She did believe in the paranormal, or was open to believing in it: there was no other explanation for her and Jared’s link. But how could she work out something as impossible as an event that interfered with reality, that made someone blind to what was there? What, or who, had caused it?
Kami slept uneasily, plagued by bad dreams that felt as if they left stains on her mind as they passed through. She woke early, pulling herself out of bed and into the dress she’d laid out the night before. Kami slipped into green shoes decorated with daisies and went downstairs. It was past six in the morning, so her mother was gone, but everyone else was asleep.
The house was so quiet it felt like the morning sunlight had to flow in more gradually, as if the whole morning was conspiring with Kami in trying not to disturb her family. She couldn’t stay here in all this quiet.
She walked to school, thinking that she would get to her headquarters and feel better, but once she was there she just found herself sitting in her chair, staring at her notebook with two words, “Lynburns” and “Magic,” written on the page, and nothing else.
She didn’t know how to make a plan for magic, why anyone might kill for it, or why someone might help them using it. She wasn’t in control, and she didn’t know what to do. She wanted the magic to stop, and at the same time she wanted Jared.
Kami reached out and felt the rush of his concern. Then she looked up at the sound of the door sighing shut and saw him. She started, but he crossed the floor toward her, eyes on hers, and she was soothed past the strangeness of it. She felt like he could put his arms around her, she could hide her face in that ridiculous leather jacket, and she would feel better.
He stopped on the other side of her desk and said, “What can I do?”
“Well,” Kami said, and looked down at her notebook so he couldn’t see her face, “I wish I knew what those rituals with the animals did.”
“Rituals with—you think they worked?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Something happened at the guesthouse last night. And there’s us—we can read each other’s minds. I know there’s an explanation, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a reasonable one. So, what if the rituals do work in some way?”
“What we are isn’t related to any of this,” Jared said. “In any way.”
The sudden chill blast of Jared’s emotions made Kami flinch back. “You don’t know that,” she said evenly. “Logically, there might well be some connection.”
“Logically, it must be magic?” Jared said, shaking his head. “And logically, what you and I have is on the same level as some sick freak killing animals and trying to kill you. That’s what you think of us.”
No, it isn’t, Kami argued, reaching out to him with her mind, but the emotion she got from him was like a hand flung up, warning her off.
Jared’s body language followed suit. He backed out of the room, his big shoulders set in a furious line, and Kami got up from behind the desk and ran after him. She resented him for leaving and for being there at all; she was angry with herself for letting it matter so much.
“You’re taking this the wrong way,” she told him, her voice echoing down the stairwell.
“You wonder what privacy would be like. You wish I didn’t exist,” Jared said. “How am I supposed to take that?”
“What am I supposed to believe?” Kami sneered. “That we’re soul mates?”
This time Jared’s fury hit Kami’s own: it felt like a forest fire leaping between them, feeding off each other in a burning destructive loop. Kami was aware of what was happening and she still couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, and she hated it.
“Oh no, that wouldn’t be logical,” said Jared. “You always want an explanation for everything!”
“Yes,” Kami snapped. “I do. What’s wrong with that? And what’s wrong with wanting a little privacy? It is different now that I know you’re real. It is hard for me to deal with.”
“I’m sorry I’m so hard for you to deal with,” Jared snarled.
Kami took three steps down toward him and Jared backed off, reaching the ground floor. Kami stormed down the steps after him, raging enough to think things she would never have said: I’m sorry you’ve latched on to this without question because you’re messed up and desperate.
Jared turned and stalked down the hall, Kami in pursuit.
“Where are you going?” she asked. She ran to the main doors as Jared banged them open and barged through. She stood at the top of the steps as he got on his battered bike and screeched past. Kami yelled down, “Oh, be a delinquent and skip school, that’s very constructive!” She slammed the door shut behind her and glared around at the students standing wide-eyed around the hall.
