She took a deep breath, her throat sore as if she had been crying, and tried to think clearly. It seemed impossible to create any order in her torn invaded mind, but she refused to let it be impossible. There was magic in the midst of the chaos. It was like trying to capture a storm of knives in her arms, but she forced herself to think of the suffering and magic as separate. She wanted to give the magic to Ash. She thought about opening her arms to him, about offering what she had so he could use it.
Ash took the power carefully, like something they were trying to pass with hands that were shaking, and which they could not drop. Kami felt his surprise and the first, tentative feeling of pleasure behind the terror and panic. He had not expected so much power, or that it would come so easily.
Jared had never really valued or understood the power. Kami had not felt anyone exulting in magic before, or been able to see someone who knew how to use magic take hers and craft something out of it.
Ash’s hand uncurled from hers, and he rose to his feet.
A light rose on the tops of the winter-stripped trees, white as moonshine and so bright, like a star fallen from the sky and going nova. The light placed a shimmering halo on Ash’s hair and, so crowned, he stepped over the wall and the broken remnants of their screen, and into the town square.
The square was filled from edge to edge with white light: it looked iced, every cobblestone shining. The shadows and firelight had both been chased away, and the chaos had gone with them. Everyone was still, watching Ash walk into the sudden peace he had created.
Rob’s hair looked snow white as he turned his head to look at his son. “So you were too much of a coward to pay the true price for power,” he said. “Instead you’ve enslaved yourself to get a quick fix. I see you’ve entirely given up on making your parents proud, Ash. Maybe you knew all along that you were not capable of doing so.”
“Maybe,” Ash said. “But now your odds look a lot worse, don’t they, Dad?” He lifted a hand to where Sergeant Kenn and Rusty stood, still wreathed in magic though they had both paused in their fight. Kami took deep slow breaths, crouched on the ground, trying to ignore her own existence and become just a conduit to the magic.
The haze of magic wrapping around them dissolved, and Rusty moved, punching Kenn in the face. Angela dived to his side. As the fighting started again, Ash did not go straight for Rob or to Jared’s side. He looked to his mother.
Magic was behind the look, and people were thrown out of his way, the crowd parting like the Red Sea. Lillian was facing three sorcerers at once and not doing badly, though there was a deep bleeding cut on her face and a vivid scarlet splash in her silver-fair hair.
Mrs. Prescott was coming at Lillian from behind. She was Holly’s mother. This was a real and terrible fight; Kami knew they might have to kill someone, but she could not see any way to murder her friend’s mother. She could not, and through the new painful pathways of her heart to a strange land she felt Ash could not.
He lashed out at Mrs. Prescott, not to kill but to stun. Kami could sense the power flooding from her to him: she was able to see herself as divided from Ash in a way that she had never been able to definitively divide herself from Jared. She could see how she could withhold the power, and how she could choose to give.
Kami gave all she had, felt like nothing but a channel for magic, the focus so everything living could give the sorcerer magic. Jared and Lillian were both approaching and Rob was fending them off rather than attacking. Ash had felled three sorcerers in less than a minute.
Rob could see where the real threat lay. He swerved to face Ash, and Ash hesitated to attack his father: Kami felt his love and fear combined, choking him, stopping him in his tracks.
He lifted his little bag like a shield and said, “Noli me—”
Rob cut through the spell before it was even complete, and cut through his son too. Kami felt Ash’s agony blaze through her. He fell to the cobblestones, twisted and bleeding. Lillian screamed like a Valkyrie who would have a death for a death, and went for Rob at the same time Jared did. Ash tried to lift himself from the blood-slick stones. He lifted a hand, his magic spiraling out from him, to help them.
It did not matter how little practice she had. Ash looked like he might lose consciousness at any moment. Kami had to join this fight. She climbed the wall, and saw Rob note her, take in his wife and his sons arrayed against him, and weigh the odds.
