Illicit Senses (Illicit Minds Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  He stood up and stretched, letting his arms and back work out the kinks they’d been carrying around all day. Jeremy needed him. He’d never met the boy, but like with most of the missing children cases he’d taken on, he had already adopted the child as his own. When he met him, the feeling wouldn’t lessen and it would be harder to leave. In another life, maybe he would have been a teacher or a social worker. Or a father. That thought bothered him so much he made himself forget it.

  If he’d been at home, he could have gone down to the gym facility and worked out. As he was deemed safe to be out in public some of the time, he had been granted gym privileges, which allowed him to lift weights and run on the treadmill.

  The Conditioned who were too scary to walk among society were not permitted to do things like that. The reasoning seemed to be that the sooner they died, the better, and keeping them healthy was only prolonging the problem. Rhodes had been working to try to change that for years. Like with most things, however, it seemed to Spencer that Rhodes was beating his head against a brick wall.

  Having met Oliver Wade, he could see why. The smug way the man had informed him that he was determined to make the world better than he’d found it. Spencer wished he could pound on his geriatric face.

  Pulling his pajama pants over his currently too-tight boxer shorts, he opened his door and glanced out into the hallway. If he was going to call Rhodes in the morning, it would be best if he had all the information Rhodes would want. He needed to exhaust every possible angle to look for Jeremy’s energy signal. Addison would take him to the school in the morning, but he wanted to be able to tell his mentor that he’d gone as far as he could go here in the apartment.

  Quietly, he opened Jeremy’s door and glanced around the room. Addison had obviously decided to sleep in her own bed. That was good. It meant he wouldn’t have to wake her.

  Crossing to the bed, he picked up the pillow and gave it one quick sniff, satisfied when he smelled Addison’s familiar vanilla scent over the smell of laundry detergent.

  Spencer closed his eyes and let himself drift into dark space. It was like breathing the way it felt in a dream, only this wasn’t a manifestation of his internal mind. No sound existed in the space except that which he made himself. He’d also never smelled anything. It was like all senses ceased to exist except sight and touch, and even touch would disappear the farther he went in.

  As a child, he had often thought he was dreaming when he’d visited this place. It hadn’t been until Rhodes had explained to him what was happening that he’d learned to control it.

  Truth was, they shouldn’t refer to it as “dark space.” It made it sound much more mysterious than it actually was. Human beings lived in two different places. The physical plane, where they ate, slept, had sex—all the everyday things. But there was another place where they existed as well. Their thoughts, feelings and emotions were as unique to each person as their fingerprints. Everywhere they passed, lived or visited, they left a mark of themselves, a fragment that someone with his abilities could see.

  The deeper he went, the more clearly he could see the people who had resided in the same space. Jeremy’s room looked the same there, except it was shadowed. The whole place was bathed in dark lights broken up by the bright energies swirling through the room that represented the people who had visited it.

  There was no sign of Jeremy anywhere. The only lights visible were his own—a swirling blue-and-white cloud that floated wherever he went—and Addison’s bright yellow sunshine. Her psychic energy pulsed all over the space. It was impossible to describe how he had immediately known it was her. In the same way he would recognize her scent anywhere he encountered it, he would know her psychic self.

  In the corner, where her aunt had stood, were purple and gray, pulsing and fading, pulsing and fading. The woman had been agitated when she’d been in here, and her energy indicated her turmoil. Well, he’d witnessed it himself.

  A tremor started in his head. The shadows were calling to him again, beckoning him to go deeper, to look further. He shook his head. This was what he wanted, what he’d promised himself he would check before he called Rhodes in the morning. Earlier in the day, he’d been too aware of Addison in the room, too distracted to do a proper job, but now, when it was quiet, he should be able to push a little farther in and not lose himself.

  He hoped.

  Forcing his concentration to sharpen, he let his mind wander deeper into the shadows. The solidness of the room drifted away. All he needed to do was find a spark of Jeremy, one fiber of the little boy, and he’d be able to send his energy out into the universe to track him.

  “Come on. Come on.” He still saw nothing. The bed looked more distant, fuzzier. At this level of dark space, matter started to lose its solidness and he could see the energy generated by inanimate objects. Everything gave off light. The bed was a brushed green; the lamp looked pumpkin orange. Narrowing his eyes, he pushed his vision a little deeper into the shadows, knowing that he was getting into risky territory. But something inside the darkness beckoned him on.

  Was it Jeremy’s energy, begging him to find it?

  Smiling, Spencer realized he was starting to wax philosophical. Realistically, he knew energies didn’t actually speak or communicate with him. Even knowing that, when he was this deep inside dark space, his mind tended to drift into metaphysical matters when he needed to focus on the moment.

  “Where are you, Jeremy?” Had he spoken out loud or just in his mind, where only he could hear it? It didn’t matter; in either case, there was no one around to answer.

  Something caught his attention, and he whirled around. Energy he didn’t recognize danced in the gloom of the boy’s closet. Was it Jeremy’s or someone else’s random flow from a previous visit? It was risky to go any farther. He’d never been deeper than this without a guide back. Hell, with Priscilla he could have gone ten times deeper and not gotten lost.

