Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,54
and I can’t exactly turn off the jamming—” which didn’t work like most other Skills “—as far as I’m concerned, you can all go stick your heads up each other’s asses for all I care.” I glanced at Hadley and flinched when I saw her staring up at me, evidently unfazed by the profanity. “Or, you could just let me go.”
“Let her go?” Liv glanced around at her friends, waiting for an explanation.
“Kris kidnapped her from Tower’s house,” Kori said.
Her brother groaned. “I didn’t kidnap her. I just...” He shrugged. “She needed to come with me, but I didn’t have time for her to reach that conclusion on her own.”
“Yeah,” I snapped. “They call that kidnapping.”
“You kidnapped Julia Tower’s Jammer?” Liv looked impressed.
“No!” Kris and I said at the same time. Then I continued. “I’m not her Jammer. She doesn’t even know I’m a Jammer. No one does, except you bunch of psychos. Thanks for that, by the way.” I hoped they all choked on my sarcasm.
Everyone stared at me. Then Liv turned back to Kris. “What the hell were you thinking, breaking into Tower’s house? Kidnapping someone? Who is she?” She turned to me again. “Who are you?”
“Sera,” I said. “And for the thousandth time, that’s all any of you are getting from me until you give up some private information about yourselves.”
Looks flew across the room. Ian, Vanessa and Gran had joined us by then, and everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion.
“Fair enough.” Liv stepped forward and extended one hand for me to shake, over the coffee table. “Olivia Warren. I’m a Tracker. Bloodhound, specifically, but I can also use names when I have to. In the spirit of disclosure, and because you can’t hang out in this crowd for long without finding out anyway, I technically work for Ruben Cavazos.”
“Technically?” I wasn’t very familiar with syndicate bindings, but I knew who Cavazos was. Everyone knew who Cavazos was.
“Not by choice. But one of these days, he’s going to cross the line, and I’m going to have to...renegotiate.” She glanced at Hadley and forced a smile.
“Cavazos will never cross the line,” Kori mumbled. “Because you keep pushing the line back. When Cam gets tired of that, he’ll renegotiate for you. He may even survive.”
I glanced from Kori to Olivia. “And Cam would be?”
“Cam’s her boyfriend,” Hadley said, and I looked down to see her smiling up at Olivia. “He works for my biological father, too.”
“Your biological father?” That struck a little too close to home.
The child nodded, and brown hair fell over her forehead. “Ruben. He lives in a big house, and there’s a huge TV in my room there.” She glanced at her mother and frowned at Anne’s stiff expression. “But I still like it better at home.”
“Your dad is Ruben Cavazos?”
“Not her dad,” Anne corrected. “Her father.”
Damn, could I ever identify with that statement.
I already knew about Kris and Kori Daniels, and their missing sister, Kenley, who was a Binder. Ian introduced himself as Ian Holt, a Blinder—he could pull darkness from...wherever and make shadows wherever he wanted. He and Kori kind of seemed made for each other.
Vanessa was unSkilled. She was also Kenley’s girlfriend, though it didn’t take long for me to realize that Gran seemed to think Van and Kris were an item.
“Your turn,” Kris said when everyone else was done making formal introductions. “Who are you? Who are you really?” he added for emphasis.
“Sera Brandt.”
“And...” Liv prompted.
I sighed and sank on the edge of the couch cushion behind me. “And...I’m a Jammer. But I don’t tell people that.” Then I told them what my mother had told me when I was eighteen and we’d finally figured out that I was, indeed, Skilled, even though she wasn’t. “I’m fortunate enough to have escaped syndicate notice so far, both because I live as far from organized syndicate activity as I can, and because I’m naturally hard to find. That’s part of being a Jammer.” The very best part of being a Jammer, and the only reason my mother had been able to hide me as well as she had. I shrugged. “That’s it. All that’s worth telling, anyway.”
Anne shook her head. “There’s more,” she said and they all turned to me expectantly. Again.
“What, you think I’m just going to bare my soul to a room full of strangers? Not gonna happen. The interrogation’s over. We’re either going to have a civil discussion, or none at all.”