“It’s not an insult,” Ash protested.
“Oh, okay,” Kami said. “In that case, you’re going to give me a minute. I’m picturing you and Jared. Naked. Entwined.”
There was a pause.
Then Jared said, “He is probably my half brother, you know.”
“I don’t care,” Kami informed him. “All you are to me are sex objects that I choose to imagine bashing together at random. Oh, there you go again, look at that, nothing but Lynburn skin as far as the mind’s eye can see. Masculine groans fill the air, husky and—”
“Stop it,” Ash said in a faint voice. “That isn’t fair.”
Behind them, Jared was laughing. Kami glanced back at him and caught his eye: for once, it made her smile, as if amusement could still travel back and forth like a spark between them.
“Ash is right, this is totally unfair,” Jared told her. “If you insist on this—”
“Oh, I do,” Kami assured him.
“Then I insist on hooking up with Rusty instead of Ash. It’s the least you can do.”
“Ugh,” Ash protested. “You guys, stop.”
“She’s making a point,” Jared said blandly. “I recognize her right to do that. But considering the alternative, I want Rusty.”
Ash gave this some thought. “Okay, I’ll have Rusty too.”
The sound of the door opening behind them made them all look up the stairs to where Rusty stood, with one eyebrow raised.
“Don’t fight, boys,” he remarked mildly. “There’s plenty of Rusty to go around.”
Ash looked mortified. Kami burst out laughing.
“So,” said Ash. “Can I walk home with you? Sorry if you’d rather I asked Rusty.”
Kami glanced at Jared. He seemed unaffected by the question, as if he hadn’t even heard it. She appreciated that Ash had asked if he could walk with her, rather than if he could walk her, like she was a poodle. And it had been so simple for her today, being able to look at Ash and smile at him. There was no pain in this: surely it was healthier.
She reached the bottom of the stairs. Ash held out his arm, and Kami took it.
* * *
It was evening, and there was a bite in the air that sank down to the bone. The dying light overlaid the fields with silver, as if it had already snowed. Kami was sure it was going to.
Ash offered Kami his leather jacket as they walked. She accepted because it seemed only sensible: all she was wearing was a short-sleeved black knit T-shirt with a red heart pierced by an arrow on it. As she put the jacket on she thought of trying to climb inside it while she kissed him. She held the collar of the jacket closed, high, to hide her burning cheeks.
Kami wondered if he was going to try to kiss her again. Did she want him to kiss her? Maybe she did. Maybe it was just about comfort in a time when her town and her home were falling apart.
She was concentrating so hard on looking away that she didn’t see much until she felt Ash tense. Then she focused on the street in front of her, the row of homes, with their windows squares of silver and on their doors . . . streaks of blackness, gleaming darkly.
“What’s going on?” Kami demanded.
Before Ash could answer, she remembered, and then she was running faster than Ash could follow her, down that winter-pale street and onto her own road lined with the silvery skeletons of trees.
Her gate stood before her, sturdy-looking and familiar and sweet, and before the gate she saw a dark figure stooping.
Kami stepped forward, and the shadowy figure looked up at the sound of her coming. In the moonlight her mother’s face shone, and her mother’s hands gleamed with the same darkness that had touched every door in Kami’s town.
I trust you’re all going to be sensible, Rob had said. I’ll be watching for the signs.
Blood marking their homes, the sign of submission Rob had asked for. The sign that the town would cooperate with the sorcerers’ demands.
“Don’t,” Mum said, her voice shaking. “Don’t look at me like that. This is for your brothers.”
Kami’s voice tore, as if it was a piece of paper in her mother’s shaking hands. “You think this is the way to protect them?”
“I don’t know any other way,” her mother whispered. Her mother had already sacrificed one child to a sorcerer. A little blood on the gate should not have been a surprise.
Kami opened the gate, shoving past her mother and running inside the house and up to her room as if nightmares were chasing her. She felt as if she had been marked instead of her home: she felt weak for wanting something from magic, for not being able to stop wanting. She lay in bed until house and night were still around her, and then she crept softly downstairs and began to fill a bucket with water. The moonlight alchemized the water from the faucet into a bright white stream.
