“Dangerous Mogs,” McKenna said. “And they have Sam.”

“They won’t for long,” Nine said. “I don’t think calling in Earth Garde and making a big deal about this is going to help anyone. We can handle it.”

Max glanced at McKenna. He looked exhausted. Max suspected the man was thinking about his son and what he’d done. Seamus had betrayed all of them, and that couldn’t be sitting well with his father, particularly as he had kind of been Sam and Six’s boss and had gotten them involved in all of this in the first place.

Nine nodded at Max and Nemo. “Go get ready,” he said. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

Max and Nemo hurried out. Once they were in the corridor, Max whispered, “Is it just me, or was it really tense in there?”

“Totally tense,” Nemo said. “Something’s up between Nine and Seamus’s dad.”

Max shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to be Seamus right now,” he said.

Nemo grunted in reply. Max knew she was as angry with their former friend as he was. He wondered what she would do if she came face-to-face with Seamus in Vegas. He wondered what he would do.

He had a feeling they were going to find out.

CHAPTER THREE

SAM

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

ELENI WAS IN A RAGE.

Sam, seated on a chair with his wrists shackled to its back supports, watched as she stormed around the room she had dragged him to. Outside the windows he could see the sparkling lights of what he now realized was Las Vegas. The room he was in was very high up, and he had a sweeping view. He recognized a number of the hotel names that flashed in neon colors against the night sky, a number of the faces that appeared on billboards announcing concerts and shows.

He also knew that he was inside the Saturn Hotel. The hotel’s logo was everywhere: on the stationery that sat on the nearby desk, on the pocket of the bathrobe that sat folded on the end of the bed, worked into the pattern of the wallpaper and carpet. He remembered reading about the building of the place in a travel magazine he’d looked at during a flight he and Six had taken from Paris to Venice. It was the Strip’s newest, biggest and most opulent hotel. As he recalled it had only recently opened.

The question was, why was he there, and what connection did the Mogs have to it? They obviously had one, as Eleni knew her way around the place and had used an elevator clearly meant for internal staff to get him up to the room unnoticed. But why were they even in a hotel at all? Why not someplace more secretive and secure? It didn’t make any sense to him.

Not that that was his primary concern at the moment. The thing in his head was. Whatever it was doing, it was getting worse. His whole body hurt, and he knew he was getting weaker. He’d of course tried to use his Legacies to help in some way—any way—and nothing was working. Not his telekinesis. Not his technopathy. He couldn’t so much as change the channel on the enormous television that was mounted to the wall.