Oath Bound

“Ian is …” Sera glanced at both of us, in turn.

“He is the other half of my soul. The good half.”

It was amazing to see the change in my sister when she talked about Ian. She was still fierce and dangerous—Korinne would never be anything less. But with his name on her tongue, she looked as if she may not hate the world after all. Not the whole world, anyway.

“But you didn’t kill Julia?”

Kori shook her head slowly, looking as if she was remembering that day, and I remembered it with her. Though the Towers were a huge obstacle in my life’s work, I’d never been in their house before that day. I’d never dealt with any of them face-to-face. “I wanted Julia to suffer. She deserved to suffer,” Kori said. “I changed my mind a second later, when I realized that leaving her alive would really mean making the rest of the world suffer, but by then I’d lost my chance.”

“Why did you hate them?” Sera asked. “I mean, other than the whole ‘birthed from an evil womb’ thing. What did they do to you?”

For a minute, I thought Kori might actually answer. That she might finally talk to someone other than Ian about what woke her up screaming in the middle of most nights. Kenley knew part of it. I think even Vanessa knew more than I did. I’d started to ask, once, but Gran, in a rare moment of absolute lucidity, told me to leave it alone.

I did, because when she’s thinking clearly, Gran is never wrong.

But after nearly half a minute of considering, Kori only stood and glanced at me on her way to the door. “You got this?” she asked, and when I nodded, she disappeared into the hall and pulled the door shut behind her.

“Is she okay?” Sera asked as I sank onto the bed, where my sister had been seconds earlier.

“Kori’s always okay.” Even when she isn’t. “All right. Here’s what I need you to understand. I don’t know you—”

“I understand that.”

I resisted the urge to growl at her. The woman was as infuriating as she was fascinating. “I wasn’t finished. My point is that since I don’t know you, I have no idea whether you’re telling the truth or just acting. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I’d appreciate it if you’d return the favor. I’m not asking to see your arm out of any testosterone-driven need to boss you around or make you do something you obviously don’t want to do. I’m asking to see your arm because that’s what I have to do to protect my friends and family.”

Sera lifted one brow and tossed her head in the direction of the door Kori had just closed. “I don’t think she needs your protection.”

I shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect her. Either way, Gran and Kenley do need protection, and frankly, I care more about keeping them safe than I do about respecting the modesty of your covered arm. I care more about keeping them safe than I care about anything else in the world. I wish that was something you could understand, but even if it’s not—”

Her eyes widened in surprise, and I realized something I’d said had gotten through to her. “I do understand that.”

“Then give me a look at your arm, Sera. A couple of inches below your shoulder. I won’t touch you. You don’t have to take anything off. Just give me a reason to trust you enough to untie you and let you be in the same room with my family. Okay?”

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.”