But I can’t escape you, can I? she asked him. And that’s why I think we should listen to your uncle and weigh our options.
I don’t want options, said Jared.
Now Kami was angry. Jared said things like this all the time, as if—and then he didn’t do anything about it. He didn’t seem to want to touch her, ever. So why did he talk like that? She could read his mind, so he should make more sense! “Jared and I need to talk this over alone.”
“Why?” Ash asked, his voice unexpected in that hushed room, his eyes fastened on Kami. “Why do you need to be alone?” he asked. “You can read each other’s minds.”
“Thank you for pointing that out; I wasn’t aware,” Kami told him. “And yes, it would be fantastic to have a silent conversation with all of you looking on.” She stood up. It didn’t give her much of a height advantage, but she glared up at Jared and over at Ash anyway. “None of this was Jared’s fault. None of this was my fault either. You may think I don’t matter because I’m not a sorcerer, but I don’t care for being threatened or being ignored. And you know what? I’m going to go.”
I’ll go with you, Jared said.
Do what you want, said Kami. She passed Rob and Lillian without looking at them. She was radiating so much fury that it acted as a force field, because Ash took a step back and blinked in surprise.
Jared did not back off, of course. As Kami stormed out of the sorcerers’ parlor, he was right behind her.
Once out of the parlor and down the couple of steps, Kami hesitated. She didn’t want to walk back through the hall of cutting wind and glass. The room she was in now had a window, floor-to-ceiling pale yellow panes. The garden spread out beyond the glass, transformed into smooth bright lines.
Kami went for the side door, tucked narrow and dark against that wide light expanse of window. When she clutched the doorknob, another fist-shaped one, the black iron knuckles pressed too hard into her palm. The door opened and the sunshine hit Kami, flooding warm over her hair and skin. She felt pure relief as she emerged from the cold manor.
Kami went and leaned against the wall attached to the rockery. She was staring at the ground and saw Jared’s shadow falling across hers before she saw him.
Doesn’t any of this freak you out? Kami asked.
No, said Jared. You are the source of everything for me. Why should magic be any different?
Sometimes I feel like I don’t know the shape of myself without you, Kami thought. She felt almost desperate. Sometimes I feel like you don’t know the shape of yourself.
“I know what I’d be.”
She looked up when Jared spoke. His jaw was tight, his eyes lowered: his hair falling on his brow, his lowered lashes a fringe of shadow on his cheekbones. The sunlight struck his hair and made it burn gold, but his face was all shadow.
“You wouldn’t be like your father,” Kami said. “You wouldn’t be like them.” She opened her mind to Jared. She tried to make it like opening a book so he could see her faith as clear as carmine and gold glowing on a page.
Who in the world would believe that but you? Jared asked. And how would I know you believed it, without this?
“You could trust me,” said Kami.
I do trust you, Jared told her. But I don’t understand why you want this gone. Kami felt the struggle in him and saw him swallow. He spoke painfully aloud again. “Is it something I did? I can—”
“No, Jared,” Kami said. No.
Confused pain radiated from him. Kami wasn’t sure if he was angry at her or at himself; she supposed it hardly mattered. That was the problem. Kami looked about the autumn garden, ruby and gold leaves making the trees look as if they were hung with treasure. She looked back at Jared. She saw the way he fit into this scene, as he had fit into the woods the first time he had stood by the Crying Pools, joking with her about the Sorrier River.
The Sorrier River, of course, was the sorcerer’s river. Sorry-in-the-Vale was sorcery in the vale. This place had been made and meant for him, so perfect that living in a city was like poison to him, while this place sent power coursing through his veins. She had access to that power now. According to Rob, she had control over it. She could reach out and touch it, the same way she could touch his mind. Except that she didn’t want to.
“I meant what I told you,” she said slowly. “By the Crying Pools. If I could go back, if I could change everything, I wouldn’t. I would never want to lose you.”
Relief washed through him, though confusion lingered. “So—”
“We can’t lose each other now,” said Kami. “I know you’re real, and you know I am, so we won’t lose each other. I think it would be worth listening to what your uncle has to say. I’m not saying I want to do it. I’m saying it might be worth considering.”
Jared’s voice was blistering. “Being cut in two?”
“Being individuals for a change!” Kami said, her voice low. “Being alone, for once in our lives.” She pushed off the garden wall and stepped away from Jared, watching her shadow slide away from his, while building walls in her mind, forbidding him to pass.
Jared looked up at her as she moved away, his eyes pale and disturbing as they always were in the grip of intense emotion. She knew that now, had learned him by heart well enough to recognize the color, like seeing a gray sky turn storm white through a pane of glass.
She looked at his face, the shadows and angles of him, and had such a vivid thought that she could almost imagine she was acting on it: walking to him across the waving grass, feeling his body, so separate and so different from her own against hers, muscles and sinews shifting against hers. She imagined her fingers on the warm nape of his neck, drawing his head down.
Only she could not do it with all her feelings laid out before him: this would not just be her telling a guy how she felt with no assurance of a return. There would be no way for her to escape afterward. Human beings were not meant to be bound together like this. She did not know how to bear it.
