Kris’s brows rose in surprise. “You really did just fall off the turnip truck, huh?” I frowned, but before I could come up with an insult of my own, he continued, “You truly don’t know?”

“I told you, I don’t work for the Towers. I never met any of them until two days ago.” Two unbelievably long days ago.

“I’m actually starting to believe that.” He let go of the man’s sleeve, but left it gaping over the tattoos. “Okay, here’s your Skilled syndicate primer. A term is five years long, and for each term you commit to, you get one ring, up front. The ink is usually mixed with the blood of either the Binder or the head of the syndicate—in this case, Jake Tower—to bind it in blood. This guy has two rings, so he’s served his first five years and is somewhere in the middle of his second enlistment. When that term’s over—or his binding is broken by other means—the marks will fade instantly to a dull gray. We call those dead marks.”

“And the color?” I repeated, pleased to realize I’d followed his explanation with no trouble.

“Rust-colored rings, like this one, mean unSkilled labor, no matter what job the bearer holds. Secretaries, bodyguards, tech, clerks, lawyers, whatever. If you have no Skill, your mark is rust-colored. Except for those in the...um...oldest profession.”

“Assassins?” I guessed, and he laughed out loud.

“Forget the turnip truck. You were born yesterday. I’m talking about prostitutes.”

“Why on earth would prostitution be the oldest profession?”

His grin widened. “I don’t know. That’s just what they say. I guess sex is the universal currency. But my point is that those in the skin trade are all unSkilled also, but they have red marks. This guy—” he tossed an openhanded gesture at the guard “—is just a hired gun. No Skill.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but...why didn’t you just kill him? Because he didn’t actually take a shot at you?”

Kris pulled a zip tie from the pocket of his jeans, then hauled the unconscious man toward the refrigerator by one arm. “That, and because dead men are notoriously difficult to interrogate.” He propped the guard in a sitting position against the front of the fridge, then zip-tied the man’s right hand to the refrigerator door handle, so that his arm stuck up at an odd angle. Then Kris patted him down until he found a cell phone, which he tossed into the drawer two down from the fridge—within reach, if the guard stretched far enough to strain his shoulder.

“Hand me a cup of water.” Kris gestured toward a plastic cup sitting on the edge of the sink.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Abracadabra. But I fail to see the relevance.”

I crossed both arms over my chest. “Please. The magic word is please. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”

“All my mother ever taught me was how to die in a car wreck. Gran taught me quite a few interesting words, but please was not among them. And, for the record, please is not a magic word. It has no supernatural properties at all that I can think of.” He came one step closer, staring straight into my eyes with such intensity that I couldn’t have looked away if I’d tried, and again, I was hyperaware that he was half-naked. And that I wanted to know what that half felt like....

“Tequila’s the magic drink. Everyone over the age of twenty-one and south of the Mason-Dixon line is familiar with its magical properties.” Kris took another step, and I held my ground as my heart beat harder, wondering how close he would come. Or when I’d stop him. “Beans are the magical fruit, or so the boys in my third-grade class told me.”

One more step, and we were less than a foot apart, and the very air seemed to sizzle between us. “Love is the international language, death is the great equalizer and no is the word most likely to turn a good man into just a friend, a drunk man into a jackass and misdemeanor-class asshole into a felon. But please...” He shrugged. “Please works no miracles at all.”

With that, he reached past me for the cup, his arm brushing mine, his lips inches from my cheek. When he turned on the faucet and filled the cup with cold water, without ever breaking my gaze, I realized I was breathing too hard. As if I’d just run a marathon.

And in that moment, I became determined to pull the word please from Kris Daniels’s mouth and show him just what kind of magic it could do.

“This is the fun part,” he whispered, so close I could practically feel his heartbeat through his bare skin and my shirt. My fingers skimmed his stomach before I even realized my own intention, and he exhaled against my neck, then just...lingered.

He was right. This was the fun part.

Then Kris pulled back and grinned at me. He dropped into a squat next to the unconscious man, his blue-eyed gaze sparkling with heat, and mischief, and beneath that, single-minded determination to do what had to be done.

Oh. That was the fun part. Interrogation. I felt my cheeks flush.

“Ready?”

It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I nodded, still trying to puzzle my way through whatever had almost happened between us. Then Kris tossed water from the cup into the guard’s face.

The man sputtered and blinked, and as soon as he was awake, he hissed in pain. “My eyes...” he moaned. “They burn. I can’t see.”

“That’s too bad.” Kris looked up at me and smiled one more time. “The view’s amazing,” he said, and my heart beat too fast. Then he pressed the barrel of his silenced gun into the hollow between the man’s collarbones, and everything about him changed. Hardened. “Where the hell is my sister?”