Sixteen
Ian
“You’re hungover,” Kori said, but there was no accusation in her voice. She sounded…relieved.
“Little bit, yeah.” I ran one hand over my hair, then scrubbed my face, trying to wake up.
“We have to talk.” She sank into a chair in the corner and sat with her hands in her lap, alternately staring at the floor and at me.
“I don’t think I can manage more than single syllable words without some coffee. And maybe a shower.” And definitely a toothbrush.
“I’ll make coffee.” She stood and looked at the open bathroom door, then headed for the hall.
The shower felt good—dual massage heads—but I did not. I hadn’t been that drunk or that hungover in a long time.
Soaked, dizzy and nauseated, I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, and only then realized that my suitcase and all my clothes were in the living room. With Kori. Fortunately there was a fresh white terry-cloth robe hanging from the back of the bathroom door.
Wrapped in the robe, I followed the scent of coffee into the living room to find Kori leaning against the counter over the minibar. I reached for the suitcase against one wall. “Just let me get—”
“Did you tell him?” she interrupted, setting an empty coffee mug on the counter.
“Did I tell who what?”
“Jake. Did you tell him about last night? About what I told you?”
I set the suitcase down, resisting the urge to close my eyes and slide down the wall to sit on the floor. “Think about how hungover I am now and how drunk I must have been last night and see if you can follow that thread of logic to its natural conclusion.”
Kori rolled her eyes, and just watching that made me dizzy. “Quit talking like an asshole and just tell me. Please. Did you report me to Jake?”
I crossed the room slowly, drawn as much by the thread of fear in her voice as by the promise of caffeine. “No. I haven’t spoken to anyone in the syndicate since we left the restaurant last night.” And frankly, I was a little insulted that she thought I would tattle on her, even though logically, I knew she had no reason to trust me.
Kori took a deep breath, then met my gaze. “What will it take to keep you from reporting me?”
I frowned and gripped the back of the couch for balance. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“I’m negotiating.” She opened the cabinet next to the minibar and pulled out a sugar dish full of packets of artificial sweetener. “And it’d be a lot easier if you’d give me a starting point.”
“Why?” I sank into an armchair across from her, acutely aware that I was nude beneath the robe, and tried to catch her gaze again. “Why are you negotiating? Why do you live life like you’re constantly volleying for position or looking for an advantage? Life isn’t a contract to be negotiated, Kori.”
“Mine is, and you’re only making that harder.”
“Okay, if you don’t mind, I’m going to offer an amateur diagnosis.” I’d come into the room for underwear and wound up playing shrink instead. “But please keep in mind that I’m extremely hungover at the moment. Either the room is spinning around me, or I’m actually tilting in this chair.”
“You’re tilting.” Kori tore open a sugar packet and a million tiny crystals spilled onto the counter. “What is it you think you’re diagnosing?”
“Your life. Your problems. Because frankly, I think those are one and the same.”
“Well, you got that much right.” She poured coffee into a second mug and dumped a packet of powdered creamer into it. “What’s your diagnosis?”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes until the room stopped spinning. Then I met her gaze. “I think the reason you value the truth so highly, even when it hurts, is that you don’t experience much of it. Syndicate life seems to be lie after lie, strung together with cruel manipulation and brutal compulsion. So let me be completely honest with you for a moment.” Well, as honest as I could be without getting us both killed. “I like you. I like you a lot.”
Her eyes widened, and I couldn’t tell if she was surprised by what I was saying, or by the fact that I was saying it at all.
She started to reply, but I cut her off. I wasn’t done. “Yes, I wanted you to stay for a while last night, but not because I was playing some kind of sadistic game. I wanted you to stay because I like your company.”
Kori stuck a stirrer in her coffee. “Now I know you’re lying.” But her grip on the mug was tense, like she didn’t want to believe her own words.
“Why? Why is it so hard for you to believe that someone could want to be with you with no ulterior motive?”
“Because it’s never happened.” She set the full pot on the coffee table in front of me, along with an empty mug. “Everyone wants something. Even my sister needs me for protection.”
“Okay, but I bet she’d do as much for you as you’ve done for her, if she had the chance. Every now and then, someone may just want to be near you, Kori. Or do you honestly think Kenley would kick you out if you were no use to her?”
