Oath Bound

  This is it. The moment when I had to decide how much to trust them. I could give them the location, which would lead them to the crime itself and then they’d know who I’d been, before my family died. They’d see the shattered remains of my life laid out across their computer screens in illicitly gained police reports.

  Then they would look at me differently. Pity would outweigh any respect I’d gained. But that wouldn’t bring them any closer to discovering the secret of my birth.

  “Andersen,” I said at last. “About an hour north of the state line.”

  Andersen wasn’t my hometown; it was just the latest in a series of relocations meant to keep us from being found, in spite of my mother’s insistence that my biological father had no idea I existed. We’d been in Andersen for six years, since my junior year in high school. That was the longest we’d ever lived anywhere, and my family had only stayed there because when I’d gone off to college, I took the target on my back with me.

  In retrospect, the town made sense, as had all the ones before. Anderson had just over one hundred thousand residents. It was a big enough place that no one noticed or really cared when someone new moved into the neighborhood, but too small to hold any real interest for any of the major Skilled syndicates. The perfect place to hide in plain sight.

  Until a random act of violence—a home invasion with no clear motive—had taken away everyone I’d ever wanted to protect.

  The click of computer keys drew me back into the present, where several sets of eyes stared at me. Vanessa was still searching, and if she hadn’t found the news articles yet, she would soon. In a town the size of Andersen, the unsolved murder of almost an entire family was still big news.

  “Is there anything else you think we should know?” Olivia asked, and I answered on my way up the stairs.

  “Only that I want him dead. But first, I want him to suffer.”

  Kris

  When I stepped out of the upstairs bathroom, Van was waiting for me in the doorway to the room she and Kenley had shared. She tossed her head toward the door, silently asking me to come in. Which meant she didn’t want someone to know whatever she had to say.

  I followed her into her room and pushed the door closed at my back, then sank onto Kenley’s side of the unmade bed, where Van’s laptop was open on the rumpled comforter. “What’s up?”

  “I found her.”

  “Kenley?” My heart thumped almost painfully.

  “No. Sera and her family,” Van whispered, glancing at the closed door. “I found all of it, and it’s not pretty.”

  “It’s the scene of a triple homicide.” Quadruple, if you counted the unborn baby, which Sera obviously did. “I wouldn’t expect it to be pretty.”

  Vanessa tucked her feet beneath her on the rumpled comforter and pulled the computer onto her lap. She ran a finger over the mouse pad and the screen glowed to life, zoomed in on a news site I’d never heard of. “I just sent the link to Olivia so she and Cam could get started. But are you sure you want to read this?”

  I scooted back to lean against the headboard next to her, angled so that my feet hung over the edge of the mattress. Kenley hated shoes on the bed. “I’m sure I don’t want to read it.” But I had to know. Whatever Sera was—whoever she was—this was the event that would shape the rest of her life, and I couldn’t know her without knowing what she’d been through. And I wanted to know Sera. Even if she no longer wanted to know me.

  “Why don’t you just sum it up for me?” I let my head fall back against the padded headboard. “If you don’t mind.”

  Vanessa shrugged and scrolled on her mouse pad, and I avoided looking at the screen. “It’s your basic home invasion, made more horrifying because we actually know one of the victims. Middle of the night break-in. One perpetrator, according to the police report. The only description they got out of Sera was ‘tall.’ Her dad was the only one still awake when it started, playing guitar in the family room. He must have heard something, because he was shot in the kitchen, through his own guitar. The ballistics report says the gunman used a silencer and facts support that. The neighbors didn’t hear anything and the mother never woke up. She was shot in her own bed.”

  Chill bumps popped up on my arms. How much of that had Sera seen? How much had she heard?

  “He took his time with her sister. Nadia. Poor thing was only eighteen. The police report says he slapped a strip of duct tape over her mouth while she was still in bed asleep, then dragged her into the living room and...well...took his time.”

  Vanessa’s jaw clenched, and for a second she looked like she’d be sick.

  I felt the same way. “Sick bastard. Eighteen and pregnant, and he—”

  Van frowned at me. “Nadia wasn’t pregnant.”

  “Sera said she was. Maybe the police didn’t know, if she wasn’t very far along.”

  Vanessa blinked at me, and suddenly there was caution in her expression. Wariness. There was something she didn’t want to tell me.

  “Just say it, Van.” Though I wasn’t sure I really meant that.

  “Kris, Nadia wasn’t pregnant. She survived the initial attack, but died in the hospital the next day of a stab wound to the abdomen, without regaining consciousness.”

  As I struggled to think around a thick fog of confusion—the truth was there, but it wasn’t sinking in—Van turned her laptop around so I could see it.

  The headline ripped me wide open, and horror leaked into my soul.

  Pregnant Woman Survives Home Invasion;

  Loses Baby

  I got through the first three sentences of the article before my eyes closed on their own, as if they’d seen all they could take. I couldn’t breathe. That horror had clawed its way up my throat and was blocking my air passage.

  Sera had been four and a half months pregnant when she was stabbed in the stomach and left for dead.

