Oath Bound (Unbound)

Six



Kris

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kori shoved pale blond hair back from her face as I closed my bedroom door behind us. “She’s not a threat. We have to let her go.”

“Not yet. She may know something about Kenley.”

“She doesn’t.” My sister sank onto the end of my unmade bed, her eyes even darker than usual with exhaustion. And fear for Kenley. And probably anger at me. “Sera was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that got her kidnapped by some jackass who follows his dick as if it points true north.”

“It’s not like that—”

Kori rolled her eyes. “Don’t even try it. I see the way you look at her, but you can’t keep her just because you want her, and the longer you try, the more she’ll hate you.”

“I’m not looking at her in any particular way.” I wasn’t going to deny that Sera was beautiful. But... “This isn’t about sex. She’s not even my type.”

“Oh, please. Your type is ‘conscious.’”

My type was Noelle. Since I was eighteen years old, I’d never wanted more than a single night with anyone but her, and that hadn’t changed when I’d realized she was gone. Losing Elle didn’t make me want someone else. Losing her made me want to push everyone else away.

But Sera was different. I’d known that from the moment I first saw her. Noelle was dead, and Sera was the first clue I’d found to the secrets that were born on Elle’s lips and died in my notebook. But beyond that, Sera was important in her own right. She needed us. We needed her. I wasn’t clear on the hows and whys, but I knew the answers were there. Sera had them.

I could have them, if I could earn her trust. But I couldn’t do that if Kori sent her away.

“You said it yourself, Kor.” I pulled out my desk chair and sat backward in it, facing my sister. The room was so small I could have reached out and touched her—I’d given the larger rooms to the couples. “Julia never would have let her in the house if she wasn’t important, but if she’s important, they wouldn’t have been willing to kill her. Something’s going on there. We’re missing something.”

Kori shook her head. “I said Jake never would have let her in the house, and I assumed Julia would do the same. But I could be wrong. Maybe she’s taking all her meetings at home, so she can control the venue, to minimize risks.” I started to argue, but my sister talked over me. “And maybe it’s not Sera who’s important—maybe it’s killing her that’s important.” She shrugged. “Maybe Julia was just hoping to kill two birds with one bullet.”

“They used way more than one bullet...” I mumbled. But I couldn’t find fault in her logic. “Fine. Maybe they want to kill Sera. But if that’s the case, don’t we have an obligation to protect her? You know, the whole enemy-of-an-enemy thing?”

“Do I look like a Boy Scout to you?” Kori scooted back to sit yoga-style on my rumpled blue comforter. “I only give a shit about three things right now. Getting Kenley back, unharmed.” She ticked off the points on her fingers. “Breaking every binding keeping Julia Tower in power. And protecting the people I care about. And I don’t care about Sera-whatever-her-last-name-is. I don’t even know her. And neither do you.” Her gaze narrowed on me. “She’s not going to sleep with you, Kris. You f*cking kidnapped her.”

“I’m not trying to...” Not that I’d turn her down. But that wasn’t the point. “And I didn’t kidnap her. I—”

“Save it. We’re letting her go.” She stood and headed for the door, and I stepped into her path.

“Sit back down. We’re not done here.”

Kori blinked at me, more curious than truly angry. “What the hell is going on with this girl, Kris?”

“We can’t let her go.” When I was sure she wouldn’t stomp out of the room without hearing me out, I sank onto the end of the bed facing her. “I think she’s important. We might need her.”

Kori frowned and sank into the chair I’d vacated. “Need her for what?”

“I don’t know. I just know that I was supposed to take her, so I took her.”

She crossed both arms over the back of the chair. “Kris, what the hell are you talking about?”

I hesitated. I hesitated so long my sister started to look at me funny. “Okay,” I said finally. “I’ll tell you what I know, but you have to promise not to—” call the men in white lab coats “—laugh.”

“No way. That’s a sister’s most sacred birthright.”

“Shut up and come here.” I scooted to the front of the unmade bed, next to the nightstand. My hands started to sweat as I pulled open the drawer and lifted out the notebook.

“What’s that?” Kori tried to take it as if we were still kids arguing over a new toy, but I pulled it away from her, just like I always had as a child.

“This is Noelle. What’s left of her, anyway.”

