Shadow Bound

  “Okay…” Kori came close, obviously thinking, and I didn’t miss the glance she threw at the alarm clock next to the bed. Vanessa’s time was slipping away, along with Steven’s. “Whatever this binding is, he only breached it a couple of weeks ago, right?” she said, and I deferred to Meghan. I wasn’t even in the country when the whole thing started. I’d been gone for nearly seven years.

  “Um, yeah.” Meghan sniffled. “I’ll never forget because it was the night he proposed. We had a wonderful dinner, then there was the question, and the ring…” She held her hand out and studied the diamond on her left ring finger. “Half an hour later, he got a migraine, and we had to leave in the middle of dessert.”

  “Oh, hell,” Kori said, turning to see if I’d come to the same conclusion. And I had. Only I knew more than she did. More than any of them could possibly know. “Love Knot,” she said, and I nodded. But the name was a misnomer—you can’t control someone’s emotions, no matter what you bind them to. But that didn’t stop the occasional love-sick adolescent—or desperate college student—from preventing the object of her affection from marrying—or proposing marriage—to anyone else.

  Kenley watched us, obviously trying to think through her own pain to follow the conversation. “You’re saying the Love Knot my college roommate used my blood for six years ago was targeting your boyfriend’s twin brother? What are the chances?”

  Kori shrugged and shook her head slowly. “I stopped asking that years ago. How did Jake break the seal?”

  “He didn’t. He said he couldn’t,” Kenley said, and my temper flared.

  “He only said that because he didn’t want you to know you could break your own bindings.”

  “So, what, he just lied and said the binding was broken, when it wasn’t?” Kori asked.

  Kenley shook her head. “He helped me transfer it.”

  I frowned. “You can’t transfer a binding.”

  Kenley shrugged. “Evidently you can, under certain circumstances. In this case, he said the target had a dead brother, close in age. And Nadia didn’t have a sample of Steven’s blood, so she used a name binding. Jake’s man showed me how to transfer the binding to the dead brother, where it couldn’t hurt anyone.” She gave another little shrug, brow furrowed from the headache. “Dead people don’t fall in love, you know.” Then she turned to me, frowning. “Except that you’re not dead.”

  “He’s not bound, either,” Meghan pointed out. “If you transferred the binding, why is Steven still bound?”

  I exhaled heavily and rubbed my own forehead, leaning back in my chair. “Because she transferred the binding to Steven, not from him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kori said.

  “Oh, shit. Your names,” Aaron said, and I looked up to see him still sitting on the floor, his fractured arm clutched to his chest. He wouldn’t take care of his own injuries until he knew his sister was safe.

  “What about your names?” Kori asked. “The quick version,” she added, with another glance at the clock.

  “My mom raised us to be paranoid,” I said. “She told us from the time our Skills manifested that people would want to use them. She said we’d have to hide our Skills, and possibly hide ourselves. Turns out she was right. When we left home for college—we picked schools on opposite sides of the country—we switched names, to help protect our true identities. That way, if someone tried to track me by my name, they’d actually be tracking him, and he was so far away even the best Tracker in the world couldn’t pick up his signal.”

  Fortunately, Steven’s skill as a Reader was more common and less powerful than mine, which was why he’d felt safe enough just hiding his name, whereas I’d had to hide my entire existence.

  “So, you’re not really Ian?” Kori said.

  “No, I’m Ian. But in college, I called myself Steven, and I registered with his records and ID. So when Nadia bound Steven, she was actually binding me—Ian—because he was using my name. He got his degree as Ian—my brother really is a systems analyst—got his first job as Ian, and applied for his mortgage as Ian Holt. He still uses my name to this day,” I said, glancing at Meghan for confirmation, and she nodded. “And I joined the Marines as Steven Holt.”

  “You’re the dead serviceman?” Kori’s eyes were narrow, her voice unsure. She was trying to untie a knot of identification my brother and I had worked for years to tangle. To keep each other safe. But that had obviously backfired. “You faked your own death?”

  I shrugged. “I just took advantage of the opportunity when the Corps thought I died, along with most of the rest of my unit. Steven chose to hide in plain sight. I chose to hide in Australia. In Steven’s name, which now belonged to a dead U.S. serviceman.”

  Kori sat on the end of the bed, eyes closed, thinking out loud. “So, Nadia bound Steven, but she used your name—Ian—so she was actually binding you. Then, when Kenley transferred the binding to you—in Steven’s name—she was actually transferring it back to the intended target. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. I think so.” I turned back to Kenley. “Does that give you enough information to break the seal?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “Please, do it,” Meghan begged as Kenley closed her eyes. Her hands shook in her lap as she concentrated, and I wondered how much harder this would be, with so much resistance pain already crippling her. Her eyes moved behind her eyelids, and her hands clenched around the arms of her chair

  The rest of us waited, hardly breathing. I watched my brother—my twin—trying to find some change in him to indicate her success. Or her failure. His breaths were shallow, his chest hardly moving. He’d grown way too thin, especially in the past week, when food became too hard to keep down, even when Meghan managed to get it in him. He’d stopped letting me help. In fact, he’d kicked me out of his room eight days earlier—that was the last time he’d had the strength to shout—and it took me a while to understand that seeing me was hard for him, because I looked like he remembered himself, even as he wasted away a little more every day.

