Read Online The Reckoning by Teyla Branton - Free Book Online Page A

least we could do.”
    “He’s probably driving them nuts.” There was more than a little satisfaction in her tone.
    “I’m sure he is.”
    We made it to the main floor conference room just as Keene McIntyre did. Apparently he’d finally decided to drag himself from bed or wherever he’d been and put in an appearance. He was dressed in jeans and wore his brown hair long and shaggy—probably to hide the disappearance of the vertical scar that had once gouged deeply into the edge of his face from his jaw to his hairline. The whole careless appearance did nothing to hide his lean good looks or the corded muscles running along his bare arms. Mari nodded at him and went inside, but Keene came to a stop and faced me.
    “So what do you think of our mystery lady?” he asked. Keene was our scientist Cort’s half brother and formerly an Emporium agent. His Unbounded ability was yet unknown to me—and probably to himself—and as far as I knew, he hadn’t revealed to the others that he’d recently Changed. Ava knew, of course, since she shared my sensing ability, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to make any official announcement. The secret irritated me because we all lived in the Fortress together, and it was obvious to just about everyone that he was avoiding us. I wasn’t sure Cort even knew about Keene’s Change. There had been a lot of rivalry between them when Keene was still trying to please their father, who was one of the Emporium Triad leaders, but the brothers had always come through for each other and had ended up on the same side. It bothered me that Keene might not share something with Cort that would mean so much to him. Cort had lost too many siblings in his half millennium of life.
    I shrugged. “Didn’t get much of a chance to talk to her, and it doesn’t look like any of us will with what’s going on.”
    “I don’t like that she’s not in our database, and I never ran into her in all my work with the Emporium. She obviously wasn’t a Renegade, but she was prominent enough in the mortal world that we should have noticed her existence. That means someone must have done a lot of cover up. I know you have reservations about this sort of thing, but I think you need to break through her shield and see what she’s hiding.”
    His green eyes seemed sharp enough to penetrate clear through to my inner thoughts, and I found myself instinctively strengthening my shield. “Then you haven’t heard. She’s a null.” I took a step toward the open door. No one else had appeared in the hall, which meant we were the last to arrive.
    “A null,” he mused. His eyes now seemed far away, as if searching for a memory he couldn’t quite place. “Interesting.”
    I nodded and continued into the conference room. The space was long and narrow, dominated by a large mahogany table that was wider than average and large enough to fit twenty people if we put two at each end, though we normally didn’t. Retractable monitors were set at each place, and some of these had been raised in preparation for our meeting. Benito had been at his picture hanging in here, so we had several peaceful seascapes that made me long for a vacation. All the others in our group were already present, except Chris and our mortal guards. And Benito, of course, who hopefully was back in his bed dreaming by now.
    I sat in the high-backed chair next to Mari, the soft, black padding cradling my tense body. Keene settled next to me on my right at the end. Across the table from us, between Stella and Cort, Ritter drew my attention. His hair was wet from his shower and parted on the left side, the strands curving around to graze a mole on his right cheek. He’d shaved since I’d last seen him in the training room. He wore all black, and even his broad shoulders and muscled torso didn’t hide the bulges of dangerous weapons hidden in special pockets of his clothing. His eyes looked black in the artificial light of the room, locking onto mine, and a