She frowned. “You don’t trust me? You kidnapped me.”
“Okay, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about that particular descriptor, but I’m very sorry for dragging you out of there. There were guns aimed at us both and I didn’t have time to think it through, but that was my mistake. If I could do it over, I’d do it differently.” Though I wasn’t sure how... “But since I can’t, we have to deal with the situation as it currently stands. That would be a lot easier for me if you’d show me your arm, and it’d be a lot easier for you if you weren’t tied to a chair. You can make both of those things happen. It’s your choice.”
“Are you patronizing me?”
“No. I’m asking you to play nice and I’m giving you my word that I’ll do the same. I’d like to take knives and zip ties out of the equation.”
“After I show you my arm, then what?”
“If it’s unmarked, I’ll let you out of that chair and out of this room. Then we’re going to have a civil drink or a cup of coffee—your choice—while we wait for a friend of Kori’s.”
“What friend?”
“She’s a Reader.” Annika, the human lie detector, who would always owe Kori a favor and would always be owed one from her in return, because of Kenley’s binding. “She’s going to listen while we ask you some questions, and if she likes your answers, we’re going to take you home and you can go on with your life. Which, incidentally, will last much longer if you stay away from Julia Tower.”
The door opened behind me, and Kori appeared in the doorway. “I’ll go get her in a minute,” my sister said, and I realized she’d been listening through the door. And that she’d already called Anne.
Sera frowned. “And if your friend doesn’t like my answers?”
Kori shrugged. “Well, then we’ll all have some difficult decisions to make. But I promise that if we have to kill you, it’ll be a quick death.”
Sera turned to me, suddenly pale. “Is she serious? Is that supposed to be comforting?”
I held her gaze, because that was the least I owed her. “Coming from Kori? Yes.”
“You people are so screwed up!”
Before I could reassure Sera that I wouldn’t let my sister deliver a mercy killing, Kori leaned against the door frame and made a thoughtful sound. “I think the problem here is that you don’t understand the alternative.”
“The alternative, wherein you open the door and I walk out, and we never have to see one another again?”
“Um, no. The alternative that actually bears some resemblance to reality.” Kori looked poised to continue with her typical colorful, disturbing delivery, so I cut her off and stepped into Sera’s line of sight before my sister could make things worse.
“We hope to convince you to talk to us by giving you coffee and deploying a Reader. The Towers would substitute an experienced torturer for our cup of dark roast.”
“Seriously?”
Before I could answer, Kori turned and pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal a canvas of scars I’d only seen once, myself. Thick welts. Mottled burns. And at least two complete sets of bite marks.
Sera gasped and Kori lowered her shirt, then turned, her expression as empty as I’d ever seen it. “They didn’t even want information.”
“What did they want?” Sera whispered.
“To hear me scream.”
Sera looked queasy, and I knew how she felt. The evidence of Kori’s suffering made me sick to my stomach, and the empty way she spoke about it made me want to kill someone. But she’d already taken out one of the men responsible. Ian had killed the other.
Kori had nothing left to battle but her own memories.
“They will want information from Kenley,” I said. “They’ll want to know where we are, and how many of us there are, and how easy it would be to erase us from existence. If we let you go and you are obligated to report to Julia, she won’t have to torture you to get that information. But they will have to torture Kenni for it, and we won’t let that happen.”
Kori continued with the part I didn’t want to verbalize. “If you know anything that could help us get her back, you have to tell us. And if you’re obligated to do or say anything to Julia Tower that would put Kenni in greater danger than she’s already in, I’ll have to kill you to stop that from happening. I’m not going to bullshit you about that. But I promise it won’t hurt, because the difference between us and Julia Tower is that if we kill you, it’ll be a mercy.”
But that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t sure how I could justify letting her live if she was a threat, but I was determined to do it.
“This is so fucked up,” Sera mumbled, staring at the floor in shock, and I couldn’t help but believe her. She was horrified by what she was hearing and what Kori had shown her. If she was bound to Julia, she was so newly bound that she hadn’t yet discovered the horrors of syndicate service for herself.
Surely she wasn’t a good enough actress to make us believe such a convincing display of naïveté. Surely no one was that good....
Kori huffed. “You have no idea. You gonna show us your arm?”
Sera tossed her head, throwing long, brown hair back from her face. “Let me up and I’ll show you. I’m not one of them. I’ll never be one of them.” There was something new behind her eyes. Something strong and resolute. “But I’m not convinced you’re much better than they are, so let’s let your Reader friend do her thing, so I can get the hell out of here.”
“We’re not like them,” I insisted as I unbuckled the belt securing her to the chair. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but we’re nothing like them.”
“Right. You kidnapped me and tied me up, and now you’re ready to kill me. From my perspective, the distinction between you psychos and the Tower psychos isn’t exactly glaringly clear.”
“We’re not ready to kill you,” Kori said. “We’re willing to kill you. There’s a big difference.”
Sera sat straighter when I pulled the belt loose and laid it on the bed behind me. “And that difference would be?”
