“I couldn’t tell you,” she insisted, her gaze silently pleading with me to understand. “I thought...” She let her words trail off when she realized Mitch was still listening, but we all knew what she’d thought, and we all understood why. She’d had no reason to trust us not to kill her or use her as a bargaining chip, if and when we found out how valuable she was.
I hated that I’d given her reason to think that.
“It doesn’t matter.” I made a mental note to reassure her of her safety later, away from stranger’s ears. Hopefully in private, where I could tell her other things that still needed to be said.
“Okay.” It was a struggle for me to pull my thoughts back on target. “You cut him loose and we’ll give him a head start. A Traveler can be hundreds of miles away by the time Julia finds out he’s gone.”
Mitch started to object again, and I turned on him, rapidly losing my patience. “You won’t be a priority. She probably won’t even bother looking for you, with us still out here wreaking havoc.”
“Bullshit!” Mitch’s eyes were wide, his nose crinkled in a bizarre display of fear.
“Sit,” Sera said, and he sat reluctantly, then scooted his chair closer to the table and leaned with his elbows on it, watching us all.
“She’ll look for me and she’ll find me, because her other Travelers can move just as fast as I can. And I will be a priority, because Jake taught her how to do business. She has to kill me, or everyone else will think Sera can be their savior. Which is exactly why she’s killed most of the people your dumb-ass sister set free.”
“What?” My stomach sank into my heels, weighing me down. Julia had killed the people Kenley had freed? “Do you know that for a fact? They’re dead?”
“Not all of them.” He turned to Kori, sitting on the edge of his chair as if he still wanted to stand, and his next words carried special, bitter weight. “A couple of them are still in the basement, wishing they were dead. In front of a live studio audience.” Then he turned back to Sera. “She’s going to hunt down everyone you set free until you stop doing it or she gets to you, just like she got to Kenley. And you’re a bigger fool than I can even comprehend if you don’t believe that.”
Sixteen
Sera
“She killed them?” The words echoed in my head long after they’d left my tongue. They resonated in my bones and churned in my stomach, urging my dinner to stage a revolt.
“Only the lucky ones.” Kori took the whiskey bottle back from Ian and sank onto one of the bar stools at the kitchen peninsula.
“You mean we’ve been making it worse?” Kris leaned with his elbows on the table, his arms tense, his brow deeply furrowed. “All that time and effort trying to fix things, and we were really just getting people killed?”
“What the hell were we expecting?” Kori rotated her stool so that she faced us, her grip on the neck of the bottle so tight her fingers had turned white. “That Julia would just pout and shrug, then go on with her life? She can’t afford to let us beat her, and she certainly can’t afford for people to know we beat her. This is our fault.”
“No, it isn’t,” I insisted. “You were doing the only thing you could do. The right thing.” The same thing I’d tried to do for Ned. But then, that hadn’t worked out very well, either.
“Right is irrelevant.” Kori twisted the lid from the bottle again. “It’s just a word. Or do you really believe it’s better to be dead than alive but enslaved?” But before I could answer, she stared down at the bottle in her hands and seemed to be reassessing her own question. “We should have just killed them ourselves.” She took a long swig. Then one more. “It would have been a mercy.”
Anger blazed in my chest like heartburn. “How the hell is death a mercy?” My parents wouldn’t have considered their deaths a mercy. Neither would my sister. And losing them was about as far from merciful as an act can be.
“No offense, Sera, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s what makes you dangerous.” Kori’s gaze pinned me like an insect tacked open for display. I felt as though she could see what was inside me. And she didn’t look impressed. “You have more Skills than anyone I’ve ever met, but you don’t know how to use them. You have power Julia Tower would slaughter half the planet to keep for herself, but you don’t know how to control it. And you brought all that to our doorstep. Like she needed another reason to hunt us down.”
Kris stood and tried to take the bottle from her, but she pulled it out of his reach and swigged again. “Kori, back off. None of this is her fault.”
“When has that ever mattered?” she demanded, and when Ian stood for the bottle, she actually let him have it. But her frustration didn’t fade. “The whole damn thing was Jake’s fault, and he lived like a fucking king. Now Julia’s taken over where he left off, and if she’s suffering guilt or grief, she’s hiding it really well.” She turned to me then, while we all stared at her. “That’s what you don’t understand, Sera, seeing as how you just fell off the family tree into a pile of money and power. The Tower birthright isn’t just fortune and clout. No matter how you use it, it’s an obligation. A responsibility you can’t shirk. If you abuse it, like Julia, people will die. If you waste it—if you hide out with us and do nothing—people will die, because Julia will kill them.”
“Kori, that’s enough.” Kris glanced at Mitch, to make sure he wasn’t trying to pull something while they were all distracted, then turned back to his sister. “Picking a fight with your allies isn’t going to help.”
“You think I’m hiding?” I could feel my cheeks burn. But wasn’t she right? Wasn’t I hiding from Julia with them, even as I hid them from Julia?
Kori pushed Kris out of her way and took two steps toward the table. “I think that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
“That’s not fair.” Kris’s jaw clenched in anger at his own sister, and something in my chest tightened. Then warmed. “Sera didn’t ask for this. You said it yourself, Kor, she fell into this mess. Not everyone eats and breathes revolution, you know.”
