Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel) (14 page)

“Is this about that boy? Micah?”

An old, bitter pain rang through me at the mention of his name. I hadn’t consciously thought about him in years, but his face was never far from my memory. “No. This has nothing to do with him.”

“Because you know, you can’t punish yourself forever, and no matter how many kids you shield, you can’t bring Micah back.”

No. I couldn’t. But I could stop it from happening to the others. To the kids most in danger of being headhunted by the Skilled mafia. Kids like Kenley, who’d barely been in college when she was extorted into joining the Tower syndicate. Kids like Micah, who’d been delivered into their own personal hell by people like me, who didn’t ask enough questions—who didn’t
care
enough to ask the right questions—and became unwitting, unbound cogs in the very machine I wanted to destroy.

But for once this wasn’t about Micah.

“This is about Noelle, and the things she saw, and the things I’m supposed to do. There’s a reason she said those things in my bed. There
has
to be. Destiny doesn’t deal in coincidences.”

“But Kris...Noelle didn’t say these things to you.” Kori spoke with a firm voice, as if that might make her assertion easier to believe. “She said them to no one. In her sleep. We don’t know if Elle ever remembered a word of this.” She took the notebook from me and flipped through it aimlessly. “She wasn’t trying to saddle you with some kind of heroic mandate. She was just...sleeping.”

I’d thought about that possibility over and over since Noelle died, and every time, I came to the same conclusion. “Did you ever hear her talk in her sleep?”

Kori shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a couple of times.”

“Exactly. You didn’t hear much of it because even when she came for your sleepover, she slept in
my
bed. I think she fell asleep with me on purpose.” She started to object, but I spoke over her. “Think about it, Kor. She could have snuck back to the sleepover as soon as she had what she’d come for. But she didn’t. She stayed with me—she
slept in my bed
—for a reason.”

Kori looked as if she didn’t know what to say.

Then, she looked as if she had
too
much to say.

“You’re telling me—with a straight face—that you think Noelle slept with you off and on for six years so that you’d record her prophesies in a notebook she didn’t even know you had, then drive yourself nuts for the rest of your life, trying to figure out what she was talking about, when
she
didn’t even know she was speaking? Seriously?”

Well, when you put it like that... “Yes.”

“Kris...”

“
Think
about it, Kori!” I set the notebook on the nightstand and turned to face her more directly. “No one knows what Elle knew, and most of what she said only makes sense years after the fact. Maybe she
did
know about the notebook. Maybe she wanted me to keep it. Maybe she knew I was going to write in it before
I
knew I was going to write in it. Hell, maybe she knew she wasn’t going to be around long enough to do anything about all the stuff she saw, and this was her way of asking me to take over for her.”

Kori exhaled slowly, apparently struggling for patience. “Fine. Let’s assume you’re right. Why on
earth
would she have wanted you to kidnap Sera?”

“Maybe she wanted you to trade her for Kenley?”

Kori and I both glanced up to find Anne standing in my bedroom doorway. We hadn’t even heard her open the door.

“No.” I stood to pull her into the room, then closed the door behind her. I wanted to know how much she’d heard, but I didn’t want to ask, in case that led to more questions from her. “Elle wouldn’t want me to use her as a hostage. Or to give her back to people willing to kill her.”

“You don’t know that.” Anne brushed long red hair over her shoulder and leaned against the closed door with her arms crossed over her shirt. “Elle would do whatever it takes to protect the people she loves, the rest of the world be damned. Look what she did to us to protect Hadley.”

I frowned, and Anne clarified: “Don’t misunderstand. I love Hadley, and I wouldn’t give her up for anything in the world. But Noelle never asked me if I wanted to be a mother. She never asked me if I wanted my husband to be murdered. Or if Liv wanted to be bound to that abusive bastard Ruben Cavazos. Or if Kori wanted to be put in the middle of the whole thing, then shot and locked up. Noelle didn’t give any of us a choice about any of that. She just stacked the deck, content to let the cards fall as they may, so long as Hadley was protected. Who says she wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice Sera—some stranger none of us even knows—to help Kenley?”

