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to the street midway down that hallway on your left.”
    The carpet was warm on my feet after the icy courtyard, and incredibly soft. It felt wrong to hurry across such luxury. We rounded the bend but had only gone a few feet when two men appeared at the end of the corridor, one a big man with blond hair and the other a compact Asian.
    “Unbounded,” I whispered. I couldn’t tell their abilities but given the years of battle, the odds were that both were gifted in combat. Only in the past fifty or so years had the Emporium begun to recognize that brute force wasn’t always the answer.
    Should we fight here or try to find another way out?
    The decision became moot as two more Unbounded appeared in the hallway behind us. One I recognized, though even after all our encounters, I still didn’t know his last name. “Hey, Edgel,” I called. “What are you doing here? And your three friends. Nice hotel, isn’t it?”
    “We copy,” Cort said. “Four attackers. We’re en route now to your location.”
    Edgel glared at me as he approached, the whites of his eyes bright against his black face. In his muscled hand he held a weapon, but it wasn’t a gun. Apparently they hadn’t been successful at sneaking one inside the hotel any more than we had. At least that evened the odds slightly.
    “You killed my daughter,” he accused.
    I found his barrier and pushed at it. It appeared strong and solid, but like with Keene, I could feel his surface emotions—mostly anger, which would make him more dangerous. Outside his barrier, I wouldn’t be able to use his combat ability. I had to get inside. We couldn’t take all four men, but if I was successful, we could stand long enough for our people to get inside the hotel. Maybe.
    Edgel’s barrier felt familiar because I’d been inside it before, but pushing against it bore no result. Probably because of the energy I’d wasted on Patrick Mann. I needed to distract him.
    “Your daughter’s dead?” I asked.
    His jaw clenched and unclenched. “You knew it would happen. All of you did.”
    “We didn’t have the information you wanted. Your people erased it, not us. We would have given it to you.” I didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but I knew what it was like to worry about mortal family members.
    Edgel didn’t speak, but disbelief radiated from him.
    Keene shifted his weight, getting ready to act. “She’s right. They didn’t have the information.”
    Edgel had served under Keene and knew his distaste for untruths. Would it make a difference? I didn’t think so. He was a soldier who always followed orders, except for the one time when he had asked for our help and Keene had brought him to our safe house.
    Edgel dipped his head, a signal to his men. Showtime. I slung one of my knives at Edgel’s face. He anticipated the move, as I knew he would, but I accompanied it with a mental assault. There, I was in. For a moment, I considered sending a pulse of light to try to disable him, but that meant expending strength that would leave me vulnerable to the others and prevent me from utilizing his gift. Instead, I channeled his combat ability and hurled my remaining knife at the big blond behind me. To my surprise, the knife embedded deeply in his eye and he crumpled to the carpet. Not dead, but out for now. No combat ability there, or he’d have moved aside.
    As Edgel flung a knife in my direction, I ducked and used my momentum to push off the wall and deliver a kick to the Asian, striking a knife from his hand. He countered with a jab to my face that sent pain reverberating throughout my entire head. My earbud fell to the ground. Instinctively, I rewarded him with a kick to the knee, followed by a punch to the gut and another to his jaw. He blocked these with lightning speed.
    Edgel was coming at me from behind with another knife in his hands. I retreated past the Asian, darting a glimpse at Keene. He’d dispatched the fourth Unbounded and now lunged at Edgel.
    A fist