Oath Bound
Page 89

“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.”