Page 27 of Dark Gambit: The Play

Her heart, which was already shriveled like a prune, constricted further. Had he manipulated her mind as well?

No wonder her head was hurting so badly. She'd had two compellers and one memory manipulator mess with her mind. She would be lucky if by the end of those terrible twenty-four hours she retained any cognitive function at all.

"What did you do to me?"

"It was a very small thing just to test whether you are susceptible to my talent. Do you remember the expensive gift I bought for my ex-girlfriend that you couldn't recall any particulars about?"

"You made me forget what it was."

"I did. I told you that it was a diamond necklace, but that wasn't it. I got her expensive jewelry, but she wanted more than shiny objects to prove my love for her."

The pain in his voice indicated that it was much worse. Had she made him betray his people? Forsake his family?

"What did she want?"

He shook his head. "That's a secret I'm going to take to my grave. I haven't told anyone, and I don't intend to."

Why did that hurt so much?

He hadn't told his family or his friends, and she was no one to him. Why should he tell her his deepest secret?

"You can keep your secrets." She let go of his hand. "Just promise me that you'll never make me forget anything again or remember a false memory."

"I'm sorry, but I can't promise that. I might have to make you forget about meeting Tom as well as other details about our organization. People with paranormal talents fear persecution and exploitation. We need to keep our existence a secret."

Sofia snorted. "Then running a paranormal retreat might not be the best strategy."

"How else are we going to find more of us? Besides, people on the outside think it's all fake. Sometimes ridicule is the best defense. It allows us to hide in plain sight."

She thought about the Kra-ell and how they'd gone undetected despite looking very alien.

"People think along the parameters they are familiar with. When something doesn't fit, they dismiss it as an aberration or a hoax."

"Precisely." Marcel pushed to his feet. "How is your head? Has the Motrin started to work?"

"It's a little better." She rubbed her temple. "But it still hurts."

"Get some rest. You didn't get enough sleep tonight, and all the excitement must have exhausted you."

"I barely slept at all." She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. "It's hard to fall asleep while my whole world is falling apart around me."

He grimaced. "I wasn't the one who caused it."

"No, you were not."

He was just the one who broke her heart.

18

MARCEL

With a heavy heart, Marcel left the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He'd closed himself up emotionally as best he could, but Sofia's sadness had managed to penetrate the shields he'd built around his heart and poke a dagger right through it.

"Is she asleep?" Mia asked.

"Not yet." Marcel sat down next to Julian.

"That compeller is extremely dangerous," Toven said. "I'm afraid to use too much power on Sofia and fry her brain. The best approach would have been to chip away at the walls he's erected around her brain slowly, but we don't have the luxury of time. I understand that you want to use her to feed him false information, and to do that, we need to have her on our side. I need to break through his compulsion and use mine to get her to talk."