Leigh nodded, unsurprised by the information. “We know of him. One of their tools, or was.”

“Was?”

“Gone,” Brodie said unemotionally. “We checked on him periodically; as of this morning, his house was empty and the neighbors have no idea when he left or where he went.”

“They don’t like failure,” Sarah murmured, chilled.

Leigh nodded. “And he failed. You were getting stronger by then, and when he failed, they knew they had missed their chance to convert you that way.”

“Why didn’t they try earlier? When I was still so confused and didn’t know how to resist them?”

“As nearly as we can figure,” Brodie said, “they use their psychics very sparingly, always trying more…conventional means first. We think it may be because when a psychic touches another psychic’s mind, it’s like opening a corridor between them, leaving both vulnerable. They seem to avoid that whenever possible, though we aren’t sure why. It may be another reason why they decided to tap into Mackenzie’s mind instead of yours.”

“Think. Seem. May.” Sarah heard the frustration in her own voice. “You don’t know much for certain, do you?”

“No, we don’t.” Brodie met her gaze steadily. “Can you tell us more?”

Her eyes fell. “No.”

Gently, Leigh said, “Not yet, anyway. But, Sarah, we believe you may be able to tell us a great deal about them. One day. When your abilities have had the time to develop properly.”

“And until then—what? Hide me away somewhere?”

“No,” Brodie said. “Hiding isn’t the best idea.”

Cait spoke up finally. “And in another week or two, you’ll be much safer from them.”

Sarah remembered the conversation she had overheard. “Six months since I woke up a psychic. Why six months?”

“Another thing we don’t know,” Brodie replied. “But it always holds true for the psychics like you, the ones who aren’t born with it but suffer head injuries or some other kind of trauma later in life.”

Leigh said, “In the life of every psychic, there comes a moment when full potential is realized. Control may be lacking, knowledge almost always is, but the ability is there. For a new psychic, a person who becomes psychic abruptly when all the other faculties are fully mature, the threshold seems to occur around the six-month mark. From the evidence we’ve seen so far, it appears that once that threshold is crossed, the other side finds it difficult—if not impossible—to convert a psychic. Whatever it is they want of us, we apparently become useless to them.”

“You become a threat to them,” Brodie corrected.

“We don’t know that,” Leigh argued. “Not for certain.”

Brodie let out a short laugh and looked at Sarah. “It’s another assumption of ours, based on the fact that we’re sure they continue to keep tabs on psychics long after they seemingly give up trying to take them, and because there have been several disappearances, possibly even deaths, of psychics we thought were safe.”

“Nothing was ever proven,” Leigh said.

“Nothing ever is,” Brodie retorted. “But there are some assumptions we’d damned well better make to keep our people safe.”

“I don’t believe we’re of any use to them once the threshold is crossed,” Leigh argued. “Those disappearances all involved psychics who were having trouble adjusting to their new lives; they probably just wanted to drop out of sight and did just that.”

“It would be nice to think so, Leigh—but I don’t. Whatever these bastards want with psychics, it doesn’t just end when you cross that threshold of yours. They’ve got something else in mind for you, I can feel it in my gut.” He laughed shortly. “I may not be psychic, but I know what I know. Taking new and inexperienced psychics is just step one of their plan. Step two involves the rest of you.”

Leigh seemed unwillingly impressed by his certainty, but shook her head a little. “I don’t feel that. And none of the others has felt it.”

“Maybe all of you are too close. Maybe it takes somebody without psychic abilities to see it.”

“Maybe.”

Sarah probably should have been disturbed by this lack of consensus among people who had fought the other side much longer than she and Tucker had, but instead it gave her an odd feeling of comfort. This entire thing was so bizarre, so inexplicable, that it felt wonderfully normal to watch and listen to people who couldn’t agree on the details—but were very clear on what the problem was.

“What about people like you?” she asked Leigh. “You’ve been psychic from birth, right? Why are you safe from them?”

“She isn’t,” Brodie said. “She just thinks she is.”

Leigh smiled at him briefly, then looked at Sarah. “Like many born psychics, I had nonpsychic parents who tried their best to make me—at least seem—normal. I was always encouraged to hide what I could do, to keep to myself the things I saw. I learned secrecy at a very young age.”

“So the other side wasn’t aware of you?”

“So we believe. When I finally did go public, so to speak, it was with my full potential realized. They never even tried to take me.”

But they had, Sarah knew, taken plenty of her friends through the years. That was why Leigh Munroe was involved in this. Not out of fear for herself, but out of fear for others.

Brodie leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked intently at Sarah. “They outnumber us, Sarah, but we’re growing. In strength and numbers. We’re getting organized, even if it’s loosely, and we’re fighting back.”

“How?”

“Marshaling our own strength. Gathering what few facts and little information we can lay our hands on, so that we may be able to expose them some day. Finding and protecting psychics, keeping them away from Duran and his goons.”

“Duran?”

Brodie nodded. “The head goon.”

Cait murmured, “Well, he isn’t really a goon.”

Brodie glanced at her, then looked back at Sarah with a wry expression. “Crocodile. Shark. Smiling villain. Whatever the hell you want to call him, he’s obviously in charge, at least of their field operations.”

“Field operations? You make it sound…military.”

“Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t. Until we get strong enough as an organization, or find a single psychic who’s strong enough, we have no way of knowing. They don’t leave evidence behind them, not so far.”

Sarah thought about it. “So that’s what you meant when you all were talking earlier? That I might be the one?”

Leigh replied to that, this time obviously in agreement with Brodie. “We’re convinced that a strong enough psychic will be able to find a way past their mental shields and give us the information we need to fight them.”

“What makes you believe I might be that one?”

“I can feel it in you. The strength. The potential.” Leigh smiled. “And I gave you a little test, Sarah.”

“What test?”

“Earlier today, when you looked into my mind. Remember?”

“How could I forget. You opened a door and showed me…everything inside you.”

Leigh shook her head slightly. “You opened that door, Sarah. Something not one in a hundred psychics could have done. The door was not only closed, it was locked—and I’ve spent a lifetime learning how to make those locks strong. But they didn’t stop you. You didn’t force your way past them, you didn’t hurt me. You just opened the door as if it were no barrier at all.”

Sarah didn’t know what to say to that.

“You’re the one, Sarah,” Leigh said. “You’re the key to our future.”

“Well?”

“She’s made contact with Munroe.”

“And?”

“Brodie’s there. And the girl.”

“Then we can assume they’re making plans.”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good.”

It was unsettling, to be told she was so important in a cause she hadn’t even been aware of a week before, and Sarah wasn’t sure what she felt about it. All she knew was that a weight of responsibility was settling on her shoulders, and it was heavy.