“So, wait a minute,” I said, going over the facts in my head. “Hunter left large amounts of his own blood in his bathroom, and the power from it is fading faster than the blood itself is drying? He went to a public hospital, and his middle name is on records accessible to the public?”

“Well, maybe not accessible to most of the public,” Van amended.

“Okay, but my point is that this doesn’t sound like the behavior of any Skilled person I ever met.”

“Nor does the Skill fading from his blood make one single bit of sense,” Liv added. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Does that mean you can’t track him?”

Liv grabbed her jacket from the back of an armchair and dug into her pocket, presumably for the most recent blood sample. “It still has some pull. Which means we can and will track him. Especially now that you’ve found his middle name for us.” Because for all we knew, the pull from his blood might just lead us to another pile of bloody bandages instead of to the man himself. Which was why we’d stopped to look for his name—our tracking plan B.

“What about the bank account?” I asked, and Van turned back to her computer as I slid Hunter’s bank statement across the counter toward her.

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m going to need some privacy. My methods are kind of…supersecret, proprietary knowledge.” Van picked up her laptop and gave me a sly smile. “Should I take the bedroom, or would you two like it?”

I laughed, and deferred the matter to Liv, who looked as if she wanted to boil me alive. “You go ahead,” she said finally. “We’re not going to need it.”

Vanessa shrugged and hauled her stuff down the hall to my bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, except for the bathroom. I took my water bottle to the couch and sat, amused when Olivia just stood in the middle of the room, glancing between the couch and the bar stools. “I promise I won’t bite,” I said, gesturing at the two unoccupied couch cushions.

She considered for a second, then dropped onto the opposite end of the couch. “If memory serves, you’re all bark anyway.”

“I think we both know better than that. And if my memory serves, I have a couple of bite marks that prove you’re not, either.”

Liv laughed, and my mission in life became making that happen again. When she laughed, she looked like the Olivia I’d known, and if I closed my eyes and listened closely, I could almost pretend the past six years had never happened. I could pretend she might not hate me for signing my life over to a man and an organization she detested. An organization we both detested, if I were being completely honest—which I couldn’t do aloud.

“Can I see your tattoo?” I asked, and her smile died a sudden, brutal death. “On your back. You don’t have to take anything off,” I clarified. What had she thought I meant? “You don’t have a mark from Anne and the girls, right? I thought that was a paper binding.”

“It is. Blood bound and name bound, but on paper. Thank goodness.” She relaxed a little, but I couldn’t forget the severity of her original reaction. What did it mean? Why was she so touchy on the subject of marks?

And then the guarded look in her eyes gave me sudden insight: she had another mark somewhere—one she clearly didn’t want anyone else to know about. It was probably a dead mark—the statement tattooed on her back clearly stated her position on the subject of ownership—but I couldn’t help wondering who she’d been bound to. What she’d been bound to do—or not to do?

Instead of answering the questions I hadn’t asked, she twisted away from me and folded one leg beneath herself on the couch. Then she slowly swept her long hair over one shoulder, baring the small black script echoing the neckline of her shirt, between her shoulder blades.

And there it was. Cedo nulli.i> The script taunted me. It said that, even if she’d been bound before, she’d gotten out of it with her principles intact. She answered to no one.

Well, no one but the women she’d sworn to help, and none of them would ever make her do what I’d had to do for Tower and the syndicate.

I reached out without thinking, drawn by the pull of the words and the purity of soul they represented, and traced the first letter with my finger. Liv’s whole body tensed. She pulled away from my touch, and the ever-present ache in my chest widened into a chasm I couldn’t climb out of. My sigh was an exhale of pain.

But then she relaxed a little—an obvious effort for her—and leaned back until her skin touched my finger again, at the base of the calligraphic C. I held my breath as I traced the rest of the letters, treasuring the warmth of her skin. I don’t know why she let me touch her this time, when she’d been pushing me away for years, but I wasn’t going to question it.

I’d just finished the last letter—acutely aware that once I’d started breathing again, her breathing synced with mine—when my bedroom door opened and Vanessa clomped down the hall toward us with her backpack over her shoulder, equipment already stowed.

“Any luck?” I asked, as Liv swept her hair back over her shoulder to cover the words, as if she had never let me touch them.

“I’m sorry, Cam, but I can’t help you.” Vanessa walked past the kitchen on her way to the door, and Liv was up in an instant. She grabbed Van’s arm and pulled her to a stop before I could get between them.

“What do you mean? Why not?”