  Sera. Not Nadia.

  The police report said she came out of hiding to defend her sister, fought with the intruder, then crawled to the telephone to call for help after their attacker fled the scene.

  That’s why she hid.

  She wasn’t protecting herself. She was protecting her baby.

  I shoved the laptop away so suddenly it was teetering on the edge of the mattress when Van grabbed it.

  Sera had been pregnant. She saw her parents murdered. She saw her sister brutalized, and when she tried to help Nadia, she’d lost her own unborn child. And nearly died along with her sister.

  But even as I thought that over, trying to digest the horror and depth of her loss, the totality of the rage and isolation she must be suffering with every beat of her heart, some small detail nagged at the back of my brain, clamoring for attention.

  I opened my eyes and pulled Van’s laptop closer to read the first line again. And there it was, in black and white. I hadn’t really noticed it my first time through because the crime itself was shocking enough.

  She’d kept her last name secret, but it turns out I hadn’t known her first name either.

  Sera was Sera Brandt. S-E-R-A. Short for Serenity.

  Holy shit.

  It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

  I shoved the laptop at Van again, then stood and crossed the floor in three steps. I pulled the door open so hard and fast the hinges groaned with the pressure, then I raced into the hall and down the stairs, leaving Vanessa staring after me in surprise. In the living room, I grabbed my bag from the end of the couch and pulled out Noelle’s notebook, then started flipping through it frantically, still standing.

  I was four pages in when I found the first mention.

  Find serenity.

  Noelle had said it in her sleep, twelve years ago. Then again, five months after that.

  Save serenity.

  And twice more, over the next
two years.

  Serenity waits. and Family, serenity.

  I hadn’t once capitalized her name, because I hadn’t realized it was a name.

  Noelle had been trying to tell me all along, though she probably didn’t understand the message at all. Sera hadn’t appeared in the notebook to help me—she’d appeared so I could help her.

  Stunned, I closed the notebook and dropped it into my bag, disgusted with my own ignorance. Horrified by my own failure. What good did it do for me to have glimpses of the future at my fingertips when I couldn’t make sense of a damn one of them?

  I was supposed to save Sera and her family. I was supposed to find her and stop the bastard who broke into her house and slaughtered her entire family. Including her unborn child. Hunting down their killer was a secondary goal, only necessary if I failed to keep him from committing the prophesied atrocities in the first place.

  Which was exactly what I’d done.

  I’d given up. I’d put the notebook away and turned my back on every preventable accident and atrocity predicted within it, because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out the puzzles.

  Because of me, Sera had lost everyone she’d ever loved.

  How the hell was I supposed to tell her that?

  Fourteen

  Sera

  When I came downstairs that afternoon, finally drawn from my room by the scent of homemade chili, Kris was at the kitchen table again, alone this time, his nose buried in that journal, his jaw clenched with some intense emotion I couldn’t define or understand. I wanted to talk to him, despite my lingering embarrassment. I wanted to know why he was so angry, and whether or not I was the cause.

  I wanted to know if he’d found my family online. If he’d read about what had happened to them. To us. I wanted to know whether I’d see pity or anger in his gaze when it next met mine, so I could plan my response accordingly. I’d lied to him about what happened, so any anger on his part was probably warranted, and most people would think pity was appropriate, as well, but I couldn’t stand to see either. Not from Kris.

  So I only watched him for a minute, knowing I should have been relieved by how focused he was on that stupid notebook. Keeping my distance from him would be easier with Noelle standing between us.

  But I didn’t feel relieved. I felt...alone.

  Kris didn’t notice me, so I snuck out with a smile and nod to Gran, who was stirring a big pot on the stove.

  I hadn’t had chili in months. My dad had made it once a week, every winter of my life. He’d spent Saturdays soaking beans and Sundays simmering sauce on the stove, and if I asked nicely and used a clean spoon, he’d let me have an early taste. I’d missed weekend chili when I’d gone off to college, but every time I came home for winter break, I’d find a pot on the stove and a clean spoon waiting for me on the counter.

  There would be no more of my dad’s chili. That hadn’t occurred to me until I saw Gran making hers, and as I fled the kitchen, I fought a sudden, irrational urge to dump her chili into the garbage disposal because it dared to exist when my dad’s chili never would again.

  In the living room, Van was curled up in the armchair with her laptop, clicking away as if her fingers would never tire. She glanced up at me and smiled, and I found sympathy in her gaze. No—worse—empathy.

  She’d found news coverage of my family’s deaths, at the very least. I could tell from the new way she looked at me, and if she knew, Kris knew. They might all know. But she didn’t call me over or try to ensnare me in some kind of bullshit therapeutic chat, for which I was eminently grateful.

  Kori and Ian sat on the couch, talking in hushed tones with a map spread out on the coffee table in front of them. He was shirtless again, with a big white bandage taped over his shoulder. When he twisted to reach for a pen on the end table, I saw a matching bandage on his other side. The bullet had gone all the way through.