“She wouldn’t.” I refused to believe it. I
couldn’t
believe it. “She was just doing the best she could with what she had. She never asked to be a Seer.”

“None of us asked to be what we are.” Kori pushed pale hair back from her face. She looked tired. “And a large part of what and who we are now is because of Elle plucking strings and pushing buttons behind the scenes.”

Anne nodded. “Besides, Kris, you have no idea what Elle knew about Sera. Maybe Hadley’s right. Maybe she’s not who she says she is.”

“She hasn’t told us anything but her first name,” Kori pointed out.

I turned to the Reader. “But you said she was telling the truth about that, right?”

Anne frowned and her gaze lost focus, as if she were seeing the kitchen from twenty minutes earlier, rather than my bedroom from the present. “I didn’t read any untruth from her, other than about the favor she thinks the Towers owe her. But I didn’t really read much truth in the rest of it, either. It was more like... Well, it was like most of the time I got no reading at all. Normally I would assume that means the speaker is telling the truth. But in this case...there’s just something weird about her.”

I grasped at the straw she’d unintentionally handed me. “Okay, Anne doesn’t trust her, so we shouldn’t let her go yet.” I turned to Kori. “That’s two against one.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “You realize you’re now supporting both sides of the argument, right?”

I shrugged. “Whatever it takes. I need her.
We
need her.”

The Reader exhaled heavily. “If we’re voting, we should include Ian and Van.”

Kori shook her head. “We’re not voting. We’re letting her go.”

“You’re not in charge, Kor.” I stepped in front of the door again. “I can’t let her go. Not yet.”

Kori glared up at me, something dangerous shining in her dark eyes. “Then kill her.”

I blinked at my sister, waiting for the punch line. Because surely that was a joke. We only kill those who pose a threat.

But no punch line came.

“Kori, I’m not going to kill her.”

She shrugged, looking up at me. “Then let her go. Those are your options. You kidnapped her, scared the crap out of her, bound her hands, then tied her to a chair. There’s a very good reason she doesn’t want to be here. So put her out of her misery. Release her, one way or another.”

And that’s when I understood. Kori had spent six weeks locked up in Tower’s basement. She doesn’t talk about it, but we all know she was tortured. Of
course
she would be in favor of letting the prisoner go, regardless of the extenuating circumstances. Even if the prisoner wasn’t really a prisoner.

“I’m trying to
help
her, Kori. And I’m trying to let her help us.” Even if I didn’t understand the specifics of either scenario yet.

“Listen to me.” My sister stood on her toes and leaned closer so that I couldn’t possibly misunderstand. “We. Don’t. Lock. People. Up.”

“I’m not—”

But before I could figure out how to finish that sentence, Kori’s phone buzzed. She pulled it from her pocket and frowned. “Olivia’s freaking out about something. I’ll be right back.” She reached past me for the doorknob, and I only let her through because getting her out of the house for a while seemed like a good idea. “While I’m gone, you either let Sera go, put her out of her misery, or convince her to stay of her own volition. If you can’t get the job done, I’ll do it myself.”

I glanced at Anne, who could only shrug while Kori stomped down the hall, then down the stairs. “She’s right.”

I groaned. “Why do you always take her side?”

“I don’t.” Anne crossed her arms over her chest. “As you might recall, she once kidnapped my daughter. But this time, she’s right, and if you don’t make a call, she’ll fight you for it.”

“I know.” I sank into my desk chair again and glanced up at Anne. “My very earliest memories is the day my mom went into labor with Kori. As they were leaving for the hospital, I
begged
them to bring home a baby brother for me. Life’s been screwing me ever since.”

Seven

Sera

A
fter the Reader went upstairs to find Kris and Kori, her daughter sat next to me on the couch with a glass of chocolate milk. I tried to ignore her, not because I didn’t know how to talk to children, but because I didn’t know how to talk to that particular child. And because, honestly, I agreed with Gran—she was more than a little creepy.