Kami looked out the window and saw someone at her gate. Fear touched her for a moment, but then she recognized the face.
Her father.
She turned off the taps and walked out of her house, carrying the bucket in both her hands so it would not spill. Silently they washed the blood away from their gate together.
Chapter Thirteen
At Your Gate
Sorry-in-the-Vale was a frequent tourist destination in the summer, which meant Kami knew the places in town where strangers were likely to go. And nobody could be invisible if they wanted to buy milk or stamps.
After school on Friday, Kami made sure everyone was in position. Angela kept sending her text messages of bitter complaint from the gift shop.
Kami herself was turning loitering into a fine art at the post office. “I always wondered what it would be like to work behind the counter here,” she told Mrs. Jeffries, being energetically charming while keeping one eye out the door. “I want to write an article about it, in fact.”
Mrs. Jeffries patted her dark hair. “I do like that paper of yours.”
“I would call it . . . ‘The Secret Lives of Postmistresses,’ ” Kami said.
“I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Jeffries told her doubtfully. “Sounds a little saucy to me.”
“Oh no,” Kami assured her. “Mine is a worthy publication. Completely lacking in sauce.” She spotted her quarry coming down the High Street, letters in hand, and texted a group message requesting immediate assistance. “So could I possibly come behind the counter?” she asked.
“Weeeeeell,” said Mrs. Jeffries.
Kami jiggled the gate invitingly, and Mrs. Jeffries swung it open. At the precise moment Kami slipped inside, the phone in the back rang. Mrs. Jeffries gave Kami a questioning glance, and Kami nodded encouragement.
Mrs. Jeffries went to answer the phone, while Kami spared a moment to hope Holly could keep her occupied long enough. Then the door of the post office swung open, and the stranger came in. She was tall, with hair so red it was almost vermilion. She had clear green eyes and Kami decided as soon as she saw her that her name must be Carmen or Veronica. Some classic evil name.
Carmen/Veronica gave Kami a skeptical look. Kami drew herself up and tried to look like a youthful but dedicated postmistress. “New here, are you? Welcome to Sorry-in-the-Vale,” Kami said. “I’m Mabel Jeffries.”
“Indeed?” said Carmen or Veronica.
“And you are?”
“Ruth Sherman,” said the woman, handing over her letters. Kami was tempted to keep them, but Ruth Sherman—shame about the name, possibly her evil sorceress title was Ruth the Ruthless—had propped her handbag up on the counter and was watching her carefully.
Kami stuck on stamps and deposited the letters in the postbag with an innocent smile, resolving to fetch them out when Ruth was gone. The door jangled and Kami was relieved to see Jared burst into the room. Ruth turned at the sound, and obviously recognized him. Or rather, recognized a Lynburn when she saw one.
“Staying with friends, are we?” Kami asked loudly, to attract her attention. “Enjoying yourself?”
Jared sidled up. He was not very good at sidling; he was mo
re of a loomer.
“I plan to,” said Ruth.
Kami gave up on conveying messages to Jared with her eyebrows at the same time Jared gave up on subtlety. Instead he just knocked Ruth’s handbag onto the floor.
“Oh no,” he exclaimed. “Clumsy me.”
Kami clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I am so sorry,” she said. “What must you think of us? Those stamps are on the house. I mean the post office.” She spoke very fast, because she’d just heard the click of Mrs. Jeffries hanging up the phone. Jared rapidly stuffed the contents of Ruth’s bag back inside and thrust the bag into her arms.
Then they both stared at her intently and expectantly.
Ruth Sherman raised her eyebrows at them and backed out of the post office.
“Who was that?” Mrs. Jeffries asked, bustling out from the back just as the door swung shut after Ruth Sherman. She started at the sight of Jared, still crouched on the floor. Then she did a rapid scan of her post office. She instantly caught sight of the lone lipstick rolling on the floor.
