Blood Bound

by Rachel Vincent

  Cam shrugged, and I continued my search for paper. “I think we’re skimming right over the most obvious possibility—Hadley’s father could be dead.”

  I shook my head without looking up from the last drawer in the kitchen. “If he were dead, why would she hide his identity? Wouldn’t she want her daughter to grow up at least knowing her late father’s name?”

  “Maybe she was trying to keep Hadley from his family?” Anne suggested. “In the absence of a will, orphaned children go to the next of kin. So maybe she didn’t like his family and didn’t want them to know about the baby.”

  “That doesn’t fit the timeline,” Cam insisted, rounding the peninsula toward the fridge, where he plucked a magnet notepad from the front and handed it to me with a brief grin. “She named the baby eleven months before she died.”

  I set the notebook and pen in front of Anne on the table. “So maybe she knew, even then. We have no idea how long she knew she was going to die.” And that was the root of the problem—we didn’t know what Elle had seen, or how long ago she’d seen it.

  “Here.” I tapped the notebook for emphasis. “Write down every possible name combination you can think of, and Cam can try them one at a time. Cross them off once you’ve tried it, otherwise, you’ll just repeat your efforts.” And I knew from personal experience how frustrating that could be. “Use Elle’s family names—her own, her mom’s, et cetera—and her friends’ names. Try everything you can think of.”

  “What are you going to do?” Cam called, as I made my way toward the bedroom.

  “I’m going to try Kori again.” Maybe if she knew what we’d just found out…

  That was wishful thinking, and I knew it. We all knew it. But I dialed anyway. And just as I’d expected, I got her anonymous voice-mail message.

  “Hey, Kori, it’s Liv,” I said, sinking onto the king-size bed I’d never slept in. “To be honest, I’m kind of banking on the assumption that you were following orders when you took Hadley, and that if you could have found a way around following that particular order, you would have. If that’s not the case, then…well, I guess more has changed over the last few years than I thought. But in case I’m right, there’s something you should know.” I inhaled deeply…and the machine cut my message off. The dial tone buzzed in my ear.

  Damn. So much for a heartfelt message—short and sweet it is.

  I called back, and again I got her voice mail. “Okay, I’m gonna keep this short.” Because I had no choice. “Hadley isn’t really Anne’s daughter. She’s Elle’s. She’s Noelle’s baby, Korinne. Elle knew she was going to die, so she left her baby with Anne and made her promise to keep it a secret. If any of us have ever meant anything to you—hell, if Elle ever meant anything to you—find a way to bring her back. Please, Kori. I’m leaving the bathroom dark for you. Will you please bring her back?”

  That time when the machine cut me off, I was ready. I’d said what I had to say, including a direct request for her help, and beneath the mountain of my cynicism, there was a tiny blossom of hope, dying from lack of light, but deeply rooted. Within our four-sided friendship, Elle and Kori had always been best friends, like Anne and I were. Closer friendships within the whole. Even if Kori wasn’t willing to risk her job—not to mention her life—for me or Anne, or even for Hadley, she might be willing to do it for Elle.

  For Elle’s memory.

  Assuming she heard the message. But if she were listening to her messages, she would already have brought Hadley back, compelled by Anne’s request.

  Anne looked up from the notepad when I sank into the chair next to her at the table. “Well?” she said, and the naked longing in her voice nearly killed me. Her hope was raw and obvious. It was her first line of defense, not merely a backup parachute cord, like the one I clung to privately. And when I shook my head in reply, her heartbreak and disappointment were just as raw and obvious.

  “I left a message and told her about Elle,” I said, glancing at the first page of potential names, crossed off, ripped from the pad and dismissed once they’d been eliminated.

  Anne looked up, still clutching the pen. “Try texting her. She’ll probably have the text read before it occurs to her that she shouldn’t finish it. You can compel her before she even realizes what she’s read.”

  “Anne, that’s brilliant!” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket.

