Shadow Bound (Unbound) by Rachel Vincent

the first flight, then stopped on the twenty-second floor to use the elevator—no way I was going to walk down twenty-one flights of stairs.
On the first floor, I crossed the lobby like my bare feet were on fire and only breathed easy when I stepped outside, into the night, and spotted the entrance to an alley at the corner of the building.
Unlit alleys are the downfall of many an airheaded horror-movie bimbo, but they were my escape. My own personal transportation system, with free, unlimited rides.
I dashed past the doormen and valet attendants, still holding my sister’s shoes, and ran into the alley, already picturing my room in Kenley’s apartment, kept dark for situations exactly like this. My bare feet pounded from the grass onto the broken pavement, and a rock bruised my foot on my second step. With the third step, my foot landed on carpet, and a step after that, I collided with my own bedroom wall, and the rebound knocked me on my ass.
Dazed, I dropped the shoes and leaned back against the foot of the bed. A second later, my bedroom door flew open and the overhead light flared to life. “What the hell was that?” Kenley demanded, one hand still clutching the doorknob.
“Sorry. I forgot how small this room is.”
“No more running starts, Kori,” she said, letting go of the door to cross her arms over her chest. “You’re gonna break your nose on the wall.”
I half hoped she was right. A broken nose would make me ugly. And if I was ugly, Jake might pull me off the Holt job in favor of a prettier face.
Of course, knowing my luck, he’d kill me as punishment for messing it all up, then carry out his threat against Kenley, even though I wasn’t there to see her abused. It would be just like him to try to make my afterlife miserable, too.
“How’d it go?” Kenley gave me her hand, and I let her pull me up. “Did you have to sleep with him?”
“No.” Not yet, anyway.
She turned me by my shoulders and unzipped my dress. Which was really her dress, loose on me now, where it would have been tight two months earlier. I let the material slide to the floor, and she picked it up when I stepped out of it. “Is it just me, or does he look familiar?” Kenley said.
“It’s you, and half the planet. The whole world saw that news clip.”
“I kind of feel sorry for him,” Kenley said. “They’ll all be after him now.” They, being the rival syndicates, of course.
“Don’t.” I grabbed the T-shirt slung over the end of my bed. The one I’d slept in the night before. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for him. He’s the idiot who revealed his Skill on national television. He’s gonna have to sign with someone. It may as well be Jake.” Holt’s imprisonment may as well keep me alive and keep Kenley out of the basement.
“What’s he like?” she asked.
“He’s fine. Normal. Kinda funny. He doesn’t deserve this.” What I was doing to him. What I had to do to him, to save myself and my sister.
“No one deserves this.” Kenley laid the dress across the bed and pulled a hanger from the closet, then stood staring at it, like she’d forgotten what to do with it. “I’m so sorry, Kori,” she said, and I could hear the unshed tears in her voice.
“No.” I pulled the T-shirt over my head, then lifted her chin, making her look at me. “You have nothing to be sorry for, so don’t start this again. Please.”
Kenley burst into tears and I pulled her into a hug, holding her until the wrenching sobs fractured into smaller cries, then broke down into teary hiccups I could handle. “This is all my fault,” she said, wiping her cheeks when I let her go. “I’m so sorry for getting you into this.”
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t have.”
Six years earlier, at twenty years old, Kenley had still been sheltered and naive, because we’d made her that way. Kris, Gran and I had tried to protect the baby of the family, and instead we’d turned her into a victim, ready-made for a world full of predators.