your first shot twenty minutes ago, and he’s more than dead.” I smiled, because she looked disappointed with herself. “But here’s the hard part. How many rounds do you have left?”
She squinted, staring at the ground in thought.
“Don’t try to count the casings!” I said, when I realized what she was really doing.
“I’m not.” But that’s exactly what she’d been doing. “Two,” she said, after another second of thought. “One in the clip, one in the chamber.
“Close. Three,” I said, and she frowned. “Two in the clip, and one in the chamber. Now, eject the clip and reload.”
“How do I...”
I took the gun from her, letting my fingers brush her hand a little longer than necessary, and ejected the clip in demonstration. Then I slid it back into place and gave her the gun.
Sera checked the safety, then ejected the clip.
I showed her how to load the first round, then I stood back and left her to it.
A minute and a half later, she set the clip down in frustration. She’d only loaded two rounds. “I can’t do it. It’s too tight.”
I shrugged. “If you can’t load the clip, you don’t get to shoot the gun.”
Sera scowled.
“You wanna try Van’s .22?”
Her scowl deepened, and she picked up the clip again, determination clear in the line of her jaw.
It took her another ten minutes, but she got it done—all seventeen rounds. Then she slid the clip into place and fired four rounds with no prompting.
I couldn’t find any holes, so I picked up the binoculars. She’d shredded the paper man’s groin.
“Classy.” I set the binoculars on the table, and she laughed.
“Now try that on a moving target, and I’ll be impressed,” Kori said, and we turned to find her leaning against the door to the shed we used to Travel into the house.
“You couldn’t hit a moving target when you first started,” I reminded her.
“Yeah. I was also twelve.” Kori glanced from me to Sera, then back to me, her left brow arched in amusement. “Isn’t this a little cliché? You wanna teach her to hit a golf ball next?”
“Watch out, or I’ll teach her to hit you.”
“No lessons necessary,” Sera mumbled, and I couldn’t hide a grin.
Kori laughed out loud. “So, is she ready to be thrown to the wolves?”
“She’s getting there.” But I wasn’t going to throw her to the wolves. Everyone else may have been willing to let Sera march into Tower territory on her own, to find our Kenley, but I wasn’t. I was going with her. Whether she agreed or not.
“Gran says if you don’t come eat, she’s going to throw your dinner down the drain.”
I huffed. “If by drain, she means her own gullet.”
“We’ll be in in a minute,” Sera said, and Kori must have been feeling generous, because she took the hint and retreated indoors.
“Thank you.” Sera ejected the chambered round from her gun, just like I’d shown her.
“No problem. I like guns.”
“That’s not what I meant. Thanks for helping me, beyond the guns.”
I concentrated really hard on putting the unspent .40 rounds back into the box. “I like you, too.”
“Now you’re just messing with me.”
“I’m really not.” I met her gaze, letting her see the truth. “And I don’t want you to get killed trying to find my sister.”
She held up the gun, safety engaged, aiming downrange. “Thanks to you, I just may walk out of there alive.”
But the gun was no guarantee. The fact that she didn’t seem to understand that scared the living shit out of me. I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t even have her, but I already knew that I couldn’t survive losing her, and that was the scariest thought I’d had since the day I’d decided my life was worth living, even without Noelle in it.
Eighteen
Sera
After dinner on my third night in the House of Crazy, Kori and Van started their anti-Julia viral campaign, jokingly referred to as “Off With Her Head.” Though I truly hoped no one actually planned to decapitate Julia Tower. A bullet through her brain was enough for me.
Ian held the master list of names and phone numbers they’d compiled—an act worthy of punishment within the syndicate itself, where writing criminal details down was highly...discouraged. Kori and Van each took half of the list and texted every number with a prepared statement, declaring that Julia was actually Tower’s regent, not his heir, and naming me as the oldest of my biological father’s children.
No one texted back with a response, and I was tempted to