Shadow Bound

“Clash of the titans.” Barefoot, she peeked into the hall, then gestured for me to follow her. “Everyone fights for one side or the other.”

“Are we sneaking?” I whispered, nodding at her shoes, wondering if I should take my own off.

“Nah. There’s no one in this wing. I just hate heels.”

I followed her down the hall and around the corner to the right. Three doors later, she turned left into a room with a billiard table in the center of the floor and a full-size bar along one wall. “Close the door,” she said over one shoulder as she dropped her shoes on the floor and headed for the bar.

I pushed the door closed softly, then crossed the room and took a seat on the center bar stool while she took up the position of bartender.

“What’ll it be?” She leaned forward with her elbows on the polished dark wood surface of the bar.

“Scotch?”

Kori rolled her eyes. “Of course you drink Scotch.”

“Are you calling me a stereotype?”

“Not yet, but if you don’t pull some surprises out of your hat soon, I suspect that moment is coming.” She dug beneath the bar and came up with a single short glass while I tried to decide how to respond to such a challenge. She wasn’t ready for any of my real surprises, and she never would be. Which was why I couldn’t get emotionally involved. Why I had to keep telling myself that she was just a hammer. A hammer with really nice legs, and eyes the color of good caramel, and …

Focus.

“Creating darkness wasn’t enough of a surprise?”

She laughed. “It was a start. Ice?”

“Four cubes.”

Kori scooped ice into the glass and set a half-full bottle of very expensive Scotch in front of me. I held it up, examining the label, reluctantly impressed with Tower’s taste. “How much trouble will we be in if we get caught?”

“We’re not going to get caught. If we hear footsteps, you make it dark, and I’ll make us disappear.” She produced a bottle of Grey Goose from beneath the counter, then circled the bar to sit on the stool next to mine. “There’s snack mix if you want, but you’re gonna have to serve yourself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“This.” She twisted the lid off the bottle and gulped from it once, twice, three times, without flinching.

“Rough night?” I asked, thinking about what I’d overheard.

“Any night that sees me in three-inch heels and sequins is a rough night.” She set the bottle on the bar, the cork stopper still clasped in one hand. “But I’ve certainly seen worse.”

I watched her, and after nearly a minute of staring off into space, she turned to face me. “What?”

“You drink like a man.”

She shrugged and glanced at the bottle I had yet to pour from. “One of us should.”

I wanted to ask, but at the same time, I didn’t want to know. Whatever the guard—David—had seen done to her was none of my business, and it wasn’t relevant to the job at hand. I already knew Tower was the scum of the earth, without having to hear the specifics.

And for no reason I could have explained, I didn’t want her to know I’d heard.

“So, what do you think so far?” She tilted her bottle up again as I poured from mine, then she wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. “Seen anything yet worth signing over your soul for?”

“Is that what I’d be signing away? My soul?” I happened to agree, but I was surprised to hear it from her.

Kori blinked, like she’d just realized she’d said too much—that pesky honesty getting in the way again. But she recovered quickly. “Nah. Just five years of your life. The standard term of service for most syndicates.”

“How close are you to the five-year mark?” I picked up my glass and sipped from it, savoring a liquor I could never personally afford, trying not to think about the fact that if I were alone with the other Daniels sister, this whole thing could be over in a matter of seconds. My objective hadn’t changed, but the strategy certainly had. Use one sister to get to the other. And to do that, I’d have to pretend to be recruitable.

“Five years came and went nearly a year and a half ago.” She twisted to show me her left arm, and the two interlocking chain links tattooed there. Marks of service. “One for each term.”

I’d already seen them, of course, and I already knew what they meant. She was six and a half years into a ten-year commitment to serve Jake Tower and his syndicate. Her oath had been sealed with two linking tattoos, each containing a tiny bit of his blood—a flesh binding. Until the day her commitment expired and her tattoos faded into the dull gray of dead marks, she would be compelled to follow his orders, or she would die fighting the compulsion.

Syndicate service was a miserable way to live. And often a miserable way to die. Only three kinds of people joined voluntarily: the ignorant, the ambitious and the desperate.

Which category did Kori fit into? Which would be most believable for me?

“You must like it here, then, if you signed on for another term,” I said, trying to embrace the part I had to play.

Kori blinked, then took another swig of vodka, straight. Then she shoved the corked lid back into the bottle and pushed the Goose away, like it might be to blame for whatever she was about to say. “This is my home.”

I frowned. It felt like she was starting a new conversation, rather than continuing the one already in progress. “No, this is your job.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” she asked, and I let my frown deepen, so she would explain what I already knew, and I would listen and respond, and ask all the right questions, and with every minute that passed she would trust me a little more, because she would know I was no threat. She had all the power, because she had all the knowledge.

And because she thought she could cut my balls off with one hand while slicing my throat open with the other.

Kori exhaled slowly, and a brief glimpse of guilt flickered across her face, like she was already regretting the pitch she was about to throw at me. That told me she was neither ambitious nor ignorant—at least, not after more than six years of service, which came as no surprise, after what I’d overheard on the stairs.

And that only left desperate.

“When you sign on with a syndicate—any syndicate, not just this one—you’re not just taking a job, you’re becoming part of a community. Like an extended family. You’re getting job security, medical care, personal protection and virtually limitless resources. The syndicate isn’t just employment—it’s a way of life. A very stable, secure way of life.”

“Sounds awesome.” It also sounded like a very well-rehearsed speech. “What’s the catch? Is it all the following orders? Because honestly, that’s what I balk at.” To say the very, very least.

“There’s some of that, of course. But that’s not really so different from any other job, is it?” she asked, and I couldn’t help noting that now that I’d pointed out a flaw in the system, she was referring to it as a mere job again. “Any workplace is a hierarchy, right? There’s a CEO, management, and the rest of the employees. Everyone has a boss, except whoever’s at the top. That’s how we operate, too.”

“Yes, but in any other job, you can quit if you don’t like the orders.”

“That’s not true.” She smiled, like she’d caught me in a lie. “You can’t just quit military service if you don’t like the orders.”

“So, would you say service to the Tower syndicate is more like military service than like a civilian job?”

She had to think about that for a minute. “Yeah, I guess, only without the patriotism and gratitude from your fellow citizens. Large community. Great benefits. They even get chevrons for time in service.” She twisted to show me her arm again, to emphasize the parallel.

But I knew what she wasn’t saying—in the military, you can take the chevrons off at the end of the day, but the syndicate owns you for the life of the mark, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You’re never off the clock. And the word no has no meaning. I couldn’t understand why anyone would ever sign on for that.

“Okay, obviously following orders is what’s bothering you, and I can understand that. So why don’t we just lay the truth out on the table?”

“The truth?” I watched her in interest. The truth was a rarity in life in general and even more so in the syndicate. Only the fearless and the foolish wielded it so boldly, and I already knew Kori Daniels was no fool.