On the Prowl by Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, Sunny Page B

in the bedroom, a warm tan in the living area, sandy tan in the kitchen, with a turquoise stripe wrapping the two areas to unite them.
    She tugged down the covers and turned off the bedside lamp, leaving the one on in the kitchen. Childish, foolish…she promised herself again to stop with the name-calling, but it did embarrass her. Eleven years after the accident, and she still didn’t like the dark.
    She cozied into her nest of pillows and drank the tea in three big swallows. And shuddered.
    The stuff tasted nastier than it smelled, but it worked fast. Even as she snuggled down flat, warmth opened in her middle like a blossom and began sending out tendrils.
    She lay in the darkness breathing quietly, listening to the wind as it kicked up a fuss outside. Warmth continued to spread, reaching places that made her think of Nathan and wishes…a wish that hovered in the air, its wistful lavender woven threaded with silver and red. A nice carnal shade of red.
    A sensible woman would be glad their relationship hadn’t gone in the direction she’d wanted. He was leaving, wasn’t he? He’d told her that three months ago. People he worked with were beginning to be suspicious about him. He couldn’t stay in Midland much longer.
    Surely it would hurt worse when he left if they’d become lovers. As it was, loss already ached inside her like a tooth going bad.
    Maybe he wouldn’t leave if…
    Yes, he would. Dammit, she knew that.
    Rain tapped its first, uncertain fingertips on the window. Time to finish putting herself out…not for her own sake, but for everyone else’s. Her Gift might not be empathy, as she claimed, but it was skewed.
    Which was just as well, since that was probably why she wasn’t crazy. Telepaths usually were.
    Kai didn’t read minds. She saw thoughts and the emotions connected to those thoughts, and sometimes she changed minds. Literally. If she stayed awake for tonight’s storm, there was a good chance that some of her thoughts would split off to tangle themselves up in other people’s heads.
    This wasn’t unusual. The biggest null on the planet left a residue of thoughts and feelings behind, but such a faded wash that only a strong psychometry Gift could read anything from it. Strong emotions caused many people to project, and a few others were natural projectors.
    But normal thought-bodies evaporated soon after separating from their origin. Kai’s didn’t. Her stray thoughts might cause her neighbors no more than a brief confusion or bad dream, but it could be worse. Much worse. And with the way her Gift had strengthened since the Turning, she couldn’t take any chances.
    Kai no longer needed to speak the entire spell aloud. Long practice plus the focusing property of the tea allowed her to carry only a single word deep inside, where she released it. In a dizzy, immaterial shift she slid into white fog, a place diffuse and warm where thought slowed…and slowed…and faded away.

C HAPTER 2
    I T was the sobbing that woke her.
    Kai hung in the blurred state between sleep and waking, eyes closed, hearing the wash of rain drained of its earlier frenzy, the wail of her neighbor’s Siamese cat, and the sobbing. Deep sobs, bereft of hope, aching with a terrible loneliness.
    And familiar. She’d heard this before, in other dreams. Oh, sweetheart—there now, you aren’t alone, I’m here. I’m…
    Her eyes opened. The sound of that terrible sorrow died, but the colors of it lingered for a second in alien shapes of black and silver before dissolving.
    Kai sat up, shaken. She’d brought those thoughts back with her. That had never happened before. And she never experienced the emotions connected to thoughts.
    Was her lie somehow coming true? Was she was turning into an empath as well as a weird-ass telepath?
    That fear, put into words, sounded so silly she was able to set it aside. She’d been asleep, after all—normal sleep, not in-sleep; the trance state never lasted more than a couple hours.