  He didn’t have that luxury now.

  He tried to touch the bed beside him. His hand floated through the object as if it were a phantom version of itself. Damn. He’d already left solid space. Dare he risk it?

  He pushed out with his senses to gently probe the shadow that contained the strange energy. Like a kitten nervous to be approached, the colors leaped backward deeper into the blackness. Unlike a live cat, he couldn’t coax them back out. If he wanted to see it, he was going to have to go in after it.

  A vision of a little blond boy with dancing green eyes appeared to him. He’d only seen a picture of Jeremy once, and very quickly. In his work, the subject’s appearance on the physical plane was irrelevant, but sometimes when he touched energy, he could get a glimpse of the physical person who’d created the mark in the universe.

  Even if he hadn’t known the boy was Jeremy, he would have recognized him as a Wade. High cheekbones, a straight nose, and a stubborn cleft in his chin that he shared with his great-grandfather, spoke of his strong familial genetics. The eyes were not the Wade blue, and Spencer wondered if he’d gotten them from his father. It was odd that they knew nothing about who that man had been or still was; bizarre that Oliver Wade had never investigated it.

  Laughter filled his mind, the soft dulcet sounds of true innocence. The boy had lost his mother at a young age, but when he had left his trace of himself, he had still been pure and happy. Spencer could practically taste the unique manifestation of youth in his mouth.

  He closed his eyes as the murk plucked at him, gently tugging. Damn. He was going in. There was no choice. Maybe he wouldn’t come out again, but he had to give it a try. How could he possibly leave a trace of Jeremy out there without catching it? They’d never be able to follow the path if he didn’t grasp on to it now, and the thing was so skittish he might never get this chance a second time.

  Spencer would simply have to find a way back. He was the strongest tracker on the psychic plane. If anyone could do it, he could.

  Rubbing the back of his neck to relieve some pent-up stress,
he pushed all his consciousness forward into the shadow that held Jeremy’s energy. Without an anchor holding him, he slammed into the darkness with force, and his head spun from the effort. Regaining his equilibrium, he looked left and right to see where he was.

  Drifting in front of him was Jeremy’s energy signature. It was white and blue with some random green spots. He moved toward it, and it hovered away, just out of reach.

  Placing a hand out in front of him like a lifeline, he took a deep breath. “Okay, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Usually he didn’t talk to the energy around him, but Jeremy’s seemed to be skittish. Using his voice meant that he could control his own reactions and energy, thereby, he hoped, manipulating Jeremy’s into coming to him. Only once before had he ever had to resort to speaking to the psychic energy he encountered. At that time, he’d been searching for a rape victim who had been kidnapped. Her energy had been as damaged as she had been when the police had found her.

  Jeremy’s energy didn’t look damaged, only afraid.

  “My name is Spencer. I need to touch you so I can find the real version of you out there in the physical world. That’s what I do; I track energy. Your aunt, the beautiful one with the yellow, sunlight signature, found me and brought me here to find you. I know you’ve been through a lot. Someone came in here and removed you. It’s amazing that you’re here at all. Can I do that? Can I touch you and you won’t move away?”

  Spencer stayed very still and silent. Finally, after what felt like forever but might have been only minutes, he reached out his hand and touched the swirling white and blue in front of him. To his delight, Jeremy’s energy stayed still and let him feel it.

  With his hands acting like conduits, he took Jeremy’s energy inside him. Rhodes had once told him that it was like Spencer took in part of the person’s soul when he captured his psychic energy. Although he didn’t like to think of himself as doing exactly that, he had to admit it was a pretty good description. Wherever he went, he would always carry part of Jeremy with him now.

  Pulling back, he swung around to look for the exit from dark space. Nothing but total blackness surrounded him. Spencer sucked in his breath as his palms started to sweat. He’d gone too far.

  There was no light anywhere, and in complete darkness he would never be able to find his path back to the physical world. It was like flying an airplane without equipment in a cloudy area. Without the horizon to show you where you were going, there was no way to tell if you were up or down. If he tried to move and it turned out to be the wrong way, he might end up going even farther into the shadows.

  This was his personal nightmare.

  Spencer closed his eyes and made himself push down his fears. Only once before had this happened, and he hadn’t been nearly this deep or this lost. He’d been only five, and it had been his first experimentation without Rhodes monitoring him. Evidently, Will Rhodes had gone crazy on the outside, found Priscilla—who herself had been only six—rushed her to him, and she had pulled him out.

  There wouldn’t be anyone to do that today. What pissed him off the most was that he wouldn’t see Addison again, wouldn’t get to touch her, or tell her that he would now be able to find Jeremy. It was strange that out of his entire life’s existence, the thing he was the most resentful about missing out on related to a woman he’d known for such a short time.

  How would she find Jeremy without him? He hated the feeling of being ineffectual. He lifted his head as he roared like a trapped animal. Would he just stay like this for the next fifty years until he died? Could he starve to death here? If they kept his body alive on the physical plane, would he continue to live in here?

  He tried to push down the insanity that threatened to consume him as he looked around again. There had to be a way out. There simply had to be. This wasn’t the way it ended, damn it. His hands shook with fury.

