Chains and Memory by Marie Brennan Page B

did he pick me because his own gift prodded him? I wouldn’t be surprised if the client kept the identity of the “drug” even from him. Whether it was the DEA or the CDC — and I would lay money it was one of the two, if not a joint team of both — they might very well want to keep the details under wraps. But I would have to put my suspicions in my report, and Adam would see that.
    Better to tell him now. I reached out to gather up the cards, but caught myself before I touched them. This second spread wasn’t technically part of my assignment, but I had to record it anyway. There was a box of spare forms in the corner; I grabbed one and wrote out the layout in a quick scrawl, along with a summary of my impressions. Then, file and form in hand, I went to find Adam.
    He was in the hallway talking to Latonya, the firm’s best runecaster. She was facing me as I came out, and put a hand on Adam’s to stop him mid-sentence. Distress had frayed my shields; I was leaking empathic cues to an embarrassing degree. Or maybe it was just my expression that warned her. Adam twisted his head to look over his shoulder, and his eyebrows shot up. “We’ll finish this later?” he said to Latonya. It was more of a statement than a question, and she nodded. “Kim, follow me.”
    A moment later we were back in his office, with the door shut behind us. “What happened?” he asked.
    I swallowed, steadying my breathing. “Shields?”
    He closed his eyes briefly, and my ears suddenly felt stuffed with cotton. I opened my jaw to pop them. Adam said, “Speak.”
    Fear had carried me this far, but now caution slowed me. I held up the file. “Do you know who this came from?” He nodded. “Do you know what they’re after? The specifics, I mean.”
    â€œNo,” Adam admitted. “That is—I know there’s some specific substance they’re worried about, not just general trends. And although they didn’t say this, I suspect it has something to do with the sidhe.”
    Which explained why he’d passed it to me. I put the file down on the end of his desk, pressed my hand flat against it as if the force would make this any easier. “I had a suspicion of my own, so I performed another reading. And. Um.” The paper was inside the folder. I should never have filled it out; I should have thought the implications through before racing to tell Adam. “I know I’m an intern, and what I’m about to say is crazy. But . . . I need to go over your head on this one. I need to talk to the client directly— without you there.”
    Adam’s eyes widened, and his hands fell to the rims of his chair’s wheels. “Kim—I shouldn’t have even given you that file. There are regulations I’m supposed to follow, and one of them says, no contracts of that classification to be shared with diviners without security clearance. Which you and I both know you don’t have.”
    Intuition snapped into place again. I was riding the sharp edge of my gift, putting together pieces without the help of tools. Maybe being a wilder had changed my divination after all. “Plausible deniability. Who gave this to you—the DEA or the CDC?” I dismissed the question as soon as I asked it. “Doesn’t matter. The entire federal government knows where I spend my days; they damn near put a tracker anklet on me. They knew I might be able to get a better read on this, but they also knew I don’t have a security clearance. So they gave it to you.” They might have even nudged him to increase the chance of him passing the file on to me.
    My boss was staring at me like I’d grown a second head. “Why? What in the name of all the gods would merit that kind of scheme?”
    The file was under my fingers. If I didn’t think it would set off a fire alarm, I would have taken my report out and burned it on