“Do you remember what you said to me the third time we met?” Kami asked. “That we should date?”
Jared did not answer, but his eyes went shocked silver.
“If we cut the connection,” she said, “I would.” Even with her walls up, she could feel his anger. Of course, she thought, of course she would say something like that and he would be angry. She wondered what he could sense, what might be slipping past her wall.
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Jared. “It’s like blackmail.”
“It’s like you have no other use for me but this connection,” Kami said. “Without it, what would I be to you? Just some ordinary girl. Nothing special about me at all.” She remembered the first time he had seen her. He hadn’t been impressed by her. She looked away and saw birds bursting from the trees, taking wing from the sorcerer’s wrath or just fleeing because winter was so close.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jared said curtly. “And this whole conversation is ridiculous. There’s a murderer on the loose. If we weren’t linked, you would have died in that well. We can’t afford to break the connection now.”
Kami could see the fact that there was a sorcerer killing people was a great relief to Jared. She thought of Nicola Prendergast and felt nothing but fury.
“So we have to keep it for now,” she said coldly. “We can break it later. I want to find out how.” She turned her back on him and strode back across the garden before he could answer, through the iron door with the drowning woman on it, and back through the stone corridors to the flight of steps that led to the parlor.
Lillian Lynburn’s voice echoed clearly against the stone. “Now Jared’s powers are explained, and we have no idea of who is killing people in my town.”
Kami stood still, Jared beside her. Despite how desolate and angry she felt, she reached out in her mind and he reached back. They stood at the bottom of the steps under a light shaped like a caged star, soothing each other with their thoughts as they had done for years and years, since they were swapping
lullabies in cradles across an ocean.
Jared’s family had believed he was Nicola’s murderer all this time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Yours to Break
Kami woke the next morning while Jared was still asleep, his dreams chasing each other in the back of her mind. Sunlight, strained by autumn leaves, left a lacy pattern of shadows on her pillow. Kami uncurled from the warmth of her sheets, her toes making the unpleasant journey from bedclothes to fuzzy slippers, and found her giant pink robe, which she only wore at the times she was most in need, because it made her look like a bright pink woolly mammoth. She went downstairs wrapped in comfort.
Even if there was a shadow town lurking beneath the bright surface of Sorry-in-the-Vale, home was safe, she thought. Then she opened the door of the kitchen and saw Rob Lynburn sitting at the table with her mother.
Kami raced across the floor, grabbed his arm, and tried to haul him to his feet. “No!” she snapped. “Whatever you threatened her with, whatever you want, she’s not going to do it. This family doesn’t serve the Lynburns anymore.”
Kami saw her mother’s hands tighten on her coffee cup, but Rob’s gaze was calm and steady. She suddenly felt ridiculous for descending on him like an avenging angel with pink flannel wings. Or a very short, fuzzy version of Batman.
“I wish it didn’t,” Rob said. “I have never hurt or threatened your mother. We’ve always been good friends. Haven’t we, Claire?”
“If you say so,” said Mum, as easy to read as the Mona Lisa. She reached out a hand to Kami.
Kami took the hint and let go of Rob’s arm, let her hand be clasped in the strong comfort of her mother’s fingers.
“Well,” said Rob, sounding regretful, “as good friends as we can be, under the circumstances.”
Mum lifted her head and smiled a smile as bright as winter sunlight, and about as warm. “That depends on what you want with my daughter.”
Kami had seen her stiff posture when Kami had come in. Mum was afraid of this Lynburn, as she was of every Lynburn, but she was trying to protect Kami anyway. She sent her mother an encouraging smile. “It’s okay.”
“I mean her no harm,” said Rob Lynburn. “I just want to undo what Rosalind did to you both. Let me have a word with Kami in private.”
Kami had to protest again that it was okay and pull her hand out of her mother’s grasp before Mum let them go out into the front garden, but she did let them go. Kami figured Mum couldn’t turn down a chance to have the connection severed. Kami could see the pale curtains in the kitchen moving as she stood against the garden gate.
Kami looked at Rob Lynburn, who was gazing down at her in a kindly way. In some ways, he seemed the most normal of the Lynburns, but she remembered his upturned face, wakened to magic hunger by Jared’s thunderstorm. She’d do best to keep in mind that none of the Lynburns was all that normal.
She focused on the words cut into the stone by her gate, ivy hanging over the blurred message. THE G——HOUSE, it said. Kami had grown up assuming that the “G” stood for “Glass.” Her mother had known all along that it stood for “Guard” and that the word meant heavy responsibilities and dark consequences.
“Well,” Kami said, “what have you got to say that you didn’t say yesterday?”
“Only this: that yesterday I was very impressed by how sensible you were being,” Rob told her. “Many young people would be drawn to the thought of such power in their hands. But you see that the magic does not belong to you. I wish Jared could see as clearly, but he’s blinded by the connection. I was so glad you had realized that the emotions that come with the connection are not real.”
Kami pulled ivy leaves savagely off the stone. “Not real?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“Not entirely real,” Rob qualified. “How could they be? A connection like this would make anyone feel close to anyone. Yours is the worst case I can think of. All the links I’ve heard about contained some element of choice. You were children.”
