“Is there,” Jared began, voice rough as it had been when they first met. He wasn’t looking at her. “Is there anything I can do to make you happy?”
“I don’t understand.” Kami reached for him in her mind, but his walls were up and his face stayed turned away.
“Nobody’s ever been happy I was there before,” Jared said. “That’s just the kind of effect I have on people. I want you to be glad I’m here. I want it badly. But I have no idea how to make it happen.” He looked at her then, fixing her with that pale gaze. He hardly ever looked at her, but when he did his attention was absolute, and profoundly unsettling. “I’ll do anything you want. All you have to do is tell me.”
Kami bit her lip. “I am happy you’re here.”
It tasted like a lie in her mouth, when they had never lied to each other before. Kami glanced involuntarily away from him, eyes falling to her clasped hands, even though she knew that would make her look more like she was lying than ever.
She wasn’t lying. It wasn’t that she was unhappy he was here: it was just that it was all so complicated. He had been so safe in her head, her constant companion. Now he had come crashing into her life, a stranger with his own life separate from hers whose emotions were all tied up with hers, someone who she barely knew and who sometimes seemed cruel. She could not help being afraid of him: he could hurt her, more than a stranger should be able to, and she did not know if he would.
“You’re not happy,” Jared said, his voice flat, and he headed for the back door.
“Come on, I am,” Kami said. “We’re going to fight crime together. I totally need you to be corporeal.”
He was holding the door open already, but when she spoke she felt him reach for her. She reached back, and felt his little shock of recognition, as if he had only just caught sight of her in a crowd, relief and joy spilling through the connection. She was not quite sure if it was his or her own.
“I could throw thugs out windows for you,” he offered, and there was life in his voice again.
“I can defenestrate my own thugs,” Kami informed him. “But you could maybe get clues for me. You know. Clues on high shelves.”
Jared laughed. “You’re not happy yet,” he said. The afternoon sunlight transformed him into a brightly limned shadow, already turning away. “But you will be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Belief and Unbelief
The back door slid open, softly and gradually, in the dark. The moonlight formed a hazy halo around fair hair, and the silhouette of a woman moved quietly as a shadow into the room.
“Boo!” said Kami, from her sentry position beside the dishwasher.
Her mother gave a little scream and dropped her parcel of baked goods. “Kami! You scared me,” she said as Kami knelt down and began to pick up the contents of the parcel.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kami said reasonably. “So I lay in wait for you.”
Mum had known Kami since Kami was born, so she just sighed at this brilliant logic. And Kami did feel it was logical: Claire’s was both a bakery that Mum opened at six and a restaurant she did not close until midnight. Mum got home to see the boys in between, but lately Kami was at her newspaper headquarters then. So midnight lurking it was.
Her decision may have been slightly influenced by the fact that Mum always brought home treats. The bakery box was mostly intact, and the pastries on the floor still looked good. Kami handed her mother the box, then picked up a chocolate chip cookie from the floor.
“Don’t eat that,” Mum said.
Kami bit in. “Mmm, floor cookie.” She leaned against the counter and said, “Spill it.”
Mum slid the box onto the counter. “What are you talking about?” she asked warily.
“Mum,” Kami said, “have you met me? You tell me to stay away from someone, and you thought I’d say ‘Oh yes, Mother, of course, no further questions’ and sit about in the garden making daisy chains?”
“I’d like to hear ‘Oh yes, Mother, of course, no further questions,’ ” Mum said, sighing. “Just once.” She leaned forward, meeting Kami’s eyes in the dark kitchen as if they were going to do a business deal. “All right, Kami, I made a bit of a miscalculation there. I was slightly overwrought. Sometimes that happens when you get phone calls saying that your child has tumbled into a well. But can’t you trust me that these people are dangerous?”
“Trust you?” Kami said. “Of course I can trust you. But I want to know why.”
Mum suddenly looked more tired than she had before. “I hoped they would never come back,” she whispered. “A lot of us hoped that.”
