LITMIR.BIZ

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didn’t you just burn it?”

      Burning it to ashes was the only surefire way to destroy a blood-sealed contract, which is why certain notorious crime lords had started sealing their employee bindings in the flesh—literally—with tattoo marks as a fail-safe in case the corresponding written contract was destroyed. Fortunately, Kenley hadn’t foreseen that advancement. I wasn’t even sure she was capable of flesh binding, not that any of us knew what that was fifteen years ago. Her first sealed contract could easily be destroyed—if it could be found.

      “By the time we realized what we’d done—the first time Kori’s grandmother had to pick her up from the police station—the oath was gone. We looked everywhere. Our parents got together and tore the Danielses’ house apart, and when it wasn’t there, they searched their own houses. But we never found so much as a scrap of powder-blue paper or pink glitter pen.”

      “You think someone took it?” he asked, and I could only shrug.

      “It didn’t walk off on its own. But I have no clue who could have taken it. Or why. Until Kori got arrested, only the four of us knew about it—Kori, Anne, Noelle and me. And Kenley, of course. And we all wanted it destroyed.” Badly, by the time we got to high school. “We explored different theories over the years. A parent trying to teach us a lesson. Kori’s brother, Kristopher, being a pain in the ass. Their dog burying a new prize. But no one ever admitted anything, and Anne didn’t know she was a Reader yet, so it never occurred to her to look for a lie. And every time we tested it, the binding was still intact, which meant that the oath was still whole, wherever it was. And obviously it still is now,” I said, gesturing to the entire car to indicate our current vigilante mission.

      “That sounds like a total pain in the ass.”

      “Worse. We started hating each other. Even the most offhand, ridiculous request became a geas—a compulsion that had to be obeyed, to the exclusion of everything else. We wound up cheating, and lying, and stealing, and starting fights for one another. We got hurt, and arrested, and kicked out of school. And the cycle was self-perpetuating. Anne would get pissed at Kori for making her help cheat on a test, so she’d ask Kori to go to the drugstore and shoplift only hemorrhoid cream and Vagisil, knowing that when she got caught, she’d be humiliated.”

      Cam laughed. “When I met them, the four of you seemed to get along pretty well.”

      “Part of that was the fact that we rarely saw one another after high school. The rest of it was the second oath.”

      “There was a second oath?”

      “Yeah. My senior year, Kenley got tired of all the bitching and backstabbing. And I think she felt guilty, because she was the reason for the trouble in the first place. So she conned us all into the same room long enough to show us a new oath she’d penned, which basically made us swear never to ask one another for anything.”

      “So, did you sign?”

      “Hell yes! We fought over who got to sign first. After that, everything was fine. We weren’t best friends anymore, but we didn’t hate each other, either. We just kind of … left each other alone. That New Year’s Eve party six years ago? That was the first time we’d spent more than an hour together since high-school graduation. It was also the last time I saw any of them. Until this morning.”

      “Because Anne burned the second contract?” I scowled. “You were eavesdropping?” He shrugged. “I could only hear bits of it from the hallway.”

      After a moment of hesitation and concentration, I motioned him through the next red light, but I could tell his thoughts were no longer on the drive. “So, why did you guys let Anne keep the second oath?”

      “We didn’t,” I said. “It didn’t seem fair for any one of us to have it, so we let Kenley keep it. She was the only neutral party, and she was the one who sealed it.”

      “Well, Anne must have gotten ahold of it somehow, if she burned it.”

      My hand clenched around the bloody material. I hadn’t thought of that. “And she must have gotten to it quickly….” I mumbled, mentally counting the few hours between Shen’s murder and the moment Anne showed up in my office. And she’d found Cam even before that. “Maybe she’s still in contact with Kenley….” I began, then realized that we’d rolled to a halt three cars back from a four-way stop.

      “Which way?” Cam asked, and I forced my mind back to the energy signature I was tracking.

      I closed my eyes and placed my hand flat over the tacky sock, inside the bag. The pull was still there, but fading as the blood dried. “Straight,” I murmured. “But slightly to the right …”

      “There’s no slightly to it,” he said, and I opened my eyes as we rolled through the intersection to find the street sandwiched by tightly packed rows of buildings—mostly neighborhood businesses and apartments.

      “Slow down.” I closed my eyes again and let the blood guide me. The pull was getting stronger, but not definitively so. “Stop,” I said at last, when the blood began to pull me from behind. “We passed it.”

      He backed into the first available parking spot on the curb and turned off the engine. “Up there, maybe?” he said, twisting to peer through the rear windshield at the building on the right. “In one of the apartments?”

      “That’s my guess.” I pulled a packet of wet wipes from my satchel and started cleaning blood from my hand. Again. The wipes wouldn’t work as well as lye, but they were portable and didn’t make me want to peel my own skin off to stop the burning.

      Cam glanced at the slight gun bulge beneath my jacket as I stuffed the used wipe into a plastic sandwich bag in the side pocket of my satchel. “Are you really going to do this?”

      “I don’t have any choice. Or did you forget what compelled means?”

      “I haven’t forgotten anything, Liv,” he said, and I realized we were having two different conversations. “Do you have a silencer for that thing?”

      “No, I don’t have a silencer. Because I’m not an assassin.” I dug through my satchel for a thin box of surgical gloves and plucked two from the slit on top, then shoved them into my right jacket pocket.

      “Well, that’s too bad, because this is an assassination.”

      “No, this is an execution.”

      “The difference would be …?”

      “Assassination is murder. Execution is justice.” I pulled a small, folding blade from my back pocket and flicked it open, then folded it closed again, satisfied that it was still in working order.

      “So now you’re an executioner?”

      “No, I …” Too late, I caught the hint of a grin and realized he was teasing me. I scowled. “Are we going to sit here and argue until he comes out and begs to be shot, or you wanna go in?”

      “Honestly, arguing sounds like more fun. And on that note … you sure have a lot of weapons for not-an-assassin.”

      I shoved the knife back into my pocket and met his gaze, the butt of my gun digging into my side. “Do I look dead to you?”

      His grin grew. “You look all pissed off. It’s kind of hot.”

      It took serious effort for me to stay focused when I realized he wasn’t joking. “I don’t know about your line of work—” I wasn’t even sure what he did for a living, come to think of it “—but most of the people I track don’t want to be found, and people who don’t want to be found are usually armed. And dangerous. And on hair triggers. So yeah, I’m armed. Because I don’t want to die.”

      “If you’re the muscle, that must make me the brains of the operation.”

      I rolled my eyes. “You’re the chauffeur. Here’s the plan—find him, kill him.”

      Cam

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