Then she heard a choked-off scream, and both their heads turned. Kami thought of the screams and running she’d heard behind them. In the square. She should have known Holly wouldn’t run anywhere but to them.
Holly was still in the square, still in a crowd, but the boys were gone and the crowd she stood in now was a jostling, rushing crowd of scarecrows. Kami saw Holly’s bright crown of hair disappear among them, swallowed up. Angela’s immediate race forward was checked when the scarecrow from the Kenn house lunged in front of her. Kami ducked down and scythed its feet out from under it with her branch.
At least, that was the idea, but instead the scarecrow’s straw legs sagged forward, bowing instead of falling. This still gave Angela plenty of time to dodge around it.
“Go,” Kami said. “I’ve got this.”
Angela hesitated for an instant, then nodded and ran, her black hair streaming behind her.
Kami had told her to go. She had not expected to feel quite so abandoned and alone, the only human left on a street full of horrors.
The light from the Kenns’ windows gleamed in their scarecrow’s eyes, and Kami saw they were marbles that had transformed into something that glistened as if they were made of the same stuff as human eyes but stayed small, swirling colors at their center.
It had a plaster face that had turned waxy and a little flexible. Kami saw its mouth move infinitesimally, its grin stretching. It flexed its hands in black gloves, and Kami heard tiny wooden pieces click inside the leather. Rob Lynburn and his sorcerers had made all these creatures come to some semblance of life. Kami had known as much already. But this scarecrow was specifically designed to last longer, to be more capable of hurting her.
It was horrible that there were lights on in the Kenns’ house. She wondered how many people were awake in the other houses along this lane, knowing nothing or hiding in fear, or standing at the windows watching the chaos they had created.
A hand touched the back of Kami’s neck, so terribly light, like a glove filled with nothing but air. Kami spun, trying to keep both scarecrows in her line of sight and jabbing her branch at the new one.
It was the scarecrow in the pink sun hat. Kami felt a little betrayed.
She hit it and the branch caught on the ruffled material of the scarecrow’s dress. Kami stabbed the branch in deeper and then yanked it out, ripping the scarecrow in two.
The Kenns’ scarecrow grabbed at her arm, its grasp firmer than the other scarecrow’s, feeling slick and strangling-strong on the bare skin of her wrist. Kami wrenched away and saw that there were other scarecrows very close now. One with a little whittled wooden face, its nose a knot in bark, was suddenly at the Kenns’ scarecrow’s side like a henchman.
A couple of houses down, there was a dark shape lying splayed in the grass. Kami felt her stomach turn, cold and sick, as she realized it was a scarecrow so badly made it could not stand.
It was crawling to get her, on its belly like a snake.
Kami dived for the scarecrow with the wooden face. The Kenns’ scarecrow crashed into her, heavier than a scarecrow should have been, as if it had a wooden skeleton buried underneath its straw, and caught her off-balance.
Kami fell heavily onto her side, elbow catching the edge of the pavement. The Kenn scarecrow’s leather shoe slammed down toward her face. Kami rolled to avoid it, and ended up flat on her back in the wet grass of the Kenns’ garden. The scarecrow’s waxy face and living marble eyes glistened above her, impassive and terrible, and Kami lifted her branch in both hands to ward it off.
In the black shadow of the church spire, light was born. First an orange glint ran along the dark wood of her branch; then Kami caught the sharp smell of smoke and heard a crackle nothing like the sound of straw.
Kami kept tight hold of her branch as light raced along it, sparking between the forked ends, and watched it burst into burning life. By the sudden light of fire, she saw there was someone with her in Shadowchurch Lane.
Jared Lynburn, one of the sorcerers. Rob Lynburn’s nephew, the real boy she had once believed was her imaginary friend.
He was standing back, arms crossed over his chest, watching her. His face was mostly shadowed but the stark line of the scar on his face was white as moonlight, firelight catching the sleeping gold in his dark-blond hair and setting twin lights burning in his pale eyes.
The boy who used to live in her head.
But not anymore.
