Free The Escape by Teyla Branton

staff?”
    He nodded. “It’s used for striking, catching, and stabbing. You normally hold it like this.” He rotated it so the blade lay along the inside of his arm. “This is for blocking with your arm and for thrusting with the handle. Keep your arm straight or it’ll bounce back and hit you. And this”—he slowly pivoted the blade out—“is for striking and for blocking swords and the like. Make sure your fingers aren’t still over the guard or they’ll be cut off. There’s another way to strike and a hold where you use the handle as a sort of hammer, but we won’t worry about those right now.” He stroked the blade of the one in his hand again before passing it to me.
    “They’re beautiful. Thank you.” I turned to put them in my room, but his hand grabbed at the flap of my long coat.
    “They go in these inside pockets. Stella orders all of the coats and jackets with them, but not everyone carries sai. I haven’t even trained Jace on them yet, though I know he grabbed some from the armory.”
    I’d fleetingly wondered what the oddly shaped pockets were for—it wasn’t as if I went around looking inside everyone’s coats when we were out on duty to check what weapons they carried. The sai fit perfectly, the main blade emerging from a hole in the bottom of the pocket, pointing toward the ground. “Nice.”
    “Yeah.” He opened his black jacket, which was shorter and thinner than my coat but still long enough for his own pair of sai. I could see other bulges in his black clothing, and a sword rose from a back sheath, so apparently he’d taken the time to restock as well. Nothing more attractive than a man dressed to kill.
    Silence stretched between us. Ritter opened his mouth, but closed it again without speaking. Was that uneasiness I felt from him? I stifled the urge to push into his mind. Despite his earlier assertions about me helping to strengthen shields, he’d hate the uninvited intrusion.
    I broke eye contact first. “I guess we’d better get down there. Ava’s in the conference room.”
    “About time.”
    “Yeah.”
    As we hurried to the elevator, I wondered what he’d wanted to say.
     

 
     
     
     
     

     
    T HE MEETING WAS WELL ON ITS way without us when we arrived in the conference room, with Ava, Dimitri, Stella, and Jace all seated on one side of the table, staring up at the huge screen. A live stream of local news coverage filled one corner, the sound turned low, and the rest was taken up with different websites. Behind our people stood Tenika Vasco, leader of the New York Renegades, a line of worry on her prominent forehead. Tonight, her many small braids were pulled from her face into a large black mass at the nape of her neck, and her dark clothing told me she’d come directly from staking out the Emporium compound.
    “Hey, Erin, we’re going to be on the news,” Jace said, looking up at me. “Or at least what happened at the hotel is going to be. They keep mentioning breaking news and live coverage before every commercial break.”
    “Great.” I really hoped they didn’t show any video feed of the attack.
    Tenika walked toward us, and it said something for my state of mind that I was glad she was too preoccupied to give Ritter the kiss she normally gave him on the mouth. She simply hit her fist with each of ours in the customary Unbounded greeting, dipping her head in acknowledgment. “I hear you had quite a time tonight.” Her voice held the slightest Angolan Portuguese accent.
    “It was eventful.” My eyes went to Dimitri as I spoke. That he was here had to mean Keene was out of immediate danger.
    “Cort’s with him.” Dimitri answered the question I hadn’t voiced. “He’ll join us when Keene wakes.”
    “Maybe we shouldn’t have gone tonight,” I said.
    “Of course we had to.” Ava’s voice was firm. “There might never have been another chance to get you close enough to the vice president to look into his mind.”
    Tenika nodded. “I