Rob had failed to recruit Henry Thornton. But how many sorcerers had he succeeded in recruiting? Kami could not make out most of the faces through the mist, but she saw the two nearest her: a woman she had never seen before and Sergeant Kenn. One of the officers investigating Nicola’s murder.
Kami held on tightly to Holly’s and Angela’s hands and started counting sorcerers under her breath. She was up to twenty-six before Rob Lynburn spoke.
“Sorry-in-the-Vale is mine,” he said quietly. “You just don’t know it yet. I have more sorcerers than you, and we will do whatever it takes to get more power. Any of you Lynburns can come join me in the town tonight, and all this will be forgotten. Any of you who do not come … Well. This is a real sorcerers’ town now. And there are new laws.”
Rob looked from his wife’s unconscious body, to Rosalind, and at last to Ash, who stood trembling in front of him, “Those who turn traitor and break my laws,” Rob said softly, “will be executed.” He walked away, up the path of rocks Lillian had made.
The dark figures drew away. Even the mist was receding by the time Jared appeared, walking slowly through the pale shreds of mist, as if they were ghosts who loved him, clinging to him and refusing to let him pass. He looked as drawn and sick as Kami felt. He did not look at Kami, but he looked at the chains and blood, at Lillian unconscious, at Ash and Rosalind shaking as if they had fevers.
“What happened?”
“We had a moment of triumph,” Angela informed him. “Unfortunately, it was short-lived, and you missed it.”
They all went back to Aurimere House, passing through the arched doorway bearing the warning YOU ARE NOT SAFE. Ash carried his mother up the wide flight of stairs from the hall to her room. He did not come back.
Kami sat in a chair in the parlor, aching all over, and fell into an uneasy, exhausted sleep. When she woke, Jared was gone. Holly and Angela were stretched out on the canopy sofas, both asleep. Angela’s chain was still knotted in one hand. Kami stood over her best friend and touched Angela’s shoulder lightly, just enough to feel her there, solid and real and safe. Then she tiptoed out of the room. Her whole body felt like the empty place where a tooth used to be, a phantom ache that she had to keep investigating.
She went down a set of steps, across a hall, and into the library. There was no light except the dying sunlight from the bay windows. Kami passed the glass-fronted cabinets full of leather books and armchairs with backs high as thrones to sit on the window seat.
The library was on the ground floor, on the side of the manor near the cliff. Kami could not see the path, but she could see Sorry-in-the-Vale. Everything about her, body and mind and soul, hurt. She didn’t know what to do about it.
Except she knew they all had to do something. She had to think of something. She wished Jared was with her. He had stayed by the door of the drawing room, not looking at anyone, while she was awake. She had not known what to say to him in front of the others.
She could go and find him. She remembered that morning in her bedroom, and she thought she could rest if he was there, if they were together. Only she was not sure of her welcome.
They were not linked anymore, Kami told herself, and suppressed a pang of desolation. The tiny creak of the door made Kami look up.
Jared had never surprised her like this before. She breathed in fast, taking a gulp of air to ease the shock. It was terrible to see him and have him so far away, all his thoughts and feelings locked to her, as remote as a star. It reminded her of when they had first met, and how his physical presence kept startling her. Now that was all she had.
He was here, though, and that was what she wanted.
He looked the same, gold hair in shadow, scar the thinnest of white lines, and gray eyes at their palest and most disturbing. The harsh lines and angles of his face looked harsher tonight: he must be in as much pain as she was. She wondered how she looked to him and how, with everything so changed, they would manage to comfort each other.
At least he was here. At least, now that he was with her, comfort seemed possible.
Kami forced herself to smile. “Is Lillian awake?”
“I don’t know,” Jared answered. His voice sounded very loud in her ears, now that she knew there was no way for him to speak to her silently. His mouth twisted. “But my mother’s gone.”
Kami opened her mouth to ask where, and then closed it. She turned her head back toward Sorry-in-the-Vale, where Rob waited for the other Lynburns to see the error of their ways and come to him.