Kami lifted herself onto her unhurt elbow and plunged the burning branch into the Kenn scarecrow’s body. Its coat caught alight, and Kami scrambled to her feet as it scrabbled at the branch with its leather gloves. She shoved the branch into its straw breast and watched it burn from the inside out.
She was not surprised when she looked for the scarecrow with the wooden face and saw its face already a charred ruin. She was surprised when she looked across the street and Jared was gone, twining shadows and moonlight where he had stood.
Firelight burst in the corner of her eye. Kami turned and looked down the street. There he was, a shadow passing through forms bright with burning. Some of the scarecrows writhed as they burned in a ghastly parody of a dance. Jared stopped at the garden where the ill-made scarecrow lay, a humped-up shape in the grass. Kami watched him looking at it, weakly rolling in the grass as it burned, and thought she saw him smile.
She could have followed him. He would not exactly have been hard to track, what with his blazing path of destruction and all. But Jared obviously did not need her help. Angela and Holly might.
Kami turned away from him and ran, clutching her burning branch, down to the town square.
Angela was standing beside the statue of Matthew Cooper. Holly was sitting at the base of the statue, short skirt riding up her purple tights as she put her boots back on. Beside her was a metal sign from one of the High Street shop fronts.
Standing diffidently on the other side of the statue was Ash Lynburn, Jared’s cousin and Rob’s son, his camera around his neck and piles of cloth and straw all around him.
“How’d you do that?” Kami asked. It was the first thing she had said to him in two weeks, since the day she found out his father had persuaded him to spy on her, and almost persuaded him to kill Angela.
Ash blinked and smiled at the sight of her. “It’s easy,” he said. “You just undo the spell put on them in the first place—it’s like undoing a knot in your mind.”
So setting them on fire and watching them burn was an entirely unnecessary and insane thing to do, Kami thought. But she did not say that. Instead, she said, “Everyone all right?”
Angela nodded. Holly looked up and smiled too, her smile shakier and thus more real than Ash’s. “I’m okay,” she said. “I see you are too. I also see you have a weapon that is on fire.”
“I’m badass like that,” Kami said, putting the branch down on the cobblestones. It was still burning. She had no idea how to put it out.
“My mother’s up by the woods, dealing with the gardens there,” said Ash, as if Lillian Lynburn was trimming hedges rather than killing scarecrows come to life. “Jared’s—”
“I saw him,” Kami told him shortly. She jerked her head toward the road past the church, and the burning trail Jared had left. She went to sit at the foot of the statue beside Holly.
Holly linked arms with her. Kami leaned in close, sharing warmth as they looked around the nighttime square and past it to the rest of their town where there were still fires burning and straw men moving through the dark.
They had known it was coming: Rob Lynburn’s first move to terrify the town into submission, to make it a place where sorcerers ruled again, where they could kill for power and nobody would stop them.
They didn’t know who most of Rob Lynburn’s followers were, but some people who didn’t follow him must have seen what was happening. Nobody had come to help. Kami shivered in the night air, and felt Holly shiver too.
When they saw someone walking toward them down the High Street, they both jum
ped.
Angela ran past them, and when she reached her brother she punched him in the shoulder. Rusty’s shirt was torn; he put an arm around his sister and looked at Kami over Angela’s head. His often-sleepy hazel eyes were bright and intent.
“Cambridge?” he said, using his silly nickname for her. “A scarecrow just tried to choke me. I don’t wish to seem overly inquisitive, but do you have any idea what on earth is happening?”
Kami looked at Holly and Ash, who were both silent and totally unhelpful. “Well,” she admitted, “I might have some idea.”
“You’d better tell me,” Rusty said.
Kami looked around the square at the remains of scarecrows in the moonlight. “We’d better go to your house first,” she said. “It’s not safe here.” She didn’t know if anywhere was safe. She didn’t want to go home, so there was nowhere to go but Rusty and Angela’s place. She wasn’t welcome at the Lynburns’.