“No. But she’s my sister. You’re…”
“A job. I know.” And even hearing it from my own mouth stung a little. “But even if that’s all you see in me, that’s not all I see in you. I have no intention of reporting what happened last night to Tower. Nor will I report anything that happens today. I won’t tell him anything you don’t want me to. I swear on my life.”
“You’re serious?” She frowned, but I knew her skepticism ran much deeper than a cynical expression. “Why?”
“Because believe it or not, I’m not trying to hurt you, and I don’t want someone else assigned as my recruiter. So nothing that was said here will leave this room.” Except what I’d already told Aaron. “Think of this suite as our own personal Las Vegas. What happens here…”
“Stays here,” she finished, and I nodded. Kori sank onto the couch across from me and glanced at the coffeepot. “I’m not going to serve you. Unless that’ll get you to sign on. Or have I already ruined any chance of that?” She said it casually, but her eyes didn’t match her tone. My answer mattered. A lot.
I picked up the coffeepot and filled my mug, glad my stomach was finally starting to settle. “What will happen if I don’t?” I asked, but she only stared into her coffee. “The truth, Kori. You owe me that.”
And finally she looked up, anger flashing in her bold, aggressive gaze, like she was daring me to disagree with something she hadn’t even said yet. “If I can’t get you to sign, he’ll hurt Kenley to punish me. Then he’ll execute me.”
A bolt of anger burned through the center of my chest, and my jaw clenched. “Execute?”
She lifted her mug with shaking hands, and I felt like I was burning alive, consumed by my own rage. “Death by conflicting orders.”
“That’s sick. That’s not death, it’s torture.”
“It’s both. It’s also an object lesson. Public executions tend to keep the masses in line.”
I wanted to beat Jake Tower into the ground until the earth accepted him back.
“I’ll sign,” I said. My words were a lie, but my intent was true. I would do whatever it took to protect her from him, but that wouldn’t involve signing with Jake Tower. I wanted to free her from him, not enslave myself alongside her.
“Are you sure?” She looked so suddenly hopeful, yet so skeptical. So…guilty. Because she thought she was condemning me to a life like her own.
“Yes,” I said, and her obvious relief was like a ray of sunshine parting dark clouds. “But not today. I want today off. My last day as a free man. And I want you to spend it with me. If you want to.” I had to know that she wasn’t just following orders.
“Now more than ever. But don’t read too much into that.” She was actually grinning. “It’s a nice suite.”
There was something in her eyes when she said it. Something I liked. I wanted to know what scared her and what made her smile. I wanted to know what she’d wanted out of life before she’d joined the syndicate, and if that was what she still wanted.
“Was any of it true, Kori? About your parents, and your grandmother? Or was that just part of the role he made you play?”
“I can’t tell you everything,” she said, meeting my gaze. “But nothing I said was a lie.” She took another sip from her coffee, and the stiffness in her shoulders eased. She looked almost relaxed, and I realized she’d been tense since the moment I’d met her, and probably for years before that.
My lie had set her at ease and given her a borrowed sense of security. But I wanted her to have those both permanently. I wanted her to have a real life, free from compulsion, humiliation and pain. And I only knew of one way to make that happen.
I needed to talk to her sister alone—a chance to convince her to do the right thing, not just for Steven, but for Kori, too. Kenley Daniels was the source of so much trouble, but she might also be the solution.
But Kori couldn’t know what we were planning, because she’d have to report me to Tower.
“So, what do you want to do today?” Kori asked, and I struggled to wipe my thoughts from my expression. She couldn’t know what I was thinking about until it was done.
“I don’t know,” I said, stirring my coffee. “How would you spend your last day as a free woman? What should I absolutely see before I sign?”
“The fork in the river,” Kori said without hesitation. “My favorite place in the city. There’s a park on the south side, right where the river splits, and you can see all three districts from there. And there’s this vendor in the park that serves the best hot dogs in the city. The secret is the potato bread buns.”
“Hot dogs?” I laughed.
Kori shrugged. “Jake said no more bars. He didn’t say anything about hot dogs in the park.”
