Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent Page 0,93
taken my whole life from me.
“How can I help?” I said when Ian looked up at me and smiled. “What are we doing?”
“Van got us a partial list of the Tower syndicate’s real-estate holdings, so we’re going through the list of warehouses, looking for one that could possibly work for the blood farm.”
I stared at all the red circles on their map, trying to make sense of names and places I’d never seen before. “Any luck?”
“Too much luck.” Kori walked out of the closet and closed the door, stepping into our conversation as easily as she’d stepped out of the shadows. “Tower owns nearly two dozen warehouses in the city alone, and who knows how many in other areas. I’ve been to several of them, and the truth is that any one of them could house the blood farm. Julia has the money to set up all of the necessary supplies and equipment anywhere she wants, and it could take us days to search all of these individually.”
“And this is just a partial list,” Vanessa added, peeking over her laptop screen.
Ian looked grim as he studied his list, then circled another point on the map. “We need some way to narrow them down.”
“That’s what Kris is working on.” Skepticism was thick in Kori’s voice. “Did he tell you about the notebook?”
“Yeah. And about Noelle.” Did I sound bitter about the fact that she’d had him for so long, but I never would? I must have—Kori’s pale brows rose and I swear she almost smiled. “You guys are all messed up. Your relationships are, like...twisted.”
Ian laughed, but Kori only nodded. “Sometimes when you’re tied too tightly to the people you care about, the strings get tangled. You can either cut them loose or pull them tighter. I’m sure you can figure out which one we chose, based on the knot we’re in now.”
Yeah. They were tied so tightly together I couldn’t tell where one relationship ended and the next began—siblings, lovers, friends, caretakers, defenders and coworkers. They were everything to one another, and I could see that sometimes those bonds chafed, but from where I stood—a single thread dangling alone in the wind—their tangled knot looked pretty damn secure.
“So, do you think he’ll find anything in that notebook? Do you think it’s even possible?”
Ian and Van looked to Kori for an answer, and I found myself doing the same. Kori shrugged. “It’s more than possible. I never knew Noelle to be wrong. But the chances of anyone figuring out what she was talking about in time to be useful are slim to none.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t put money on that, because I’d own every cent you have right now,” Kris said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. When I looked up to find him standing in the kitchen doorway, his index finger marking a place in the closed notebook, I could also see the spark of excitement in his eyes.
“You found something?” The rational part of me wanted to be happy for him. That other part wanted to poke him in the eyes to get rid of that spark, put there by a dead girl he’d loved and who might be trying to tell him to kill me, either to put an end to the Tower empire, or because even in her grave, she was a jealous bitch.
My money was on the latter.
Kris nodded eagerly. Kori scooted over and he sat next to her on the couch, then set his journal on the coffee table, open to a page about a third of the way through the notebook. “Ned said they were moving everything to a warehouse, right?” Kris said, and I nodded. I was the only other one who’d heard Ned. “Well, there it is.” He underlined a passage several lines from the top with his finger.
We all leaned in for a closer look, and I had to read upside down from my chair on the other side of the coffee table. Fortunately, the line was short, and Kris’s script was a neat, masculine cursive, with long narrow letters. Easily legible.
“Blood in the trees,” Ian said, echoing the phrase as it played in my head. “What the hell does that mean?”
Kris rolled his eyes and snatched the printout of Tower’s real estate holdings from his sister’s hands. “That one. The warehouse on Sycamore Grove, in the south fork. See?” But no one saw. “It’s the only one with trees in the address.”