“That’s right,” she said loudly. “Stay in school, all of you. Or I’ll get really riled.”
She returned to the headquarters, but there was no comfort to be found there now. She turned on the computer anyway, yelling at Jared in her head.
“Uh,” said Ash from the door, “are you—all right?”
“Fine!” Kami said. She typed out: “With the advent of sperm banks, women realized the sheer uselessness of men, and by the year 2100 they were largely extinct” with extreme force. “Absolutely fine, never better! Why do you ask?”
“Er, because I heard you and Jared had a screaming fight. Also, you are typing like a maddened weasel taped to a keyboard.”
Kami stopped typing. “You may have a point.”
“I just wanted to check and see if you were okay,” said Ash. “I thought you might need cheering up.”
Kami relaxed back in her chair. Ash was standing in the doorway, not leaning against it listening to invisible voices. Just standing, blue eyes concerned and voice gentle. “How were you planning to cheer me up?”
“Oh, well,” said Ash, and smiled his charming smile. “How about catching a movie tonight?”
He was so nice, Kami couldn’t help but think. She wasn’t dating anyone else. She wasn’t betraying anyone. Kami bit her lip, then smiled back, feeling the edges of her mouth strain to form the shape. “I’d love to.”
Down in the dark waters, there was gold gleaming. There was no air and the water was cold as death, dragging him down like chains. There was nothing here but darkness and the unreachable gleam of gold lost down so deep. If he did not get to the surface, he would die, and yet he knew with a chill, sure knowledge that if he did not reach that golden gleam, he would die anyway. Then he saw something else, lit by the underwater shine on the metal: a woman’s face at the bottom of the pool.
Jared broke the surface of the dream and woke gasping. He rolled onto his stomach and winced: he had been driving around for eight solid hours, and taken a few tumbles. He’d only eased up because he knew if he did actually crash, Kami would come for him.
So he hadn’t driven his bike into a tree, and instead Kami’d gone out on a date with Ash. That was much better. And instead of crashing his bike, Jared had stormed in here at evening time, crashed out, and dreamed about a dead woman.
Jared realized that his jacket smelled like he’d been on a bike for eight hours in it. He threw it off and headed for the shower. His bathroom at Aurimere was ridiculous and strange, each claw on his claw-foot tub clutching a tiny crystal, the showerhead a brass fist. At least the faucets worked, which was more than he was used to. It was better than he’d had in plenty of the apartments with his parents in San Francisco, and sure as hell better than the taps at fast-food places that he’d used to try to keep clean last summer.
The hot water stung on his new scrapes and bruises, sluicing between his shoulder blades. Jared cracked his neck, got out of the shower, and went to find a clean T-shirt and jeans. He left the room raking his hair back from his face, went up the steps past the tapestries, through the drawing rooms and down the long hall, calling for Uncle Rob. Uncle Rob was always kind to him, clapping him on the shoulder and calling him “son.” Jared wasn’t sure why he liked it or why he wanted to see Uncle Rob now, but h
e did.
Jared stalked into the parlor. There were no lights on, but a fire was burning, casting orange and black streaks on the windows as if the curtains were tiger hide. From the shadows, a voice said: “Can I help you?”
Jared said, “Aunt Lillian?” and turned on the light.
His aunt sat in a yellow armchair with a high back. Her hair was neatly parted, held back by a black band, which made her look like an older, evil Alice in Wonderland.
“Did you want a book?” Aunt Lillian asked. “I could not help but notice half the library has moved to your room.”
Jared felt vaguely unsettled that she’d noticed. He wasn’t used to adults scrutinizing his behavior. He hadn’t meant to take so many books, but they were all the kind he liked, about made-up olden days when the world made sense, about death and love and honor.
“I was looking for Uncle Rob,” he said, backing up. “Is he in the garden?”