  Off in the distance, a light met his eyes. Was it real? He moved cautiously toward it. A few steps more and he determined he wasn’t crazy; there was a light beckoning him to return to the physical plane.

  Home. The word filled his mind. The light wanted him to come back home. He could have laughed at the silliness of the thought; he didn’t have a home, not really. He lived in an institution. Still, it felt good to think he did for a moment. He pushed his consciousness forward, drawn to the light, begging for its guidance. It didn’t let him down. Rather than disappear, it got stronger as he approached it.

  Priscilla had given him a narrow path to follow; he used to call it his faded gray brick road back home. But this illumination was breathtaking—yellow with crisp gold lines and a stream of silver glowing around the edges. It was easy to follow and manipulate. As he followed where it led, things began to come back into focus.

  The bed was to his left. He reached out and touched it. Shuddering, he breathed with relief as he discovered it was solid and sturdy beneath his hand. As his eyes readjusted to the room around him, he looked up and his heart stopped beating for a moment.

  It was Addison. She was pushing the light to him; the light that had led him back. How was that possible? Her condition had made her break a glass window. That was in no way connected to conduit abilities. He forced his mind to take him to the physical world.

  His first solid thought was that he had fallen to his knees. That was unusual. In the past, he had never moved at all during his trips in and out of dark space.

  His thoughts felt clogged, like being awakened at night in the middle of a dream.

  For the space of a few heartbeats, he didn’t know what was going on.

  Cool hands touched the sides of his face, and he raised his head to look at their owner. Addison sat in front of him, and Spencer understood for the first time what sailors lost at sea must feel when they see a lighthouse beckoning them in the distance. She was like an angel sent from Heaven to bring him back from the darkness. If he could have mustered the energy to laugh at that thought, he would have. Heaven was not sending him any angels, not if he was already damned.

  Nevertheless, he was grateful beyond belief for her and whatever she had done to bring him back.

  “How did you do that? How did you create a path?” His voice sounded rough, like sandpaper.

  “You were screaming, I heard you.”

  “Impossible. I’m silent when I’m in dark space.”

  Addison laughed. “Well, you weren’t this time. It was like you were dreaming, but I couldn’t wake you up and you kept screaming. I grabbed you…”

  “And?” He wanted to hear the whole story.

  “I tried to concentrate on sending my energy to you. Instead of it just flowing out of me uncontrolled and destroying something, I was able to direct it into your mind, and then I could see what you saw… or rather what you didn’t see. The blackness was extraordinary. You were lost, but I knew the way home.”

  Home. She’d used that word. It did feel, right at that moment with her hands touching him, like he’d come home. Shaking his head, he pulled her into his arms. “Thank you for coming to find me, Addison Wade.” He closed his eyes and was glad that she didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he could fill the moment with any coherent speech. It was better to be quiet for a while.

  Addison adjusted herself so she could wrap him in her arms. His head pressed against her chest, he could hear the slow, steady rhythm of her heartbeat and smell the vanilla scent of her hair.

  A few moments later, he lifted his head. “What kind of shampoo do you use?”

  “Some stuff from the salon where I get my hair cut. Why?”

  “You smell like vanilla.”

  She laughed, her eyes dancing in the low lighting of the room. “That’s not my shampoo. That’s this soap product they make in the Caymans where we have another house. You know, where I sent my aunt. I buy it by the gallon because I like it so much.”

  “It’s natural on you, like it’s your scent and not manufactured.”

  “I’m glad. I love the Caribbean. The
smell reminds me of there.”

  “Addison.” He pulled back so he could look at her. “I found him.”

  “You found Jeremy?” She shuddered in his embrace.

  “Well, his energy field. I should be able to track him now. He was in the deepest shadow. Loretta missed a tiny portion of him. There he was, blue and white with small green dots.”

  “Spence, you went into the shadows after Jeremy. You risked not coming back out in order to save him?”

  “He’s a little boy and he should come home. At least for a little while, until your grandfather ousts him to Safe Dawn or one of the other institutions.” He hated to think of the laughter he’d heard in his head forever snuffed out by the horror of the institutionalization process.

  “I’m not going to let him send Jeremy away.”

  He squeezed her shoulders hard. “Shhh. The Fury hears us everywhere.” He stared her hard in the eyes and wished she were a mind reader so he could tell her how much he admired her resolve to keep Jeremy safe. It was the right decision. No one should casually turn over his or her children. Whatever had to be done to try to keep them safe without letting the government take them was the right thing to do. As wonderful as Rhodes was, he hadn’t been a parent to them. Spencer’s own mother had died because of him and Roman.

  A voice he didn’t expect to hear called out, “My brother is right. You don’t want to advertise that kind of sentiment.”

  Not sure where he found the energy, Spencer jumped to his feet. Damn it, was there never going to be a time when he could get away from Roman? “Out.” Spencer pointed at the doorway.

  “I thought you wanted my help with this.” Roman shifted his gaze to Addison.

  “I found his signature. I don’t need you anymore, and I don’t like you stalking about and showing up uninvited.”