  Finally Kenley gasped and her eyes flew open. “I think I did it.”

  Meghan burst into tears and pushed herself out of her recliner to sit on the edge of Steven’s bed. I couldn’t see a change, but she looked happy. Relieved. She laid one hand on his cheek, then touched his arm. Then she turned the sheets back to touch his bare, gaunt stomach. And when she finally looked up, silent tears poured down her cheeks.

  “They’re working. They’re all working again.” She turned to Kenley, wiping her face with both hands. “Thank you.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Kenley said, clutching her own stomach. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  “He’s going to be fine soon,” Meg said, and I stood, already turning to Kori.

  “Ready?” We had twenty-five minutes to get to Vanessa.

  Kori turned to Meghan, who was fussing over Steven, trying to make him more comfortable, obviously eager for him to wake up. “Swear you’ll take care of her.” The gun in her right hand made it kind of hard to hear her request as anything less than an order, complete with implicit threat.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Meghan turned to look critically at Kenley for the first time.

  “She’s in breach of her oath to Jake Tower just by being here.”

  “If she dies, three-quarters of Jake Tower’s private army will go free. His empire will collapse,” Aaron said from the floor near the door, injured arm still cradled at his chest, and I started to reconsider my original assessment of his IQ.

  Kori turned to him slowly, pistol aimed at his head. “If she dies, you die, even if I have to chase you across the fuckin’ planet. And you should know that one of the best Trackers in the country owes me a favor.” She lowered her gun, and Aaron looked up at me, anger smoldering in his eyes.

  “You’re with her on this? You’re gonna pick some bitch you just met over a friend you’ve known all your life?”

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to. Don?
??t be stupid, Aaron. Kenley just saved your sister’s life.”

  “She’s the one who put it in danger!”

  “No, I put my own life in danger,” Meghan said, rounding the bed for a closer look at Kenley. “I chose to heal Steven. And now I choose to heal the woman who saved him.” She turned to Kori, as she knelt next to Kenley. “She’ll be fine as long as I am. But I don’t know how long that’ll be. I’ve been doing this too long as it is.”

  “It won’t be long,” Kori said, and I could see the solution in her eyes. In the set line of her jaw. She was going after Barker. In killing one of Tower’s Binders, she’d be freeing the other. The king’s castle would come crumbling down on top of him. “Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Kori

  I walked us out of Meghan’s bathroom and back into Kenley’s living room, and neither of us bothered with the light. “I need to be gone before Jake’s men get here, and it’ll look better if you go in voluntarily.”

  “Where will you be?” Ian asked.

  “Recruiting backup.”

  “You know, if you hadn’t broken Aaron’s arm, we could have used him as backup.”

  I huffed. “If he was that easy to disarm, he wouldn’t have done us any good.”

  “So who are you calling?” Ian asked as I dug my phone from my pocket.

  “My brother. And Olivia. I trust them both at my back.”

  “Olivia Warren?” I could hardly see his frown in the deep shadows. “Cavazos’s Olivia?”

  “She was my Olivia before she was his, and I know how to avoid his claim to her.” I glanced at the microwave clock. It had been seventy-five minutes since Jake called Kenley’s phone. In the basement, Vanessa was being cut again. I couldn’t hear her scream, but I could almost feel it.

  I dialed Liv’s number from memory, then pressed the speaker button and my phone rang out into the room. After four electronic bleats, Olivia answered, her voice thick with suspicion. “Hello?”

  “Will you help me?” I said, in lieu of a greeting.

  “Kori?” Liv was pissed. I could hear it in her voice, in the way she bit my name off at the edges. But she was also worried; she knew I wouldn’t call unless I was in trouble. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need sanctuary. Are you at your office?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turn off the light. I’m coming over.”

  Olivia sighed. “Fine.”

  I hung up and turned to Ian. “I’ll see you in the basement.”

  “Be careful.” He pulled me close for a kiss, and I didn’t want to let him go. Ever. But this wouldn’t be over until Van and Kenley were free. Hell, it might never be over. And Van was running out of time.

  I took a deep breath, then made myself let him go and step into the shadows.

  The moment I stepped into the darkened bathroom in Olivia’s tiny two-room office, I could see her. And hear her. She sat on the couch opposite her desk, fully visible in the well-lit main room.