“Come on!” Rob said, his magic cutting a swath of silence through the air like a whip. “I do not intend to risk any of my sorcerers. We can get as much magic as we need, and they can’t.” He threw up a hand and Jared went slamming into the foot of Matthew Cooper’s statue.
Kami ran, though her legs felt unsteady. By the time she was in the square, Rob’s followers were leaving. Rob was not. He was standing by Lillian, tilting her chin up in one hand.
“You know I could beat you,” he said, “if I was willing to sacrifice a sorcerer or two. But it’s not worth it to defeat so humiliatingly feeble an enemy.”
He stroked Lillian’s hair. It was one of the only gestures of affection Kami had ever seen between this married couple.
“You thought you would at least have a glorious last stand, didn’t you, Lillian? But you’re just going to be crushed. You’re nothing. And now everybody knows it. Now every soul in this town will surrender to me. All this display was for nothing. I can make a sacrifice in the spring equinox just as well. I will have my sacrifice, and this town will submit.” He spread out his arms to the square, to the statue and the sorcerers. To anyone watching, the gesture must have looked like victory, and he like a conqueror.
Kami turned away. She knelt down at the foot of the statue where Jared lay, and looked anxiously down at him. He was lying still, but his chest was rising and falling steadily: his head was turned to one side. When Kami laid her hand gently against his cheek and turned his face to hers, she saw the trail of blood on his temple.
There must be some way to magically heal people, Jared had told her. She had the power to try it now: she wanted to try, to assure herself that she could handle this magic, and that it would help. That she had been right to do this.
Kami drew on a little of the magic. It was wrenchingly uncomfortable to be connected to someone else when she was looking down at Jared, trying to reach him. She had to concentrate on his cut, and how she wanted it healed, his pain eased, wound closed: she could not let herself think about him. Kami had her fingers curled just above the wound. She felt the warm flutter of his breath, evening out against the inside of her wrist.
Then she reached out and touched his temple with her fingertips, very lightly. The blood came away on her hand, and underneath the skin was whole. Kami looked up and saw that Rob had left the square. Nobody was there but Lillian and her sorcerers, Ash and Kami’s friends, and the bodies on the cobblestones.
Lillian had Ash’s head in her lap, his blood on her hands. His eyes were open. Kami could feel his pain through their connection.
“Mother.” Ash’s voice was soft. “It’s not true.”
“That he would have won?” Lillian asked. “That you had to chain yourself to a source to give us the smallest chance? Of course it’s true. He’s right. He is the one with the power.” She shook off Ash’s gentle hands, as she had tried to step away from Rob’s cruel ones, and stood up, leaving Ash lying in the bloodstained square. “But not for long,” she added.
Lillian beckoned to the five sorcerers still standing, turned on her heel, and left the square. She was not walking up to Aurimere, Kami thought in a dazed way. She was heading out to the woods, as if any of the sorcerers could possibly be ready for another practice session.
Ash looked at her across the square. Kami could feel his uncertainty and discomfort, could feel someone else’s feelings, hideously distinct from hers. He felt everything in a different way than she did: they barely saw the same color when they looked at the sky.
“Rusty,” she said. “Angela, Holly. Help Ash, pleas
e.”
Kami felt Ash’s relief, saw Rusty going toward him at once. She wanted nothing but the best for Ash, wanted him healed and saved. Kami looked away from him and into Jared’s still face.
She did not want Ash anywhere near her.
PART VII
IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
The strength and splendour of our purpose swings.
The lamps fade; and the stars. We are alone.
—Rupert Brooke
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Lady of Aurimere’s Error
The others took Ash to the Water Rising, the nearest place that had certain beds and an almost-certain welcome. Kami stayed where she was, kneeling on the cold stone of the square, waiting for Jared to open his eyes. When he did, the sky was lightening from black to steely gray, and she still wasn’t ready.
Kami was holding his head in her lap. His lashes stirred and his eyelids lifted: he looked up at her, eyes a lighter, softer gray than the sky. His eyes warmed when he saw her.
