the dresser.
The bedroom door flew open behind us, and I whirled around an instant before the overhead light blinded me. “What’s wrong?” Ian demanded as Kris pushed past him into the room.
“She did it.” Kori was smiling—beaming—like she was proud of me, or maybe proud of herself, but all I could hear was what she’d said before. In the dark.
I can take you there.
All I could see was the tall man with the curly hair. Blood leaking from my sister’s stomach to pool on the floor. The tall man’s creepy grin as he lurched after me and grabbed my shoulder, his knife already dripping...
“Kori tried...” I said, but I couldn’t finish it. “She tried to...” My arm took over when my tongue failed for a second time. My fist crashed into her jaw and Kori stumbled backward into the dresser.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” She bounced back faster than I could believe, brow furrowed in anger, both fists clenched and ready to swing. “I was trying to help you!”
My heart thumped painfully and my fists rose—I was too busy being scared of the tall man to be scared of her.
Kris jumped between us. Ian pulled Kori back with one arm wrapped around her waist.
“What happened?” Kris’s gaze bounced from me to his sister.
“I’m fine. Let me go,” she said, and Ian let her go, but stayed close. “I was trying to help her. I did help her. She blocked me.”
They both turned to me for my version. “That crazy bitch tried to shadow-walk me into my parents’ house. Where they all died.” Where I’d lost everything.
“Kori!” Kris looked furious.
“I wasn’t really going to do it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in exasperation. “You know I can’t go that far in one shot.”
She couldn’t?
“I was just going walk her into the hall closet, but she had to think I was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go, or she couldn’t block me.” She turned to Ian. “It’s just like what you did for Kenley to help her break my binding. She had to really want it. Same principal, right?”
“That was an emergency, Kori,” he said, in that way he had of making quiet words seem more important than shouted ones. “Most people don’t respond well to the shock-and-awe approach.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Kris demanded, and his arm slid around my waist. Maybe I should have pushed him away, to prove I could stand on my own, but instead I scooted closer, and his arm tightened around me, and I realized he wasn’t trying to protect me—he was standing with me.
“I was thinking that she had the balls to do what needs to be done, no matter what that requires.” Kori gestured angrily as she spoke. “She’s the one who wants to charge into enemy territory, and we can’t send her in unprepared. She has to be able to use her Skills.”
“Kori...” Kris started, but she cut him off, her anger clashing with his.
“Listen up, all of you.” She stepped away from Ian and addressed us as a group—as if she were in charge—and my blood boiled. “None of you know what Julia’s capable of. Not like I do.”
“She can’t hurt me,” I insisted, clinging to that very thought.
Kori turned to me, eyes narrowed, studying me. “She can’t physically hurt you, or order someone else to. But there are many kinds of pain, Sera. What that man did to your sister? What you saw? Julia can and will make that happen all over again. Maybe to someone you know—she’ll pluck your best friends right off the street, if she can find them. She’ll make you watch them tortured, for no reason other than to see you suffer. To make you remember what you would do anything to forget.”
My friends? College felt like a lifetime ago. My friends were a universe away—I hadn’t seen even one of them since the funeral. But they weren’t beyond the Towers’ reach. “Why would she...” My question had no end. I couldn’t say it.
“To make you give up your birthright. To illustrate what a heartless bitch she really is. Because she’s premenstrual. Because she’s bored. Because she can. She doesn’t need a reason to cause pain, but she has plenty of them to choose from.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Kris swore. Then he turned on his sister. “Get out.”
“You’re sending a lamb to the slaughter, Kris. You all need to listen to me.”
“And you need to back the fuck off and