Kami lifted her eyes to Aurimere House, which stood outlined against the sky. Its windows reflected the lights of fires burning all over her town.
Chapter Two
The Heir of Aurimere
“So to review,” said Rusty, two hours later. “Magic is real. The Lynburns are sorcerers who founded Sorry-in-the-Vale as an ideal place for sorcerers to soak up nature, which gives them their, ah, magic powers. But not as much magic as they get from killing people. Rob Lynburn killed Nicola Prendergast, and we can’t go to the police because at least one member of the police force is one of Rob Lynburn’s sorcerers.”
“Also because the police might not find our story particularly convincing,” Kami put in.
She scrutinized Rusty. He was sitting on the other side of the kitchen island from herself, Angela, and Holly, resting his elbows on the granite surface. He was back to his usual self, all traces of his former alertness wiped out, big shoulders at ease and eyes heavy-lidded as if he might just go to sleep. There was never any way to tell what Rusty was thinking.
“And the imaginary friend you’ve had all your life—the voice in your head—was actually Jared Lynburn, who is also a sorcerer,” Rusty said. He shrugged. “Well, I did think there was something weird going on with him. And the fact that you guys were sort of . . . wearing woo-woo mental friendship bracelets meant he had more, ah, magical power, and you could use it.”
“I could use it better than he could,” Kami said. “He’s a sorcerer, and I was a source—the link between us meant I was a source of magic to him. But I broke the link between us.”
“Right,” said Rusty. “So you don’t have, ah, magic powers anymore.”
“Can you stop prefixing magic powers with ‘ah’?”
“I’m not ready to drop the prefix,” Rusty told her. “If you like, I can switch prefixes. I’m happy to go with ‘um, magic powers’ or ‘er . . . magic powers.’ Whichever works best for you ladies.”
Angela leaned across the table. “Rusty, I already beat up four scarecrows tonight. Do not push me.”
“Okay,” said Rusty. “So, we have three people with magic powers on our side: Lillian, Jared, and Ash Lynburn. And Jared and Ash—or, as I think of them, Sulky and Blondie—are still sorcerer trainees. On the side of evil are sorcerers in double digits, and aside from Rob; Jared’s mum, Rosalind; and Sergeant Kenn, we don’t know who most of them are.”
“Yet,” said Kami.
“Wow,” said Rusty. “Bet family reunions are going to be awkward for the Lynburns from now on. Also, I have lost a certain amount of faith in the police force.”
It was possible Rusty thought this was all an elaborate practical joke. Kami looked at Holly and Angela, hoping for backup. Angela scowled and Holly seemed uncomfortable. Maybe Holly didn’t want to look like a lunatic in front of a cute older guy. Or maybe she was uncomfortable being in Angela’s house.
The Montgomery house was never a comfortable house to be in at the best of times. Kami looked around at the shining kitchen island, the coffee machine she thought might unfold to be a robot butler, and Rusty, who seemed to have relaxed himself into a coma. She could not imagine a less likely place to tell someone about magic and be believed.
“You saw a little of what they can do tonight,” Kami said quietly. “There’s much more. There’s so much worse. Rob killed Nicola. He tried to kill me and Angela. We have to find some way to stop them, because there isn’t anybody else who will. If you don’t believe me, it doesn’t matter. If you won’t help me, it doesn’t matter. I know what I have to do.”
“You usually do,” Rusty said, and smiled lazily at her.
Holly reached out and squeezed Kami’s hand. “And we’re with you,” she said, her voice subdued but firm. Kami squeezed back.
Angela turned her gaze to Rusty and said, “That’s right. We don’t need you, you useless lump. In fact, you’d probably get in the way.”
Rusty placed a hand on his heart. “Without the love and support of my family, I would not be the man I am today. I’m with Cambridge too, of course.”
“You are?” Kami said blankly.
“A scarecrow tried to kill me. I don’t see anyone offering me alternative explanations for that,” Rusty drawled. “I believe you. I’ll help you. I’m with you. But it’s a lot to take in all at once. Could someone maybe fix me a snack? I think it would really help me process.”