  She shrugged. “That’s how Elle got me in the first place. In writing.” She held up the notepad full of names for emphasis.

  I was halfway through a short, to-the-point text when Cam suddenly snatched my cell from my hand. “Wait!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t compel her in a text.” He backspaced over everything I’d typed. “That’ll only compete with her orders from Tower and make her self-destruct.”

  Anne frowned. “You said her binding to us would supersede her marks from Tower.”

  “I was wrong.” He handed my phone back. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before, and I can’t elaborate, but her binding to him is just as strong as her binding to you two. That’s why she’s not listening to her messages. It has to be.”

  “You said Tower probably told her not to listen to them,” I said, flipping my phone open again.

  “I was wrong about that, too. He doesn’t know about her binding to you guys, remember? Why would he order her not to listen to a request from Anne when he doesn’t know Anne can compel her? She’s ignoring the messages on her own, because if she hears you make a request in conflict with her current orders, her body will tear itself apart, trying to do both at once. It’s a miserable way to die. I’ve seen it.”

  “Tower?” I asked, staring at my phone.

  He nodded. “Standard sentence for divided loyalty.”

  My stomach churned in horror. “So what can we do?”

  Cam shrugged. “Ask her for help without compelling her to go against Tower’s orders.”

  “Okay…” But that was much easier said than done, considering that I didn’t know what orders he’d given her.

  I started typing again, and when I was done, I showed Cam.

  Hadley isn’t Anne’s daughter—she’s Elle’s. Know u can’t return her, but we need help. Can’t track her w/no real name or blood.

  Cam read it and nodded, so I hit Send. “Now it’s up to her.” I set my phone on the table and glanced around at the scattered notepad pages. “What’d you guys come up with?”

  Cam answered from across the table, while Anne feverishly scribbled more name combinations on a fresh sheet from the pad. “Nothing yet. We’ve tried every possible pairing of Noelle’s name, her mother’s name, and yours, Anne’s and Kori’s. But we don’t know everyone’s full names, and we don’t know for sure that Elle used any of them. If she was smart—and she obviously was smart—she probably used a random name, to prevent exactly what we’re trying to do.”

  “That’s the problem with having smart friends.” I picked up the sheet of eliminated names and glanced over it, trying to think of something they might have missed. But I came up empty.

  A moment later, something clattered on the floor in the hall, and we all three spun around in time to see a small pink canvas shoe tumble to a stop in the middle of the living-room floor. But the hall was empty.

  Anne was out of her chair in an instant and she had the shoe in hand before either Cam or I reached her. “It’s Hadley’s,” she said, fresh tears forming in her eyes. “Why would she send us Hadley’s shoe? Why isn’t Hadley wearing it? Is this some kind of warning?”

  “Anne, calm down.” I took the shoe from her gently and pulled the tongue back with the opening aimed at the light overhead. “There’s something inside.”

  She grabbed the shoe before I could stop her and pulled a folded sheet of plain white printer paper from inside. Cam and I read over her shoulder.

  If she’s really Elle’s, you’re going about this all wrong.

  You have to think lke Noelle.

  That was it. No
signature. No introduction. But it was definitely Kori’s handwriting. We’d passed dozens of notes—maybe hundreds—in school during my life before cell phones, and her writing hadn’t changed since the seventh grade.

  “What does that mean?” The note shook in Anne’s hand. “Is she taunting us? Why not just call or text?”

  “She’s probably prohibited,” I said, rereading the note for the third time, trying to find more meaning in the sparse wording. “Tower doesn’t know she’s bound to us, but he does know we’re friends.”

  “She can’t make a phone call, but she can throw a shoe down the hall with a note stuffed inside?”

  “She’s using the loopholes.” And the shadows I’d left in the bathroom. I took the shoe from Anne. “It’s a given that Tower would ban her from calling or texting us, but who thinks to specifically forbid tossing a shoe with a handwritten note inside it?”

