Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,80

her clothes back?”

“Not that she’s mentioned. But that’s just creepy.” I waved a hand at her...whole body. “From my perspective.”

“Your sister’s clothes are creepy?”

I frowned. She was going to make me actually tell her how hot she was. “On you? Yes,” I said, and her hurt expression clued me in to the fact that I’d just failed the Communicating With Women pop quiz. “That’s not what I meant. You look...so good, in a way I don’t want to associate with my sisters’ clothes.”

But that didn’t do her justice. Sera looked practically edible, in that you’ll-never-taste-anything-this-sweet-ever-again kind of way. In fact, all I’d had was a taste, and the thought of never tasting her again made me want to bite my own tongue off, to put it out of its misery. “Does that make sense?”

She gave me a mischievous smile. “I’m not sure. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“I’m only human, and you’re...flaunting.”

Her brows rose and she tied the robe closed. “Better?”

I had to swallow a groan. That wasn’t better at all.

Instead of answering, which I wasn’t sure I could do without begging for another peek, I kicked out the chair next to mine in wordless invitation.

Sera sat and picked up the empty hot-chocolate packet. Then she peeked into my mug and grimaced. “Seriously. How can you drink that crap? Hot chocolate is made with milk, and sugar, and cocoa. And a pot. On the stove.”

I shrugged. “The microwave’s easier.”

She laughed. “Do you always make such little effort?”

I shook my head slowly, studying her, trying to decide whether I’d imagined smut behind likely innocent words. “No. The rest of my life is complicated. Food seems like the safest place to take a shortcut. We are still talking about food, aren’t we?”

“Were we ever?” She stood before I could interpret either her tone or her expression and dropped the empty paper packet into the trash, then snatched my mug from my hands.

“Hey!” I protested as she dumped thin, chocolate-flavored water into the sink.

“I’ll make cocoa. You tell me how you’re going to kill the bastard who murdered my family.”

“With a gun, almost certainly.” I watched as she pulled a half-full jug of milk from the fridge, then started opening cabinets. “That’s kind of my specialty.”

“Are you armed right now?”

I took the .45 from my lap and set it on the table.

She frowned and pushed the last cabinet door closed. “I think you have a serious problem. Do you sleep with that thing?”

“Only when I sleep alone,” I said, and either I was imagining things, or she blushed. A lot.

“Sugar?” Her brows rose in question, surely an attempt to cover her own...interest? Curiosity? Either way, I had sudden hope that she might not permanently hate me.

“Pantry. If we have cocoa powder, it’ll be in there, too.”

“I want to watch,” Sera called over her shoulder as she dug in the small pantry, and for a second, I thought we were still talking about sleeping, and guns, and innuendo neither of us was likely to admit to. But that couldn’t be right.

“Watch what?”

All noise from the pantry ceased, and her shoulders tensed. “I want to watch him die. I want to be there when the life fades from his eyes and he bleeds out on the floor.”

“That might not be...” Healthy. It might not give her the closure she obviously needed. “Safe.”

“Screw safe.” She turned with an unopened bag of sugar tucked under her left arm and a yellow plastic canister of cocoa powder in her right hand. “My parents and my sister were ‘safe’ in their own home, behind locked doors, and look where that got them.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Safety is an illusion, even in the best of times. The only true defense is vigilance, but that wasn’t something a daughter/sister in mourning needed to hear. Yet I wasn’t going to insult her with polite platitudes, either. Those hadn’t helped me when my parents died.

“How are you going to find him?” She set the ingredients next to the stove, then pulled a pot from beneath the counter.

“Do the police have a description?”

Sera ripped open the bag of sugar, and thousands of tiny grains spilled onto the counter. “I can get you one.”

“How? Was there a witness? Did the police take a statement? Because Van can get into their records, no problem, and you won’t have to—”

“There was a witness, but her statement won’t help.” Sera lowered her head, and I knew her eyes were closed, though I couldn’t see