For several minutes, Hadley sipped from her bendy straw and watched cartoons while I tried to puzzle out my next move. I’d decided there had to be an emergency exit, aside from the one I’d created from a broken kitchen window, which Ian was patching with a sheet of plywood. As far as I could tell, Kris and Kori were the only shadow-walkers in the house, so there had to be an easy way out for the rest of them. What if there was a burglary? Or a fire?

There
was
another way out. I just had to find it.

“Where’s the baby?” Hadley said from my left, but she had to repeat the question with a tug on my sleeve before I realized she was talking to me.

“I’m sorry?” Surely I’d heard her wrong.

Her big, round eyes blinked up at me. “Can I hold it?” When I couldn’t figure out how to respond, she continued. “Is it a girl baby or a boy baby? I love babies, but I like girl babies better.”

“Um...I don’t have a baby.” My foot began to tap. My knee jiggled on the lower edge of my vision.

“Then who is the cradle for?”

“What cradle?” My chest felt tight. I had to open my mouth to suck in more oxygen than my nose could handle at one time.

“The wooden one, on rockers.” Hadley frowned up at me, as if I were being intentionally obtuse. “You know. In the striped room.”

My stomach tried to launch itself through my torso and out my throat. I had to swallow convulsively to keep my lunch down. There was only one cradle she could possibly have assumed was mine. I twisted on the couch to face her fully. “You saw the cradle?” That last word cracked in half and fell from my lips in jagged pieces.

Hadley nodded.

“What color were the stripes on the walls?” I demanded, my voice both fragile and sharp, like a thin sliver of glass.

“Green and yellow.” Hadley frowned, as though she was trying to remember. “And purple. Light purple,” she said, and my next breath escaped on a sob.

My dad had been so thrilled to find out he was going to be a grandfather, despite the circumstances, that he’d given up his home office to make room for the baby, even though it wasn’t due for five more months. He’d painted the walls himself. He’d even gotten the cradle down from the attic, where it had been since Nadia outgrew it. That cradle had been in his family for generations. He was so excited by the thought of using it again.

“Where’s the baby?” Hadley’s question ripped me out of my own memories and back into the cruel new reality that had become my life.

“The baby...died.” In its mother’s womb. The day my sister and parents were murdered in their own home.

Hadley blinked at me in confusion, and for a second I envied her the shattered misconception that babies couldn’t die. Too late, I realized I’d probably ruined that for her.

Then the implication of what she’d just said hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, and I leaned back on the couch, breathing through the pain.

Hadley had seen my house. She’d seen the baby’s room. For whatever reason, and despite the questionable accuracy of her earlier prediction, she seemed to be tuned into my psychic frequency. Or something like that.

Which meant that she might have more visions, or prophesies, or whatever. She might be able to tell me the name of the man who killed them. She might even be able to help me find him.

I might not need Julia Tower after all.

“What else did you see?” I demanded so suddenly that she gave a startled little yip and sloshed chocolate milk onto her lap. “Did you see a man in hiking boots? Do you know his name?” All the police had been able to tell me was that boots like his—he’d left bloody footprints all over the house—had been sold at hundreds of stores, all over the country. Ballistics found no match for the bullets he’d fired. He’d left DNA, but it didn’t match anything in the database.

They had suspects, but no smoking gun. My family’s killer was a ghost.

When the child only blinked her startled, teary eyes at me, I made myself take another deep breath and calm down. She had no idea what I was talking about. She probably didn’t even understand her own Skill yet. She was
so
young. We’d have to start with something more basic.

“Hadley, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Here.” I took her milk and set it on the coffee table, suddenly glad that Ian’s hammering obscured our conversation. “I just want to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“Great. Thanks. Hadley, how did you know that the cradle and the striped room were in my house?” It was actually my parents’ house, but that was close enough. She’d somehow associated me with what she’d seen.

Hadley only shrugged.

