Miriya

by Jade Kerrion

CHAPTER SIX

  A half hour later, she walked into her hotel room to find Jake in a chair by the window. He tossed her a smirk. “How can you possibly be afraid of heights? You live in a twenty-fifth-floor penthouse.”

  “Well, technically, I’m not afraid of heights,” she clarified. She set her handbag and card key on the desk, and slumped into the chair across from him. “I’m just afraid of falling from heights, and since I’d never intended to jump from my penthouse balcony, I figured I had nothing to be afraid of. Climbing across balconies and playing James Bond is not exactly what I thought I had signed up for.”

  “I’ll be with you.”

  She jerked her gaze up to meet his eyes.

  A wide grin spread across his face. “I have to get in too. Even got me a new tux for the occasion.”

  “I think we should try getting in through a door instead of a window.”

  “The security guards are telepaths, and they will be on the lookout for gate-crashers. Telepathy can only get you so far against a psychically shielded mind, especially if you’re not holding an invitation in your hand.”

  “We don’t have to walk in with the guests. There are people in there right now, preparing for the party. Surely, they’ve got decorators, caterers lined up. Why not enter with them?”

  Jake’s eyes widened.

  Miriya frowned. “Tell me you actually thought about it. Did it not even occur to you?”

  He held his hands up. “I had other things on my mind, but yours is a really good idea. Did you by any chance pick up the name of the catering or cleaning company?”

  Somewhere in the cacophony of thoughts swirling through the Mistick Krewe building, she had snatched up a name or two. “Tastebuds Catering. They have an office on Canal Street.”

  “Awesome.” Jake shoved to his feet. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Room service. I called ahead, and breakfast should be arriving in about ten minutes. I’m starving.”

  “Oh.” Jake sank back into his seat and folded his hands across his chest. “How are you holding up?”

  She shrugged.

  “I remember my first mission as an enforcer,” Jake said. “It was about five years ago.”

  Five years? Jake did not look a whole lot older than she. “What were you, a teenager then?”

  “Just graduated from high school. The council offered me a scholarship to UCLA, in addition to psychic training and a guarantee of employment upon graduation.”

  “ROTC for mutants, huh?”

  “Pretty much, though less physical, more mental. On my first winter break, the council got me started on simple investigations.” Jake dragged his hands through his hair. “I’ve been on some pretty rough cases since, but I don’t think any freaked me out as much as that first one.”

  “How so?”

  “The realization that I was doing it officially as opposed to on the sly. It’s different when you don’t have to constantly look over your shoulder, worried that some jackass enforcer from the council is going to slap electric handcuffs on your wrists and drag you off to a maximum-security prison.”

  A knock sounded on the door, and Miriya let the uniform-clad waiter into the room. The man politely murmured good morning before setting the tray of pastries and coffee down on the table between Jake and Miriya’s chairs.

  Miriya tipped the waiter and closed the door on him. She returned to her seat and cast Jake a narrow-eyed stare as she reached for a Danish pastry. “How often does that happen?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The electric handcuffs, dragging-off-to-prison deal?”

  “Four times that I’ve seen in the past five years, but those people deserved it.”

  “And who gets to make that decision?” Miriya scowled.

  “Alex Saunders. He’s the director general of the council. He has a team of advisors, all alphas, many of them precogs.”

  Miriya’s scowl deepened. “I hate precogs.”

  “They have their uses.”

  “Charlatans. Mutter some new age mumbo-jumbo, and people treat it like it’s the gospel truth.”

  “Some of them are actually quite good at predicting the future,” Jake said mildly. “Would it get your hackles up if I told you that we reached out to you because of a vision?”

  Her pastry paused on the way up to her mouth. Miriya stared, wide-eyed, at Jake. “A…vision?”

  Jake settled back in his chair with a muffin. “That’s what I heard.”

  “What…what kind of vision?”

  He shrugged. “Not a clue. Alex doesn’t tell me everything—only what I needed to know to pique your interest in coming along.”

  What the freaking hell? Miriya set her pastry on a plate before folding her arms across her chest. “I’d like to know what I’m getting manipulated into.”

  “Look, you just find Charles—”

  “Screw that. If you’re laying some kind of trap for me to walk into and then blackmailing me into working for the council—”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  “Paranoia has kept me alive and out of the clutches of the council.”

  “The council isn’t a witch cackling over a cauldron of boiling mutant bones.”

  Miriya rolled her eyes. “Great. Now I’m going to be stuck with that image in my head all day.” She pushed to her feet. “I want to know what the vision is or I’m walking out of here.”

  “Miriya, I don’t—”

  “Maybe you should start finding out.” Her eyebrows arched. “Time’s a‘wasting.”

  Jake’s shoulders slumped; the expression in his eyes was distant. Was he communicating telepathically? Most likely, though Miriya did not feel like poking into the conversation. Privacy was tough to come by where telepaths were concerned.

  A minute or two later, Jake blinked hard and straightened in his seat. His eyes focused on Miriya. “All I know—all Alex knows—is that there will be a battle, and we can’t win without you.”

  “What battle? With whom? When?”

  “Nobody knows, not even the alpha precog who had the vision.”

  “Seriously? You feed me this prophecy crap and expect me to be okay with it? I’m not a big fan of battles that hinge on me, especially when I don’t have any details on who, what, when, where, how.” She counted off on her fingers, punctuating the last five words. “Not to mention, I don’t even know how to fight.”

  “Don’t you?” Jake asked. “You were a scrappy little kid when you were still Maria Durand. Made more than a couple of noses bleed back in the day.”

  “Hah. I don’t think mutant battles exist on the same level as a punch in the face.”

  “The principle is the same though. Stop someone before he hurts you.” Jake sighed and adjusted his glasses. “Look, we don’t have to talk about the precog’s vision. In fact, we really shouldn’t. It has nothing to do with finding Charles or figuring out the reason for the spikes of psychic activity in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.”

  “Really? What if this big battle is literally just around the corner?”

  Jake shook his head. “The precog said you had to be in place, part of the council, by the end of the year. Whatever’s supposed to happen isn’t going to happen until after New Year.”

  Miriya glared at him and fought down her temper until she could mutter a sentence that was not loaded with curse words. “I hate this. You know I hate what the council does.”

  He averted his gaze. “I know. I’m sorry, Miriya.”

  He sounded like he meant it.

  She was, however, not quite inclined to forgive him or the council yet. Jake was right, though, as much as she did not want to admit it. The only thing that mattered now was getting Charles out of whatever mess he had gotten himself into. He was a human, and as a rule, humans did not fare well in situations where mutants were involved. What were guns compared to the world-altering power of an alpha telekinetic, or intelligence and ingenuity compared to the mind-ripping power of a telepath?

&nb
sp; The only superiority humans could afford was against empaths, the most common and weakest of the mutants. Feelings. Emotions. Hah. What good were they? What could they do against people in complete control of their faculties?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.