Kami looked at the movement in her kitchen window and thought about what their mothers had done.
“My boy is lonely and impressionable, and now that you two are together, magic is flooding to him through you. I’m not surprised he got so worked up when we suggested the severance. But you’re wiser than that. You’re sensible to know the connection you feel is based on nothing but magic misused, and any power you gain would be tainted and not yours by right.”
Jared was lonely. She’d known that all her life, that she was the only important thing to him. “I have no interest in power of any sort,” Kami snapped.
“Of course,” said Rob Lynburn soothingly.
He ticked Kami off. She didn’t want to hear him telling her how mature she was, praising her because he thought it would make her behave the way he wanted. Only he’d called Jared “my boy” twice now, and he seemed to mean it. He was infuriating, but he might want the best for Jared. So did she.
“I believe you care about Jared,” Kami said.
“I do,” said Rob. “Show me that you do.”
“I told Jared it was something I might want to consider,” she continued slowly, trying to be reasonable for Jared’s sake. “He didn’t want to hear it.”
Rob looked at her, and a breath of cold air snaked in even over the collar of her thick robe. He looked like a scary sorcerer for that one moment in time, able to command wind and shadows.
“But it’s not up to him,” he said. “It’s up to you.”
“It’s part of why sorcerers don’t like having sources,” Kami explained to Angela and Holly that afternoon. “Apparently sources can say, ‘Sorry, buddy, you’re cut off’ anytime, but once linked, the sorcerer can never get away.”
“I say you do it,” said Angela, her voice echoing in the hall.
Kami and Holly both looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but people were just making their way to class, oblivious.
“Oh no, she couldn’t do that!” Holly said, shocked. “It would be such a betrayal.”
That was what Kami had said to Rob. He had not agreed: he had seemed sure that this would save Jared from worse betrayal later on, when Kami got used to having power over the world and power over Jared. He’d been angry when she refused.
“Holly’s right,” Kami said. “Besides, Jared was right too. It isn’t safe to break the connection right now, not when it might save one of us. It already saved me once.”
“There’s this wonderful new invention,” Angela said. “It’s a device that you can carry in your purse, or even in your pocket, and using it you can communicate with people from a distance and let them know if you feel unsafe. Not just people: I believe you can also contact the constabulary! I hear it’s quite simple to use.”
Holly, who was standing close to Angela, elbowed her in the side. Kami gave her a grateful nod.
“Fine,” Angela said ungraciously. “But if you’re not going to do it now, you have to do it sometime. Tell him you’re doing it, soften the blow, and pick the time or whatever you have to do, but you can’t live like this, Kami. Not forever.”
“She can decide this for herself,” said Holly, and looped her arm through Angela’s. “Besides which, while you’re standing around laying down the law, we’re going to be late for Political Science.”
“You people make me tired,” said Angela. “I mean that quite literally. I want a nap. Well, I guess that’s what Political Science is for.”
“Don’t drool on our notes,” said Holly, and dragged Angela off.
They were laughing as they went. Kami felt a slight, unworthy pang of jealousy. Angela was her best friend and not Holly’s. Angela had always made her preference for Kami’s company quite clear by openly disliking everyone else’s; if Angela liked someone else, Kami could not help but worry about being replaced. It wasn’t like she could read Angela’s mind and be certain she still had the best-friend spot.
Kami shook her head at herself and made her way upstairs to the
headquarters.
Holly and Angela had not mentioned one important reason for Kami not to break the link.
Without it, what would I be to you? Just some ordinary girl.
A connection like this would make anyone feel close to anyone.
Even if she could read someone’s mind, she could apparently still be scared of losing them.
Kami was in no mood to enter her headquarters, her sanctuary, and find Ash sitting at her desk. He looked up from a map of Sorry-in-the-Vale, on which Kami had marked the houses with the families who had been in town longest according to Holly’s mother.
“What are you doing?” Kami asked sharply.
“Waiting for you,” Ash said.
Kami strolled in, closing the door behind her. “I could’ve sworn we gave you a desk of your own.”
“Well … I happened to see the map,” Ash said. “And I wanted to—it sounds stupid, but I wanted you to see that I wasn’t working on the paper or anything. That I was waiting for you.”
It was silly, so silly it was almost plausible. But then Ash, with his bright clear voice and his bright clear face, always seemed so very plausible. Kami rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. She was sick of drowning in uncertainties. “Why were you waiting for me?”
“I wanted to talk about you being Jared’s source. It explains—a lot about you, and you and him. And us. I understand why you couldn’t tell me before.”
“Because you were being so frank and open with me about the magical details of your life,” Kami observed.
Ash ducked his head in abashed assent, and Kami felt guilty for snapping at him.
“I guess I can understand that too,” she conceded.
“We both had a lot of things we had to hold back,” Ash said. “But now we don’t.”
He was gorgeous and sweet, and his sudden reawakening of interest in her was making Kami suspicious. She was either becoming a paranoid freak or having a perfectly reasonable reaction to the world going mad around her. “Yes, openness is a beautiful thing. You do realize we have a murderer to catch.”