“The poor lady must have dropped that,” she said, and undid the gate, stepping out to get it.
Jared put his hand on it. “No.”
Mrs. Jeffries stared down at him. “What do you mean . . . no?”
Jared and Mrs. Jeffries stared at each other, neither breaking eye contact, in a perfect deadlock.
Then Jared smiled at her. “I mean,” he said with conviction, “it’s mine.”
“It’s what?”
Jared stood up, pocketing the lipstick. “I know,” he responded. “Everyone tells me I’m more of a summer.”
Mrs. Jeffries continued to stare.
Jared continued to speak. “I’m going to go now. Me . . . and my lipstick.”
Since the gate was already open, Kami seized her chance to escape. “I too will leave. I have soaked up so much post office ambiance today already!”
Mrs. Jeffries visibly gave up on the youth of today with their random comings and goings, and even more random cosmetics.
Kami and Jared escaped out into the chilly brightness of the wintry air, sunlight pouring on them clear and cold as if through a crystal.
“Good save,” Kami told him. “I mean, it’s going to be all over town by nightfall, your reputation is ruined, but it was a noble sacrifice.”
“That’s me,” said Jared, and tossed her the lipstick. Kami caught it in both hands. “Chivalrous.”
“Oh, chivalry,” Kami said. “You get it from those old books of yours. Alice Duer Miller said chivalry was ‘treating a woman politely / As long as she isn’t a fright / It’s guarding the girls who act rightly / If you can be judge of what’s right.’ ”
“You be the judge of what’s right,” Jared said. “If you like. I wouldn’t know.”
Kami glanced over at him. “You do okay.”
“However, you’re not allowed to judge my books,” said Jared. “I am not the one who has actually read a book actually called The Bride of the Cursed Emerald.”
“Quality literature,” Kami told him, used to defending her mystery novels. “Turned out the butler did it. With the cursed emerald as a murder weapon. But the bride still loved it. The emerald, I mean, not the butler. Nobody loves a butler.”
It was ridiculous how simple it was to talk to him now that they had something to laugh about and an adventure behind them. It was such a relief to have him with her, and not to hurt any longer.
Kami could not help resenting him in the midst of happiness: that he could take it all away.
“Do you hate me?” Kami asked, without planning to. “I mean—do you?”
She forced herself to look at him as punishment; he had stopped walking and was facing her. He looked stricken, as if she was the one who had hurt him.
“Sometimes,” he said in a low voice.
“All right,” Kami said, and clenched her hand around the stupid lipstick. “Well—I have to go home now. Thanks for all your help.”
* * *
Kami was taking her time walking home. This morning she had seen her father come out of his office again, his door open enough to show a mess of blankets on the sofa, and her mother was already gone. Maybe to the bakery. Maybe somewhere else.
For the first time, Kami could almost understand her mother’s fear. If the truth didn’t help anyone, and love didn’t last, what was there left to struggle toward?
The path home was a gentle curve. Kami followed it, and did not look up to Aurimere. She looked at the woods lining one side of the way instead, and thought of warnings passed down in the form of stories about never straying into the woods.
As if staying on the path meant you were safe.
“Kami,” said a voice behind her, proving her point, and Kami squared her shoulders and turned to face Sergeant Kenn.
He was a stocky, gray-haired man of about fifty, who wore horn-rimmed glasses. He had patted her hand and given her cups of tea when he talked to her about finding Nicola Prendergast’s body. It had been his scarecrow that tried to kill her on Halloween.
“I’d like a word with you, young lady,” he said.
Kami stifled a desperate urge to laugh. She kept walking, hastening her pace. “I don’t think we have anything to say to each other.”
He hurried up alongside her: she could hear his slight out-of-condition pant in her ear. “I think we do,” said Sergeant Kenn. “You were spotted up at Hallow’s Field, you know.”
Kami kept walking, her head down. “And if I was?”