“Do they have sauerkraut?”
“Of course.”
“I’m in. Let me get dressed.”
I threw on some clothes, and then Kori and I took a cab to the fork in the river, because she couldn’t shadow-walk into a park in broad daylight. I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but the carousel surprised me.
“My parents took us here once when I was a kid,” she explained, leading me along the waist-high wrought-iron fence containing a crowd of children waiting their turn for a ride. “I was about five, so Kenley would have been three, and Kris was probably almost seven. I rode that black one, with the gold reins.”
“Of course you did.” The carousel horse she’d pointed out was one of only three not painted in some pastel shade with a white mane. Her horse was more dignified, and probably a little creepy from a child’s perspective, its lips pulled back from its teeth like it was in midwhinny.
“I fell off and busted my knee on one of the bolts on the floor,” she said, watching the carousel turn. “My mom swooped in to pick me up while my dad sprayed all the blood with bleach solution.” She stopped walking and crossed her arms over her chest. “I wonder if any of it’s still there, in the cracks.”
“If so, there’s no way it’s viable,” I said, but I’d misunderstood her intent. She wasn’t worried. She looked…interested.
“Isn’t it weird, how we leave little bits of ourselves everywhere we go? Like, there’s part of me in that carousel, and part of it in me. I still have the scar on my knee.” She frowned then, and looked away from the carousel. “There’s a part of Jake in me, too.” She rubbed her left arm, where the tattooed chain links would be beneath her sleeve. “They’re sealed with his blood. Not enough to use against him, unfortunately. Just enough to make it feel like you don’t belong to yourself anymore.”
And that was true. That was the whole problem.
“So, where are those hot dogs?” I asked, eager to change the subject. Smart-ass Kori was fun, and even angry Kori was usually entertaining. Scared Kori made me want to fight. To find a way to accomplish the impossible. But I didn’t know what to do with melancholy Kori. She seemed directionless. Lost. Not like Kori at all.
“It’s a little bit of a walk, but it’s worth it,” she said, altering our course toward a winding sidewalk.
“Does Kenley like these dogs, too?” I asked as we walked. “Think she’d like to join us for lunch?” Admittedly, my approach was less than subtle, but I was running out of time and options.
“Kenley’s a vegetarian. Which is why I eat out so often.”
“Oh. Well, maybe—” I started, but Kori grabbed my arm and pulled us both to a stop, suspicion thick in the arch of her brows.
“What’s with your interest in my sister? She’s not into you, and Jake would never…”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I insisted, but she didn’t look like she believed me. So I told another lie, and I wasn’t sure whether I should feel guilty or grateful that I’d had enough practice to carry it off. “I’ve never been bound to anything, and I feel like I’m diving right into the deep end with this. I just…I want to get to know the person who’s going to be sealing the binding. I want to know I can trust her.”
“You can’t,” Kori said, and I frowned. “You can’t trust any of us,” she continued, and that didn’t make me feel any better. “Soon, you won’t be able to trust yourself.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Don’t get me wrong. You’ll like Kenley. Everyone does. But she has to do whatever Jake tells her to, just like the rest of us.”
“What was she like before the syndicate?” I asked. If I couldn’t talk to her directly, maybe I could at least get a feel for her personality in preparation.
“She was sweet, but gullible. Powerful, but naive.”
“You said she got into some trouble?”
“Yeah. Kenley had trouble making friends as a kid, and that got worse in college, until her roommate found out about her Skill. Poor Kenni thought this little bi—um, this little monster was really her friend, so she gave her a little bit of her blood. The roommate said she needed it to get an aggressive ex out of her life. Kenley didn’t realize she was being used until this Tracker tracked her down through one of the bindings and scared the shit out of her. Turns out the roommate had been using Kenni’s blood for everything from revenge on a volleyball team rival to making sure her boyfriend stayed faithful.”
“The boyfriend she was trying to get rid of?”
“That was a lie—she was actually trying to keep him. And he wasn’t technically her boyfriend. But she used Kenni’s blood to tie him into a particularly nasty Love Knot.” A binding preventing him from committing to anyone else.
“Damn. So, how did Tower get involved?”
“The Tracker was working for Jake, looking for a new Binder. He hit the jackpot with Kenley.”
