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 not.” 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.
“I never told them I knew.” A slight shift in the shadows and the squeal of bedsprings told me she’d folded her legs beneath her on the mattress. “They clearly didn’t want anyone to know, and I sure as hell didn’t want to hear about it, from either perspective. So I left it alone. But I had no idea it went on as long as it did until he showed me the notebook. Three days ago.”
I thought about that for a moment. Then I kind of wished I hadn’t.
“What was she like?”
Kori leaned forward, her palms propped on the edge of the bed, and I could see her face now, still heavily shrouded in shadow. “Noelle was...a puzzle. I knew that even before I knew I should be putting the pieces together. You’re kind of like her, in that respect. But only that one.”
I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “He loved her?”
“Yeah. He did.”
“Did she love him?”
Kori hesitated. “Maybe. In her own way. But things with Noelle were...complicated. We didn’t know it at the time, but in looking back, I don’t think she was ever really a normal kid. Because of her Skill. I don’t think she did anything—including my brother—without a reason related to something she’d seen in prophesy.”
“So...she used him?” That bitch. My own thought surprised me, but I refused to let myself overanalyze it.
“I think she really did care about him, but yes. She used him. For multiple...things. But I’m not sure he actually understands that, even now. I’m also not sure he’d want me to tell you any of this,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Then why are you?” I whispered back, my feet on the floor now, so the chair couldn’t spin.
“Because he doesn’t always know what’s best for him.” She paused and seemed to reconsider. “I take that back. He almost never knows what’s best for him.”
“And you do?”
She shrugged. “I know it’s no better for him to keep living in the past than it is for Gran.”
“And by ‘the past,’ you mean Noelle?”
Kori frowned. “I mean all of it. Kris is a man on a mission that can never be fulfilled, without a time machine. He can’t go back and save Elle from a bullet. He can’t go back and save Kenley or me from the Towers, and no matter how many kids he shuttles from one safe harbor to the next, he can never undo what happened to Micah.”
“Kids?” Micah?
“The kids he works with.”
“How do kids fit in with bail bondsmen and private collectors?” Something wasn’t adding up...
Kori frowned. “That’s what he told you? That he rounds up criminals and collectibles?”
I nodded slowly. “So it’s not true?” My chest ached. He’d lied to me.
“Oh, that’s true, but it’s only half the story. Kris is a smuggler.”
“A smuggler?” Pieces were falling into place in my head, but the big picture wouldn’t come into focus. “A...kid smuggler?” Were those the kids Gran was talking about? “So he is a kidnapper?”
Kori shook her head. “No, he’s a liberator. And they’re not small kids. They’re mostly teenagers. Kids who’ve just discovered their Skill and are at risk of being ‘recruited’ by the mafia.” The bitter scowl that accompanied her air quotes spoke volumes about her own recruitment. “He gets them out of the city and helps place them with families in the suburbs. Families with Jammers. Like you. To keep them safe until they learn how to hide themselves.”
Holy crap. “And does Gran...cook for them?” Suddenly the four huge cans of marinara made sense.
“She did, before he had to take away the knives and stove knobs. She’s only truly with us about half the time now.” Kori shrugged. “Of course, all of that’s on hold now while we’re here helping Kenley break her bindings.”
“He didn’t tell me.” Why didn’t he tell me? “Does that mean he doesn’t trust me?”
Another shrug. “He’s just really careful. It’s his life’s work, and a lot of people would get hurt—or killed—if the wrong people find out.”
People, like the Towers.
“Kenni and I didn’t know about it until our bindings were broken. He couldn’t tell us, because we’d have had to report it.”
I was still mulling that over when she sat up straight and her face receded into the shadows. “I think I know why you can’t stop me from traveling into the closet,” she said, and girl-chat time was obviously over.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t give a shit whether or not I can travel into the closet. When you stopped us earlier, it was because you really didn’t want us to go without you. Right?”
I nodded. I could see where this was headed. “So, I’m only going to be able to stop people from using Skills I really don’t want them to use?”
“At first? Yes. But you’ll get the hang of it with practice, and for now, the good news is that if someone’s Skill threatens you or someone you want to protect, I’m guessing you really won’t want him to use it. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Let’s test the theory.” She stood and grabbed my hand, then leaned forward to kick the bedroom door closed, cutting off most of the light from the hall. Which left us standing in almost total darkness, thanks to the thick drapes. “I’m guessing the place you want least in the world to be right now is...your parents’ den.”
My hand clenched around hers and my heart tried to claw its way up my throat.
“That’s where it happened, isn’t it? That’s where you saw him on top of your sister? Where you heard her screaming? Where you realized what he would do when he was done with her? Right?”
“Kris told you?” My voice sounded hollow. Dead.
Kori shook her head, but I didn’t so much see that as feel it—movement in the dark. “I read the police report.”
Then she knew the rest of it.
“It’s none of your business,” I whispered, but when I tried to pull my hand from hers, she only tightened her grip.
“I know. I’m sorry for what happened to your family, and for invading your privacy. But if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t know where they lived, and I wouldn’t be able to take you there now. He’s not there anymore, Sera. I can take you back there, and he won’t be there.”
“No.” I tried to pull my hand from hers again, but she wouldn’t let go.