She, like Jared, knew perfectly well where Rosalind had gone. “I’m sorry,” she told him. She wanted to reach out and console Jared, but she did not know how to any longer. She couldn’t reach out with her mind, and he had always shied away from her touch. She did not think she could bear for him to do that now.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jared said. “Except that it means there’s another sorcerer out to get us.”
“At least we know who she is and what she looks like,” Kami murmured. “There are at least twenty-six other sorcerers.”
“You counted them?” Jared’s mouth curled at one corner, and the ache in Kami’s chest turned almost sweet, the sudden force of hope a welcome pain. “Of course you did.”
“They might be people from Sorry-in-the-Vale, or they might be newcomers. I saw one of each. If they’re new, we can find out about them, but otherwise—we have to find out which of our neighbors are secretly sorcerers who want to kill us, and I’m not sure where to start the investigation.” Saying it that way lifted her heart. It all sounded slightly more doable. Kami thought she knew how to handle an investigation.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Jared said.
Had his voice always been this hard to read before, and Kami had never noticed because she knew how he felt? She thought he sounded detached, but perhaps it was that he was so removed from her. She didn’t know. Kami decided to take his words at face value and smiled at him again, though her lips were trembling and it was oddly hard to do.
Jared crossed half the room and then stopped, leaning against one of the glass-fronted cabinets full of books. Even when he was walking slowly and she knew he was in pain, he was graceful. She had never noticed that before either.
“Jared, I want to talk,” she began, and stopped helplessly. She did not want to talk. She wanted it not to be necessary to talk.
“Let me say something first,” Jared said. “Thank you.”
Kami blinked. She had an absurd impulse to tell him that he was welcome, but she said nothing. She could see his reflection in the glass cabinet, an iced-over doppelgänger of Jared, turning his eyes white and the curl of his mouth cruel. She felt it would be as impossible to reach out to this Jared as it would be to reach through the glass and touch that one.
“You were right to sever the connection,” Jared continued. “You were right all along.”
Kami was numb. It seemed for a moment as though by cutting away Jared, she had cut away every part of her that felt anything. All she could think of was what Rob had said to her in her garden one morning: that the emotions that came with the link, Jared’s emotions, were not real. “Was I?” she whispered.
“Here we are without the link,” Jared said. “And what am I to you? What are you to me?”
“I don’t know.” Kami’s voice sounded muted, pressed flat by the way he was looking at her, as if he was seeing a stranger.
He answered his own question. He did not seem upset. He seemed puzzled, as if looking back at his past self and wondering how he could possibly have been so stupid.
“You’re nothing special.”
It was as simple as that.
Kami kept looking at him, even though she wanted to look away. It made no sense, she thought, that someone who seemed so distant from her could hurt her so much.
“So thank you,” Jared told her. “I see things far more clearly now.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Kami answered at last, her voice shaking out of c
ontrol. She had been so scared of losing control with him. She had never really believed she could lose him, and in losing him lose so much of herself. “And you can go to hell now, for all I care.”
“Who knows,” said Jared, not taking his icy gaze off her. “Maybe I will.”
They looked at each other for a few moments longer. Kami’s whole body had gone tense, as if she was going to fight him. Then Jared smiled at her, a small savage smile that pulled his scar tight, and he turned around and left. He shut the door with a vicious slam.
All the warmth seemed to leave the room with him. Kami hugged her knees to her chest to try to control her shivering and turned away from the door. She sat there, on the top of the cliff with no path in sight. She stayed looking out of the window, watching darkness fall over her town.
For the first time in her life, she was alone.
Acknowledgments
How do you thank people for saving your book? Kingdoms and the hand of the princess seem to be in order, but since I’m short on princesses right now, I will make do with offering my deepest thanks.
First and foremost, so many thanks to Mallory Loehr. From the moment I met her and she said the magic words (“I love Diana Wynne Jones” and “dangerous books” being among the most magical), I had the mad secret ambition to work with her. I never dreamed I’d be lucky enough to work with her on the very same novel I was wailing about to my friend on that very weekend. Thank you for being even greater than I imagined, Mallory!
