Oath Bound (Unbound)

Seven



Sera

After 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?”

“Cam’s her boyfriend,” Hadley said, and I looked down to see her smiling up at Olivia. “He works for my biological father, too.”

“Your biological father?” That struck a little too close to home.

The child nodded, and brown hair fell over her forehead. “Ruben. He lives in a big house, and there’s a huge TV in my room there.” She glanced at her mother and frowned at Anne’s stiff expression. “But I still like it better at home.”

“Your dad is Ruben Cavazos?”

“Not her dad,” Anne corrected. “Her father.”

Damn, could I ever identify with that statement.

I already knew about Kris and Kori Daniels, and their missing sister, Kenley, who was a Binder. Ian introduced himself as Ian Holt, a Blinder—he could pull darkness from...wherever and make shadows wherever he wanted. He and Kori kind of seemed made for each other.

Vanessa was unSkilled. She was also Kenley’s girlfriend, though it didn’t take long for me to realize that Gran seemed to think Van and Kris were an item.

“Your turn,” Kris said when everyone else was done making formal introductions. “Who are you? Who are you really?” he added for emphasis.

“Sera Brandt.”

“And...” Liv prompted.

I sighed and sank on the edge of the couch cushion behind me. “And...I’m a Jammer. But I don’t tell people that.” Then I told them what my mother had told me when I was eighteen and we’d finally figured out that I was, indeed, Skilled, even though she wasn’t. “I’m fortunate enough to have escaped syndicate notice so far, both because I live as far from organized syndicate activity as I can, and because I’m naturally hard to find. That’s part of being a Jammer.” The very best part of being a Jammer, and the only reason my mother had been able to hide me as well as she had. I shrugged. “That’s it. All that’s worth telling, anyway.”

Anne shook her head. “There’s more,” she said and they all turned to me expectantly. Again.

“What, you think I’m just going to bare my soul to a room full of strangers? Not gonna happen. The interrogation’s over. We’re either going to have a civil discussion, or none at all.”

“I’m fine with that,” Kris said with a shrug, and I glanced at him in surprise.

“Good. But to be clear, in a legitimate conversation, both sides get to ask questions and no one monitors the truth in their answers.” I shot a pointed glance at Anne, who shrugged, and I wondered if her ability was impossible to turn off, like mine. If so, was it even realistic of me to expect her to keep a perfect stranger’s secrets?

“I think we can all respect that,” Kris said. “What do you want to know?”

“What are you all doing here? Why are you hiding out in a house locked up from the inside? What is the ‘higher purpose’ you mentioned earlier? Why does Julia Tower need your sister?” I hadn’t realized I had so many questions for them, until the words tumbled from my mouth.

“Okay.” Kris took a deep breath. “Every one of those questions has a complicated answer, and when you put them together...the explanation is pretty involved. But the short version is this—we’re trying to take the Towers down.”

“Take them down? Like, kill them?” I wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled by the prospect—considering Julia’s willingness to take me down—or horrified.

“Put them out of business,” Ian clarified. “We’re trying to end their syndicate.”

“Which will mean killing some of them,” Kori added. “Most notably, Julia.”

Olivia sank into the chair where Kris still perched on the arm. “Kenley’s an important part of the effort. Julia took her to stop her from working against the syndicate.”

“But you’re sure she won’t kill Kenley?”

Kris gave me a grim nod. “She can’t afford to, at least for the moment.”

“Okay.” I stared at the floor, still processing most of what I’d just heard. “Your turn.”

“What do you want from Julia?” Ian asked. “What could possibly be worth putting yourself on their radar?”

“I need her to do something for me. Something personal and very important, that I can’t do for myself. But you don’t have to worry about them recruiting me. She doesn’t know I’m a Jammer.” And she wants me as far away from her borrowed empire as possible. “So I think I’m safe in that respect.”

“Some people are never safe,” Vanessa whispered. “Even when they legitimately have no Skill.”

“Anyway, she’ll figure it out if you wind up working with her.” Kris shrugged. “She’s a Reader. She’ll know if you lie.”

So they knew her Skill. But they hadn’t yet realized I knew ways around the truth.

“What did you want from her?” Kori asked. But instead of answering, I stood and wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans.

“That’s all I can afford to tell you, and I don’t want to insult you with a lie.” Again. Though, if they were smart, they’d search for my name online the moment I was gone, and from there it would be easy to guess what I’d wanted from Julia. But at least if they found the information themselves, I wouldn’t have to say the words. I wouldn’t have to remember it again for them, like I’d remembered it for Julia. “I need to go now. Please. That’s as nice as I’m gonna ask.”

Now that I knew Anne’s last name, I could contact her on my own. Later. Maybe she’d actually let me talk to her daughter again.

“Wait, Sera.” Kris stepped forward, and his eyes seemed to see nothing else. Nothing but me. “Please. I have a proposition for you.”

Anne’s brows rose.

