look of great glee. "Man, wouldn't it be interesting to see those two face off?"

Bree reached out and slapped him on the arm. "You are bad!" she exclaimed. "No, it would not be interesting. Someone would end up dead."

"I suppose you're right," Leander sighed with theatrical regret.

"Please, at least attempt to be serious for just a few more minutes," Bree admonished. "I want you to be honest with me, Leander. Do you still have ties to the Keltoi?" Bree could only hope that such a direct question would trigger some kind of response that she could read. But Leander's expression, his body language, gave nothing away.

"Not anymore. Bree, I'm not out to hurt you, or Daniel. Like I told you before, I'm asking some questions because I'm trying to do the right thing for a change. To be honest, I still feel guilty that I didn't go to the Keepers when I left the Keltoi. I know that's what a lot of Keltoi do to get out, they trade information for asylum. But at that age, I didn't trust them anymore than I trusted the Keltoi. And in some ways, the choice I made did work well for me. This way, I don't have to hide from the Keltoi, or be perpetually distrusted by the Keepers. I get to go my own way. That's always been important to me."

Somehow, that last statement had a particular ring of truth to Bree. Leander did seem like the type of person who avoided being tied down to anyone's expectations. Just look at how much he had loved shocking her with his announcement that he'd been Keltoi. He positively enjoyed being different, took pleasure in causing a stir. In a way, it was hard to feature him as some kind of Keltoi spy. He didn't seem serious enough for that. Leander's eyes were fixed on her face, and she got the impression he'd brought his Reader sense up. She met his eyes, searching for the truth, and challenging him a bit over the read. It was a strange moment, with each trying so obviously to see into the other. "You know, I haven't given up on the idea that you might be able to read me," Leander told her softly.

"I haven't give up on it either," Bree admitted. This time, she consciously brought her Reader sense to the forefront of her awareness, keeping her gaze locked with Leander's. She could tell she was still not up to full strength, but was in far better shape than she had been the last time she'd tried, at his place.

She felt a s.h.i.+ft in the energy between them as she slowly pushed back her chair and moved to stand over Leander. Her power was filling her as she invited it in. If she succeeded this time, she would know for certain if she could trust him. She would stop feeling like some kind of naive idiot, fumbling her way through a dense thicket of fatal hazards with only a pocket knife to hand. She wanted her power back, both literally and figuratively. There was an edge of anger in her, at Leander for intruding and asking his questions, at herself for not trusting Daniel's a.s.sessment of Leander.

Leander continued to regard her steadily, with a look of mixed trepidation and controlled excitement.

"Unb.u.t.ton your s.h.i.+rt," she told him. He did as she said, glancing down at his hands as he undid several, opening his s.h.i.+rt halfway. He looked back up at her, waiting for her next instruction. Without thinking it through in the slightest, Bree stepped forward and arranged herself sideways on Leander's lap. His eyebrows raised at that, but he s.h.i.+fted his legs to more comfortably accommodate her. Bree wanted to be close this time, as close as she could be. She wanted every possible advantage for the read. She knew that men opened to intimacy through s.e.xuality more than through any other route. If some physical desire could be generated through physical closeness, she knew it would help the read. It wasn't something she would normally use, though she was sure it had helped in her reads of Daniel.

The whole scene was, on the surface, much as it had been that night in Leander's bathroom. Internally, to Bree it felt much different. This read was more deliberate on both their parts. She still wanted to read Leander out of a desire to ensure her and Daniel's safety, and for the challenge of it, but this time, she really did want to see more deeply into Leander himself. Bree put her arm around the back of Leander's shoulders and rested the palm of her right hand on his neck. Her left she raised and settled on the center of Leander's chest. His arm went around her waist to steady her, and he put his other hand on her knee. "Are you sure?" Bree asked him quietly, though she thought she already knew the answer.

"Yes, I'm sure," Leander replied. His muscles were tensing under her hands, and his voice was a little rough with some emotion, but Bree took him at his word.

She started the read with simply looking at him, letting the edgy anger she'd been feeling drift away as she closely regarded the arch of his red brows, the shape and color of his eyes, the tiny scar by his hairline on the left side of his forehead, the elegant plane of his almost too pretty cheekbones. She felt the temperature of his skin under her hands, the rise and fall of his breath. She let herself sink into Reader empathy, wanting to know him, to feel whatever it was that he felt. She let go of suspicion. When she thought she was ready to go in, she closed her eyes.

This time, she went slow as honey dripping from a jar, letting her Reader sense ease out of her and toward Leander. She quickly encountered the kaleidoscopic tangle of his energy, and she slowed down even further, just letting herself be with the whirl of impressions. She could feel herself start looking for the patterns, and she relaxed that part of her Reader function, much like relaxing the eyes to let one's vision blur.

