A dog barked, shattering the midnight silence. Gabriel glanced up briefly, his psychic senses alert. Then he went back to breaking into the house.
In a moment, the lock on the door gave way to his lockpick. The door swung open.
Gabriel smiled.
There were four people awake in the house. One of them Kaitlyn. Beautiful Kaitlyn with the red-gold hair. A pity he might have to destroy her-but he was her enemy from now on. He couldn't afford weakness.
He was working for Mr. Zetes now. And Mr. Zetes needed something-a shard from the last perfect crystal in the world. Kaitlyn had it... Gabriel was going to take it.
As simple as that.
If anyone tried to stop him, he was going to have to hurt them. Even Kaitlyn.
For just an instant there was a tightening in his chest. Then his face hardened and he moved stealthily into the dark house.
"Give up, Kaitlyn."
Kaitlyn looked into Gabriel's dark gray eyes.
"How did you get in here?" she said.
Gabriel smiled silkily. "Breaking and entering is one of my new talents."
"This is Marisol's house," Rob said from behind him. "You can't just-"
"But I have just. Don't expect help; I've put everybody outside to sleep. I'm here, and I think you know why."
They all stared at him: Kaitlyn and Rob and Lewis and Anna. They were refugees, runaways from the Zetes Institute for Psychic Research, and Marisol's family had taken them in. Marisol herself was absent; once a research assistant at the Institute, she'd found out too much and ended up in a coma. But her family had been kind-and now Kaitlyn had brought more trouble on them.
It was past midnight. The four of them had been sitting up in the room Marisol's brother had assigned the girls, talking and trying to figure out what to do next. And then the door had opened to reveal Gabriel.
Kaitlyn, who was standing directly in front of the handsome mahogany desk by Marisol's bed, made her face utterly blank. She tried to make her mind blank, too.
Anna and Lewis, who were sitting on the bed, were looking just as blank, and Rob's mind was just one wash of golden light. Nothing for Gabriel to grab onto.
It didn't matter. He looked past Kaitlyn, at the desk, and his smile was dazzling and dangerous.
"Give up," he said again. "I want it, and I'm going to get it."
"We don't know what you're talking about," Rob said flatly, taking a step toward him.
Gabriel answered without turning to look at Rob. He was still smiling but his eyes were dark. "A shard of the last perfect crystal," he said. "Do you want to play hot and cold-or should I just take it?" He looked at the desk again.
"If we did have it, we wouldn't be giving it to you," Rob said. "We'd use it to destroy your boss-he is your boss now, isn't he?"
Gabriel's smile froze. His eyes narrowed slightly, and Kaitlyn could see darkness rilling them. But his voice was calm and easygoing. "Sure, he's my boss. And you'd better stay away from him or you're going to get hurt."
Kaitlyn could feel a stinging behind her eyes. She didn't believe this was happening, she didn't. Gabriel was standing here like a stranger, warning them away from Mr. Zetes. From Mr. Zetes, the man who'd tried to make them into psychic weapons to sell to the highest bidder, who'd tried to kill them when they rebelled. Who'd hounded them all the way up to Canada when they ran away from him, and who was clearly still after them now that they'd returned to fight him. They'd hoped Marisol's house would be a safe place to hide from him-but they'd been wrong.
"How can you, Gabriel?" Anna said in her low, clear voice, and Kaitlyn knew she was feeling the same thing. Anna Eva Whiteraven's face-usually serene between its dark braids of hair-was now clouded. "How can you join him? After everything he's done-"
"-and everything he's going to do," Lewis put in. Lewis Chao was normally as cheerful as Anna was serene, but now his almond-shaped eyes were bleak. "He's bad, Gabriel; he's bad, and you know it," Reb said, closing in from behind. Rob Kessler wasn't built for menace either, but just now with his tousled blond hair and blazing golden eyes he looked like an avenging angel.
"And he'll turn on you in the end," Kaitlyn said, adding her voice to the chorus against Gabriel. In her mind she added herself to the group: Kaitlyn Fair-child, not as gentle as Anna and Lewis or as good as Rob, a girl with fiery hair and a temper. And eyes that people called witchy, smoky blue with darker blue rings in them. Right now, Kait fixed these eyes mercilessly on Gabriel, staring him down. Gabriel Wolfe threw back his head and laughed. As always, it almost took Kaitlyn's breath away. Gabriel was so handsome it was frightening. His pale skin made his dark hair look even darker, like the silky pelt of some animal-like his namesake. A wolf, a predator in his bones, who enjoyed stalking and toying with his prey.
Of course he's bad, Gabriel said. Kaitlyn heard the words in her head, rather than with her ears, and the tone was amused and mocking. I'm bad, too-or hadn't you noticed?
Tiny needles of pain jabbed into Kaitlyn's temples. She managed not to gasp, but she could sense Anna's alarm, and Lewis's and Rob's. Gabriel had gotten stronger. Kaitlyn could feel it through the psychic web that connected the five of them, the web that Gabriel had created. The web that would link them until one of the five died. They were all psychics: Rob was a healer and Kaitlyn saw the future, Lewis was psychokinetic and Anna controlled animals-but Gabriel was a telepath. He fused minds. He'd fused their minds, the five of them, by accident, and now they were like the arms of a starfish: separate but part of one being.
Gabriel's power had always been strongest, but now it rocked Kaitlyn with its force. His mental voice had been amused, yes-but it had also been like a white-hot poker burning the words directly into her brain.
By contrast, Lewis's thought sounded weak and distant. I'm scared.
Kaitlyn glanced at him quickly and saw that he hadn't meant it to be heard. That was the problem with telepathy, with the web that connected them, held them close. It held them too close, sometimes, throwing their private thoughts into the public forum. Leaving them totally exposed, naked to one another. Unable to hide anything.
Realization flashed through her, and she looked back at Gabriel.
"That's it, isn't it?" she said. "Why you left. It was too much for you, being so close. It was too intimate-"