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Mist watched me a moment longer, blue eyes appraising, then gave a tiny nod. “Of course,” she said, coolly professional once more, and motioned me into the hall. “This way, Mr. Hill. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team.”
    “Just call me Dante,” I invited, a tactic to gain her loyalty, and followed her down a long, brightly lit corridor past several offices, until we came to a door at the very end. Without hesitation, Mist pushed it back, and we went through.
    I gazed around, impressed. The room beyond was enormous, a sprawling floor of desks, computers, flashing screens, and people. Aisles of long counters snaked their way across the room, each holding numerous computers with glassy-eyed humans sitting in front of them. The entire back wall was one enormous screen divided into numerous parts that projected a dozen images of maps, satellite feeds, security cams and more. The murmur of voices, ringing phones, buzzing computers and clicking keyboards all blended into a general cacophony of noise that flowed over me as I stepped through the door.
    “This is our operating center,” Mist explained, leading me across the floor. All around us, humans hurried by or typed feverishly at their desks, avoiding eye contact. Mist continued as if she didn’t notice or care. “Talon has dozens of these centers all around the world. It’s where we monitor Talon’s assets, keep an eye on St. George movement and track persons of interest to the organization. We’re mostly in charge of the western region of the US, which is where we think your sister is right now.”
    She stopped at a desk where two humans sat across from each other, a pair of large screens separating them. When Mist’s shadow fell over the desk, the overweight male and small bespectacled female looked up and gave her polite, fixed smiles, which she ignored.
    “Mr. Davids and Ms. Kimura have been tasked with locating your sister,” Mist told me, not even looking at the two humans. “They’ve been trying to pinpoint her location ever since she left Crescent Beach. Unfortunately, they’ve been unable to find any trace of her, or Cobalt, unless something has changed in the time I’ve been gone?”
    She looked down at the humans as she said this, and both of them went pale.
    “No, ma’am,” the male said quickly. “So far, there have been no leads on Ember Hill or the rogue dragon Cobalt. We know they’re still in California somewhere, but other than that, we’ve been unable to get a lock on them.”
    “Where have you been looking?” I asked, making all of them glance at me. Mist raised her eyebrows in amused—or annoyed—surprise, but I ignored her. The humans paused, obviously wondering who I was, some bossy kid in a business suit come strolling into their affairs. I kept the smile on my face and held their gazes with my own, polite but expectant, and after a moment, they looked away.
    “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.