Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,64
approximately?”
“My range?” I looked up from my pictures to meet his gaze and discovered, now that the major light source was the incandescent bulb overhead, that his eyes were more blue than gray—the sun had long since stopped shining through the east windows. I’d been staring at pictures for half the day.
“Yeah. How far away from a person do you have to be to...jam him? His signal, I mean.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, then started over. “His psychic signal. How close do you have to be to a guy to make sure no one can Track him?”
I glanced at the single foot of space separating us. “Not this close.”
Kris’s cheeks actually flushed. Across the kitchen Kori laughed out loud and her brother glared at her. “I mean, assuming you’re at the center of a vaguely spherical psychic dead zone, for lack of a better term, what’s the diameter of your influence? How far can you spread your wings, so to speak?”
“I have no idea.”
“Seriously?” Kori took the first bite of a candy bar, then spoke around it. “You seriously don’t know the extent of your own abilities?”
“How is that possible?” Kris asked, and when I noticed Ian and Vanessa watching us from the kitchen doorway, I realized story-hour had commenced.
I shrugged. “My family wasn’t Skilled. I didn’t even know I was Skilled until I was nearly eighteen.”
Kris whistled, looking impressed, though I wasn’t sure why.
Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “Steven and I knew practically from birth. But then, our mom was pretty paranoid.”
“Our parents didn’t tell us until Kris started demonstrating Skills, but that was way earlier than eighteen,” Kori said, and I wondered how old they’d been when their parents had died.
“That’s the thing.” I slid the photos back from the edge of the table so they wouldn’t fall, unsure of who to look at as I addressed the entire room. “I’m a Jammer. I didn’t accidentally walk through the shadows in my own room, or suddenly start calling my friends liars. Jamming is really a whole lot of nothing. Literally. I don’t even do it on purpose. It just kind of...follows me.”
“So you can’t control it?” Vanessa’s gaze flicked to Kori. “Didn’t you say some Jammers can turn it off?”
Kori nodded, still watching me. “And some can restrict or expand their zone. You probably could, too, if you tried it.”
“Maybe.” But I’d never had any interest in narrowing my zone of influence, because I’d never wanted to be found.
“So, if your family isn’t Skilled, how are you Skilled?” Van asked, and I remembered that she had no Skill. She probably knew less about the whole thing than I did. Though that hardly seemed possible.
I picked up a photo of me with Nadia and my parents, and handed it to Kris, who studied it for one long moment, then passed it around. “My mom had me before she met my dad. She and my dad are—were—unSkilled, but my biological father wasn’t.”
When everyone had had a look at my heartbreak, Van handed the photo back to me. Everyone was somber now, out of respect for my loss.
“So, what about him?” Kris seemed to be studying my eyes, like he could read more in them than I would say aloud. “Your biological dad?”
“I never met him.” And since Anne was gone, I had no trouble leaving it at that—a technical truth hiding an even deeper one.
“Okay.” Kris cleared his throat, bringing us back on task, whatever that task was—and there was now obviously a point to this line of questioning. Which had turned personal after all. “Since we don’t know your range and we don’t have time to figure it out now, we’ll need you to come with us.”
“Come with you where?”
“To get Kenley back.” Vanessa said it as if it should have been obvious. “We think we know where they’re keeping her.”
“Why are they keeping her alive, exactly?” I regretted the question almost immediately. I’d just lost my whole family. I should have been more sensitive to their potential loss. “Sorry. I just... The Towers haven’t demonstrated any particular respect for human life, that I’ve seen, and no one’s actually explained why they need Kenley alive.”
“They can’t kill her.” Kris glanced at Kori and Ian, who were leaning against the counter, side by side. They both nodded, so he continued. “Kenley sealed the contracts that bound Jake Tower’s employees to him. The bindings Julia Tower inherited when he died.”