  “So what does this mean?” She gestured with the shoe, and I noticed that her hands were still shaking. If I wasn’t afraid it would start to fuzzy her logic, I’d offer her more whiskey. “How is thinking like Elle going to help us find Hadley?”

  “I think she means we have to think like Noelle to figure out Hadley’s name. So we can track her.” I shrugged. “She probably heard us talking from the bathroom.” Or maybe she just knew we’d try tracking Hadley—it was a logical assumption, considering that two of us were Trackers.

  “Okay…so how does—did—Elle think?”

  “Like a Seer,” Cam said. “Elle thought like someone who knew what was going to happen, but not how to prevent it. All she could do was prepare for it, and that’s what she was doing when she sent Hadley to you.”

  “Oh, hell…” I whispered, and my entire body suddenly felt heavy with the weight of a startling understanding. I sank into the nearest chair, trying to wrap my head around the details as they tumbled into place, some more reluctant than others. “It wasn’t just that.”

  “It wasn’t just what?” Cam sat on the couch next to my chair, his knees nearly touching mine, and he looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to take my temperature or pour me a shot. “What’s wrong?”

  “It wasn’t just sending her baby to Anne. Noelle did much more than that to prepare for this.”

  “To prepare for what?” Anne dropped onto the couch next to Cam and they watched me like one of those three-dimensional images you have to squint to see just right—as if they couldn’t quite bring me into focus.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what she saw, or how long ago she saw it. Maybe she knew that Tower would someday be selling Skills on the black market, and that he’d want her daughter’s blood for his project. Or maybe she just knew that someday someone bad would be after Hadley and that she’d have to be able to ask for help to protect her kid.”

  “Yeah, we’ve established that,” Cam said gently. “That’s why she burned the second oath.”

  I shook my head. “I think this goes back a lot further than that. How do you think she got the second oath from wherever Kenley hid it in the first place? If Kenley knew it was missing, she would have told us.”

  “She saw it in a vision?” Anne said, and I shook my head again.

  “It doesn’t work like that. She’s not—she wasn’t—a psychic metal detector. In fact, she was always losing her own stuff and borrowing ours, remember?” As teenagers, we’d theorized that her head was so full of the future it was hard for her to keep track of the present, and I’d never been more convinced of that than I was in that moment, with Anne and Cam watching me as if they were waiting for me to either start making sense or spontaneously combust. Was this how Elle always felt? As if she could speak until she turned blue, but no one would understand a word?

  “What are you saying?” If the lines of confusion in Anne’s forehead grew any deeper, they’d be trenches. “She snatched the second oath a long time ago and didn’t tell anyone?”

  “Yeah. Probably years before she burned it—because she knew someday she’d have to be able to ask you for a favor.”

  “You’re saying that when we were seventeen, while you, Kori and I were daring one another to sneak into frat parties and make out with strangers, Noelle was making plans to protect her future daughter from a Skilled crime lord?”

  I took a deep breath and dove in even deeper. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but I think this goes back even further than that. At least, it does for Elle. Do you remember the day we signed the original oath?”

  Anne nodded, clearly impatient for me to get to the point. “I was twelve, not brain dead. That was the night I had my first kiss, at the back-to-school mixer. With Robby Parker. Who then told the entire male half of the seventh grade that my mouth tasted like dog shit smells.”

  Cam looked as if he wanted to laugh, but he caught my censuring glance just in time and held it in. I turned back to Anne. “And after that?”

  “After that, Kori went across the street into the park and filled a paper party napkin with actual dog shit, which she then shoved into his mouth in the middle of the gym, in front of the entire school. She got suspended, and I got the last laugh when Robby spewed dog poo all over his friends.”

  That time Cam did laugh, and even Anne cracked a smile at the memory, in spite of the circumstances necessitating the trip down memory lane.

  “And after that…?” I prompted.

  “We went back to Kori’s house and swore we’d always be there to help one another. Her sister, Kenley, drafted an oath, and we all signed, then stamped in blood. Of course, we had no idea what we were doing—”

  “Yes, but whose idea was the oath, do you remember?” I interrupted, when she seemed to be sidestepping my point entirely. “It wasn’t Kori’s—she’s more of a seat-of-the-pants revenge-taker—and it wasn’t mine.”