And many thanks to Phoenix Valentine, with apologies for distracting her.…
Thanks also to Suzy Capozzi, Michael Joosten, my wonderful copy editor Deborah Dwyer, and everyone else at Random House Children’s Books.
Thank you for my cover, the most beautiful cover in the world (sorry, all other covers, you tried, but it just wasn’t enough), to Jan Gerardi and Mallory Loehr, who worked—including me every step of the way; it was like a miracle—through two false starts and balefire to get such a wonderful image. Thank you to Beth White, artist extremely extraordinaire, for creating it: I love it more than I can say.
Thank you to my amazing agent, Kristin Nelson, always for every book, and especially for being so happy about the cover. Thank you, everyone at NLA—particularly Lindsay Mergens, who helped a lot with my publicity fretting!
Thank you to Venetia Gosling and the team at Simon & Schuster UK—so happy to be having another go on the merry-go-round with you! It’s an honor and a privilege.
And thank you to my amazing foreign publishers, one and all.
Thank you, Holly Black, for being the friend I wailed to about this book—incessant, incessant wailing—and the first person to read the whole thing. The email you sent me about it is one of my treasures.
Thank you, Saundra Mitchell, for being a first reader and for being the friend I wailed to about covers—and thank you to my other first readers, Justine Larbalestier, Karen Healey, and R. J. Anderson.
Thank you, Delia Sherman, for coining the phrase “Sassy Gothic,” and to Cassandra Clare and Robin Wasserman for naming my Sassy Gothic.
Thank you, Maureen Johnson, for playing Jared (or were you Kami and I was Jared?) in a dark, closed swimming pool. Memo: I am not in love with you. Though you are a most attractive lady.
Thank you to the Book Club—Zoe Cathcart, Joanne Lombard, Emma Doyle, Karen Pierpoint, Aileen Kelly, Jessica Barrett, Stefanie O’Brien, Clare Lynch (and Isabelle). Especially for the time you lovely ladies thought you were coming to have, you know, a book club—and ended up being there on the night Unspoken sold to Random House, and dealing with me in a fit of joyful hysterics, and also my dad arriving with champagne. (Total shamer.)
Thank you to my father for the champagne nonetheless, and my mother, my brothers, and my sister, Genevieve, who was one of the early fans of the cover.
Thank you to all my friends: in Ireland, in England, and in America, and the best one in Slovenia. You all now know far more than you ever wanted to about being a writer. I know how much I owe you for putting up with me!
Thank you to all the Gothics I now love—among others, all three Brontë sisters, Daphne du Maurier, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels, Victoria Holt, Madeleine Brent, and Jennifer Crusie—and to all the sassy reporter ladies I’ve always loved.
And you, the one who picked up this book, looking for something to laugh at, something to cry at, something to interest you, something to remember: I hope you found it. Thank you.
SARAH REES BRENNAN was brought up on a dark, storm-wracked shore where clouds hang over a stone-gray sea and sailors meet their doom. (Irish weather: not so good.) Her house was full of secrets, not the least of which was what her parents were feeding the kids for them all to end up being six feet tall! She grew up to live in New York, where she was almost murdered by sinister thieves and was saved by handsome firemen, and then London, where she found the grave of a pirate dead from plague. In the midst of all this she wrote her first book, The Demon’s Lexicon (an ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults), and Team Human (a vampire novel, written with Justine Larbalestier).
Sarah has never done as much research as she did for Unspoken, during which she was almost murdered in the woods (admittedly by a goat) and went to a Gothic manor, where she suffered a horrible fate: sitting on the tallest gravity fountain in the world. She never had an imaginary friend as a child, but now she writes about all the imaginary friends she has as a (sort of) grown-up and hopes you like them. Visit her on the Web at sarahreesbrennan.com, or write her at [email protected] to tell her all your imaginings.
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