With him looking at her as he always did, she felt for a moment as if she was not changed. Then his eyes went flat and his muscles went tense. He said, “Watch out,” and rolled off her lap and into a crouch, ready to leap.
Kami looked up and saw Mr. Prescott staggering toward her with fire building in his cupped hands. She reached out a hand and thought, Stop—and Mr. Prescott went down again.
Kami had an instant of horror when she wondered what she had done. Then she saw who was standing over Mr. Prescott, a piece of wood from their broken screen of briars and branches in his hands. It was her father. He stood staring down at her, the blood on her hand and whatever wild changed look she had on her face.
“Dad,” she whispered.
He looked sick. “Kami.”
His eyes traveled over the bloodstained cobblestones, to where Ms. Dollard lay. The slow-dawning horror on his face was terrible to watch: it was like seeing through his eyes, seeing a nightmare. Kami got up, wobbling a little, and ran into his arms. Dad smoothed her hair, murmuring comfort into her ear that seemed meant for both of them.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Dad said softly. “Thank God Lillian came to me.”
Kami felt as if his warm breath, running along the nape of her neck, had suddenly gone ice cold and sharp. She shuddered involuntarily, and the shudder took her a step away out of his arms.
“Lillian?” she asked. “When?”
Dad blinked. “Just now. She came to the door and told me you needed my help.”
“Why would she—is Mum at home?” Kami demanded. She found herself trembling inside, as if tiny slivers of ice were racing through her bloodstream, making every cell shiver with dread.
Dad reached out and took hold of Kami’s shoulders in a gentle grip. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your mother isn’t there, but Lillian offered to stay while I went to you. She’s waiting downstairs, and your brothers are safe in their beds. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Dad thought Lillian was on their side and could be trusted. Dad had not seen Lillian’s face tonight when Rob had told her she was nothing.
“Dad,” said Kami. She was able to control her voice somehow, keeping it steady because she had to, because she could not be sure something was wrong. But she could be sure of one thing.
“We have to go home now.”
* * *
Kami had been walking down this street all her life. She had always taken for granted that family and peace could be found at the end.
She had never had a homecoming like this, running desperately with her father ahead of her, Jared racing at her heels. The early morning made everything look alien, clouds muffling the dawn: bands of sickly yellow edged with gray thrown over their little garden, over the crumbling roof tiles.
Dad was trying to open the door as Kami flew down the path. His hands were shaking so hard that he could not get the key in.
Kami fished out her own key from her pocket, the pink plastic daisy swinging from it looking pathetic and ridiculous, as if it belonged to a different girl in a different life. She forced her hands to keep steady, as she had forced her voice in the town square, and opened the door.
The hall was still and quiet, the red tiles shadowed. The door to the sitting room was standing open. It was still and quiet in there too. Lillian was gone.
Dad ran up the stairs, hoarsely calling the boys’ names. Kami ran behind him, breaths like sobs tearing in her throat. Dad ran into Ten’s room, so Kami ran into Tomo’s.
Tomo’s bed was a rumpled mess, sheets trailing on the carpet, toy trucks idle on the motorways of his blankets and parked in the high hills of his pillows. It was empty.
“Tomo.” She said his name when she’d meant to scream it. “Tomo!”
Then she wrenched her eyes away from the bed and ran across the hall, into Ten’s room, where Dad stood. His face was blank, as if he could not understand the horror he was suddenly living through.
This bed was empty too. It made Kami’s eyes burn, looking at those sheets. Ten always made his bed, small hands smoothing out hospital corners, the most conscientious kid in the world.
“Kami!” Jared shouted.
Kami turned. Her eyes were stinging and her legs numb as she stumbled down the stairs. The light and darkness in their hallway were wavering and blending in her vision. Everything looked sinister: Kami could not help but think of the phrase “seeing things in a new light,” and wonder why there was no phrase for seeing things in a new shadow, realizing how dark the world could become.
Jared was in the kitchen. His eyes swung to her, alert, then back to the door of their closet. “I heard a noise,” he said quietly.