“Okay. Did you see anything else...about me?” She shook her head. “Anything else about the house?” I was scaring her again. My voice was too intense. My grip on her hand too desperate. “Did you see any of the other rooms?”

“Just...” She squeezed her eyes shut as if she was trying to see it all again in her head. “I saw the living room. There was a guitar—a wooden one—on this metal stand. By a chair. The kind that you can lean back and put your feet up on.” She opened her eyes and met my gaze, and seemed pleased by whatever she found there.

My heart ached with every beat. “That’s my dad’s guitar. And his chair.”

Except that guitar was gone.
Destroyed
. A bullet shattered it the night my parents died. The police believed my father was actually playing it when the attack started.

I’d buried him with what was left of it. Other than his family, it was what he’d loved most in the world.

So how the hell could that guitar be in Hadley’s vision of the future?

It couldn’t.

Maybe she’d seen another guitar. Maybe even another room. But that was too much of a coincidence, wasn’t it? An acoustic guitar on a metal stand and an old-fashioned wooden cradle in a green, yellow and purple striped room?

I could only think of one other possibility, but before I could give it voice, footsteps thumped on the stairs. A second later, Kori jogged into sight on the landing, then headed straight through the living room and into the dark hall closet without a glance at anyone else. When she didn’t come back out a second later, I realized she was gone.

Kris and Anne, the Reader, came down a minute later. “Okay, I think we’ve come to a compromise about...what to do with you.” He sat on the arm of a chair across the room.

Distantly, I realized I should have been furious about that. None of them had the right to do
anything
with me, but that fact was hard to focus on, with the new possibility now taking up most of my attention.

“If you’re willing to—”

“Has she ever done this before?” I asked Anne after a brief glance at Kris. When the Reader only frowned at me, I nodded toward her daughter. “Has she ever had a premonition before today, or am I actually witnessing the birth of a Skill?” A very extraordinary Skill, if my hunch was right.

“As far as I know, this is the beginning of it.” Anne sank onto the couch on Hadley’s other side. “Why?”

“She...knows things. Things about me.” I took another deep breath. “About my family.”

“What kind of things?” Anne glanced at her daughter, but Hadley was watching cartoons again, ignoring the adults.

“She’s always been creepy, Anne,” Gran said from the doorway, and when I twisted to see her, I realized that she might have been listening the whole time. “But she seems to have taken that to new heights today.”

“Gran!” Anne snapped.

Gran shrugged, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “If that girl’s anything like Elle, she’s more conscious of how strange she is than any of us ever will be.” Then she turned and headed back into the kitchen, where Ian was still hammering at the window I’d broken and Vanessa was keeping him company.

“What did she say?” Kris slid from the arm of his chair onto the cushion, glancing from me to Hadley, then back to me.

“She described some things in my house. Things she’s obviously never seen. But that’s not the weird part—”

“Could you all please
stop
that!” Anne said, exasperation riding every syllable. “She’s not weird. If anything, she’s
gifted.
”

“You’re right.” I nodded. “In fact, I think she’s more gifted than any of you realize—”

The hall closet door flew open so hard it slammed into the wall, and the entire house fell into silence. Kris stood, one hand on his gun. Ian and Vanessa appeared in the kitchen doorway, also armed, with Gran peeking over their shoulders. Only Hadley seemed completely at ease with the possibility of invasion.

Maybe she already knew who was there.

“See?” Kori stepped into the living room and everyone relaxed. “They’re all here. Alive and well. Plus one.” Me, evidently.

I’d never seen the woman who stepped into the room behind her, brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, blue eyes narrowed in confusion. “I’m telling you, none of you is emitting a psychic signature right now. Or else, they’re all being...swallowed.”

Uh-oh
.

After a quick scan of the living room and what she could see of the kitchen, her gaze fell on me and lingered. “It’s her. It has to be.”

“What’s me?” I said, but I was pretty sure she’d figured out something no one else ever had, other than my mother.

