I tossed my head toward the door. Cam stood and kicked it.

Wood splintered—as usual, the door frame was weaker than the lock—and Cam lurched out of the line of fire as the door swung open. A bullet split the air between us and I dropped into a squat, peeking carefully around the door frame. A suitcase lay open on the bed, already too full to close. Hunter was going to run.

So why was he still there?

“Okay,” I said, scanning what I could see of the bedroom for any sign of movement. “You have a valid point. Why should you be held responsible for someone else’s screwup?”

I waited out the quiet that followed; I couldn’t pinpoint his location until he moved or spoke. And finally, he gave in to the urge to fill the silence—most people can’t stand a vacuum.

“Especially when I’m offering to repair the damage for free,” he said, and my gaze found the narrow space between the bed and the dresser, just a few feet away from the window and the fire escape he could have climbed down—if the window weren’t obviously painted shut, a fire-code violation he was probably kicking himself for now.

Except that a Traveler shouldn’t be bothered by a window that won’t open.

The sun was down and Hunter’s bedroom faced an alley. Very little light shone through his window, and the room was lit only by a single dim bulb overhead. There were small shadows everywhere, and the floor beneath his bed should have been an endless, gaping void for a Traveler. He should have been able to roll into the darkness and roll out of another shadow somewhere else. Anywhere else he wanted to be, depending on how strong his Skill was.

So why the hell was Hunter cowering on the floor with nothing but a couple of mattresses between him and the barrel of my gun?

I was missing something. I had to be.

Careful not to compromise my aim, I slid one hand into my pocket. I took a silent breath, touching the stiff bandage in my pocket, and concentrated on the pull of Hunter’s blood. Every single drop of it called to me, drawing me like a magnet as long as I touched the sample in my pocket. The closer I got to him, the stronger the attraction.

And suddenly I realized what was wrong. I wasn’t the one missing something; he was. Hunter’s blood—the part still flowing in his veins—had no power at all. Somehow, incredibly, he was completely without Skill, though he’d been a Traveler only hours before. The blood sample in my pocket proved that, as did the one Anne had brought.

“So what’s the plan, Eric?” I let go of the bandage and aimed with both hands again, still squatting. “You were just going to…what? Get on a bus?”

Cam raised one eyebrow at me in question, but I couldn’t explain about Hunter’s mysteriously disappearing Skill. Not even if I wanted to—it made no sense.

“That was the plan.”

“So which is it going to be? Run, or fix what you messed up?”

“Does that mean you’ll deliver my message?”

I pretended to think about that for a moment. “Fortunately for you, I like your idea. And I really like the part where I get to be the bearer of good news. So why don’t you come out and tell me who really screwed the pooch. That way you can go work on damage control and I can go make a very powerful man smile.”

A second or two of silence passed while he thought about my offer, and I held my breath, waiting. Surely he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that—my karma wasn’t that good.

“Aren’t you under orders to kill me?” he asked at last, and I was almost relieved. If he’d given in that easily, I’d have assumed it was a trick. “That means you don’t have any choice, right?”

“Smart man,” I said, hoping he was unfamiliar with verbal irony. “But actually, I was ordered to kill the one responsible for the fuckup. If that turns out not to be you, then killing you would put me in breach of my contract, wouldn’t it?”

Another moment of silence, and I measured his ignorance with each second that passed. With each mistake I could tick off on mental fingers. He’d left viable blood in the trash can. He’d gone to a civilian hospital. He’d put his real middle name on government documents. He’d trapped himself in his bedroom rather than escaping into the shadows. These were not the actions of a man who understood my world.

“Yeah, I guess it would. But I’m gonna need some kind of reassurance. A guarantee.”

“Such as…?” I shot Cam a questioning glance, but he looked even more confused than I felt—he didn’t know about the powerless pull of Hunter’s blood yet.

“Your word. If you promise you won’t kill me, you’ll be bound to that, right?”

Was that a trap? Was he using something he knew to be false to test my honesty? Or was he really that ignorant? The blood in the trash can suggested the latter, but I flavored my lie with a little truth, just in case.

“That’s not the only way to bind someone.” And unless the person swearing was a Binder it was about as reliable as crossing your fingers and making a wish. “But yes, a verbal oath is certainly one kind of binding.”

“Swear, then,” he said, too quickly to be anything but eager impulse. Which meant he believed it, right? “Swear you’re not going to kill me, and I’ll come out.”

I glanced at Cam for an opinion. He shrugged, leaving it up to me, but looked far from convinced. But the standoff couldn’t last forever. My thighs were on fire from squatting, and my arms were already aching, which would soon compromise my aim. Did Hunter know that? Was he counting on it? Or was he just trying to get out of this alive?