Elara's knees weakened beneath her before she could understand why, and Serena caught her by the arm, pulling her gently toward the nearest chair while Freya moved around the table to make certain there was no hidden supernatural disturbance in the room. Nadia remained frozen before the terminal, her fingers hovering above the keyboard, because the name on the screen had not been generated by an ordinary database search; it had appeared after an encrypted layer had opened itself, almost as though someone on the other side had been waiting for them to find it.
Elara pressed one hand against her chest and tried to breathe through the strange ache spreading beneath her ribs, but the woman's voice remained inside her mind with an intimacy that frightened her more than any threat ever had. "You heard her, didn't you?" Serena asked softly, kneeling beside her, and Elara slowly looked at her with tears gathering in her eyes before whispering, "I don't know who she is, but she knows me."