“Don’t go outside, Jared; your hair is wet,” Aunt Lillian told him. She said it coolly, but it caught Jared off guard. It was such a mom thing to say, and something his mom would never have said. He hesitated on the threshold, and while he did, Aunt Lillian’s darkened and shaped eyebrows came together in a slight frown. She repeated, “Can I help you?”
Jared came to a decision. “Yeah. Yeah, you can.”
Lillian clearly did not much appreciate the word “yeah,” but she nodded for him to continue.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “we don’t know each other all that well, do we? I mean, like—for people who are related to each other. I wondered, and this might seem strange, if you have any stories about when Ash was a kid.”
Aunt Lillian blinked. Jared figured that was Aunt Lillian’s equivalent of staggering back with a hand pressed to her heart. “Yes,” she said, her voice chillier than ever. “Yes, I do.” She rose and went to the glass-fronted bookcase at the other end of the room and took out a cloth-covered photo album with sepia roses on the front. She stood by the bookcase holding the album in her hands and regarding Jared.
Then she strode over to one of the sofas with scarlet canopies. She sat down, her back straight, like someone trained at the most genteel military academy in the world. “You can come sit by me,” she said graciously.
Jared came and sat on the couch, enough of a distance away so that Aunt Lillian had her space and close enough to see the photo album. It was possible he slumped a little more than usual.
“I am pleased you are taking an interest in the family, Jared,” Aunt Lillian said. “It matters a great deal to me.” She paused and added, “It is the only thing in the world that matters to me.”
Jared felt a stab of guilt. He felt okay using Aunt Lillian and having underhanded motives, but it got more complicated if she actually cared what he did. It also made him accept something he really had known before. Back in San Francisco, in the last of a long string of apartments, he’d woken up to hear Mom and Aunt Lillian arguing. Mom had never lost her accent, but it had been weird to realize that he couldn’t differentiate between their voices. It was like lying in the dark listening to his mother arguing with herself. Except that the two voices had very different things to say.
He’d wanted to believe it was Aunt Lillian who said “He won’t be any use” and his mother who said “Of course we’re taking the child. I do not care if you don’t want him: I do.”
But he’d known, really, that it wasn’t.
Which begged the question, why would Aunt Lillian want him, and what for?
Jared leaned farther backward into the cushions, even though the straight line of Aunt Lillian’s spine reproached him. “So,” he said. “Tell me about Ash.”
At the point when Jared relayed Ash’s habit of hiding his cuddly toys in the freezer, Kami started to laugh in the movie theater.
Ash glanced over at her.
“Sorry,” Kami murmured. “Just—the movie’s funny.”
Ash looked back at the movie, in which a small blond child was dying of leukemia.
“I have a very warped sense of humor,” Kami whispered.
What she had was the deep desire to beat Jared’s head in. She knew how this date should have gone. She would have sneaked looks over at Ash. A few times their gazes would have met and parted after an instant too long. She would have left her hand lying on the arm of the seat invitingly, and he would have taken it. But instead she’d been trying to maintain a poker face while being regaled with the story of when Ash was four and had stuffed a prawn up his own nose.
After the movie, Ash and Kami left the theater and meandered down to walk by the riverside. It was twilight, the moon turning the Sorrier River into a silver ribbon and turning Ash’s fair hair into silver threads.
“So, that movie was …,” Ash said. “Uh …”
“Very much so,” said Kami. “There’s only one cinema in Sorry-in-the-Vale, and we only play one movie a week, so they pretty much know that they’ve got a captive audience. Not that this is an excuse for how many times I’ve watched Casablanca.”
“Do they change it up?” Ash asked. “Like, one week, touching stories of love and loss and the human condition, and the next week—er—mutant killer werewolves? Not that I’m saying I personally would choose werewolves.”
“If we ever got a shot at werewolves,” Kami said, “I’d choose werewolves too. For the novelty value alone.” She slanted a look at Ash. “Regretting your parents’ rash decision to move back here, oh cosmopolitan traveler?”
