Oath Bound. Rachel Vincent

her closer. My gaze met hers from inches away and she gasped at whatever she saw in mine, then bit her lip. “The difference is that if the Towers think you’re a threat, they will have you beaten, raped and tortured in front of an audience—they’ll call it an object lesson—before they finally give you conflicting orders and watch your body tear itself apart trying to follow both commands at once.”

      She’d stopped breathing, but her gaze had only intensified. Sharpened. “You’re trying to scare me.”

      “Yes. But I’m scaring you with the truth.” I tried not to think about how close she was and how badly I wanted to touch her. And how much she would hate that.

      I hated knowing she’d recoil from my touch.

      “They are bad people who do bad things for sport and for profit. We are good people who do bad things to protect people who can’t protect themselves from the Julia Towers of the world.” I should have let her go. I should have pushed her chair back so she could stand, but I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t feel particularly guilty about that.

      “You’ll do bad things, too, eventually,” I said, and when she shifted in the chair, her jeans brushed my thumb. “In our world, there’s no way around that, and the fact that I met you in Julia Tower’s office tells me that you’re in that world now, for better or worse. The only thing you have left to decide is which side you want to fight for. Because you will fight, or you will die.”

      Kori shrugged. “Or maybe you’ll fight, then you’ll die. That happens here, too.”

      Neither of us acknowledged her. Sera’s gaze was locked in mine. At least, that’s what I thought until I tried to look away and discovered I was as trapped by the look in her eyes as she was by the doors I’d screwed shut.

      The difference was that I didn’t want to escape.

      I should have moved my hand, but Sera hadn’t moved her leg, so I left my hand where it was and let the heat bleeding through her denim warm one side of my thumb. “Take off your scarf,” I said, and my voice was lower than I’d meant for it to be. Deeper. I didn’t think she’d comply, but her gaze held mine while she unwound the thin material from her neck and shoulders. She handed it to me and I held it for a second, stunned by the realization that the yellow scarf from my notebook weighed nothing.

      And that it smelled just like her. Clean, and vaguely sweet and enticing, in a way I could never have put into words, but would never, ever forget.

      Kori cleared her throat and I blinked in surprise, then realized I was still staring at Sera from less than a foot away, and now I was fingering her silk scarf like some kind of pervert with an accessories fetish.

      I rocked back onto my heels and draped her scarf over the foot of my grandmother’s bed, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt.

      “We still need to see your arm.” I stood and Sera stared up at me, and I wished I knew her well enough to understand the intense blend of strength, fear and anger warring behind her eyes. “You want me to step outside?”

      Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and her gaze hardened. “I don’t care what you do.”

      But that was a lie. Women who don’t care what you do have no reason to tell you that.

      I started to turn, to give her some privacy, but she turned faster. She pulled her left arm out of its long sleeve, then lifted that side of her shirt to her shoulder, revealing half of a slim, almost delicate waist above the denim clinging to the swell of her hip.

      My throat felt tight. I tried not to stare. When that didn’t work, I tried not to look like I was staring. If Kori noticed, I couldn’t tell. She was fixated on Sera’s arm, as I should have been.

      With the front of her shirt clutched to her chest, Sera twisted to show us her left arm, and I exhaled in relief before I realized she would hear that, and that she might understand how badly I’d wanted her to be unaffiliated with the Towers, and not just for her own sake. Not just for Kenley’s sake.

      For my sake.

      Her arm was smooth and pale, and completely unmarked. She was free from obligation not just to the Towers, but to any of the other syndicates who routinely marked their employees in the same spot. And that was most of them.

      Sera was unbound.

      Based on the lack of dead marks, she’d never been bound, which would explain her incomprehension of just how vile the syndicates really were. But if that was the case—if she didn’t work for Julia Tower—why had my notebook told me to take her? How was she supposed to help us get Kenley back?

      Maybe she wasn’t. My head spun with that possibility. Maybe Sera wasn’t supposed to help me. Maybe I was supposed to help her.

      Kori shrugged, arms folded over her chest, while Sera slid her arm back into its sleeve. “Well, assuming the rest of her is as spotless as her arm, I’m good with letting her walk around unfettered until Anne gets here.”

      “Me, too.” I hadn’t planned to tie her up at all until she tried to climb out the window.

      “The rest of me is fine, but I’m not showing you anything else.” When Sera turned to face us, I saw that her resolution was just as firmly back in place as her shirt. “I’m not a prostitute.”

      “We know,” I assured her.

      Kori shrugged again. “I believe you, but what I believe doesn’t matter. You have to make Anne believe.” She turned to me, already reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll go get her.” Then she stepped into the hall and left the door open behind her back.

      “She’s … interesting.” Sera glanced at the bed, as if she was considering sitting, then she sat in the chair instead. “Kinda scary.”

      “Yeah. I’d like to say that’s Tower’s fault, but the truth is that Kori’s always been a little scary. I think that’s why he liked her.” Until suddenly he didn’t like her.

      “She really worked for him?”

      “Yup.” I knew better than to give her any new information, but I could verify what Kori had already said. “And she hated every minute of it.”

      “She seemed legitimately surprised to see me.”

      I sat on the edge of my grandmother’s desk, trying to look casual, as if I weren’t dying to interrogate her, to figure out how and why she fit into my notebook. And by extension, into my life. “As opposed to what?” Then I understood. “You still think I planned this.”

      She shrugged and glanced at the nails I’d driven into the window frame. “You sealed all the exits. It’s kind of hard to believe you didn’t go to the Tower estate intending to take a prisoner.”

      “Okay, I know that looks bad, but the doors and windows have been nailed shut for weeks,” I insisted, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I did that to keep everyone else out, not to keep you in.”

      She looked like she wanted to believe me, but …

      “If you can’t take my word for it, ask Kori when she gets back.” Or any of the others. I’d tell her to ask Gran, but I could never be sure what decade Gran was currently living in.

      “If that’s the truth, why do you have such easy access to restraints?” She bent to pick up the severed zip tie.

      “Those are for my job.”

      “Are you a cop?” She studied me closer, as if that thought made her rethink her original assessment.

      I actually laughed. “No. I … um … retrieve things.” That was half the truth. I couldn’t trust her with the other half. Not yet. Although if Gran kept slipping into the past, Sera would figure it out for herself.

      “Things?” Sera may have been young, but she was a born skeptic. Not that I’d given her any reason to trust me.

      “People,