  And that’s when Anne finally understood. She sat up straight and stiff on the couch, her eyes wide, staring at nothing and everything all at once. “Noelle…”

  I nodded solemnly. “We were just goofing around—kids high on loyalty and revenge—but she saw what we couldn’t. And she must have known about Kenley….”

  “Hell, she must have known about us all!” Anne’s stunned expression was starting to shift into amazement. “She must have known part of it, anyway.”

  “Wait a minute.” Cam leaned back on the couch, arms crossed over his chest in an obvious display of skepticism. “You’re saying that a twelve-year-old kid saw sixteen years into the future and not only understood what she saw, but also understood how to prepare for it?”

  I nodded. “And she knew how to nudge us into preparing for it.”

  Cam’s brows rose, and I couldn’t tell if he was scared or impressed. Or both. “Well, it’s no damn wonder Tower wants her kid, if there’s even a chance that she’ll develop her mother’s Skill. I’ve never heard of a Seer that powerful in my entire life.”

  Yeah. But look where it got her. Noelle had spent half her life planning for her own death and putting us in place to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to her daughter.

  And we weren’t going to let her down.

  Twenty-Four

  “Okay, so Elle’s been planning ahead.” Anne leaned back on the couch, one arm over her closed eyes, and I wondered if she was trying to keep the light out or the hope in. “But if she could see so far in advance, wouldn’t she know we’d eventually need Hadley’s real, full name? Even if she never saw this particular problem coming? Why on earth would she trust me with her child, but not with that child’s name?”

  “Maybe she did,” Cam said, and Anne sat up to frown at him. “But she couldn’t just write Hadley’s middle and last names down somewhere where anyone might find them.”

  “An understandable paranoia,” I said, waving one hand for him to continue.

  “So maybe she hid them.”

  “Hid them where?” Anne demanded, her voice brittle with frustration. Or maybe that was pain. She was probably miserable by now, considering how long her acc
idental breach of contract with Noelle had been in effect.

  “It would have to be somewhere you’d be sure to see them, but no one else would notice them.” I rubbed my forehead, my brain racing. “They’d have to be in something she gave you. Something she sent with Hadley. Or maybe something she left in her apartment.”

  Anne shook her head. “I’ve been through all that!” She ran one hand through her hair in exaseration. “I’ve been through everything. Over and over. She didn’t have an address book—not hard copy, and not digital. There are no names on the backs of her photos except for Hadley, and that’s all she ever called her in writing. Just that one name. There was nothing embroidered or written on her clothes, no name tag on her diaper bag or suitcase. It’s like Noelle was hiding her before she ever even sent her to me.” Another sigh, then Anne met my gaze with an exhausted one of her own. “Besides, she was too careful to leave anything telling in her apartment. What if I hadn’t come to clean it out before she was officially evicted? What if someone else came looking for her before her neighbor called me? She couldn’t have seen everything, Liv. Some things had to be in the shadows, and she wouldn’t have taken a risk like that.”

  “She’s right,” Cam said, before I could reply. “Elle wouldn’t have left sensitive information in the apartment. So it had to have come with the baby. It had to be in or on something she sent with Hadley.”

  “There wasn’t anything!” Anne’s eyes watered, and she swiped away the tears angrily. “There was just the baby in her carrier, a diaper bag full of supplies, a stuffed bear, over-the-counter medication and a small suitcase full of clothes. And I went through all of it over and over. I ripped the lining out of the carrier, the diaper bag and the suitcase when I was looking for Hadley’s birth certificate. Hell, I even cut the bear up his rear seam and ripped out the stuffing, then had to sew the damn thing up again by hand. There was nothing. No note. No mysterious P.O. box key. And certainly no X to mark the spot. There was just Hadley and the letter from Elle, asking me to take her.”