I wasn’t seeing the park anymore, in spite of the children racing past every now and then on their way from the playground to the riverbank. I could only see half-formed connections—threads that didn’t quite meet.
Kenley had bound Steven to something unknown, at some time in the past, but he didn’t recognize her name or her picture. But Kenley wasn’t the only one who’d used her blood to seal a binding. Was it possible…?
“Wait, how would that even work? It’s a Binder’s will that actually seals a binding, right? If Kenley didn’t know what her blood was being used for, how could her will be there?”
Kori shrugged. “Evidently by giving her roomie permission to use the blood, she was contributing her will to whatever the roommate decided to use it for.”
“That’s scary as hell,” I said, and my voice sounded hollow.
“No sh—” Kori cleared her throat and started over, but I was too distracted to find humor in her near miss. “No kidding. Which is why she’s not allowed to hand her blood out anymore.”
We walked half a mile or so as we talked, following the sidewalk around the playground, a set of basketball courts and large patches of grass beneath sprawling trees. All around us, kids played and joggers jogged, enjoying their weekend in one of few green patches within the city limits. But I hardly noticed any of it. I was thinking about my brother and his girlfriend, and the invisible ties connecting them to Kori’s sister, and me to her by extension. How long had those connections been there? How had Steven only breached this mysterious binding two weeks ago, if it had been in place for the past six years, if my hunch was right.
At the dock, a line had formed as people waited their turn for boat rides, and just past that, Kori led me to a quaint walking bridge spanning one branch of the river. My footsteps echoing on wood was what finally brought me out of my own head.
“Is this still the west side?” I asked as we reached the apex and she stopped to lean over the rail, staring out at the river flowing beneath us.
“Technically, this is nowhere. This is the space above the river, and no one owns the river.”
“Like standing with one foot on either side of a state border?” I asked as she leaned so far over I was afraid she’d fall in.
“More like standing on neither side. I like it here. There’s no ground beneath us, so it feels like this place doesn’t really exist. And if it doesn’t exist, then I don’t exist when I’m here. And if I don’t exist, no one can make me do…anything.”
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked when she showed no sign of wanting to move on.
“No. If I did, it wouldn’t be special.” And she needed this place to be special—this place, where she didn’t exist—and I felt privileged to not-exist there with her.
“So, if that’s the west side…” I said, pointing back the way we’d come. “Then that must be the east side. Is the hot dog stand on the east side? Are we allowed to go there?”
“Yes, because that’s the south side. Neutral territory. The east side is over there.” She pointed over the bridge and I saw the actual fork in the river, beyond where we stood, and the east side, on the opposite side of the thicker part of the river, before it branched.
Kori finally turned away from the water and we crossed the rest of the bridge slowly, side by side. “Neutral territory, huh? So it’s safe for everyone?”
“No one is safe. No place is safe. The south fork is only neutral because no one’s been able to take total control of it yet. Cavazos has a regular presence here, as does Jake. If either of them backed down, the other would claim the fork and have a larger territory. So really, it’s land in flux. The heart of the struggle. Not coincidentally, the south fork has the highest crime rates of any area of the city.”
“And the best hot dogs?”
She laughed. “And the best hot dogs. The stand is just over there.” She pointed, and I followed her gesture to find a wheeled vendor’s cart with a faded, striped awning and a line of customers stretching out beyond it.
We were almost to the cart when Kori stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Her shoulders tensed and her fingers curled and uncurled at her sides. I started to ask what was wrong but before I could speak, a woman said her name.
“Hey, Kori.”
I looked up to find a man and a woman on the sidewalk in front of us, carefully spaced to block our path. We could have gone around them, of course, but their positions were more statement than true barrier. A command to stop. As was their identical stance, feet spread wide, as if they were expecting a fight. Jackets unbuttoned, for easy access to whatever weapons they were carrying.
The woman was unfamiliar, but I knew the man from Aaron’s research on the Tower syndicate. Cameron Caballero. The only man alive known to have gotten out of his contract with Tower before the term was up. Now he worked for Cavazos—a lateral move at best.
“Olivia,” Kori said. “I wondered when you’d show up.”