Unspoken

  “Have you guys eaten?” Kami asked. “I’m starving.”

  “Cooking is so much trouble,” Rusty said mournfully.

  “You could order in,” Kami suggested.

  “Delivery people are so annoying,” Angela responded.

  Kami opened the cupboard doors and began rummaging around for supplies. She found a half-empty packet of pasta and waved it about in triumph. “I’m going to cook something.”

  Rusty drifted over to the kitchen island, where he sank onto a stool. “So little and so busy,” he remarked with solemn wonder. “Like a squirrel.”

  Kami threw a piece of pasta at him. He caught it and then, as if he only worked in fast-forward and slow-motion, brought it gradually to his mouth and chewed it with great deliberation.

  “Rusty attacked me in the garden,” Kami announced.

  “Hey, women pay good money to have me attack them,” Rusty mumbled.

  “That makes it sound as if you’re running a one-man bordello.”

  Rusty leaned his chin in his hand, the effort of keeping his head upright obviously too much for him. “That’ll always be the dream.”

  Women really did pay good money to have Rusty attack them. He rented a room above Hanley’s grocery shop and taught self-defense. It was the sole thing in the world Rusty was passionate about, and that meant Angela and Kami had been jumped at regular intervals growing up.

  “What do you have now?” Kami inquired, chopping onions. “Six clients?”

  “Eight, counting you guys.”

  “You can’t count us,” Angela said, strolling into the kitchen. “We don’t come to your stupid classes, and we don’t pay you.”

  “My parents give me a roof over my head in return for teaching their only daughter to defend herself from predators,” said Rusty. “And I teach Cambridge because she feeds me and because she’ll need these skills to get out of situations she will inevitably throw herself into. It’s all very equitable. Which reminds me, Angela, I’m a crazed drug dealer, desperate for the change in your jeans pockets. What do you do?”

  “No,” Angela commanded. “Don’t!”

  Rusty tackled her at the knees and Angela fell backward with a scream of rage. Kami began to fry her onions, whistling over the noise.

  “So, I was looking through websites about animal sacrifice on the Internet,” Kami announced to distract herself. “Apparently it’s a feature in Satanic rituals.”

  “Wow,” Rusty remarked, his voice slightly muffled. “I sure hope this conversation continues over dinner.”

  “Wait,” Angela said, expertly twisting Rusty’s arm. “I thought we were dealing with kids? Are we talking twelve-year-old Satanists?” She paused. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense. I suspect those kids from the cricket club.”

  Kami hadn’t really expected Angela and Rusty to take this seriously. They knew what Kami had seen, but they hadn’t seen it themselves: it wasn’t real to them.

  She aired a few more thoughts while making their pasta anyway.

  “It wasn’t just cruelty. It was either a ritual or staged to look like one. If it was staged, why?” Kami asked. “If it was real, people don’t perform rituals, Satanic or otherwise, for no reason. I’ve done my research. They do it for favor from the gods, for good winds, to tell the future.”

  “So the answer is that they are crazy?” Angela inquired. “Shocker.”

  “Don’t think about the answer, think about the question,” Kami said. “The question is—what do they want?”

  Neither Rusty nor Angela had an answer. Kami didn’t have an answer herself and didn’t come up with one during dinner or her walk home alone. Angela had offered to walk her home, which was so unheard of that it made Kami laugh.

  “Just take care of yourself, you hyperactive midget,” Angela had instructed, eyes narrowed like a cross cat, and sent Kami on her way with a shove.

  Sorry-in-the-Vale by night was different, the small streets seeming to narrow and twist, the Georgian and Victorian houses becoming specters from horror movies. Above the town Aurimere House stood, windows bright but narrow, making the great black edifice look awake and aware. As if the house was a giant’s head, watching them all with sly eyes, and soon the giant’s hand would rise from the earth and scoop their whole town away.

  Kami reached for Jared. You there?

  Always, he said, and her uneasiness faded. Kami never really walked anywhere alone.

  The next day was Friday. Kami felt strongly that Fridays should not be full of disappointments.

  The disappointments started when their headmistress, Ms. Dollard, stopped by the newspaper office to say: “Friday also means that the entire school closes promptly, including Room 31B.”

  “I’m calling it my headquarters now,” Kami said, looking around proudly.

  “I’m ignoring that,” Ms. Dollard said. “And I’m shutting everything up at five sharp. Do me a favor and go out and perform one of the activities I hear the youth enjoy this Friday, like defacing public property.”

  Kami was sad to be parted from her headquarters, but it struck her that the library had both the Internet and reference books.

  The disappointments continued after school. Kami had arranged to meet Holly, who was supposed to bring Ash’s delinquent cousin, on the school steps. At five sharp, she was outside the school with a notepad and pen in hand. It wouldn’t take long to type out the interview later, Kami thought. She expected him to talk mainly in surly grunts.

  It was one of those September days when the sunshine was mellower than summer sunshine but still warmed you. Kami was leaning against the balustrade at the bottom of the steps, basking, when she heard the doors of the school open.

  Holly was on her own. She held her hands up. “I tried, boss. I did establish contact with him at lunch, had a little chat with him about our motorbikes.” She smiled. “And I think I was right about him.”