  When Ian had winced and sucked in a sharp breath three times in less than a minute, Kori stood and tossed her pen onto the end table, mumbling something about stubborn-ass men who made no use of the available resources. She stomped down the hall and into the closet, where—presumably—she disappeared through the shadows, despite his protest.

  Several minutes later, the closet door opened again and everyone who had a gun drew it, just in case. Then Kori stepped into the hall again with a woman I’d never seen before, but everyone else seemed to recognize.

  “Meg, you really didn’t have to come,” Ian said, but Kori rolled her eyes and Meg waved away his congenial objection.

  “You’d do the same for me or Steve.” This was Ian’s twin brother’s wife. Meghan. The Healer.

  I watched, fascinated, as she sat on the center couch cushion and gently peeled off the bandage on the front of Ian’s shoulder. “Ready?” Meg asked, and Ian nodded, his jaw already clenched against the pain.

  Meg took a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her pocket and rubbed a dollop onto her palms, then pressed her right hand against Ian’s bare, still-bloody wound.

  He hissed again and Meghan stiffened, and a second later, thin black lines appeared on the back of her hand and across her arm, as though her veins were rotting from the inside out. I’d never seen anything like it, and could only assume that was normal for a Healer when no one else seemed impressed or upset.

  A couple of minutes later, Ian’s jaw unclenched, and a minute after that, Meg let him go and slouched sideways against the back of the couch. When she’d caught her breath, she inspected the wound, which had closed but was still an angry red color, beneath smears of Ian’s blood. “That’s better.” She nodded, obviously satisfied. “Not perfect, but good enough that you should be able to use it, if you’re careful.”

  “Thanks, Meghan.” Ian squeezed her hand and Kori took his bloody bandages to the bathroom, where she would burn them in the sink to destroy the viable blood sample. Gran brought two smaller clean ones, and Meghan carefully taped them over the wound again.

  Then Kori took Meg back to wherever she and Steven were staying while he finished recuperating.

  “Liv and Cam got called in,” Vanessa said when I settled into Gran’s rocker across the room. “They’ll be back, though, and hopefully I’ll have something for them to go on by then. The police questioned a couple of possible suspects in your case, both parolees with convictions for breaking and entering and burglary. But neither of them match your description, and neither have a history of violence.”

  “So, no other leads?” I tried not to sound as disappointed as I felt.

  “Not yet. But the police have plenty of...physical evidence. All the blood they found belongs to...your family. But it’s possible that Liv can find something they missed. She only needs a drop or two to get a feel for the owner, so if he bled on anything, she’ll be able to tell us if he’s anywhere within her range. The tricky part will be getting our hands on the evidence. Not impossible for a group with our varied talents. But too complicated a project for today.”

  “Of course.” I had to remind myself that I was in no hurry. Kenley was in immediate danger, so her case had to come first. The sooner we found her, the faster they’d be free to help me hunt down and kill the bastard who’d taken my whole life from me.

  “How can I help?” I said when Ian looked up at me and smiled. “What are we doing?”

  “Van got us a partial list of the Tower syndicate’s real-estate holdings, so we’re going through the list of warehouses, looking for one that could possibly work for the blood farm.”

  I stared at all the red circles on their map, trying to make sense of names and places I’d never seen before. “Any luck?”

  “Too much luck.” Kori walked out of the closet and closed the door, stepping into our conversation as easily as she’d stepped out of the shadows. “Tower owns nearly two dozen warehouses in the city alone, and who k
nows how many in other areas. I’ve been to several of them, and the truth is that any one of them could house the blood farm. Julia has the money to set up all of the necessary supplies and equipment anywhere she wants, and it could take us days to search all of these individually.”

  “And this is just a partial list,” Vanessa added, peeking over her laptop screen.

  Ian looked grim as he studied his list, then circled another point on the map. “We need some way to narrow them down.”

  “That’s what Kris is working on.” Skepticism was thick in Kori’s voice. “Did he tell you about the notebook?”

  “Yeah. And about Noelle.” Did I sound bitter about the fact that she’d had him for so long, but I never would? I must have—Kori’s pale brows rose and I swear she almost smiled. “You guys are all messed up. Your relationships are, like...twisted.”

  Ian laughed, but Kori only nodded. “Sometimes when you’re tied too tightly to the people you care about, the strings get tangled. You can either cut them loose or pull them tighter. I’m sure you can figure out which one we chose, based on the knot we’re in now.”

  Yeah. They were tied so tightly together I couldn’t tell where one relationship ended and the next began—siblings, lovers, friends, caretakers, defenders and coworkers. They were everything to one another, and I could see that sometimes those bonds chafed, but from where I stood—a single thread dangling alone in the wind—their tangled knot looked pretty damn secure.

  “So, do you think he’ll find anything in that notebook? Do you think it’s even possible?”

  Ian and Van looked to Kori for an answer, and I found myself doing the same. Kori shrugged. “It’s more than possible. I never knew Noelle to be wrong. But the chances of anyone figuring out what she was talking about in time to be useful are slim to none.”