“Whatever the Lynburns did,” Kami said, “Jared and Ash aren’t responsible. They weren’t even born.”
A branch knocked on the window, its leaves silver in the moonlight. Kami and her mother both jumped.
“It wasn’t what the Lynburns did,” Mum said very softly. “It was what they were. What they still are. Creatures of red and gold. The whole town was terrified of them. Lillian Lynburn thought she was queen of every blade of grass in the Vale, and Rosalind Lynburn looked through you as if you were too unimportant to even notice. If she did notice you, it chilled you to the bone. But Rob Lynburn’s parents were dead, and the twins’ father was sick for a long time before he died. All the time we were growing up, the Lynburns were losing their grip on the land, and then Rosalind left and the others went after her. I was so glad they were gone.”
Kami’d always thought her mother had a face like a woman in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She wasn’t like Angela, always fashionably dressed with flawless makeup. Claire Glass was usually in quiet rebellion against her beauty, pinning her hair up, always in loose jeans and sweatshirts. Kami had never seen her mother look tragic before.
“What about Rob Lynburn?” Kami asked. “Dad said he was the one you knew best. He said he had an office above Claire’s and he had lunch early so he could talk to you. Were you afraid of him?”
“Rob?” Mum echoed, sounding startled. “I was, but I understood him better. You don’t get how people felt about the Lynburns back then. We were terrified, but we were fascinated too. There were a lot of people who would follow wherever a Lynburn led. Rob Lynburn was used to having a crowd of girls after him, and he liked the attention. He expected it from all of us. He came and had lunch with me, the way men do when they’re set on catching your eye.” Her voice was unself-conscious as she flipped open the lid of the bakery box to examine the damage done to its contents.
It would be nice to be crazy beautiful for a day, Kami thought, and then told herself that the way things were always happening to her—through no fault of her own—she might start a war like Helen of Troy. Being beautiful would probably be too much of a hassle.
“So, Rob Lynburn fancied you,” Kami said. “And all the girls were after him, and all the boys were after the twins. So the Lynburns are hot blonds? That doesn’t sound so scary.”
“It didn’t matter who was after the twins. Lillian never cared about anything and Rosalind never cared about anybody but Rob.”
“Her sister’s husband!” Kami squawked.
“Well, not at the time,” Mum said mildly.
“Jared’s mum was in love with Ash’s father?”
Mum raised an eyebrow. “Bit of a surprise when Rob married Lillian—to Rosalind most of all. We all thought that was why she left with that American: hurt pride, a broken heart. If any Lynburn has a heart. I was hoping that the boys would act like the Lynburns usually do: that they would stay away from normal people. That you could keep away from them.”
“Mum!” Kami exclaimed. “You don’t know Jared. Or Ash.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know,” Mum said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in the hands of a Lynburn.”
“They aren’t monsters!”
Her mother whispered, “Yes, they are.”
Kami skirted the counter to draw close to her mother. “Mum,” she asked, “what did a Lynburn make you do?�
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“Don’t tell your father,” Mum whispered.
Suddenly the overhead light in the kitchen went on.
“Cookies!” Tomo screeched, and zoomed across the room.
It was like the world had been flipped instead of a light switch. Their bright ordinary kitchen was a jarring contrast to secrets in the dark.
“Don’t try to eat five things at once, Tomo—remember the time you sneezed lemon meringue,” said Mum, relaxing and ruffling Tomo’s silky black hair.
Tomo was Mum’s favorite. He was the baby, and the one it was easiest to make happy. He made Mum sure of her ground as a mother, Kami supposed: he always made her smile. She was smiling now, faintly, as she reached out and patted Kami’s arm.
“Please just stay clear of him,” she said, and Kami realized Jared was the Lynburn her mother was most afraid of.