Kami crossed the kitchen floor in an instant, Jared at her shoulder. She opened the closet door with a jerk. Tomo tumbled out, tear-streaked and terrified and whole, into her arms.
“Kami!” he exclaimed, his hands scrabbling at her clothes as if he was a small frantic animal, clawing to hold on. Kami clasped his head, silky hair against her palm, pressed it down to her shoulder, used her free arm to hold his body tight, tight against hers. He was too heavy and too big for her, and it did not matter at all.
Dad burst into the kitchen and Tomo burst into tears. Their father put his arms around Kami and Tomo for a moment; then Tomo transferred his grip from Kami to Dad, arms winding around his neck. “Tomo, Tomo, I’ve got you, I’m so sorry, you’re safe now,” Dad said, like a prayer, like a promise. He touched Tomo’s hair the same way Kami had, trying to soothe him and hang on to him at once. “Tomo, I’m so sorry,” Dad repeated. “But you have to tell us what happened.”
Tomo let out another gulping sob. Kami had been hanging on to his fingers for reassurance, but now she squeezed them, pleading.
“Ten needs you to tell us.”
“He came and woke me up,” Tomo forced out, voice pitifully small between sobs. “He came and he said that . . . that the lady was scaring him. He put me in here and he closed the door after me and I heard the lady and him, th-they were t-talking. He s-said to the lady that I must’ve gone after Dad.”
Tomo burst into another fit of sobs. Kami thought of Ten standing in their kitchen lying for his little brother, when Ten always went scarlet at the least little fib, and wanted to cry too.
Dad tightened his arms around Tomo, pressing a kiss to the side of his face.
“What else did she say, Tomo? Where did she take your brother?”
“I d-don’t know!” Tomo wailed. “She just said he had to come with her, she said she needed—she needed—”
“A source,” Kami whispered.
Matthew Cooper’s blood, given the house and kept under the Lynburns’ eye, in case a time ever came when they would be desperate enough to need a source again.
Dad’s eyes met hers, over Tomo’s head. “A source,” he said, his voice controlled, trying to understand. “Like—like you are? What does that mean for Ten, Kami? You’re all right, aren’t you?”
“I’m all right
,” Kami told him, more forcefully than she would have done if it had been true. But she couldn’t lie to him about Ten.
“But I was . . .” Kami looked at her hands instead of into her father’s eyes. She glanced at Jared over her shoulder, met his gaze, and looked back down. She rubbed at the inside of her wrist, pulse fluttering under her thumb. “I was never forced to be a source, not by Jared. We were—we were in it together, always. He wasn’t using me as a way to get power. I knew that. I wanted to be—close.” She pressed her thumb down on her wrist, feeling her pulse pound as if it wanted to break out of her body. “When you don’t want to,” she whispered, “it’s different. We have to save Ten.”
Dad nodded. “Would she have taken him back to Aurimere to do this . . . spell?”
Kami thought of the way Rob always spoke about sources, the way Lillian had never actually suggested that Kami become her son’s source. She thought of the relentless pride of the Lynburns. And she remembered how she and Ash working together had only been able to hold off Rob’s people for a while. Another sorcerer, with less power than Ash, with an inexperienced child for a source, would not guarantee them victory.
Kami thought of all the contingency plans Lillian might have had her sorcerers practicing, out in the woods. “She didn’t go to Aurimere,” Kami said. “Lillian took the other sorcerers out to the Crying Pools, to do the ceremony. She wants them all to do it. And when they do, she’ll have one of them make Ten their source.”
In Lillian’s desperation, because of her overwhelming arrogance, because she had good intentions, she thought it was all right to take Kami’s little brother. She thought she had the right.
“Dad,” Kami said, holding Tomo’s hand, “you have to stay here with Tomo. I have to go get Ten.”
“I forbid you to leave this house,” Dad told her, his voice angry enough that it made Kami swallow. “One of my kids is already in danger. You two both have to stay here. I’m going.”