I slid my pocketknife between her wrists and the zip tie, and she stiffened the moment the metal touched her skin. I used my free hand to brace hers, so she wouldn’t get cut.
Her skin was soft and warm. I hesitated for just a second, so I’d have a reason to keep touching her. Then I severed the plastic with my blade and let the cut zip tie fall to the floor. I closed my knife and slid it into my pocket, and when I spun the chair around so that she faced me, she was rubbing the red marks on her wrists. And waiting for my answer.
I gripped the chair seat on either side of her legs and rolled her closer. My gaze met hers from inches away and she gasped at whatever she saw in mine, then bit her lip. “The difference is that if the Towers think you’re a threat, they will have you beaten, raped and tortured in front of an audience—they’ll call it an object lesson—before they finally give you conflicting orders and watch your body tear itself apart trying to follow both commands at once.”
She’d stopped breathing, but her gaze had only intensified. Sharpened. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“Yes. But I’m scaring you with the truth.” I tried not to think about how close she was and how badly I wanted to touch her. And how much she would hate that.
I hated knowing she’d recoil from my touch.
“They are bad people who do bad things for sport and for profit. We are good people who do bad things to protect people who can’t protect themselves from the Julia Towers of the world.” I should have let her go. I should have pushed her chair back so she could stand, but I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t feel particularly guilty about that.
“You’ll do bad things, too, eventually,” I said, and when she shifted in the chair, her jeans brushed my thumb. “In our world, there’s no way around
that, and the fact that I met you in Julia Tower’s office tells me that you’re in that world now, for better or worse. The only thing you have left to decide is which side you want to fight for. Because you will fight, or you will die.”
Kori shrugged. “Or maybe you’ll fight, then you’ll die. That happens here, too.”
Neither of us acknowledged her. Sera’s gaze was locked in mine. At least, that’s what I thought until I tried to look away and discovered I was as trapped by the look in her eyes as she was by the doors I’d screwed shut.
The difference was that I didn’t want to escape.
I should have moved my hand, but Sera hadn’t moved her leg, so I left my hand where it was and let the heat bleeding through her denim warm one side of my thumb. “Take off your scarf,” I said, and my voice was lower than I’d meant for it to be. Deeper. I didn’t think she’d comply, but her gaze held mine while she unwound the thin material from her neck and shoulders. She handed it to me and I held it for a second, stunned by the realization that the yellow scarf from my notebook weighed nothing.
And that it smelled just like her. Clean, and vaguely sweet and enticing, in a way I could never have put into words, but would never, ever forget.
Kori cleared her throat and I blinked in surprise, then realized I was still staring at Sera from less than a foot away, and now I was fingering her silk scarf like some kind of pervert with an accessories fetish.
I rocked back onto my heels and draped her scarf over the foot of my grandmother’s bed, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt.
“We still need to see your arm.” I stood and Sera stared up at me, and I wished I knew her well enough to understand the intense blend of strength, fear and anger warring behind her eyes. “You want me to step outside?”
Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and her gaze hardened. “I don’t care what you do.”
But that was a lie. Women who don’t care what you do have no reason to tell you that.
I started to turn, to give her some privacy, but she turned faster. She pulled her left arm out of its long sleeve, then lifted that side of her shirt to her shoulder, revealing half of a slim, almost delicate waist above the denim clinging to the swell of her hip.
My throat felt tight. I tried not to stare. When that didn’t work, I tried not to look like I was staring. If Kori noticed, I couldn’t tell. She was fixated on Sera’s arm, as I should have been.
With the front of her shirt clutched to her chest, Sera twisted to show us her left arm, and I exhaled in relief before I realized she would hear that, and that she might understand how badly I’d wanted her to be unaffiliated with the Towers, and not just for her own sake. Not just for Kenley’s sake.
For my sake.
Her arm was smooth and pale, and completely unmarked. She was free from obligation not just to the Towers, but to any of the other syndicates who routinely marked their employees in the same spot. And that was most of them.
Sera was unbound.
Based on the lack of dead marks, she’d never been bound, which would explain her incomprehension of just how vile the syndicates really were. But if that was the case—if she didn’t work for Julia Tower—why had my notebook told me to take her? How was she supposed to help us get Kenley back?
Maybe she wasn’t. My head spun with that possibility. Maybe Sera wasn’t supposed to help me. Maybe I was supposed to help her.
Kori shrugged, arms folded over her chest, while Sera slid her arm back into its sleeve. “Well, assuming the rest of her is as spotless as her arm, I’m good with letting her walk around unfettered until Anne gets here.”
“Me, too.” I hadn’t planned to tie her up at all until she tried to climb out the window.
“The rest of me is fine, but I’m not showing you anything else.” When Sera turned to face us, I saw that her resolution was just as firmly back in place as her shirt. “I’m not a prostitute.”
“We know,” I assured her.