“What does that even mean?” She sank onto the mattress next to me.

“Don’t get mad.” Another deep breath. “I know she was your best friend, but when you guys were sixteen...we started...seeing each other. Like, all of each other. Privately.”

Kori laughed.

“Why is that funny? I’m serious. Elle and I were a thing.” A top secret, middle of the night, swear-on-your-life-you’ll-never-tell kind of thing.

Her smile had taken on a life of its own. “It’s funny that you think I didn’t know.”

“You knew?” I couldn’t process that. Surely if she’d known, Elle and I would never have heard the end of it.

She shrugged. “I figured there had to be a reason she wanted all the sleepovers to be at our house, and that it had nothing to do with Gran’s winning personality.” Another shrug. “Also, I woke up in the middle of the night a few times, and she was gone. The first time I freaked out—until I heard the two of you down the hall.” Kori shuddered at the memory. “It was disgusting. It was also none of my business.”

Disgusting? “Yeah, well, now my room is between the one you share with Ian and the one Kenni shares with Van. I think we’re even.” But the mention of Kenley had sobered us both.

“So...what’s with the notebook?”

I flipped it open and gave her a look at the first page full of dates and broken phrases—whatever I could understand of Noelle’s night mumblings. “Elle talked in her sleep.”

“Holy shit.” Kori grabbed the notebook. Her focus scrolled left to right, up and down as she read. “You wrote all this down in the middle of the night? Are they predictions?”

“Some of them.” I fought the urge to snatch the notebook back. Those handwritten lines were all I had left of the girl I’d loved more than the world itself, from the first time I saw her until the day she’d died. Then long after. They’d been mine that whole time. Private memories. Abandoned potential. And—when I realized I couldn’t interpret any of the lines—my secret shame. “I don’t know how many are predictions and how many were just dream fodder. For all I know, they’re all both. Maybe her dreams were predictions.”

She flipped through the pages, scanning words too fast to be absorbing any of them. “What made you start... I mean, how did you know to write them down?”

“I didn’t at first. But do you remember the day that school bus driver fell asleep and drove through a crosswalk? The crossing guard died?”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly, her gaze unfocused with the memory. “After that, we started driving Kenley to school, so she wouldn’t have to take the bus.”

“Yeah.” That had made sense at the time. If one bus driver was a Nyquil guzzling lunatic, they all could be. “You had a sleepover the weekend before. Noelle snuck into my room when you, Liv and Anne passed out, and afterward, we fell asleep. A couple of hours later, I rolled over to tell her she had to get back to your room before anyone woke up, and she was talking. Kind of...whispering. But her eyes were closed. She was asleep.”

“What’d she say?” Kori’s eyes were huge.

“I can’t remember, exactly, but it was something about a crosswalk, then, ‘Wake him up!’ It made no sense at the time, but then that Monday, there was the bus accident, and I made the connection. I wrote everything down after that. See the dates?” I pointed out the first one, and Kori stared at it, fascinated. “I know it sounds stupid now, but at the time, all I could think was that if I’d known what she was talking about, I could have stopped it. I could have saved that crossing guard. She had kids, you know. It was in the paper.”

My sister stared into my eyes as if she could see through them into my soul. “So you thought that if you wrote it all down, you could...what? Play superhero? Snatch women from railroad tracks before the train even leaves the station?”

I could only shrug. “I told you it sounds dumb.”

“Yeah, it does.” Yet there was a smile lurking at the corners of her mouth. “But only because prophesies are notoriously ambiguous, and you are notoriously ambitious. So...did it work?”

“Not even once.” I could feel my shoulders slump and wondered if I looked as guilty and frustrated as I felt. “I stopped sleeping when she came over, so I wouldn’t miss a word. I kept a flashlight in my nightstand—”

“Next to the condoms, right?” Kori said, and it took me a second to realize she was teasing.

“Yeah, actually. Anyway, writing it down was easy. Figuring it out was hard.” Impossible, really. “Every now and then something would happen, and a line or two from the notebook would suddenly make sense. But by then, it was too late. I never figured any of it out in time to actually make a difference, until today.”

“Sera?” Kori had made the connection, but she couldn’t understand it yet. But then, neither could I.

