I was hungry when I woke up, the physician and psychic strain of the past few hours wearing on me at the cellular level. Hadrian was somewhere off to my right, too far away to order room service. I froze at the realization. He was there, not in the next room but blocks away. How was it possible that I could know that? Oh I don’t know, maybe because I had drawn him into my mind and given  him a guided tour. My lips grew dry. Every psyker worries that at some point touching the warp, no matter how carefully, will leave a mark. Most psykers develop stigmata even mutations if they over reach repeatedly, and the physical type of corruption was, in some ways, the least distressing. I told myself that whatever had happened would fade and that there was nothing to worry about. I was too careful, too skilled to allow any kind of corruption to take root in my mind.


Hadrian had cleaned me up and tucked me in bed before he had gone out on whatever errand he was about and I scrabbled around until I found the ornate brass vox set by the side of the bed. I called room service and ordered an unreasonable amount of food then hung up slumping into the comfortable covers in exhaustion. I must have dozed off because I was awakened by the door bell and a cry of: “Room Service.” I was about to call them in when I saw the folded note Hadrian had left by the bedside. I picked it up and opened it, calling for them to bring the food in. My stomach dropped as I read the content of the note.

“STOP!!!” I screamed, all but leaping out of bed. I laced the words with my will and the door knob to the room froze in mid turn. I scrambled, trailing the sheet, out across the destroyed sitting room to find Hadrian’s explosive charge clamped to the door. Letting out a slow breath I unhooked the trigger plate and peeked through the doorway. A young waiter, sweating profusely, stood frozen his hand on the door plate. I unclenched my mind and pulled open the door. The waiter sagged and gave me a look. Then another look as he realized I was naked but for a sheet that I had clasped rather inadequately to my chest.

“Madmioselle?” he stammered, his eyes huge and shocked. His nose wrinkled as he caught the scent of the psyburned carpet. I gave him a languid smile and a wink, then grabbed the silver and brass cart of food he was pushing and pulled it into the room, slamming the door behind me. I sat for a minute leaning my backside against the door, then re-engaged the manual lock and carefully reconnected the explosive. Certain death averted, I read the rest of the note while shoving a hot grox bun into my mouth and washing it down with a half a bottle of champagne that I didn’t bother to decant into a glass. Reaching out with my mind I touched the ward Hadrian had created. It was always interesting to examine the work of another psyker. Hadrian was very workman like, everything done just so and by the book. He lacked the artistic flair I employed but then our powers were vastly different. I would not have been made an Inquisitor if I had been found by the Black Ships as a child. The best I could have hoped for was the rather miserable existence of a sanctioned psyker, or perhaps to have been condemned to go to the Throne itself. I lacked the inherent discipline of someone like Hadrian, not matter how much power I had at my disposal. Time and study had gone a long way to increasing my power but ‘workman like’ would never be applied to my psy-craft.


Wearily I pushed the cart to the bedside and then climbed back under the covers, shoveling pastries and sauteed tuberites into my mouth. I felt I should be doing something, but there was no way I was up to an auto seance or a reading of tarot just yet. I thought about what I had learned from Demik. It was irritating that his mind had collapsed. I could have kept him ‘alive’ for as long as I wanted if we had not pressed him so hard. That had been difficult at the time as the temptation for just a little more information had been too much. Well it was done now and he had managed to outlive his body by at least a half hour. Well if psychic means were out, there were always the physical ones. I picked up the phone and patched myself through one of the hopefully still secure call forwarding services Hadrian had set up, and began making some calls.