He was trying to help. I knew that, and it was so sweet, and I was certainly grateful, but somehow his words chafed even worse than his sister’s.
I stood and pushed my chair back, but when Mitch tried to stand, I shook my head, and he sank back into his seat with a scowl. “Is that what you all think?” I glanced from face to face, wordlessly demanding the truth. “That I’m some helpless, useless little twit who can’t protect herself or her family, or enact her own justice?”
Kris shook his head and Ian frowned, but Kori only pressed her lips together and crossed her arms over her chest.
That was what they thought. And why shouldn’t they? I’d lived when my entire family died because I’d hidden. I was still hiding.
“That’s what Julia Tower’s counting on,” Kris said softly, and Kori and Ian nodded in agreement.
“Well, then, she’s wrong. And she’s going to figure that out the hard way.” Kris smiled, but everyone else flinched when I held Mitch’s gun up to get a better look at it. A better feel for it. “If you guys can teach me how to use this and show me what I don’t yet know about my own Skills, I think we can bring the fight to her. And along the way, we can release every Tower employee we come across, until there are too many for her to hunt down.”
“Won’t work,” Mitch said, and I ignored him.
“Won’t matter,” Kori added. “If Julia isn’t already binding more to herself directly—making Kenley’s bindings obsolete—she will be soon.”
“You can’t release them all, Sera,” Kris insisted. “You can’t even let her think you’re going to release them all, because then she’ll have no reason to keep Kenley alive.”
For a moment, there was only a fragile quiet, as what he’d said sank in.
“Fuck me.” Kori was the first to break the silence, raking one hand through her pale hair. “We’re screwed either way.”
“No, we’re n
ot.” I had an idea, but if I was going to live long enough to put it to use, I’d have to get smart. I’d have to let them teach me. Kori was right—I didn’t know how to use the bindings I’d inherited, and until I learned the ins and outs of direct orders and loopholes, those bindings would do me no good.
And I was far from sure I wanted to use them anyway. If I took Julia’s employees as my own instead of setting them free, I’d be no better than she was. Right?
I held Kris’s gaze for a long moment, hoping he understood my silent plea to stop me if I messed this up, then I turned to Mitch, who still sat in the chair at the corner, considering my words more carefully than I ever had before. “You will never tell anyone anything that you heard here today, except for the fact that I am Jake Tower’s biological daughter.”
Kris frowned at that, but I’d already thought it through. Julia was killing the people whose bindings she’d lost, but the solution wasn’t to stop telling people she was a pretender to the throne. The solution was to tell everyone. She couldn’t afford to kill them all. In fact, my guess was that she couldn’t afford to kill many more than she already had, without undermining her own power base.
“Do you understand?”
Mitch nodded slowly, but he still looked angry. And maybe scared. “Releasing me won’t help. She’ll find me.”
“That’s up to you.” I sat in the chair next to him and set the gun on the table without letting go of it. “The best I can give you is a head start. I release you of all obligation to me and to the Tower syndicate, except for your silence about what you’ve heard here. If I were you, I’d find a darkroom and start running.”
Mitch’s eyes widened. He looked at his gun. When I made no move to return it, he glanced at each of us, as if we might take it all back and keep him imprisoned forever. Then he stood and headed through the dining area into living room, and when he glanced back from the hall, he looked almost panicked. As if maybe he’d been enslaved for so long he didn’t know what to do with his freedom. Then he stepped into the darkened bathroom.
I couldn’t hear him leave through the shadows, but I could practically feel it.
“We should get out of here,” Kris said, once we were sure Mitch was gone. Kori put the bottle back where she’d found it, then took Ian’s hand. I took Kris’s hand and in the second before he walked us into the shadows, I realized that with his hand in my left one and Mitch’s gun in my right, I’d never felt so secure in my life.
Seconds later, we all bumped shoulders in the crowded hall closet of what I’d long ago dubbed the House of Crazy.
“Was she there?” Vanessa asked, lowering a small handgun when she saw us step out of the closet in pairs.
“No, but we’re going to find her.” Kris sounded so sure.
“I’m going to find her,” I corrected, and they both glanced at me in surprise. “As soon as you teach me how to use this.” I held up Mitch’s gun. “And the Skills Julia doesn’t know I have.”
“I’ll teach you whatever you want to know,” Kris said. “But not until you tell me what you’re plotting.”
“I’m going to turn myself in.” I sounded more confident than I actually felt.
“No.” Kris dropped my hand and stomped into the kitchen, dismissing both me and my intentions.
My temper flared and Kori lurched out of my way as I stomped after him. “I’m not asking for your permission—I’m asking for your help. But I’ll do it on my own if I have to.”
“Are you really that stupid?” Kris turned on me in the middle of the kitchen floor, and I noticed that everyone else had stayed in the living room, though they were too quiet to be doing anything other than eavesdropping.