A few half-formed images and feelings flickered in and out of her awareness, a tinge of fear, a flash of Warder energy, the white and grey flutter of bird's wings. She let them flow by like water. She was trying to find a way to attune at this more surface level, which was not the usual procedure. Usually, attunement was only attempted on deep reads. A good Reader didn't need much attunement to read basic talents, energy levels, and whatever hits of emotion were closest to the surface.

But she tried it anyway. She imagined herself as a leaf on the surface of Leander's energies, going wherever the little eddies and waves took her. It was a dizzying sensation, and she distantly registered Leander's arm tightening around her as her body swayed in unconscious reaction. There was a paradoxical tension between the effort it took to keep concentrating and the necessary letting go that allowed her to be receptive and unfocused. Bree's brow furrowed as she periodically lost the trick of that paradox, but she kept trying, kept keying back in to the flow. And she got better at it, until she felt a hint of a rhythm in the movements of Leander's energy. Her body dipped and swayed in subtle little motions as she rode the waves of his psyche. She continued to get brief impressions, but she ignored them, knowing somehow that they were blocks in the road, not the eventual destination.

As she found the crazy, syncopated, be-bop tune of his energy, she sunk into it further, riding it deeper in wild little jerks and spins. It was like being on an amus.e.m.e.nt park ride, and now, she could feel Leander starting to move with her. Wondering what his experience of this whole process might be nearly broke Bree's concentration, but she held on. And the first thing that started to form up out of the non-patterned pattern was the emotion of unease, followed by a soupon of wonder, then tension again.

Then she started to get images, first one of a looming, angry man raising a hand to strike, from a child's eye view. Then one of a dark eyed woman scowling, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Another woman, this one surrounded in a sort of soft glow and a feeling of being held.

Then came a quick succession of physical sensations: Of being dragged, kicked and penetrated. That last one made Bree flinch, but now she was caught in the attunement, and the shock wasn't enough to blow her out of it. More images: a school cla.s.sroom, of sitting outside a princ.i.p.al's office, accompanied by a feeling of defiance. Then a tall woman shaking a finger, followed by a feeling of dead emptiness. She saw huddling with a teenaged boy on the beach in the rain, both trying to fit under a single coat. Felt the thrill of kissing a teenaged girl, and horribly, gagging on an older man's p.e.n.i.s. She saw a man with dark hair and green eyes, shaking her shoulders, face distorted with fury, and that same man laughing and holding out a piece of pizza.

Bree realized she was so attuned now, she was feeling Leander's feelings, his memories, as her own. She'd somehow completely skipped all the intermediate levels and gone straight into a very deep read. She felt Leander's body rocking underneath her, felt a startle in her gut as they almost tipped over in the chair, but she gritted her teeth and kept with it. The memories and emotions felt chronological to her, and if she could just hold on, maybe she'd get something that would tell her about Leander's time in the Keltoi, how he truly felt about it, and whether he was still involved.

She got a brief flash of s.e.x with a gorgeous African-American woman, but again, with that awful emptiness. She saw the dark haired man again, this time holding a gun to her head, then throwing the gun away and striking her in the face. And then, she felt Leander pitch backwards in the chair, and as her body jerked in primal reaction to the sensation of falling, her connection with Leander was broken. Leander grunted in pain as she landed on top of him.

At first, Bree was too stunned and dizzy to move. Then, when she tried to move, she realized how weak she felt. She must have been pouring out the power to stay with the read there in the end. She was lying half on top of Leander, and with a little wriggling, managed to get her knees on the floor. She had to push off a little against his stomach to get upright on her knees. She looked down at him anxiously, afraid he'd been hurt in the fall.

He was looking at the ceiling, and, amazingly, laughing, with tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. It was pained, choking laughter, and as she watched in concern, he put his hands over his face.

"I'm so sorry, Leander, are you hurt?" she asked. She'd had a soft landing on him and wasn't hurt in the least, but she was worried about whether he'd banged his head.

The sounds of his strange laughter continued to come out from behind his hands. Bree got down on hands and knees so she could bring her gaze closer to his face. She put out a hand and ran it over his head, as far back as she could reach, but didn't come up with anything wet, so she didn't think he was bleeding. She couldn't see any blood coming out from behind his head either. The worst of her worries alleviated, she started in on being anxious about his emotional state. She got back up on her knees and scooted a little closer, tossing her hair over one shoulder so her view of Leander's face wouldn't be blocked. She put a gentle hand on one of his wrists. She was pretty sure he was crying now more than laughing. She wondered how much of the memories she'd seen were ones he was consciously reliving as she did the read.

She'd never before had anyone be aware of her ability to read at that near psychic level, to feel it happening, not even Daniel with all his experience. But given Leander's tears, she thought maybe he had been aware. If those were, as she thought, his literal memories, he'd had one h.e.l.l of a hard life. Tears came to Bree's own eyes as she thought of a sensitive Reader child going through all that, able at times to feel the emotions of those hurting him, able to perceive their lies. She thought of those flashes of profound emptiness she felt in him, a kind of dead zone, and she could easily imagine how that had come to be.

