Oath Bound. Rachel Vincent

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      “I’m aware. She’s neither prisoner nor hostage,” I insisted as I lost the battle not to stare at Sera some more. At her scarf. At her eyes. At the tension in her frame, telling me she would fight until the very last breath was forced from her body, if that’s what it took. She didn’t need a reason to fight—she just needed an excuse.

      I didn’t want to be her reason or her excuse. Or her jailer. In spite of her sharp knife and her even sharper tongue, I was captivated by the fire inside her and curious about the fuel that fed it.

      And I needed to know why Sera had shown up in my notebook, nearly a decade before I met her.

      “She’s a guest,” I continued, watching Sera while I spoke to my sister. “She’s a reluctant guest who really shouldn’t be thrown out in the cold until we know whether or not she’s bound to tell Julia Tower about everything she’s said and heard here.”

      “Agreed. Although she wouldn’t have seen or heard anything if you hadn’t brought her here.” Kori exhaled and crossed her arms over her shirt. “So … who is she?”

      A pang of disappointment unfurled in my chest. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

      “I don’t recognize her. But she could have signed on with Julia after I left the organization.”

      Understatement of the decade. Kori hadn’t just “left” the Tower syndicate. She’d fought her way out in an elegant clusterfuck of a showdown, in which Ian, Olivia and I all kicked ass and fired guns on her behalf.

      They say combat is a bonding experience for those who survive. They’re right.

      Kori eyed our guest’s awkward tilt. “Why is she tied up?”

      “Because he’s psychotic,” Sera spat.

      “Because she’s a flight risk,” I corrected, and I got the distinct impression that she was flipping me off behind her back. “Did I mention she’s feisty? Because she’s also stubborn.”

      “Fascinating.” Kori glanced at the long sleeve covering Sera’s left arm. “Does she have marks?”

      Sera groaned, still glaring up at me. “I told you, I don’t work for Julia Tower!”

      I could only shrug. “She keeps saying that, but she won’t prove it.”

      “You have to prove it. That’s the way the world works.” Kori studied Sera’s scowl. “Either you know that, and you’re refusing because you’re marked, or you’re naive enough to think you actually have a choice in the matter. That’s adorable, but completely erroneous.”

      “She’s not from around here,” I said, while Sera shot rage daggers at us both.

      “No shit. Did you ask her nicely?”

      “I said please and everything, but remember how I told you she was gentle and pleasant? I lied.”

      “So what’s the plan?”

      I leaned against the door frame and eyed Kori expectantly. “I was hoping my sweet, gentle little sister could use her charms to verify that our guest doesn’t have any marks.”

      Kori huffed, still eyeing Sera as if she were a puzzle she didn’t have the patience to solve. “Kenley’s unavailable at the moment.”

      “Then I guess you’ll have to do.”

      Kori turned on me. “She’s your problem. You check her for marks.”

      I groaned, then tugged Kori into the hall after me, where I lowered my voice. “I’ve already had to catch her, restrain her, catch her again, then tie her up, and after all that, cutting her shirt open just feels like crossing a line.”

      Sera huffed from the bedroom, where she could obviously still hear us. “So you’re saying there is a limit to the cruelty and unreasonable demands you’re willing to inflict on the woman who saved you from a future as a human sieve?”

      Gran laughed from the living room. “I like her! I think we should keep her!”

      “We can’t keep her, Gran. She’s not a kitten!” Kori shouted.

      I tried to not to dwell on the fact that way too many of the women in my life communicated at top volume and maximum ridicule. Then I lowered my voice even further. “Wasn’t checking for marks part of your job description? Aren’t you supposed to be good at this?”

      My sister shrugged. “I know seven different ways to get a look at her bare arm in the next thirty seconds, but none of them are gentle, and a couple of them would obligate me to marry her in several third-world cultures.” She slapped me on the arm. “You’re on your own. But I will give you a little advice.”

      I groaned. “Don’t you need wisdom in order to dispense advice?”

      “Nah, just experience. Listen up.” Kori tugged me farther from the half-closed bedroom door. “Don’t force her into showing you her arm. Talk her into it. Otherwise, she’ll never forgive you.”

      “What makes you think I want her forgiveness?”

      My sister’s eyes narrowed, but the real censure was in the contempt behind them. “Don’t be an asshole, Kris. We both know you care what she thinks of you.”

      “And you’ve drawn that unlikely conclusion based on …”

      “Oh, please. You took one of Julia’s pretty young women instead of one of the many fat, balding men bound to her. Though I hope it’s obvious now that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”

      “You think I took her because I wanted her? What am I, a caveman?”

      “In her opinion?” Kori shrugged. “Probably.”

      “I took her because they were going to kill her to get to me.” And because she was wearing the yellow scarf. But I couldn’t tell my sister that. She didn’t know about the notebook. She didn’t even know about Noelle. “I couldn’t just leave her there.”

      Kori rolled her eyes. “Julia would have killed anyone to get to you, or to any one of us, but you will never convince me that you’d have pulled one of her meathead laborers through the shadows to ‘protect’ him.”

      There was no use arguing with her when I couldn’t explain myself without mentioning the notebook, and I couldn’t tell her about that because I’d never told anyone about the notebook or about how I’d filled it. About how, for the first time, one of those indecipherable lines had made sense, and I’d pulled Sera through the shadows just in time to prevent us both from being killed.

      If the woman in the yellow scarf was real, then everything else I’d written down could be real, too. What had I missed in that notebook? What had I ignored? What other horrible things could I have prevented?

      “Go talk to her, Kris. We can’t keep her tied up, but we can’t afford to let her go, and the only other option isn’t going to sit well on my conscience.”

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