Shadow Bound

by Rachel Vincent

  Then I realized I’d just spilled my blood in a public restroom and had no good way to clean it up.

  I snatched a cloth from the stack on the counter and tied it around my cut hand, then picked up the bottle of hand sanitizer and read the contents. Alcohol. I exhaled in relief, then upended the bottle and squirted a glob onto every single drop of blood I could find. I was still on my knees in the mess when the door opened behind me and the hostess came in.

  She gaped at the destruction around me, her mouth open wide enough to catch a whole swarm of flies.

  “The mirror fell right off the wall. Could have killed me,” I said, dropping the nearly empty bottle of sanitizer in the nearest sink. “I might sue.” Then I marched past her and out the front door to the sidewalk, where Ian was waiting for me.

  He took one look at the cloth around my hand and lifted one brow. “Do I even want to know?”

  “Probably not.” I lead the way into the alley again without offering further explanation.

  “Do you find trouble everywhere you go?”

  “Sometimes it finds me.”

  I took him back to the hotel and he called downstairs for a first-aid kit, then refused help on my behalf from the man who brought it up. I cleaned and bandaged my cuts in the bathroom, then I stoppered the sink and dumped the bleach from Ian’s travel kit—no Skilled person travels without bleach-solution in a spray bottle, even if it has to go in the checked luggage—over the cloth stained with my blood. Bleach would destroy the blood enough to keep it from being used against me.

  “You want to tell me what happened?” Ian asked, glancing at my bandaged hand from the doorway.

  “No.” I didn’t want to tell him anything until I knew whether or not Julia was lying.

  “Kori, I can see that something’s wrong.”

  “I’m fine.” And maybe if I said it enough, we’d both eventually believe me.

  In the front room, I glanced around at the view, and the couches, and the huge television, and the bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of ice on a tall table against one wall—it had obviously been sent up moments before we’d arrived. This hotel suite probably cost more than I made in a month.

  No one had ever wanted me as badly as Jake wanted Ian. But I knew better than anyone that the more Jake gave, the more he’d expect in return.

  Angry, I marched across the room and plucked the small, embossed envelope from the tray the champagne sat on, trying to guess whether it had been sent by Jake or by Julia. But before I could take the card from the envelope, Ian gently pulled it from my hand. I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was something there. Something in his eyes when he looked at me. Something important, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. I’d lost all perspective.

  Julia had stolen my perspective.

  Ian looked worried—nervous—but I couldn’t tell if that was because he genuinely cared that something was bothering me, or because his game wasn’t working out the way he’d planned.

  He stared into my eyes, and my palms started to sweat. My head felt like it was floating above my body, not truly attached. I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. Everything was all tangled up in a knot so complicated I couldn’t follow the threads. And I had no hope of untangling them.

  He wanted me. I could see that in his eyes. In the way he stood close, but not quite touching me. In the way he kept glancing at my lips, like he wanted to kiss me.

  Some part of me wanted to kiss him, and that scared me so badly I couldn’t breathe. I needed to back away. To put some space between us. But that same part of me remembered what things were like before the basement. Before every touch bruised and every mouth bit.

  Ian didn’t look angry. He didn’t look nasty or cruel. He wasn’t stalking or skulking. He just looked…interested.

  If we’d met somewhere else.

  If my life and Kenley’s well-being weren’t in Ian’s hands.

  If I were someone else, and he were someone else.

  If the moment hadn’t been manufactured by Jake Tower.

  If any one of those things had been true, I might have wanted more than a kiss from Ian. I might have wanted to be with him. For a night. For a week. Maybe for more.

  But this was… I couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not when I had no choice. I couldn’t breathe past the bitter lump in my throat or make my head stop spinning. I couldn’t mute the voice in my head—my voice—shouting for me to run. Fight. Leave, before he said something neither of us could go back from.

  “So, you all set?” I asked, and even to my own ears, my voice sounded brittle, like it might break any moment. Like I might break with it.

  “Stay and have a drink with me.” Ian waved one hand at a minibar. “No champagne, I swear.”

  I opened my mouth to say no thanks, and that’s when the rest of me discovered what my brain had already known, at least in theory. I couldn’t say no. Even trying to say it sent pain shooting through my temple, half blinding me. My hands started to shake. Jake had told me to do whatever Ian wanted me to do, and Ian wanted me to stay for a drink.

  Just like Julia had said he would.

  Ian was playing a game—I was his game. And I was going to lose.

  With that realization, I knew what I had to do.

  Turn it off. Turn everything off. Whatever happens, happens. But I didn’t have to feel it. I didn’t have to truly be there. No matter what Jake made me do or say, he couldn’t shove his greedy fingers into my head. He couldn’t control my mind, or where I sent it.

  No one could.

  “Fine. Just one,” I said finally, and my hands stopped shaking. My voice felt empty, like the prerecorded message on my voice mail.

