and I both glanced up to find Anne standing in my bedroom doorway. We hadn’t even heard her open the door.
“No.” I stood to pull her into the room, then closed the door behind her. I wanted to know how much she’d heard, but I didn’t want to ask, in case that led to more questions from her. “Elle wouldn’t want me to use her as a hostage. Or to give her back to people willing to kill her.”
“You don’t know that.” Anne brushed long red hair over her shoulder and leaned against the closed door with her arms crossed over her shirt. “Elle would do whatever it takes to protect the people she loves, the rest of the world be damned. Look what she did to us to protect Hadley.”
I frowned, and Anne clarified: “Don’t misunderstand. I love Hadley, and I wouldn’t give her up for anything in the world. But Noelle never asked me if I wanted to be a mother. She never asked me if I wanted my husband to be murdered. Or if Liv wanted to be bound to that abusive bastard Ruben Cavazos. Or if Kori wanted to be put in the middle of the whole thing, then shot and locked up. Noelle didn’t give any of us a choice about any of that. She just stacked the deck, content to let the cards fall as they may, so long as Hadley was protected. Who says she wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice Sera—some stranger none of us even knows—to help Kenley?”
“She wouldn’t.” I refused to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. “She was just doing the best she could with what she had. She never asked to be a Seer.”
“None of us asked to be what we are.” Kori pushed pale hair back from her face. She looked tired. “And a large part of what and who we are now is because of Elle plucking strings and pushing buttons behind the scenes.”
Anne nodded. “Besides, Kris, you have no idea what Elle knew about Sera. Maybe Hadley’s right. Maybe she’s not who she says she is.”
“She hasn’t told us anything but her first name,” Kori pointed out.
I turned to the Reader. “But you said she was telling the truth about that, right?”
Anne frowned and her gaze lost focus, as if she were seeing the kitchen from twenty minutes earlier, rather than my bedroom from the present. “I didn’t read any untruth from her, other than about the favor she thinks the Towers owe her. But I didn’t really read much truth in the rest of it, either. It was more like... Well, it was like most of the time I got no reading at all. Normally I would assume that means the speaker is telling the truth. But in this case...there’s just something weird about her.”
I grasped at the straw she’d unintentionally handed me. “Okay, Anne doesn’t trust her, so we shouldn’t let her go yet.” I turned to Kori. “That’s two against one.”
Anne rolled her eyes. “You realize you’re now supporting both sides of the argument, right?”
I shrugged. “Whatever it takes. I need her. We need her.”
The Reader exhaled heavily. “If we’re voting, we should include Ian and Van.”
Kori shook her head. “We’re not voting. We’re letting her go.”
“You’re not in charge, Kor.” I stepped in front of the door again. “I can’t let her go. Not yet.”
Kori glared up at me, something dangerous shining in her dark eyes. “Then kill her.”
I blinked at my sister, waiting for the punch line. Because surely that was a joke. We only kill those who pose a threat.
But no punch line came.
“Kori, I’m not going to kill her.”
She shrugged, looking up at me. “Then let her go. Those are your options. You kidnapped her, scared the crap out of her, bound her hands, then tied her to a chair. There’s a very good reason she doesn’t want to be here. So put her out of her misery. Release her, one way or another.”
And that’s when I understood. Kori had spent six weeks locked up in Tower’s basement. She doesn’t talk about it, but we all know she was tortured. Of course she would be in favor of letting the prisoner go, regardless of the extenuating circumstances. Even if the prisoner wasn’t really a prisoner.
“I’m trying to help her, Kori. And I’m trying to let her help us.” Even if I didn’t understand the specifics of either scenario yet.
“Listen to me.” My sister stood on her toes and leaned