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—”
“Kenni, just hang on. I’ll get you out—”
Julia spoke over me. “And you have his stubborn streak to blame for what’s coming. Lincoln?” She released the speaker button and Lincoln nodded.
“No!” I shouted, and Julia held the remote up, so I could see that her finger was still off the button. Lincoln couldn’t hear me.
A blur of motion through the window caught my gaze, and Lincoln punched my baby sister in the face. Still blindfolded, Kenley never saw the blow coming. She grunted in pain, and my pulse raced so hot and fast that my vision started to blur. Kenley’s chair rocked back and forth, and for one interminable second, I was afraid it would tip over and she’d hit her head on the floor, and if that happened, there was nothing I could do for her.
“Stop!” I strained so hard against the zip tie at my back that the plastic bit into my skin, and the sudden warmth told me I was bleeding.
If Kenley fell unconscious, would Julia make it stop? I honestly didn’t know. Unconscious people make terrible torture victims, because they can’t feel pain, but it was my pain Julia was counting on, and I would suffer each of my sister’s blows whether or not she was conscious.
Julia held the remote up to her mouth again and pressed the button. “Kenley? How you doing? Hangin’ in there?”
Kenley gasped and raised her head. Tears spilled beneath her blindfold and a horrible bruise was already forming at the center of the red patch on her left cheek. She turned her head to the side and spit blood on the floor—no reason not to, since Julia already had more than enough of her blood. Then she cleared her throat and sat straighter. “Just fine. Also? Fuck you. And fuck Lincoln, whoever the hell he is. What kind of coward hits a woman while she’s blindfolded and tied to a chair?”
Lincoln actually chuckled. “I only work here,” he said, examining his knuckles, and I wanted to rip his throat out and watch his blood drain onto the floor. “If I had my way, this would be an entirely different kind of...session.”
Kenley bit her lip as silent tears rolled down her face, and my blood boiled. I recognized Lincoln now. He was the one who’d slit Chase Alexander Curtis’s throat.
“Hmm...” Julia turned back to me. “Someone’s been spending a lot of time with her big brother and sister. But I don’t think she’s as tough as Kori, no matter what she wants us to believe. Do you?”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me about Sera’s Skill, or we’ll find out just how tough your baby sister is.”
She was now assuming Sera had a Skill, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a bluff or a conclusion she’d drawn based on the fact that I hadn’t claimed otherwise. Julia lifted the radio to her lips again and opened her mouth.
“Yes.” I glared at