  Ian pulled the bottle of champagne from the bucket and scooped ice out with a plastic cup. I flinched when the cubes clinked into two glasses. I sat on the edge of the leather couch with my hands clasped in my lap while he pulled tiny bottles from the minibar. A minute later, he turned around with two drinks and gave me one as he sank onto the couch next to me. “What should we toast to?” he asked, holding his glass up between us.

  “Whatever you want.” That was the game, right? The winner gets whatever he wants?

  My glass smelled like vodka, a clean scent. Astringent. If I drank enough of it, could it make me clean on the inside? Could it wash the blood from my hands? Bleach the stains from my soul? If I started drinking right that moment and didn’t stop until it was over, maybe I wouldn’t remember anything in the morning. And if I didn’t remember what had happened, I could tell myself nothing had happened.

  A lie is always easier to believe if there’s no evidence against it.

  “Oh, come on. There must be something you want to toast. Dinner on someone else’s dime? Low heels?” Ian glanced at my sandals. “Borrowed blouses?” He touched the short, flared sleeve of Kenley’s shirt, and my hand clenched around the glass. He wasn’t going to let me check out. Ian wanted to hear the wind-up doll speak.

  “To free will,” I said finally, looking right into his eyes.

  He laughed, like I’d made a joke, and chills broke out on both my arms. “To free will,” he repeated. “That most fabled of civil rights. May we all one day truly understand what we’ve lost.” He bumped his glass against mine with a clink, and my stomach clenched around my lobster dinner.

  “You don’t know what real loss is,” I said through clenched teeth, refusing to drink. He couldn’t possibly.

  Ian’s smile died and he lowered his glass, frowning at me over it. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what I said. You don’t know a thing about loss. If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here in a suite paid for by a man who’s just waiting to teach you what that word really means.”

  His gaze hardened and he set his drink on the coffee table. “You’re not the only one who’s ever lost someone, you know.”

  “This isn’t about dead parents,” I snapped.

  “Then what is
it about? What did I say wrong this time?”

  “Nothing. I wish you would say it. I wish you’d quit with the drinks, and the chitchat, and the deep eye contact. This doesn’t have to be so much work. I’m a sure thing, Ian. No seduction required. Didn’t you get the memo?” I turned my drink up and drained it in several long gulps, and when I finally set the glass down, he was frowning at me, his expression stuck somewhere between confusion and exasperation.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I needed another drink. If he was playing the game Julia said he was playing, I’d just ruined the illusion of the hunt. And possibly tied a noose around my own neck.

  “Nothing. I just… I’m sorry.” I stood and headed for the minibar. “I just can’t pretend anymore. Playing your game is one thing, but pretending it isn’t a game is too much.”

  “What game, Kori?” The couch creaked at my back as he stood, but there were no footsteps.

  “You. Me. Recruitment. Fringe benefits.” I plucked another tiny bottle from the minibar and cracked the lid without even glancing at the label. Then I turned and met his gaze from across the room. “I’m what you asked for. I can’t say no. So I wish you’d quit trying to make this feel like something it isn’t and just tell me what you want me to do, so I can get it over with.”

  His eyes widened. Then his dark eyebrows sank low over green eyes and his hands curled into fists at his sides. I knew that look. Hell, I’d perfected that look. He was going to hit something.

  Me? Was he going to hit me, because I’d ruined whatever fantasy he was playing out in his head? And if so, how many punches could I throw before the resistance pain kicked in again? Would this be like it was with Jonah, brutal and violent? Or would this be a civilized conquest, grown-ups playing pretend, polite until the last stroke?

  In the basement, I’d been trapped by dead shadows and crippled by direct orders. Mentally fighting hands and teeth I couldn’t see, crushed by weight I couldn’t bear, pinned, humiliated, hurt. Wishing for death, but too scared to reach for it.

  Would I have the guts to end it this time? To fight back until I couldn’t move, drawing death closer with every punch I threw, in spite of the pain…

  “Kori, what are you saying? Whatever I tell you to do, you have to do?”

  I rolled my eyes and drained half the tiny bottle, wincing at the burn. “You knew that. You’ve known it all along.”

  “No, I… I hadn’t thought about it like that. I hadn’t realized…” He closed his eyes and sank onto the couch, his head in both hands. Then his hands fell away and his head snapped up. His gaze met mine and held it. And I realized I believed him.

  Ian truly hadn’t known. There was no game, except the one Julia was playing.

  His forehead wrinkled, and each breath he released sounded angry. “Tower told you to…?”

  My stomach tried to revolt, and I held down my dinner with nothing but willpower. If he hadn’t known what I’d been ordered to do, then he hadn’t thought of me as a whore. Until now.

  “He told me to do whatever you want. He said if I wasn’t the best you’ve ever had…” But I couldn’t finish that sentence. I couldn’t admit the consequences to him. Not with him looking at me like that. Not with disgust dripping from his words, revulsion written in every line on his face.