“Whoever he is, I agree with your mother,” said Dad as he entered the kitchen. “Stay away from him. Stay away from them all until you’re of marrying age. Once you reach a nice, mature fifty-four, gentlemen callers will be welcomed here.”
Ten slipped out from behind him and made a beeline for the bakery box, where he politely stole the lone brownie from under Tomo’s nose.
“Camilla, Henry, Thomas, you greedy monsters,” Dad said. “Not a crumb left for your father? That’s it, you’re not my children. You’re just sad, bald monkeys I won from circus folk in a poker game.”
Ten retreated with his prize and went back to lean against Dad’s leg. He split the brownie in two and offered half silently up to Dad.
“Well,” Dad conceded, “I guess you might be my kid after all.”
Ten smiled his rare smile, Mum’s smile, then hid it against Dad’s shirt. Ten had Mum’s bronze hair, brown with gold running through it, and Mum’s dark gray eyes in his thin face. He followed Dad as Dad made his way to the counter, a solemn bespectacled moon orbiting his sun.
Dad took Mum’s face in his hands and pulled it down two inches to kiss her mouth. “Claire,” he said.
“Jon,” said Mum, “please stop calling our children by names other than their own.”
Dad released Mum and grinned. “Aren’t those their names? I could’ve sworn they were.”
Mum had been the one who insisted on celebrating her children’s Japanese heritage. Kami was pretty sure she’d got the names Kami, Tenri, and Tomo out of books, since Dad and Sobo had always acted like the whole thing was a bit silly.
“Let me tell you about my day, Claire of my heart,” said Dad. “First the Gallagher account decided they wanted to change their logo. Your knight, slaying graphic design tirelessly for your sake, was not daunted, but then—even before my tea break—”
Mum smiled. Kami did not know if it was the memory of that last whisper in the dark, that “Don’t tell your father,” that made Kami wonder how well Mum had known Rob Lynburn.
Ten hovered and Dad drew him in with a hand on his shoulder. Dad loved Ten best, because Ten needed someone to love him best.
Kami stood on one end of the counter and watched her family, who she had never thought would keep secrets from each other, her parents each with their favorite child, and felt a little bleak.
You’re my favorite, Jared told her.
Kami looked out from the warmth of her kitchen and pretended that through the woods and up the hill, she could make out the lights of Aurimere House.
Yes, she told him for the second time that day. I know.
Aurimere was so cold at night, Jared kept expecting to step into one of the hallways and find it had turned into one of the wind tunnels the streets of San Francisco could become in winter.
Jared had been sticking to a three-stops plan for more than a week: bedroom, kitchen, and out the door. Now he was going off the map. This curving staircase was part of the empty bell tower attached to Aurimere. The stone steps were deep, the edges of a few jagged, and every step was a step into darkness. But Jared was used to blind curves. He took another step, then another, and came out blinking into what he thought for a second was yet another freezing hallway.
Then he found himself staring at a pair of frosty blue eyes. Ash’s cool eyes were immediately recognizable, even in oils dark with time, in the face of a guy wearing a powdered wig and a blue satin coat. Jared took a moment to smirk at the idea of Ash in that getup, then turned away.
The gallery was lined with the accusing stares of his ancestors. They stood in two rows on either side of him, in rich frames and rich clothes. They looked like history, people important enough to have changed the future and be preserved in time. They looked down at him as if he did not belong there.
Jared glared back at the faces. He already knew that. It was ridiculous, him even being here. Their whole apartment in San Francisco would have fit into this portrait gallery three times over. He felt as if all the cold shadows in this house wanted him to use the servants’ entrance.
Jared kept walking down the hall past rows of dead aristocrats. He was looking for someone. Then he saw her name, ELINOR LYNBURN, in faded gold on black wood. She looked even weirder than the dude in the white wig. She was wearing a cone-shaped headdress with a veil, and she seemed to be bald, which was hard luck on Elinor.
Married women in that time weren’t meant to show their hair, Kami told him, her mind touching his, sleepy but interested. She might’ve shaved it. Does she have eyebrows?