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she choked out. She was still so open from the read that she was having trouble managing her own emotional responses. Her hand moved from Leander's wrist to his hair, stroking slowly, trying to offer some kind of comfort, sniffing back her own sympathetic tears. Gradually, he seemed to calm, and finally, he dropped his hands from his face. At first, he just stared at the ceiling, then he turned his head and looked at her. And the emptiness she'd felt in him was on his face. Her hand froze in its ministrations. "Don't," she whispered. "You don't have to do that with me." She wasn't sure why she said it, but somehow, she hated to see that shutting down.

Leander closed his eyes, turned his face back ceiling-ward, and heaved in a ragged sigh, then another. He wiped a final time at his face, and said, "I'm going to try to move. I think I hurt my back."

Bree got out of his way. He was still awkwardly arrayed atop the chair. He pulled his knees closer to his chest, then rolled sideways off the chair. He lay like that for a minute while Bree got to her feet, pulled the chair away from him and righted it, then crouched down next to him.

"Hands and knees next?" she asked.

"I think so," Leander replied.

She hovered, and put out an arm to help pull him as he got to hands and knees, then onto his knees, then, with her hand under his elbow, onto his feet. "Let me have a look," she commanded. She unb.u.t.toned the rest of his s.h.i.+rt, then pulled it halfway down his arms so she could see his back. It was red in stripes with the imprint of the back of the dining room chair, but the skin was unbroken. She went into professional mode, running her hands over his neck, his shoulders, and over his back, gently digging in her thumb here and there, feeling for the tightness of spasming muscles. She found some in his neck and mid-back. "How much does it hurt?" She raised the s.h.i.+rt back over his shoulders as she spoke and moved around to face him.

Now he looked more guarded than empty, an improvement in her eyes. "Banged up, and like maybe I'll be sore for a couple of days, but not too bad. I managed keep my head up off the ground for the most part, but I think I strained my neck doing it."

"I'm afraid you're right about that. What I've found works best in these situations is to rotate cold and heat packs. It really helps the muscles to let go of the spasm they're in."

He shrugged. "Whatever you think best, doc."

"Why don't you go sit on the couch, or in one of the chairs in the living room if that's more comfortable. I've got some cold packs ready to go, then I'll microwave some hot packs." He nodded, avoiding her eyes, and moved off into the living room.

Busying herself with the packs in the kitchen gave her time to gather herself. She felt guilty about what had happened in the read, although Leander had said he wanted her to try. She'd only gotten that much detail on a deep read on a handful of occasions, and had certainly not expected to be able to go to that level with Leander. In fact, she had been hoping to get a general feel for his energy, dark or light, as well as perhaps an overall sense of whether he was hiding something, something like being a plant for the Keltoi. Well, she'd failed spectacularly in that, and instead laid bare what might be some of Leander's most traumatic memories. She couldn't imagine that he would have wanted for her to see all that if he'd been given a choice. She was glad of the opportunity to do something concrete to help him.

She went to where he was sitting with stiff, upright posture on the couch. She sat next to him, directing him to lean forward slightly as she positioned the larger pack across the middle of his back, then had him lean back to keep it in place. She put the other across the back of his neck. He drew in his breath between his teeth at that one. He'd b.u.t.toned up his s.h.i.+rt, and Bree reached over to the arm of the couch where her fuzzy white blanket was draped and laid it over his lap Then, with some trepidation, she took his hand in hers. After a beat, he returned the pressure of her grip. "Just let me say I'm sorry if that was a bad experience for you," Bree told him. "I never dreamed I'd be able to go that deep. I've never had anyone report any ill effects when I do, but you seemed upset."

"Upset," Leander echoed, seeming to taste the word as it left his mouth. "I was upset." He shook his head slightly, then winced as the motion strained his abused neck muscles. "I felt, you were, I thought you were..." He stumbled through his words in a way that seemed totally uncharacteristic of him. "Did you see what I was remembering?" he finally got out. "Because it felt like you were there."

"I saw what I thought might have been images from your childhood, and some later," she said carefully. "You'd been giving me a kind of summary a few minutes earlier, so maybe those memories were stirred up."

"What gives you the right," he began, anger seeping into his tone, then he stopped himself, and went on in a more even voice. "I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know when I agreed to let you try to read me that that kind of attunement was possible. I guess I've heard rumors that high power readers can come close to reading your mind, but I've never heard anyone say they've actually experienced it, or done it, and I certainly can't do it, so I blew it off as some kind of fear-based rumor. Have you done that before?" He turned his head slightly, though it obviously pained him, apparently wanting to see her reaction to his question.

Bree's stomach tightened in tension and she released his hand. She was concerned he was feeling violated, and felt terrible about it, and of course she didn't want him to be angry with her. But she felt she owed him some honesty. "Yes, I've done it before, a few times."

"Does anyone know you can do that?"