“Good. Stop me if you can. This will be a good test. But if you can’t block me, just remember that he won’t be there when we get there. No one will be there. You can go back there this one time and put the whole thing behind you.”
But that wasn’t true. I couldn’t go back there. And even if I could stand to be in that room again, being there wouldn’t fix anything. Not as long as he still had a pulse.
“I’ll be right there with you. No matter what happens, this is a step in the right direction.” She tried to pull me forward, but I wouldn’t move. I couldn’t. So she pulled harder, and I stumbled after her. One step. Two. Three, and we crashed into Gran’s dresser.
“Shit!” Kori dropped my hand to clutch—whatever had banged the dresser.
The bedroom door flew open behind us, and I whirled around an instant before the overhead light blinded me. “What’s wrong?” Ian demanded as Kris pushed past him into the room.
“She did it.” Kori was smiling—beaming—like she was proud of me, or maybe proud of herself, but all I could hear was what she’d said before. In the dark.
I can take you there.
All I could see was the tall man with the curly hair. Blood leaking from my sister’s stomach to pool on the floor. The tall man’s creepy grin as he lurched after me and grabbed my shoulder, his knife already dripping...
“Kori tried...” I said, but I couldn’t finish it. “She tried to...” My arm took over when my tongue failed for a second time. My fist crashed into her jaw and Kori stumbled backward into the dresser.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” She bounced back faster than I could believe, brow furrowed in anger, both fists clenched and ready to swing. “I was trying to help you!”
My heart thumped painfully and my fists rose—I was too busy being scared of the tall man to be scared of her.
Kris jumped between us. Ian pulled Kori back with one arm wrapped around her waist.
“What happened?” Kris’s gaze bounced from me to his sister.
“I’m fine. Let me go,” she said, and Ian let her go, but stayed close. “I was trying to help her. I did help her. She blocked me.”
They both turned to me for my version. “That crazy bitch tried to shadow-walk me into my parents’ house. Where they all died.” Where I’d lost everything.
“Kori!” Kris looked furious.
“I wasn’t really going to do it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in exasperation. “You know I can’t go that far in one shot.”
She couldn’t?
“I was just going walk her into the hall closet, but she had to think I was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go, or she couldn’t block me.” She turned to Ian. “It’s just like what you did for Kenley to help her break my binding. She had to really want it. Same principal, right?”
“That was an emergency, Kori,” he said, in that way he had of making quiet words seem more important than shouted ones. “Most people don’t respond well to the shock-and-awe approach.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Kris demanded, and his arm slid around my waist. Maybe I should have pushed him away, to prove I could stand on my own, but instead I scooted closer, and his arm tightened around me, and I realized he wasn’t trying to protect me—he was standing with me.
“I was thinking that she had the balls to do what needs to be done, no matter what that requires.” Kori gestured angrily as she spoke. “She’s the one who wants to charge into enemy territory, and we can’t send her in unprepared. She has to be able to use her Skills.”
“Kori...” Kris started, but she cut him off, her anger clashing with his.
“Listen up, all of you.” She stepped away from Ian and addressed us as a group—as if she were in charge—and my blood boiled. “None of you know what Julia’s capable of. Not like I do.”
“She can’t hurt me,” I insisted, clinging to that very thought.
Kori turned to me, eyes narrowed, studying me. “She can’t physically hurt you, or order someone else to. But there are many kinds of pain, Sera. What that man did to your sister? What you saw? Julia can and will make that happen all over again. Maybe to someone you know—she’ll pluck your best friends right off the street, if she can find them. She’ll make you watch them tortured, for no reason other than to see you suffer. To make you remember what you would do anything to forget.”
My friends? College felt like a lifetime ago. My friends were a universe away—I hadn’t seen even one of them since the funeral. But they weren’t beyond the Towers’ reach. “Why would she...” My question had no end. I couldn’t say it.
“To make you give up your birthright. To illustrate what a heartless bitch she really is. Because she’s premenstrual. Because she’s bored. Because she can. She doesn’t need a reason to cause pain, but she has plenty of them to choose from.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Kris swore. Then he turned on his sister. “Get out.”
“You’re sending a lamb to the slaughter, Kris. You all need to listen to me.”
“And you need to back the fuck off and get out of here!”
Kori blinked, stunned. Then she glanced at me and backed slowly toward the door.
“If Sera goes in there and her plan falls apart—hell, even if it doesn’t fall apart—they’ll use every weapon at their disposal to break her. And her weak spot is pretty fucking obvious.” Her hand found the doorknob and one foot landed over the threshold in the hall. “She needs to deal with that shit before she goes in there, or they’re going to rip her heart out and serve it on crackers.”
With that, she stomped past Ian into the hall and out of sight.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when she was gone. “She really does mean well. And she speaks from experience you can’t even...” He stopped and studied me for a minute. “Well, maybe you can imagine. Her approach was wrong, but her heart’s in the right place. She really was trying to help.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to accept his apology, in part because it wasn’t his to give. But his point lingered. And I suspected he was right—they both were. Not that I was eager to go home again. That house was haunted, if not by ghosts, then by memories. By loss. And if I couldn’t face my own memories, how the hell was I supposed to face down Julia Tower?