“You don’t have magic anymore,” the sergeant said. Despite everything, hearing him say “magic” made her want to laugh again. It was all so strange and horrifying: she almost could not believe any of it. “You might be wise to stay out of sorcerers’ affairs. Let the Lynburns settle it.”
“Is that your considered opinion, as an officer of the law?” Kami inquired. “Is that what the law is about—the strongest people having what they want, and the weakest submitting?”
Kenn paused. Kami spied her house and walked faster.
“This isn’t a town like any other town,” he said. “If your grandfather had done his duty, if your mother had told you the old stories, maybe you’d understand better. Sorry-in-the-Vale used to be a lucky place to live—blessed, you might say.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t.”
“People were saved from accidents that would have killed them anywhere else,” Kenn continued. “Harvests were saved because storms didn’t touch us. Things are all shaken up now, but back then, the sorcerers’ way was a good way to live for everyone. The sorcerers’ laws are worth following.”
“Tell that to Nicola,” said Kami. There were trees converging on the path now, branches in her way, pine needles on the cold earth. There was no way to get away, or to be safe. Not really.
“I’m telling you,” Kenn said in her ear. “I’m hoping you might be sensible. Lynburns should stick together. Rob Lynburn wants his boy to join him.”
Kami took a swift, deep breath. “Which one?”
“It’s Jared whose source you were, ain’t it?” Kenn asked, the country burr in his voice making her want to laugh again, it was so homey and familiar, and this was all so nightmarish and bizarre. “You might still have some influence over him, I thought. I’ve always had a fondness for you; Rob would go easier on you if he thought you’d talked Jared around to his side.”
It might have been flattering if he’d been asking Kami to use her feminine wiles to turn men to evil. But no, it was about being a source, and the link that meant she might still have some pull with Jared. Jared, who hated her.
“Like you said,” Kami told him, “I was his source. I’m not anymore. He doesn’t give a damn what I do or what I say.”
“Oh now, I wouldn’t say that,” Sergeant Kenn observed. “I saw him come charging to save you from my little scarecrow. Quite sweet, I thought it was.”
Kami swallowed at the thought of this man standing at his window, looking down at her lying in his garden
, the shadow of the thing he had created falling on her. “He would’ve saved anyone,” she said. “He’d protect anyone who needed it. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, officer?” She opened the gate she had washed clean of blood, set her feet on the path leading to her door. Surely that path would be safe, if any path in the world was.
It wasn’t. Kenn followed her inside the gate, crowding her against it and setting a heavy hand on her arm. Kami put her hand on his chest, pushing him back, but he would not be budged. “If Rob decides not to go easy on you, it won’t just be you who suffers for it,” Kenn told her. “Your family’s not safe. Your home’s not safe.”
I know, Kami thought, but she couldn’t say it. Instead she pulled her arm forcibly away and tried to turn around, and Sergeant Kenn grabbed her elbow to stop her.
Kami brought the elbow he’d been grabbing back hard, put her whole body weight behind it, and sent him flying over the garden gate, on his back in the dirt of the road. She leaned over her gate and smiled at the ridiculous picture he made, as if she wasn’t scared at all. “Stay away from my family,” she said.
Then she tried to move and found she could not. She looked down. The dead briars of the roses, usually twined around the top of her gate, were now curling around her arms. She tried to jerk away, but some of the suppleness of live branches had returned to them and they fastened tight as ropes. The briars slithered up along her arms like snakes, and thorns slid deep into her flesh.
Kami looked at Sergeant Kenn and saw his eyes narrow with concentration in his kindly face. She tried to yank the briar out from around one arm with her other hand. The curved black thorns dug thin, deep furrows along her arms, blood welling and the thorns refusing to pull free. A sob rose in her throat that she refused to let out. She could not keep a grip on the briars, blood making her fingers slick.
Sergeant Kenn tried to struggle up on his elbows, but found his arms sunk too deep in the earth.
Kami had just a second to think that that couldn’t be right, not when the frost had made the ground hard as stone, when she saw two things. One was dirt crawling over Kenn’s legs, every grain of earth moving like a vast army of brown ants to cover him.