Page 164 of Hunters and Prey

Male seers were pretty much wired that way, when it came to mates.

The woman in front of me grunted.

You have no idea, little sister,she sent humorously in my mind.

The male next to her nudged her, half-playful, half-irritation, but his eyes grew slightly less hard.

“The problem is,” I said, taking a breath, my voice grim. “Black, my husband… he’s losing all sense of strategy… of perspective. I’m afraid he’s actually considering going to work for Charles now. He’s gone security crazy, which I understand, but he’s also completely obsessed with taking out Nick. To the detriment of pretty much everything else.”

Again, I heard the male seer grunt, his meaning utterly clear.

He might as well have said, Well, no shit, Sherlock.

I didn’t bother to comment on his non-comment comment.

The female nudged him to be quiet, though, which was pretty funny, since I was pretty sure he was the quietest person I’d ever met in my life.

The woman turned back to me.

“So what happened this time, Miriam?” she said, her voice gentle. “What brought you here to us? What was the event?”

I stared at her, at her light-filled eyes.

I fought to make myself think about it, about the last thing I remembered.

The woman waited, patiently.

When I continued to stare out the window blankly, she spoke again.

“You must want to tell us all of this for a reason,” she said. “Is it related, in some way, to how you got here?”

My mind continued to serve up static.

I knew she must be right.

What she said made logical sense.

I couldn’t remember, though.

I couldn’t remember why any of this mattered.

“What is the last thing you do remember?” she said, her words soft.

I stared out the long, rectangular window, so strange in design compared to windows in houses back home. I looked at that shockingly blue sky, that was too high, too round somehow… too empty of pollution and planes and even sounds.

I looked back at the woman, and tried to answer her question.

“I…” I frowned, trailing. Something flickered in the recesses of my mind. “I went to meet him,” I said. “Brick.”

“The vampire?” The woman’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Alone?”

I nodded slowly. “I think so. Yes,” I said. “Alone. It must have been. There’s no way Black would have let me go. He would have handcuffed me to the toilet first––”

That deeper voice grunted.

I glanced up at the male sitting across from me on the blue, couch-like bench––another piece of furniture that should have looked familiar but somehow didn’t––and saw him smiling at me faintly, despite the utter lack of humor in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I sighed, reading the look there. “I know. But I had to try. I couldn’t let him just sign himself over to my uncle. I couldn’t.”

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