“Here.” I took the notebook and flipped through the pages, looking for the familiar entry. I’d read them all a million times, but that one had always stood out, because of the directive.

“Damn, Kris,” she mumbled as I scanned page after page. “How long were you two...a thing?”

“Six years.” I didn’t realize my sister was staring at me until I found the right entry and looked up. “Off and on,” I amended, with one glance at her stunned expression. “Mostly off, for the last two, when... Cavazos. Then Hadley.”

It hurt to think those thoughts, but it hurt even more to speak them.

“Oh, shit.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “So, you and Elle were still together when she met Ruben?”

“We were never really together. Not like that. Not exclusively.” I’d tried for exclusivity, but Noelle was the kind of bird that dies in captivity. She’d needed the freedom to soar wherever the wind took her, and it took her away from me as often as it brought her back.

But in the end, freedom killed her faster than captivity ever could have, surely. And maybe I would have seen it coming, if I could have interpreted that damn notebook.

When I found my way out of my own head, Kori was still staring at me, waiting for more information. For the glimpse into a side of Elle’s life she’d never seen.

“She left after high school, like everyone else.” Anne and Liv had gone to college. Kori had attended the school of life and nearly flunked that the way she’d nearly flunked high school, because she refused to play by the rules. I’d had no better college prospects than she’d had, so I’d stayed with Gran and Kenley, working for anyone who needed a shadow-walker. I hadn’t been picky about the jobs, then. I hadn’t understood that not all of the syndicates’ recruits were volunteers.

I hadn’t realized I’d become a subcontractor helping them fill quotas until something that went very wrong turned out to be very right. I’d spent most of the decade after high school trying to make up for what I’d done the year I was nineteen, but Noelle had...

Well, no one really knew where Noelle went after graduation. She just kind of disappeared about the same time I was turning my life around. But...

“Elle came back more often than the rest of you,” I told Kori as I turned the pages of my notebook. “And when she was in town, we’d just pick up where we’d left off.”

That was all my sister needed to know. She didn’t need to hear about ice cream in bed, and all-night Abbot and Costello marathons, and the conversations we’d had when Elle was awake.

She didn’t need to know that every time Elle left town again, she’d sneak out of my bed in the middle of the night, with no note. No goodbye. It might be months before I saw her again. Once, it was years. And she’d arrive just as suddenly as she’d left. With no warning.

Until she stopped arriving.

“You found it?” Kori’s voice brought me back to the present, as if time was a rubber band being snapped against my skin.

It stung.

“Yeah. Here.”

She followed my finger to a passage written in blue ink, nearly eight years earlier. Noelle had been twenty. I’d been twenty-two. “Take the girl in the yellow scarf.” Kori looked up at me again. “That’s it? Just, ‘Take the girl in the yellow scarf’?”

“Yeah. It meant nothing until today, when I saw Sera standing there in that yellow scarf.”

Fresh skepticism swam in my sister’s eyes. “How do you know she meant this girl? This yellow scarf? Is she seriously the only girl in a yellow scarf you’ve ever seen?”

I thought about that for a second. “Yeah, actually, I think she is.” The only one I remembered, anyway. And that had to mean something, right? If I’d seen another girl in a yellow scarf, I hadn’t noticed her, and that had to mean something, too, right? “Anyway, I know because the moment I saw her, I thought of this. And not just my handwriting, blue ink on white lines. I thought of the night Noelle said this. The night I wrote it down. It just felt...” Right. “It felt like this is the girl Noelle wanted me to take. So I took her. And as bad as I feel keeping her here when she wants to leave, I can’t let her go until she’s done whatever she’s supposed to do, or I’ve done whatever I’m supposed to do. Or until I know whatever Elle wanted me to know.”

But Kori clearly thought I’d lost my mind. “Kris...”

“Don’t. I’m not crazy. Do you have any idea how many people have died because I couldn’t figure this out?” I closed the notebook and laid one hand on its ratty cover. “Because I don’t. I have no idea how many people I’ve failed to save, like I failed to save that crossing guard.” Like I’d failed to save Noelle. “I don’t know, because I can’t figure most of these out. This is the first time I’ve even come close to seeing what she wanted me to see, and I’m not going to give up on that.” I wasn’t going to give up on her.

“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.”