  “That he’s crazy?” asked Kami.

  Holly’s smile spread. “That he might be fun.”

  “So he’s not crazy?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Holly said. “My current verdict would be: Crazy eyes. Nice ass.”

  “I think I want that on my tombstone,” Kami said. “Remember my last wishes, if I get involved in a tragic accident with a fruit cart before I can put it in writing. So, what happened?”

  Holly shrugged, bouncing down the steps two at a time and going over to her motorbike, sliding her helmet over her curls. “He slipped through my fingers. We were talking about motorcycles, a friend stopped me, and then I looked around and he was gone. Let me tell you, that usually does not happen. Usually I can’t lose them even if I’m trying.”

  “I believe you,” said Kami, and sighed. “Well, never mind. We’ll get him on Monday.” She waved as Holly pulled into the street, then headed on to the library. Guys might disappoint, but she knew journalism would never let her down.

  The Sorry-in-the-Vale library was one of the ugliest buildings in town. It was a squat brown-brick building that did an amazing impression of a bungalow from the outside and had three stories inside. The roof tiles were crumbly and a strange apricot shade. Inside, the worst part was the carpets. They were weirdly mottled orange and brown, as if someone had skinned a vast diseased orangutan.

  The best part was a computer with an Internet connection that Kami did not have to share with two brothers, one intent on watching every funny cat video the Web had to offer, and the other having a star-crossed love affair with Wikipedia. It was also full of books, though that side of the enterprise proved trickier than Kami had hoped.

  “Hi,” Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian, who bought bread at Claire’s every morning and instantly returned Kami’s smile. “Can you tell me where I could find books on Satanism?”

  Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami’s parents. When she finally got away from Dorothy and into the nonfiction section on the
top floor, she didn’t find any books called Animal Sacrifice: Why We Do This Completely Disgusting Thing and Who We Sacrificers Are Likely to Be, but she found a few books that she hoped related to the topic. She piled them by her computer and spent time alternately leafing through them and feeding the printer change so it would print her articles as well as truly horrible pictures of people trying to tell the future with goat entrails.

  Kami really didn’t think what she’d seen was Satanism. Satanism seemed to involve a lot of specific symbols, and there hadn’t been any of them at the hut. This left Kami with absolutely no idea what was going on, her hair frizzed up in the sticky heat of the stuffy room, and a printer coughing and stealing the last of her money.

  It was closing time at the library. Kami gave up her day as totally unproductive. She gathered her giant stack of paper and the few books that seemed helpful, and decided that she would rather risk the creaky lift that was a fire hazard than the dark steps that might break her neck.

  This meant, of course, that when she walked out of the nonfiction room, she saw the lift doors closing. “Hold the lift!” Kami yelled, and charged forward.

  The guy inside pulled the little trick of punching the air as if it was the button to open the lift.

  Kami shoved her stack of paper and books between the closing doors. “I said hold the lift, asshole!”

  The doors opened, giving a low whine as they did so. Kami knew just how they felt.

  “Oh, is this the lift?” the guy said in a bored voice. “We call them elevators in America.”

  Kami curled her lip at him. She couldn’t retreat now. There was the principle of the thing to consider, and also the fact that she had left pages scattered on the lift floor. “Do you know what we call guys like you in England?” she asked. “Wait, I believe I may have already mentioned the word.” She stepped into the lift with Ash’s delinquent cousin.

  Chapter Six

  The Other Lynburn

  Holly had been right. Ash was better-looking.

  Kami also saw why Holly had called the delinquent Ash’s brother. They were alike enough to be brothers, but in this case the fairy-tale prince had been cast into shadow and ruin. Jared literally looked like Ash under a shadow: Ash with a tan, darker blond hair, and dark gray eyes with odd, cold lights in them. Crazy eyes, Holly had said. Cutting across his left cheek, from cheekbone to chin, was a long white scar.

  “So you’re—” Kami swallowed his name. Even in the cause of getting an interview, she didn’t want to call this guy Jared. “The other Lynburn.”

  The boy crossed his arms. He looked even bigger when he did that. “The one and only other Lynburn,” he said, with a bite to his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Friend of Ash’s, I presume? Great.”

  Kami stood on the other side of the lift and felt very disinclined to get closer to him. She’d never been comfortable with guys like this, guys with that deliberate angry swagger. He was a shade taller than Ash, a shade broader in the shoulders, which were straining against a battered brown leather jacket. All the shades and shadows of him added up to something that put her teeth on edge. Kami wished she hadn’t taken the lift. But she wasn’t going to abandon her research on the floor because some jerk had crazy eyes. She knelt down and gathered up the papers she had spilled.

  The boy didn’t offer to help. He did look down at the picture nearest him: a colorful printout of a squirrel with its head cut off. His eyebrows rose.

  Kami met his gaze defiantly.

  “I’ve had days like that,” he remarked, his American accent all sharp consonants. His voice was rough.

  “But where have you had days like that?” Kami asked. Her hands were full, but she figured she could remember the interview. “Where do you hail from?”

  “San Francisco,” he answered after a reluctant pause, as if it was privileged information.

