“We’ve been able to uncover a couple of Cobalt’s nests in the past,” the male informed me, quickly turning back to the screen. “His so-called ‘safe houses’ for rogue dragons. We’ve been monitoring those areas, hoping he might return to one of them to hide. Unfortunately, when one goes down, he often moves the rest, so we haven’t been able to pin him down.”

“What about his network?” I asked. “If he has so many safe houses, he has to be able to communicate with them somehow. Have you tried tracing messages back to his location?”

“Of course,” the other human said. “We’ve been trying to breach his security for years. But we’ve never been able to crack it. Whoever’s on the other side knows exactly what he’s doing to keep us out.”

“What about St. George?” I asked. “Do you have ways of tracking them?”

All three stared at me, varying degrees of confusion and doubt crossing their faces. “Yes,” the female human said slowly. “Of course, we have extensive systems for monitoring any movement made by the Order. But we already determined that the cell in Crescent Beach returned to their chapterhouse. When Ms. Hill and Cobalt fled town, their trail went cold, and St. George abandoned the search. There hasn’t been any movement from the Order for days, at least not in this region.”

“Do you know where this chapterhouse is?”

More puzzled looks. “We could probably find it,” the male human said, furrowing his brow. “But, like we said, St. George activity has been quiet the past few days. We believe trying to find Cobalt’s underground network is more important—”

“Stop looking for the safe houses,” I interrupted. “Ember won’t be there. If I know my sister at all, she won’t be content to sit and hide. You’re wasting your time looking for them.” I glanced at the huge screen on the far wall. “Find St. George,” I said, feeling Mist’s curious gaze on me. “Start looking for the Order. The chapterhouse is a good place to begin. Find it, and tell me when you do.”

The humans gaped at me, clearly dumbfounded but too polite to say anything. Mist, however, had no such reservations. “Why?” she asked is a low, cool voice. “You’re telling us to abandon the search for the rogue’s network when we have clear orders from Talon’s VP to locate it, and your sister. Do you know something we don’t, Mr. Hill?”

“No,” I said, keeping my gaze on the far wall, on one of the many maps spread across the screen. I didn’t have any concrete evidence. It was just a hunch, a suspicion, that had been plaguing me since before I left Crescent Beach. But my intuition was rarely wrong, and I’d learned to trust my gut, especially when it came to my sister. I only wished I had listened to it earlier. Much, much earlier.

“But there was…a human,” I went on, as they all stared at me like I’d gone insane. “One of the people I met in Crescent Beach. He was a friend of my sister’s. Really, I only saw him once or twice. But…there was always something about him, something that I didn’t like. I saw him fight, once—he was definitely trained. And he just showed up out of nowhere one day, always hanging around my sister.”

“That is not enough reason to suspect someone, Mr. Hill,” Mist said in her calm, logical voice. “You can’t expect us to drop everything and switch to a new plan of action simply because you have a hunch.”

“The night Ember left Crescent Beach,” I continued, ignoring that last statement, “she told me she was going to meet this human, alone. She said she wanted to tell him goodbye before she went rogue.” I paused, my chest tightening with the memory. “That was the last time I saw her.

“I don’t know if that human was part of the Order,” I went on, looking back at Mist and the Talon employees. “But I suspect that he was. And both Ember and Lilith were attacked that night by St. George. Ember was close to that human. She…might’ve told him things, about us. About Talon. If you can find him, track the cell he belongs to, he might lead us to Ember.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

I narrowed my gaze. “Then you can blame it on me. But it’s worth a shot. Better than searching for places where she might show up or trying to crack this impossible-to-breach network.”

She gave me a long, appraising look. “All right, Mr. Hill,” she finally said. “It’s not like we have a choice. Mr. Roth did put you in charge, after all. We’ll do it your way.” She turned to the humans. “You heard him, then. Find that chapterhouse. Start monitoring all St. George activity in the region. If the Order so much as sneezes, I want to know.” She looked back at me, crystal-blue eyes defiant. “Did you happen to catch this special human’s name, Mr. Hill?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, feeling a slow burn of anger in the pit of my stomach. Anger at the rogue, and St. George, and the human, for taking my sister away. At jeopardizing all my plans with Talon. I would find her, and nothing would stop me from bringing her back. “His name was Garret Xavier Sebastian.”

Ember

Three hours on the back of a motorcycle, the sun beating down on your shoulders and the wind whipping through your hair, though exhilarating, reminds you why flying wins every time.

“You okay back there, Firebrand?” Riley called over his shoulder. I peeked up from his leather jacket and caught my reflection in his dark shades. My hair whipped and snapped like a flame atop my head, too short to tie back but just long enough to be horribly tangled when we stopped. Before us, the highway stretched on, an endless strip of pavement heading east. Around us, the Mojave Desert provided much the same scenery: sand, scrub, cactus, rock and the occasional hawk or turkey vulture. The air shimmered with heat, but heat never bothered me. My kind was well adapted to dealing with blistering temperatures.