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bit.” I grabbed Max to prevent him from attacking Mari with wet kisses. He loved pretty much everyone, except people trying to kill me. “Where’s Ava?” Although the door had been locked, I didn’t like the idea of Spencer being alone. Obviously our hideout wasn’t in the best neighborhood.
    “In chambers.” He rolled his eyes. “There’s an emergency. They wouldn’t let me in.”
    “Stella’s here?”
    “Yeah, and the new guy. Kathy’s listening from the bathroom upstairs.” His guilty expression told me that’s where he’d been as well before Max alerted him to my arrival. His brow furrowed and his blue eyes became troubled. “Everyone’s really freaking out. The Emporium did something again—in Mexico, I think. Cort and Dimitri left for there before I even got out of bed, and Dad’s down at the airport getting Ava’s plane ready in case she needs him to fly her there.” He paused before adding. “Hey, did you know Ritter’s coming back? Ava called him this morning. He was supposed to be here already, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”
    I hadn’t even thought about how Ritter had gotten to me so quickly. He must have been on his way here, and when I’d pushed the alert button, he’d have been notified just like everyone else in range. I wondered if Ava had ordered him to help me, or if he’d taken the responsibility on his own.
    Maybe it didn’t make a difference.
     

 
     
     
     
     

     
    I LOOKED AT M ARI , TEMPTED to leave her with Spencer, but until I handed her off to Stella, she was really my business. Besides, unwatched she’d probably run off to find Trevor. Better that I keep an eye on her. She’d have a good long time to get over him—if she didn’t get herself killed first.
    “Hold Max,” I told Spencer. He obliged, the dog straining at the collar and dragging the child’s thin frame a few feet.
    Taking Mari’s arm, I led her past the front desk to the large back room we dubbed chambers. It held nothing more than a huge oblong table with enough chairs to spare, and today with Cort, Dimitri, and apparently most of our mortal security employees missing, only a third were full. Ava and my brother Jace looked up as we entered. Stella didn’t. She had her neural headset on, her face directed toward a set of three flat screens on the desk, one of her brown eyes peering through an eyepiece connected to the headset.
    As a technopath, Stella could interface directly with multiple computers at once, efficiently organizing, directing, and interpreting data through electrical impulses and eye movements. With the programs she created, she could monitor not only most of the communications in the world, but also when the next sale at the local grocery would begin. She was that good. When I thought about the amount of information available in the world, I was astounded that she or her programs could find anything useful to us, much less help us prevent the Emporium from whatever machinations they were planning.
    Next to her sat Oliver, our other new Unbounded, Mari’s fourth cousin. He also wore a blinking headset and was staring at the same monitors, but the frustration and disgust on his face told me he wasn’t having success. Oliver was a few inches above average height, lean with impressive muscles, though nowhere near Ritter’s broad-shouldered bulk. His brown face was a mixture of African American, Asian, and white, with the African American dominating his coloring and the tight curls in his short-cropped hair. He was decidedly attractive, but his self-centered personality annoyed me.
    Jace popped up from his seat and took two strides in my direction. “How’d it go?” Eagerness laced his voice and danced in his blue eyes. My brother was twenty-eight, younger than me by three years, though we’d Changed within months of each other. The Change usually happens between the thirty-first and thirty-third birthdays, though sometimes it came as early as twenty-eight and as late as