Of course she has eyebrows! said Jared, standing up for his ancestor even though English people were crazy and apparently the women went bald on purpose.
Whenever he woke or went to sleep and at random moments of the day, he found himself reaching mentally for Kami, checking where she was and if she was okay. It was different now, since she was an actual girl in an actual bed.
Elinor’s eyebrows were raised, her mouth drawn in a straight line. She looked kind of irritated to be stuck in a picture, as if she had better things to do.
“Hey, Elinor,” Jared said quietly. “I know where you hid the bells.”
“What?” his mother’s voice asked behind him.
Jared crushed the impulse to jump. Showing weakness was a good way to get it kicked out of you.
She was sitting in an alcove, a little stone cup of a window and a marble seat, her long skirt flowing over the marble. The big window was diamond-paned and already touched with dew, edging the night with silver. It looked out on the dark garden.
There was moonlight shining on two pale heads below. Uncle Rob and Ash, out on one of their father-and-son bonding trips. Uncle Rob had asked Jared along a couple of times, which had made Ash dislike him even more.
“Does nobody in this family sleep?” Jared demanded.
Mom slipped along the marble seat, moving a little farther away from him. “We have been acquainted with the night,” she said, with a certain lilt that he recognized as the tone she used for quoting, “for a very long time now.”
She used to quote a lot back when Jared had been very young. She used to tell him she was Rosaline, not Rosalind, and nobody told Rosaline’s story. Jared hadn’t understood then that she’d been talking about Shakespeare, but he’d liked sitting and listening to her telling the story nobody told. But then he’d got big and rough, and they had stopped reading together. Once Dad had ripped a book of hers into pieces and thrown it in the fire, and Mom had let out a wounded cry. She’d never cried out like that when he’d hit Jared.
Rosaline was Romeo’s ex in Romeo and Juliet, wasn’t she? Jared asked Kami.
Kami said, Romeo loved her first, but then he met Juliet, and he thought she was better-looking. Romeo and Juliet is not actually as romantic a story as everybody thinks.
“Were you in love with Uncle Rob?” Jared asked his mother.
Mom’s eyes left the night garden and fixed on him. She was silent for a moment, and then she said slowly, “I never loved anyone but him, and my sister.”
“I don’t …,” Jared began, and stopped because all the words he could think of would scar
e her and it made him sick to scare her. “If you didn’t love Dad, I don’t understand why you didn’t leave him.”
Mom turned away from him, back to the garden at night. The moonlight lined her pale profile with ice. “Where would I have gone? It’s the same everywhere. And it never came as much of a surprise. He said he loved me. I’d already learned that love betrays you.” She left the window seat, retreating down the long hall until there was the distance she preferred between them. “Besides,” she said, “I didn’t have to leave him, did I? You saw to that.”
Fury rose up in him again, the desire to shake her until she took it back. He forced himself to lean against the wall, and just looked at her.
“You’ve been talking to Claire Glass’s daughter,” Mom said. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do that.”
“Don’t talk about her,” Jared snarled, and was glad to see her flinch. “She is none of your business!”
“You don’t know anything,” his mother whispered.
“You never told me anything!” Jared shouted. “You never told me anything about any of this!”
Calm down, said Kami. She was fully awake now, reaching out, but he did not reach back. He did not want her to be exposed to any of this, to learn any new horrors about him or any secrets about his family.
“It was best for you not to know,” Mom said. “Why do you think I left? Lillian was wrong to bring us back here. Our family never had a talent for happiness, and nothing will turn out the way she wants it to. The old ways are coming back again. This time, we will bring the whole town to ruin.”
She turned and fled. He didn’t follow her. She didn’t like being chased.
Jared wanted to get on his bike and escape through the night. But there was nowhere to go, and he didn’t want to go, not really. He had to stay and uncover the secrets in this house full of shadows, in the woods, in the lakes with something gold in their depths.
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