Angela threw a roll of tinfoil at Rusty’s head. Holly started to laugh, and Rusty got up and fixed himself a snack, spreading tuna salad on bread with the air of a serf being worked unto death. Kami started to talk more easily, and Holly and Angela joined in, telling Rusty about going to the shut-up Monkshood Abbey, where Lynburns had committed murders two generations ago, and talking about seeing magic in the depths of the woods and the heart of their town.
Rusty was on their side. He believed her, and Angela and Holly had spoken up for her, been there for her despite the awkwardness between them. They could all be there for each other.
It was a relief to tell someone and be believed. Kami wanted to tell the world. For now, she could feel her team coming together. She could believe that her plan would come together as well.
* * *
Ash had scoured the town for his mother and his cousin half the night, trying not to think about what might happen to them if they were caught alone by his father. He trudged up the slope to Aurimere House, his camera beating a rapid anxious tattoo against his chest with every step, and heard his mother’s voice as he opened the door.
So they were both back safe. He doubted that either of them had been desperately concerned about him.
It struck Ash as almost unbearably strange sometimes that they were in Aurimere at last. For his whole childhood, it had been the promised land, the one thing his mother and father agreed on. He’d known that once they found Aunt Rosalind, they were going home. Where he belonged, where they all belonged, where they would never suffer again. “Our house,” his parents had called it. “Our town.”
Except he hadn’t understood that his parents meant different things by “our town”: his mother meant they had a responsibility to care for it, and his father that they had a right to rule it.
It had seemed easy enough to reconcile their different views when Aurimere was nothing but a dream. Both his mother and his father had told him, always, that they weren’t like other people: they were better.
He had spent his life knowing he was the heir of Aurimere, that Sorry-in-the-Vale was waiting for his return. He had spent his life wanting, so badly, to please them both.
His mother’s and father’s different views had ended in Ash seeing Angela chained on a quarry floor and knowing his father expected him to kill her. Now his father and his long-awaited aunt Rosalind were his enemies, and the only friends Ash had left did not trust him. He pulled his camera off from around his neck. He didn’t know why he was still carrying it around: it had been weeks since he saw something so beautiful and right he wanted to record it. He left it on the hall table and climbed the broad wooden staircase, h
eading toward his mother’s voice, which was coming from the general direction of the portrait gallery. His mother had not spoken much to him since she learned that he had picked up one of the golden knives the Lynburns had used long ago to shed blood and gain power, and almost used it.
Ash walked softly toward the gallery, past the door that led to the wing where they all slept, hesitating only when he reached the gallery entrance. The doorway had been carved in stone at a time when people were shorter than he was, and he had to duck his head slightly.
The gallery had a ceiling like a chapel’s, the curves of the walls meeting in an arch. The walls themselves were bright with gilt frames surrounding the faces of dead Lynburns. Two living Lynburns were standing in one of the alcoves, on either side of its dark, narrow, diamond-paned window: Jared was leaning against the stone, face turned toward the night. Ash’s mother never leaned against anything. She stood with one hand half outstretched toward Jared.
Ash hung back in the doorway. He felt short of breath and was not sure whether it was guilt, or whether he simply did not wish to be heard.
“Perhaps you do not entirely understand how the Lynburns work,” said his mother.
“Perhaps,” Jared said, mimicking Mom’s English accent, an ugly edge to his voice, “I don’t care about anything to do with the Lynburns.”
Mom was unruffled by what Ash would’ve thought she’d consider blasphemy. “You are one of us. Sorcery is in your blood and bones. You can’t be anything else. You can’t escape from what you are.”
“Oh, really?” Jared asked. “My mom ran away. Holly told me that her uncle ran away as well. Of course, maybe he wasn’t running from magic. Maybe he was just running from you.”
Ash had never heard anything special about Holly’s family, never heard his mother mention them. She ignored the mention of them now.
“So is that what you’re going to do, run away?” his mother asked. “Strange. You are many things, but I would not have said you were a coward.”