  “Kori’s here,” she said into her phone as I rounded the desk toward her. “Yeah, I’ll let you know when—”

  “You still bound to Cavazos?” I asked, and she nodded, scowling at the interruption.

  I snatched the phone before she could finish the aborted sentence and threw it at the ground as hard as I could, where it broke into several large plastic pieces.

  “Damn it, Kori! Do you have any idea how many phones I go through in a good year?”

  “Sorry,” I lied, shoving her stapler over so I could sit on her desk. “I can’t chance Cavazos calling you while I’m here.” He’d use her against me.

  “That was Cam, not Ruben.”

  “He’ll understand. Text him from my phone.” I tossed my cell to her and she started typing with both thumbs, pausing frequently to glare at me.

  “What’s this about?” she said as she handed my phone back.

  “As of about an hour ago, I am a free woman, and the best part is that Jake doesn’t know yet.”

  Olivia reached over and pushed up my left sleeve. “Your marks aren’t dead.”

  “Black permanent marker.” I sat next to her on the couch. “Take a closer look.”

  She leaned down, squinting at my arm from two inches away. “Wow. How’d it happen?”

  “Ian taught Kenley how to break her seal. It’s no piece of cake, but she pulled it off.”

  “Is she still bound?”

  “Yes, and she’s in a lot of pain, but a friend of Ian’s is a Healer, so she’s in good hands, at least until I can kill the Binder that sealed her to Jake.”

  “If you’re killing Tower’s men, I’m in.”

  I grinned without bothering to hide my relief. “I was hoping you’d say that. But first I have to bust Kenley’s girlfriend out of Jake’s basement.”

  “Her girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” I stood and shoved my phone into my pocket. “She was a friend of Cam’s. You two might have met.”

  “Van?” Olivia sounded horrified, and I nodded from the bathroom doorway. “Why would Tower torture her?” Cam had obviously told her what goes on down in Jake’s basement.

  “To get to Kenley. And by extension, me and Ian.”

  “How are you going to get her out?”

  “I sent Ian in to bust a hole in Jake’s infrared grid. Once he has, I’m gonna walk in alone, and walk out with Vanessa. Then we’re going after Barker, Tower’s secondary Binder.”

  “Want some help in the basement?”

  “Thanks, but I’ll have Ian and Van on the way out.” And if she got too close to Ian, she’d be obligated to try to take him from me. “I do need another favor, though. Are you under any standing orders to give Kenley to Cavazos?”

  “Nope.” She smiled, and I welcomed the sight. “Obviously he knows Tower has a Binder, but he doesn’t know who that is, to my knowledge. Or that I have any connection to her.”

  “Good. If you can do it, I need you to call Kris, so he can get both Van and Kenley somewhere safe, as soon as we’re done with Barker.” Because Jake was probably already tracking Kenley, and the farther away she was, the harder that would be for him. And she couldn’t stay with Liv, because if Cavazos got his hands on my sister, the mess we were already in would be infinitely worse. And bloodier.

  “No problem,” Olivia said.

  I thanked her, then closed my eyes and mentally reached out toward Jake’s house, ignoring all the other pockets of darkness between. As usual, his house was an inferno of infrared light burning beyond the visible spectrum, except for the cool, dark sanctuary of the darkroom. But I reached deeper, lower, hoping against all hope that Ian had already found his way to the basement, and that I wasn’t too late to take advantage of it. Because once he’d created darkness, they’d realize what he was doing and they’d try to stop him.

  So when I actually found that spot of true dark in the basement, I nearly choked on my own surprise. We’d caught another break.

  “Hopefully this won’t take long,” I said, backing into the bathroom. Then I took another step backward, and this time my shoe landed not on cheap, faded linoleum, but on gritty concrete.

  The basement.

  “Ian?” I whispered, because I’d need him to let go of the dark long enough for us to find Vanessa and take care of whoever was with her. I was close. My bindings were dead and I’d broken into the impenetrable Tower fortress. I was minutes from true freedom.

  I might just survive the day after all.

  A footstep whispered on the concrete behind me and I started to turn, my heart thumping. Then something slammed into the side of my head and the world spun around me, unseen in the dark. The floor crashed into my back and the lights came on overhead. Stunned and out of breath, I could only blink as a foot pressed into my neck and someone pulled my guns from their holsters.

  I blinked again, and a face came into focus against the glare of the lights overhead. Jonah.

  “Welcome home, Kori. We’ve missed you.”

  Thi
rty

  Ian

  After Kori left Kenley’s apartment, I double-checked the clips in both of the guns she’d lent me—not that I’d have a chance to use them—then took the jacket off the dead guard still slumped against the front door. The jacket was a size too large and had an uneven spot of blood near the hem on the right side and a blood-soaked bullet hole in the right sleeve, but neither would be easily visible in the dark material, which would hide the fully loaded double holster.