  Her papers collected, Kami retreated to her side of the lift, cradling them against her chest, though she had to admit the chances of him mugging her for her decapitated-squirrel pictures were not high.

  The lift creaked to a halt.

  The boy cursed.

  “It’s fine,” Kami told him. “Sometimes you just have to press the button a few times.”

  “Great,” he muttered.

  He moved toward her, and Kami’s heart slammed against her ribs. She stared up at him. He stabbed the button of the lift, then leaned away. His expression had not changed, but she was certain he’d noticed her reaction.

  This was no way to conduct an interview. Kami tried to smile charmingly. “So, tell me,” she said, reviewing her interview questions in her head and choosing one at random. “What are your three greatest fears?”

  He hesitated, and she thought he was going to refuse to tell her, as if he did have some secret fear.

  The next instant he answered in a bored drawl, and his uncertainty had obviously existed only in her mind. “Number three: large, unfriendly dogs. Number two: small, inquisitive people. Number one: being trapped in this elevator. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “The people have a right to information,” Kami told him.

  “Well, I’m not in the mood,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  Kami looked around the confines of the lift. The other Lynburn was already taking up more than half of the available space. “Yeah,” she said under her breath. “That should be no problem.” She was deeply thankful when the lift actually moved.

  They leaned back against their respective sides of the lift, hugging the walls, and Kami mentally placed herself elsewhere.

  So, what’s going on with you? she asked Jared. At exactly the same time, he asked her the same question.

  Amusement rolled through them both. Kami found herself smiling. She saw the delinquent smile too, mouth a subtle curve. His face went grim again as he noticed her watching. He probably thought her smile meant she was flirting with him. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’re not my type.”

  He looked away from her. “Back at you.”

  I’m not doing much, said Jared, warm in her mind, the amusement lingering. Just stuck in an elevator with this creepy Asian girl giving me a death glare.

  Kami’s whole body recoiled. She was just staring at him, her vision blurry around the edges with panic. When the lift doors opened, she pushed herself off the wall because this wasn’t possible, because she was leaving the library and going home and never laying eyes on this guy ever again, not if she could help it.

  His hand shot out and slammed down on a button. The doors closed and he slammed another hand on the lift wall, close to her head. The clang reverberated in her ears. He was standing next to her suddenly, much too close, bowed down so she was looking directly into those cold eyes. “Kami.”

  Kami wasn’t shaking. The world was shaking her, the world was shaking apart and about to fall to pieces. Nothing made sense anymore. “Jared?” she whispered. Her voice was changed like everything else, sounding as if it did not belong to her. She lifted a hand, seeing her fingers tremble in the space between them, up to touch his face.

  Jared grabbed her wrist.

  They stood absolutely still for a moment, looking at each other. Kami didn’t dare move. She could feel her pulse pounding against his palm. He was real. He was here, and she was scared.

  He let go of her and stepped back.

  They were on opposite sides of the lift again, just like before, except now he was watching her. The cold lights had swallowed up his eyes: they were pale and awful, the kind of eyes you might fear watching you in the darkness when you walked home alone. His feelings hit her, not like having someone reaching out but like someone throwing something at her. She had never felt anything like this before in her life. It was like being enveloped by a storm with no calm center, with no calm anywhere to be found. Kami felt blinded by it, by Jared’s fury and panic and, above all, his black terror.

  The link between them had become an onslaught. Kami could not just tell
what Jared was thinking, she could feel it. She could not escape, could not untangle the strands of herself from him. She tried to visualize walls in her head, shields that she could hide behind, feeling both exposed and lost.

  “Stop it,” she said, her voice catching.

  “You stop it!” he whispered back.

  They sounded like terrified children, and strangers who hated each other. Kami could not tell who was the most afraid.

  The doors of the lift opened again with a cheerful little ping. The fluorescent lights of the library spilled in over their tense tableau. Kami could see Dorothy at the checkout desk in her fuzzy pink cardigan, squinting over in their direction. She saw a ripple pass through Jared’s body, like the tremor that moved through wild animals just before they ran. For an instant she thought that he would simply bolt.

  She was wrong.

  First he took one step and closed the distance between them. She was trapped between the wall and his body, looking up into the strange light of his eyes.

  “Stay away from me,” he hissed in her ear. Then he exited the lift with so much force that it rocked.

  Kami came out a moment later, blinking in the light. She was not walking steadily.

  “Are you all right?” Dorothy asked, leading Kami around behind the desk and sitting her in Dorothy’s own chair. “Was that Lynburn boy bothering you? He came in with a letter from Nancy Dollard saying that he needed a pile of books to get up to scratch in school and to rush his library membership through. I knew I shouldn’t have let a Lynburn in. I wish they’d never come back. They don’t change, and I don’t believe in their laws, or their lies.”

  “Their laws?” Kami asked, dazed. She was aware she should be coaxing this information out of Dorothy, but her brain felt like a shattered mirror, all sharp fragments and no use left in it.

  “That boy’s grandparents made a law that nobody would hurt the people of the Vale.”

  “Isn’t that good?” Kami wondered if she was hallucinating this conversation in her state of shock.