“I’m not talking about barging in guns ablaze.” I aimed a pointed glance at his holstered .45, presumably the one he’d used to kidnap me. “That really would be stupid. What I’m talking about is plucking Julia’s inheritance right out from under her, with minimal bloodshed. I’m talking about taking the whole thing at once, instead of piecemeal. And doing it on her turf, which is where I’m likely to find and usurp the most employees at a time.”
“You won’t catch them all in one place,” Kori said from the kitchen doorway, where she and Ian had congregated on the edge of our...discussion. “She has them spread out all over the city.”
“But it’s a start, right?” I said, and she nodded reluctantly. “And our best chance of finding Kenley before Julia moves her again.” Or kills her to cripple my momentum. But that would mean crippling herself as well and surely that would be her last resort.
“Yeah, it’s a start,” Kori said. “A fuckin’ ballsy start.”
“No.” Kris crossed his arms over his chest. “She’ll have you killed the minute she sees you.”
“Not if we do this right. Not if most of her people already know who I am when I get there.”
“And how are they going to know that?”
“We’re going to tell them.” I turned to Kori again, then to Van. “Don’t either of you still have any connections in the syndicate? You must, right? How else were you finding people for Kenley to free?”
“A few,” Kori said.
Van nodded slowly. Then she started to smile. “I have something better than human connections. I have numbers. Email addresses. We could do a sort of viral revolution. They just have to know about you, right? Then their binding automatically transfers to you from Julia?”
She’d caught on fast. So fast I suspected someone had filled her in while Kris and I argued.
“This isn’t going to happen,” Kris said, but no one was listening to him anymore.
“I think they have to know and believe.” Whether they wanted to believe or not. “But if Mitch believed, so will some of the others. Maybe lots of them.”
“Sera...” Kris was beyond mad. He looked...worried. Scared.
“Kris, I’m not trying to get anyone killed, myself least of all. I don’t know how many of Julia’s employees know who I am, but I do know one very important thing.” Something I was hoping she hadn’t yet thought of.
“What’s that?” His gaze held mine, and his question sounded...incomplete. Like there was something else he wanted to say.
“Julia was bound to her brother, too, right?” I said, my focus glued to Kris, though my question was for his sister.
“Yes...” Kori said, and I could tell from the sudden cautious glee in her voice that she’d come to the same conclusion I had.
“And she already knows damn well who I am.”
“Holy shit.” Kris’s eyes brightened and a smile spread over his face. “She’s bound to you, too. Julia fucking Tower is your employee!”
Yup. Which was why she’d had no choice but to give the order, when I told her to tell her men to put their guns down.
That was just one more reason for Julia to want me dead—but it was also an iron-clad guarantee that she couldn’t actually hurt me. Not directly, anyway.
* * *
“You ready?” Kori’s voice came from the deepest shadows in the far corner of Gran’s room, and I nodded from the rolling desk chair I’d been tied to earlier, though I was far from sure of my answer. The truth was that even after a good night’s sleep and half a day of practicing, I still hadn’t been able to replicate that slipping feeling I’d had when I’d somehow prevented Kris, Kori and Ian from traveling without me.
And that was unacceptable.
The only defenses I’d have once I walked willingly into the lion’s den were my newly acquired gun—assuming I ever learned to use it—and my ability to block people from using their Skills against me. I needed to be able to lie in front of Julia. I’d done it before—evidently I was blocking, before I’d even known I was blocking—but I needed to be able to do it consistently. On demand.
“Nope!” Kori called from the hall closet, which she’d shadow-walked into, proving—again—that I had yet to master my own Skill.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed.” She
skulked into the room and sank onto the edge of her grandmother’s bed. “You’re, what? Twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two and a half,” I said miserably.
“Whatever. You’re way too old for this shit. Most people learn control in their early teens. Elle was already a pro at twelve.”
And her daughter was exhibiting significant Skill at age six. Kori didn’t say it, but we both knew she was thinking it.
I swiveled back and forth in the chair, trying to exorcize my own nerves. “Did you know her well?”
Kori exhaled from the shadows. “I wondered when you’d ask.”
“How did you know I would?”
“Because you look at my brother like he invented sex, and you’d like him to show you how it works.”
“I do not.” I was suddenly grateful for the dark room, so she couldn’t see the fire surely glowing in my cheeks.
Kori actually laughed, and I almost died of shock. “Yes, you do, and you’re not the first.” She chuckled again. “But you’re a smart girl, so I figure that if you’re interested in more than one night’s worth of sweat from him...”
“I never said I was interested.” But she spoke right over me.
“...then you’ve already figured out your only real competition is a ghost.”
I hadn’t thought about it in so many words, and I wasn’t ready to admit to anything yet, but...yeah. He’d grown up with her. He’d been with her for years, even though they weren’t monogamous most of the time, from what I’d gathered. Hell, he kept a written record of everything she’d ever mumbled in her sleep!
“You didn’t answer the question,” I said when she leaned forward and peered into my eyes, as though she could read in them the things I wasn’t saying aloud. “Were you and Noelle close?”
“Best friends. When I found out she was sleeping with my brother, I was beyond pissed off at them both.”
“What’d they say?” I had no similar experience to compare that to. Nadia and I had been far enough apart in age that we couldn’t even wear the same clothes, much less compete for friends or boyfriends.
Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) Page 27