Kori shrugged again. “I believe you, but what I believe doesn’t matter. You have to make Anne believe.” She turned to me, already reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll go get her.” Then she stepped into the hall and left the door open behind her back.
“She’s...interesting.” Sera glanced at the bed, as if she was considering sitting, then she sat in the chair instead. “Kinda scary.”
“Yeah. I’d like to say that’s Tower’s fault, but the truth is that Kori’s always been a little scary. I think that’s why he liked her.” Until suddenly he didn’t like her.
“She really worked for him?”
“Yup.” I knew better than to give her any new information, but I could verify what Kori had already said. “And she hated every minute of it.”
“She seemed legitimately surprised to see me.”
I sat on the edge of my grandmother’s desk, trying to look casual, as if I weren’t dying to interrogate her, to figure out how and why she fit into my notebook. And by extension, into my life. “As opposed to what?” Then I understood. “You still think I planned this.”
She shrugged and glanced at the nails I’d driven into the window frame. “You sealed all the exits. It’s kind of hard to believe you didn’t go to the Tower estate intending to take a prisoner.”
“Okay, I know that looks bad, but the doors and windows have been nailed shut for weeks,” I insisted, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I did that to keep everyone else out, not to keep you in.”
She looked like she wanted to believe me, but...
“If you can’t take my word for it, ask Kori when she gets back.” Or any of the others. I’d tell her to ask Gran, but I could never be sure what decade Gran was currently living in.
“If that’s the truth, why do you have such easy access to restraints?” She bent to pick up the severed zip tie.
“Those are for my job.”
“Are you a cop?” She studied me closer, as if that thought made her rethink her original assessment.
I actually laughed. “No. I...um...retrieve things.” That was half the truth. I couldn’t trust her with the other half. Not yet. Although if Gran kept slipping into the past, Sera would figure it out for herself.
“Things?” Sera may have been young, but she was a born skeptic. Not that I’d given her any reason to trust me.
“People, usually,” I admitted, and she opened her mouth to start shouting something that probably included a lot of I-told-you-so’s, so I spoke before she could interrupt. “I know how that sounds, but it’s legit.” Mostly. “I work part-time for a bail bondsman, doing the jobs his unSkilled employees can’t handle.”
Olivia had hooked me up with Adam Rawlinson, the man she’d worked for before Ruben Cavazos—the Towers’ biggest rival for control of the city—had snared her exclusive services via extortion and blood binding. Rawlinson served neither syndicate, and his clientele was mostly those who also wanted to avoid syndicate tangles. And could afford to pay.
“Bail bondsman?” Sera seemed to think about that. “So, you find runaway criminals?”
“No. His Trackers find them. I go get them and turn them in. Thus the zip ties.” I glanced at the one she still held. “But I also do odd jobs for private collectors.” Very odd jobs. For very private collectors.
Her gaze narrowed. “What kind of collectors?”
“Not people collectors, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Not anymore. Not since Micah, and the realization of just what I’d been aiding and abetting. “Just stuff the rich are willing to pay for, but can’t get their hands on through other means.”
“And that’s legal?”
I shrugged. “Not always. But it pays, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, and someone has to keep the lights on and the water flowing around here.”
“What, no one else here works?”
?
??Everyone here works. But most of that work goes toward accomplishing our higher purpose, rather than actually paying the bills.”
Ian helped me out when he could—the man could make darkness appear in broad daylight—and Kori had taken a couple of Rawlinson’s jobs, but they were both more useful to Kenley’s efforts than I was, so it was my mostly steady, mostly legit income that paid to rent and heat our hideout house while we slowly chipped away at the foundation of Julia Tower’s inherited power.
Sera looked as though she wanted to say something, and as if whatever she wanted to say might not be an insult to my moral fiber; but before she could do more than open her mouth, Ian called out from the hall as the floorboard in front of the empty closet creaked.
“Kori?”
“She went to get Anne,” I said, and a moment later Vanessa appeared in the bedroom doorway, with Ian at her back.
“Kenley?” Van’s forehead was lined in worry. She hardly even glanced at Sera.
“We haven’t found her yet,” I said, and I could see from Van’s wince that she hated hearing the words as badly as I hated saying them. “But we will. They won’t kill her.”
“I’m not worried about them killing her.” Vanessa frowned at our guest. “Who’s this?”
“This is Sera...um...” I shrugged with a glance at her. “That’s all I know so far, except that she almost certainly doesn’t work for the Towers.”
“I don’t,” Sera said.
“And that she may be able to help us find Kenley.”
Sera sighed and slouched in her chair as Van sank onto the bed next to her. “I would if I could, but I honestly know nothing about your sister.”
“What happened?” Ian said with a pointed glance at my arm.
I removed the towel and Vanessa gasped. “Those are going to need stitches. Or a Healer.”
I glanced at the neat line of horizontal scars on her right forearm and I remembered that she spoke from experience.
Sera scowled at my cuts, but she looked more guilty than angry. “I’m sorry, but you brought it on yourself.”
Ian blinked. “You did that?”