  It was obvious what he thought of me now. I may as well have a red chain link tattooed on my arm.

  “That soulless son of a bitch.” He stared at the floor, fists opening and closing. Then he looked up at me with something new shining through the surface of his obvious anger. Was that…disappointment?

  And suddenly I understood that I wasn’t the only one hurt by this. If Ian’s jokes, and obvious desire, and genuine conversation weren’t part of some game he was playing, then…he’d meant them. He’d meant it all. And somehow that realization cut even deeper than the latest knife Jake had shoved into my back.

  “So, this isn’t real?” Ian demanded, anger edging out whatever pain I’d glimpsed from him. “Dinner? Telling me about your family? Was any of that true? Did any of that mean anything to you?”

  I inhaled deeply. Slowly. I could admit that in spite of my orders and my own common sense, everything I’d said and done with him was real. That I liked him, and that’s why I’d tried to paint an accurate picture of life in the syndicate, even as I roped him tighter with Jake’s noose. But that wouldn’t be fair to either of us. We couldn’t be together, ever, even if Jake hadn’t ruined anything we could have had by ordering me to sleep with Ian. Julia had been right about that much. Once Ian officially joined the syndicate, he would quickly outrank me. And even if my lower standing didn’t put him off, association with me would do him no favors.

  So I put on my work face. My stone-cold-bitch face. Because he was hurting just like I was hurting, and this time, the truth would only make that worse.

  “This is a job. You are a job. Nothing more.” It was the most difficult lie I’d ever had to tell. And it wasn’t over. “After you, there will be another job. I don’t know what that job will be, since I’m clearly the world’s worst recruiter. But whatever that next job is, I’ll do it. Just like I’m doing this one. So…” I swallowed and met his gaze, refusing to let mine falter. I could do this. I had no choice. “So just tell me what you want me to do—what it’ll take to get you to sign with Jake—and I’ll do it.”

  “I don’t believe you.” He said it softly, but his words were drenched in anger. I closed my eyes, desperately wishing I’d heard him wrong. Wishing I hadn’t seen the pain in his eyes. The denial. “I don’t believe you, Kori. The reason you’re a horrible recruiter is that you’re bad at selling something you don’t believe in, and you don’t believe in what you’re saying right now.”

  “Yes, I do.” I turned and reached for the tiny bottle again, but he was there in an instant, pulling it out of my grip.

  “No, you don’t. I can tell when you’re lying, and you’re doing it now.”

  “Don’t pretend you know me,” I snapped, reaching for the bottle, but he tucked it behind his back. “We just met. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “The hell I don’t. I know you love your sister more than you love yourself. I know you hate Jake Tower, even if you can’t ever say that out loud. I know that you cuss like a fish swims, but you haven’t spoken a single profanity in the last seven hours, and as near as I can tell, the only thing stopping you is the fact that you gave your word. I know that he makes you do things that rot your soul, and that you do them because you have to, but that you’ll never really forgive yourself.”

  I stared at him, stunned, knowing I should argue. Knowing that for both of our sakes, I should have the courage to lie and tell him he was wrong. That he didn’t know me and he never would. But words had deserted me, for maybe the second time in my entire life.

  “And I know they did horrible things to you. Things you never talk about. I know they tried to break you, but they failed, and that’s why Jake talks about you like you’re trash, when we all three know that’s not true. I think he hates you because even though he tried his best, he couldn’t break you. Which means he won’t ever really own you, no matter what he tattoos on your arm or anywhere else.”

  His face blurred right in front of me, and it took me several seconds to realize why. To realize there were tears standing in my eyes and that I couldn’t get rid of them without letting them fall.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He does own me.” And he would, as long as he owned Kenley.

  “No one owns you, Kori. People like you can’t be owned. Putting chain links on your arm is like putting a lion in a cage. He may be locked up, but he’ll always be wild, and he’ll eat his handler the first chance he gets. You’re that lion, Kori, and I see you watching. Waiting for your moment. And it will come.”

  “No, it won’t, because it’s not just me in that cage, Ian. Kenley’s there with me, and she can’t bite.”

  He blinke
d, and something passed over his expression too fast for me to understand. Something complicated and…conflicted. Then he shook that thought off, whatever it was, and captured my gaze again. “So you bite for her, too. You fight for the people you love, no matter what.”

  I shook my head, and to my horror, those tears fell. “I can’t.” I hadn’t cried in the basement. I’d screamed. I’d even begged. But I’d never cried. Yet here I was in no danger whatsoever, and I couldn’t stop the burning in my eyes, the hot trails down my cheeks. “I can’t.”

  “So you’re just going to give up? You’re just going to do whatever he tells you to do? Let him pass you around to all his friends like a lit joint, until you’re all used up and worthless?”