“What’s going on Liv?” Kris sat on the arm of his chair again, but Kori and the new woman—Liv— remained standing. Staring at me.

“She’s a Jammer. She has to be. She’s jamming every one of your signatures. It’s like you don’t even
exist,
from a tracking perspective. Who are you?” she demanded. “I know every Jammer in the city, by name and face at least, but I don’t know you.”

Kris’s eyes widened. “What the hell is she talking about?”

Liv crossed her arms over her chest, and I noticed a slight bulge beneath her jacket. Were they
all
toting guns? “I tried to track you, to make sure you made it back from wherever you went.”

“The dumb-ass broke into Jake’s house,” Kori added with an irritated glance at her brother.

“But I couldn’t find any of you. Anywhere. I got nothing from this house, and couldn’t pick you up at Anne’s, or Meghan’s, either. And there’s no way you could have gotten out of my range that quickly. I thought...” She shrugged, and we could all see what she’d thought.

She’d thought they were dead.

“Then Anne and Hadley disappeared, too. I had Cam double-check for me, and he couldn’t find any of you either.”

“We’re fine.” Kori gestured to the room full of people. “Safe and sound.”

“Safer and more sound than ever, evidently,” Kris said, and I looked up to find him staring at me. “You’re a Jammer?”

I nodded reluctantly. No use denying it.

Anne pulled Hadley closer, as if my omission had put the child in some kind of danger, when in fact, the opposite was true. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

“You scared the
shit
out of me!” Liv snapped, and my own temper flared. “You should have told them, so they could tell me.”

I stood, furious now. “Five minutes ago, I didn’t even know you existed, much less that you’d freak out about not being able to find your friends. A situation that could’ve been remedied with a simple phone call, FYI.”

Liv’s eyes widened, and Kris seemed to be...grinning.

“And considering that I didn’t choose to be here and I can’t exactly turn off the jamming—” which didn’t work like most other Skills “—as far as I’m concerned, you can all go stick your heads up each other’s asses for all I care.” I glanced at Hadley and flinched when I saw her staring up at me, evidently unfazed by the profanity. “Or, you could just let me go.”

“Let her go?” Liv glanced around at her friends, waiting for an explanation.

“Kris kidnapped her from Tower’s house,” Kori said.

Her brother groaned. “I didn’t kidnap her. I just...” He shrugged. “She needed to come with me, but I didn’t have time for her to reach that conclusion on her own.”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “They call that
kidnapping.
”

“You kidnapped Julia Tower’s Jammer?” Liv looked impressed.

“No!” Kris and I said at the same time. Then I continued. “I’m not her Jammer. She doesn’t even
know
I’m a Jammer. No one does, except you bunch of psychos. Thanks for that, by the way.” I hoped they all choked on my sarcasm.

Everyone stared at me. Then Liv turned back to Kris. “What the hell were you thinking, breaking into Tower’s house? Kidnapping someone? Who
is
she?” She turned to me again. “Who are you?”

“Sera,” I said. “And for the thousandth time, that’s all any of you are getting from me until you give up some private information about yourselves.”

Looks flew across the room. Ian, Vanessa and Gran had joined us by then, and everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion.

“Fair enough.” Liv stepped forward and extended one hand for me to shake, over the coffee table. “Olivia Warren. I’m a Tracker. Bloodhound, specifically, but I can also use names when I have to. In the spirit of disclosure, and because you can’t hang out in this crowd for long without finding out anyway, I technically work for Ruben Cavazos.”

“Technically?” I wasn’t very familiar with syndicate bindings, but I knew who Cavazos was.
Everyone
knew who Cavazos was.

“Not by choice. But one of these days, he’s going to cross the line, and I’m going to have to...renegotiate.” She glanced at Hadley and forced a smile.

“Cavazos will never cross the line,” Kori mumbled. “Because you keep pushing the line back. When Cam gets tired of that, he’ll renegotiate
for
you. He may even survive.”

I glanced from Kori to Olivia. “And Cam would be?”