The comment doubled as a warning to her not to probe his any further. Geraint reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the credstick with the monogrammed silver top. It was a little joke between them, an ostentation that went beyond the bounds of his normal vanity, but one that pleased and amused her. He held it out to her, opening the palm of his free hand to receive the quartz focus in exchange. She took the stick and pushed the focus toward him, but would not relinquish the line of query.

"And they will know, as I do, that you are an adept. You would be a better one if you had not defiled your spirit.” Serena disapproved strongly of the little cyberware Geraint had implanted: his datajack, the headware memory, the cannula implant just above the first vertebra for swift administration of psychoactives. Poisons, she called them, and she would not budge on that interpretation. “It is not a common gift, yours, to see the future.”

This, at least, gave him the opportunity to attempt to divert the direction the conversation was going. “It’s not true precognition, my mother would say. Predicting the future is only extrapolating the present. It is merely clairvoyance and some intuitive guesswork that works out from time to time.” He took an almost perverse pleasure in denigrating his talent, a carefully imposed “merely” making it seem more domesticated, less an intrusion into a well-ordered life.

“Call it what you will, Geraint. It isn’t something you can stop, or control, or subdue. If you will not accept it, then it will break through in ways that will haunt and disturb you.” She was silent for a moment, then turned to put the credstick away. "Well, that’s done,” she said. "Will you have your cards read?"

“No. Thank you.” The first word was too swift, the second following a pause just too long. His response had been almost panicky, and they both knew it. Geraint hid his embarrassment by lifting up a complaining Skita and depositing the cat on the warm cushion he was vacating, then brushing the cat’s fur off his lap with exaggerated motions. As he was leaving, Serena had a final word for him, as always.