“What proposition?” Kori asked, scowling, but her brother didn’t even glance at her.

“Work with us. Please. Work for us, if you need to see this as a real job. We’ll pay you. We need you.”

Olivia frowned. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t want your money,” I said before he could answer her. “I don’t want anything from you, except for an open door.” And another chat with Hadley, when I was ready. When I’d had time to prepare myself for what I might hear.

“Fine. Then let us work for you. As payment.” Kris stepped closer, and his gaze intensified. This meant something to him. “An exchange of services.”

I have to admit, I was curious. “Work for me...how?”

“However you need us. Whatever you wanted Julia to do for you. We’ll do it, and you won’t be indebted to the f*cking mafia.”

“We don’t even know what she wants done,” Ian pointed out.

“We don’t have time to work for her!” Vanessa insisted. “We have to find Kenley. That’s top priority.”

“Agreed,” Kori said, and everyone else nodded.

“Of course.” Kris never even looked at them. “And Sera can help us with that. In return we’ll owe her.”

I shook my head slowly, thoroughly confused. “I can’t help you. For the last time, I don’t know anything about the Towers. I can’t find your sister.”

“No, but you can keep us hidden while we find her. All you’d have to do is hang out with us. Just...stay, and come with us when we go out.” He turned to the rest of them then, glancing from face to face. “Julia won’t stop looking for us just because she has Kenley. She wants most of us dead.” He aimed a pointed look at Kori and Ian, who—I remembered—had killed Julia’s brothers. My biological father and uncle. “Sera can virtually hide us in plain sight.”

They seemed to think about that for a moment.

“Then she could stay even after we find Kenni...” Kori glanced at me. “If you would stay, and hide Kenley while she finishes...her work.”

I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea what Kenley’s work was, but I could certainly hide her. However... “What makes you think you can do what I need done?”

Kris actually smiled. “You happen to be in the presence of a sort of Skilled syndicate microcosm. Kori is a former syndicate bodyguard/hit man.”

“Not by choice,” she muttered. “And it’s hit woman. Though I prefer ‘badass assassin.’”

“Whatever you call her, she’s the best,” Kris said, and his sister looked somewhat mollified. “Liv and Cam are currently syndicate Trackers, on the other side of the city. Ian is a former Marine—Special Forces. There’s no skull he can’t bust.”

“It was a little more delicate of a job than that.” Ian looked insulted. “Though there was plenty of busting skulls.”

“Also, he can practically make his own damn eclipse. Which dovetails nicely with the Skill Kori and I share. Once we get Kenley back, we’ll have a Binder, and I—” He shrugged, not quite self-depreciatingly. “I’m good at finding things.”

“And finding people...” I remembered what he’d told me earlier. A people-finder was exactly what I needed. Also, a people-executioner.

Kris was right. Together, they represented a nearly complete cross-section of the Skilled population. And if I agreed, they’d have a Jammer.

But if we were going to do this...

I took a deep breath, then glanced around the room. “If I’m going to seriously consider working with you guys, you should know what you’re getting into.”

Kori shrugged. “Whatever it is, we’ve probably done it before.”

I hoped she was wrong. But then again, practical experience would come in handy.

I took another deep breath, but that one wasn’t enough to calm me. To fill the hole in my chest that had been growing since that horrible night. “A few months ago, my family...died.” I avoided the M-word at the last second, with a glance at Hadley. If she hadn’t seen any specifics of their murder, I wasn’t going to mentally lead her to the scene of the crime. “Unpleasantly. All of them.” I could tell from the looks of empathy and comprehension that the adults had all heard the part I hadn’t said. Even Gran. “I wanted Julia to find the man responsible. And end him.”

I waited for the objections, or at least some shocked protests. But none came.

Kori glanced at Ian, who glanced at Liv, who glanced at Kris, and they all seemed to come to the same conclusion at the exact same time.

Kris nodded. “Okay.”

I blinked at them. “That’s it? Just like that? You’re all okay with just...ending someone?”

“Just someone?” Kori met my gaze with a frank one of her own. “No. A cold-blooded murderer? Yeah. I’m good with it.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure why that surprised me as much as it did. Obviously, I was okay with it, too. It was my idea. The driving force behind my existence for the past few months. But I’d never expected to find a squad of assassins ready and willing to help me carry such a task out.

I made a mental note not to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.

“Okay, then. You have yourself a Jammer. Just so we’re clear, though, I’m free to leave whenever I want, right? This is no longer a hostage situation?”

Kris rolled his eyes. “It never was.”

“Then...can someone take me to get my stuff?”

Kori stood, but Kris was faster. “Yeah. The sooner the better.”

“Great.” I headed straight for the closet door with Kris behind me, but I turned back when I remembered what I’d never gotten a chance to say earlier. “Oh, Anne?” I said, and she looked up. “Your daughter is no ordinary Seer.”

“What do you mean?” She looked decidedly nervous.

“She doesn’t just see the future. She can also see the past.”