“So glad to hear the mass texting worked.” Surely proof that Sera was smarter than her aunt.

“Not as well as you might think. Thanks to your baby sister’s generous blood donation, I’ve spent the past three days transferring bindings from Sera to me. Starting with the gunmen in this room. None of those newly bound employees were affected in the slightest by your wireless campaign.”

“That’s not possible.” I gave my arms an experimental tug, but the bindings held tight. And they felt sharp, more like a zip tie than a rope. The irony there was that they’d probably gotten the damn thing out of my pocket. “Kenni’s blood can’t be used to bind someone without her will attached to it.” And there was no way in hell that Kenley wanted to give Julia Tower any more power than she already had. “You’re lying.”

“If I were, you would never know it. But as it happens, there’s no need for lies. Kenley’s will didn’t seal the bindings. Mine did.” Julia watched me, waiting to see if I could connect the dots on my own.

Kenley’s blood, but Julia’s will...

Horror washed over me, and the room seemed to spin—the result of my entire world being knocked off-kilter. It shouldn’t have been possible. “A transfusion? You gave yourself Kenley’s blood?”

“Only a little.” Julia shrugged, and the casual gesture looked strange on her. “Honestly, I got lucky. If we’d been incompatible blood types, the transfusion would have been very risky for me. But I had little choice, thanks to you and Jake’s bastard daughter.”

“You had a choice.” I tried to move my legs, and discovered that my ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. “You could have chosen not to be a maniacal bitch.”

“Trust me, my way was easier.”

“So, what, you took a transfusion of Kenley’s blood, then sealed the new contracts yourself?” I said, and she nodded, looking more than a little proud of herself. But I could see what she was trying not to show me. There was a reason we were in a warehouse rather than in the Tower basement. “This is all you got away with, isn’t it? Just these men? You didn’t have time to reseal most of the bindings. Sera still holds them, doesn’t she?”

Julia’s scowl could have peeled the paint off a car. “Not for long. You’re going to bring her to me.”

“Never gonna happen.” My legs had less freedom than my arms. By my best guess, they were duct-taped to the chair legs, over my jeans.

“Oh, it will. But first, I need a little information from you, so we’ll all be prepared for my darling niece’s arrival.” Julia recrossed her legs in the opposite direction. “Does Sera have a Skill?”

I stared at her in silence.

“Are you really going to make me repeat the question?”

I shrugged as best I could with my hands tied at my back. “I don’t see what good that would do.”

“It wouldn’t do you any good at all. But I’m sure your sister would appreciate your candor right about now.” She made another off-hand gesture, and one of the guards turned and opened the door he stood next to. A moment later, through the glass, I saw the door to Kenley’s room open, and he stepped inside.

“You touch her, and I’ll kill you,” I spat, openly struggling against my bindings now, though I knew I had no shot at breaking them.

Julia gave me a small smile. “You’re going to try to kill me anyway, and I have no intention of touching your sister. But Lincoln has been looking forward to it all day. So, you answer my questions, or he’s going to give your sister something to cry about.”

He wouldn’t kill her. Julia couldn’t let that happen, without losing every binding Kenley had sealed. But he could hit her. Or cut her. Or burn her. And Julia would let him.

It killed me that I hadn’t been able to protect Kori from Jake’s fury—I hadn’t even known she was in danger until it was nearly over. But Kori was a survivor—a fighter with tough skin and even tougher insides.

Kenley was none of that. I couldn’t let them hurt her. But I couldn’t betray Sera, either.

“Does Serenity have a Skill?” Julia repeated, watching me while, in the other room, Kenley squirmed in her chair and said something I couldn’t hear through the glass.

When I didn’t answer, Julia rolled her eyes and dug something from her jacket pocket. Some kind of small remote. She pressed a button, and there was a short buzz of static, then my sister’s voice came over the tiny speaker, fuzzy with static.

“—there? I can here you breathing. Say something!” she screeched, and if she’d looked drowsy before, she sounded terrified now.

“Kenni!” I shouted, and Julia frowned at me.

“She can’t hear you. Answer the question. Does Sera have a skill?”

I couldn’t lie to Julia—a Reader—and get away with it. And I couldn’t refuse to answer without getting Kenley hurt. But I knew I’d hesitated too long when Julia picked up her remote and pressed a button, then spoke into it as if it were a handheld radio.

“Kenley, can you hear me?”

Through the window, Kenni’s head pivoted toward a corner of the room I couldn’t see, where—presumably—the speaker was mounted. “Fuck you, Julia!” she shouted, and I almost laughed out loud, in spite of the circumstances. She’d sounded so much like Kori!

“Your family resemblance is showing,” Julia warned. “Speaking of family, I have your brother here—”