Bethany, or How Zarei Shot a Dolmeta in Johnson Memorial Park

He's working his way through school at the Premier Escort Agency.

Jared Ramirez was born in the slums of a mining planet but he found his way to a better world, Haivran, the intellectual center of the Four Species Alliance, where the major universities, institutes, research facilities serving all Alliance citizens are located. Agencies are legal, licensed and regulated, and an attractive young man with a flair for pleasing a female clientele is in high demand. And Jared has an advantage; he can read minds, and sometimes influence minds of the people around him. It's only a little talent, and he never talks about it, but it can be useful.

But he can't read everyone. He can't read Maud, his lover of many years, or her assistant, Carter. He can't read his newest client, Bethany, a reclusive hoarder with more than a touch of paranoia; he has to find other ways to reach her.

Meanwhile, Maud is dealing with danger from a past she has concealed from Jared. There is a threat to her and all she cares for, and somehow she must protect her young lover without revealing who she really is. And, to her surprise, she finds that Bethany is involved too.

This is the second prequel, a series of short novels and novellas introducing the world and the characters from The Misborn, to be published in the near future.

This novel is suggestive rather than explicit.