“Nah,” said Ash. “Everything’s better here. The air is easier to breathe, and my mother’s much happier. My family’s—different.”
“I had not noticed that,” Kami told him. “At all.” She thought of the Lynburns running out to soak up a storm. It was bizarre, and seemed impossible now, with Ash walking beside her in the quiet night and holding her hand in his. She could touch him, and it was easy.
Ash shrugged, and his hand tightened on hers. “Families,” he said. “They can be hard. But you have to try your best for them, don’t you?”
He swung Kami’s hand, and they exchanged a smile going over the arch of the wooden bridge.
“So,” said Ash. “What were you and Jared fighting about? I heard—”
“I don’t want to talk about Jared!” Kami said, and decided to give another stab at being Mata Hari and extracting information from men with her wiles. “So … tell me about the difficulties in your family.” She wondered if Mata Hari had ever found it tricky to know how to put things.
“Well,” Ash said doubtfully, “you already said you didn’t want to talk about Jared.” He grinned at her again. “I don’t really want to talk about my family either.”
He used her hand to spin her into him a little, as if they were doing a subtle dance. He stood looking down at her, now close, and the moonlight trembled on his lashes. He leaned down while Kami leaned against the rail of the bridge and turned her face up to his. The first touch of his mouth was gentle, light, and sweet.
Fun fact, Jared put in. Ash wet the bed until he was five.
Kami spluttered out a laugh against Ash’s lips. Ash drew back sharply.
Kami tried not to die of mortification. “I’m so sorry,” she said instantly. “I was thinking about something else.”
Ash’s voice had an edge to it now. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that—” Kami floundered, a fish on the dry land of shame. “That—that purple is a funny color?” She couldn’t blame Ash for his look of incredulity. She was feeling something along the same lines herself. “Look, I’m so sorry,” Kami said. “I’m feeling really weird. I should probably go home.”
She crossed the bridge over to the road running along the woods. When she glanced back, Ash still stood on the bridge in the moonlight, looking like an outraged angel. Jared was loud in her head about the fact that she was walking home through the woods alone at night.
I’m not going into the woods, Kami snapped. I’m not a total idiot
. And if I’m alone, whose fault is that?
Jared rolled out of bed, trying to ignore Kami’s angry silence in his mind. It had been keeping him up for hours. He just had to move, as if by moving he could get past the feeling he had done something even more messed up than usual.
He pulled on a pair of jeans and took the back stairs down toward the kitchen. The landing between floors was painted red, so the first flight of stairs was like a descent into hell. He went past hell to the next flight of stairs, past one wall that was a tableau in black-and-white mosaics of a woman standing caught between Aurimere and a lake, into shadows leading down to a gray hall. There was a marble bust against one wall, a man’s white profile that reminded Jared of Aunt Lillian.
Jared realized that a door was ajar and someone was awake, because he saw the slash of light bisecting the marble face. He turned toward the lit room as he descended the stairs, and he heard the murmur of voices. A family conference was going on in the library.
“… it’s clear it will not stop. We have to do something,” said a woman’s voice. It was Aunt Lillian, and not his mother, because she was talking about taking action.
His mother spoke next. She said, “You can’t trust a half-breed.”
Jared went still for a moment, and in that moment Ash opened the door all the way and slipped outside the room. He looked up at Jared on the stairs, and his blue eyes went wide.
Jared lunged from the step across the floor and pinned Ash up against the stone wall.
“Half-breed?” Jared said in a furious whisper. “Do they mean Kami?”
At the mention of Kami’s name, Ash’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said, and his voice was suddenly like his mother’s, crisp and cold. “They mean you.” He shoved Jared away and disappeared back into the room where they were holding the family council.
Jared didn’t wait to see what Ash told them. He walked through the dining hall and then the entrance hall and out the front door, slamming it behind him. He sat on the top step of the entrance of Aurimere House, Sorry-in-the-Vale stretched dark and quiet below him.
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