Free Eye of the Storm by Emmie Mears Page A

give her a grateful look she can have no way of knowing is as much for the address as the directive. We pass by the front desk, and one of the other Mittens mutters something about my eyes. I look at him directly. He takes a full step back. I smile at him, a wry smile. I don't have the time to scare the wee Mediators today.
    We hurry up the stairs, Nana's cage clanking with each step Jax takes. Alamea's office door is open when we get there, and the corridor is filled with weapons and boxes of magic supplies. A familiar face greets us just before we reach the door, emerging from Alamea's office with a crate of candles and sweetgrass. Black hair still in the same severe bun as the first time I saw her, Riley Evans clutches the edge of the crate with callused brown fingers and gives me a relieved look.  
    "Glad you made it," she says without preamble. She's a psychic, but I reckon even if they can sense what's going to happen, visual confirmation is probably nice. Riley looks at Hardy, whose face goes stony.  
    Nobody really likes psychics, and I used to hate them. But one of them saved my skin a few times even though I was always thinking asshole-ish things about him, and after I saw him ripped to pieces in the Summit lobby not long ago, I kind of have a guilt-inflicted soft spot for them.  
    Riley turns her gaze on me, and I twitch.  
    "Jaryn would be pleased to know you miss him," she says simply.  
    See, this is why people don't like them. Most of us prefer to control who gets a window into our brains. My eyes start to sting again, and I blink. "Uh, yeah. Sure."
    Evis's face crumples, and I know what he's thinking. It was his friends who dismembered Jaryn, and my memory helpfully reminds me that that first time I met my brother, he whispered in my ear that he was going to do the same to me.
    My life is complicated.
    Riley sees Evis's face — or maybe just hears the gong of his pain in her head — and for the barest flicker of a moment, mortification tightens her face. She greets him with a touch on the shoulder and a reassuring smile, but I notice she doesn't meet his eyes.
    She starts to walk away after greeting Jax and Mason the same way, but glances over her shoulder at me. "You could probably keep Nana in the holding cells. I doubt any demons would get in there. She'd be safe."
    Put my bunny in the grey-walled honeycomb of doom. Now there's a thought.
    I nod at her, ignoring the little hackles-raise I get with the knowledge that I've never told Riley my bunny's name.  
    "Are you going to stand out there all day, or did you plan to come in at any point?" Alamea's voice is like a tightrope cable of tension. Can't say I blame her.  
    Her office isn't that big, so only Mira and I go in, each pulling up a chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jax put Nana's cage down by a box that's labeled SAND .
    "I'd say shut the door, but at this point, nothing stays secret long." Alamea has her feet propped up on the side of the desk, which to a newcomer might look a little insensitively nonchalant, but I happen to know that's just how she works. I see her notice Asher through the open door, and she gives me a questioning look, but her silence is the now's not the time to ask I don't need her to to voice.
    The keyboard to her computer is balanced on her quadriceps, and she drains the last gulp from a giant glass of orange juice.  
    "I've spent the whole day on the line with other Summit leaders," she says. "All the major cities are in a similar holding pattern. Everywhere but Albuquerque and Ottawa here in North America have managed to keep a solid perimeter around the Summit buildings for refugees, and there's been a little bit of a stall out on norm casualties since yesterday."
    I don't like the way she says that, and I've been trying not to think about norm deaths. I know there's been a lot.  
    "What do you mean, a stall out?" Mira asks.
    "I mean most people have gotten wherever they're going to get for now. The cities'