“That is such a touching sentiment,” said Kami. “It gets me. Right here.”
Her father laughed, then saw her expression and stopped. “Speaking of moving out of home,” he said, “I couldn’t help hearing about the Lynburn boy.”
“He’s got nothing to do with me,” Kami said. “He wants nothing to do with me,” she added. Her throat went tight. “We were never dating. I wish you’d get that dumb idea out of your head.”
Kami’s father was pretty easygoing, but he would not normally have been okay with Kami talking to him like that. Just now his black eyes were watching her, a little narrowed and more than a little concerned. He reached out and rested his knuckles against her cheek. “I can’t help it, the dumb ideas, they just come to me,” he said, voice tender. “You all right?”
Kami closed her eyes for a minute. “Yeah.” She opened her eyes. “Do I have chocolate on my face?”
“You do,” said Dad. “It’s all over. Total mess. Sorry about that. Go wash your face, and maybe go up and say hey to Ten afterward. He seems bummed about missing the Scarecrow Trials.”
Kami hadn’t realized that she’d been hoping maybe, when she came home, Dad would have seen something like Rusty had. Something that would make him believe if she told him about magic. Something that would stop Mum lying.
“Did all of you miss the trials?” Kami asked.
“Ten got sick when your mum had already left, so Tomo and I had to stay in,” said Dad. “Did you have fun? I hear there were vandals.”
“Yes, Dad, vandalism is always fun.”
“It is the way I used to do it,” Dad informed her. “I was a true artiste.”
“I’m sure,” said Kami, and went upstairs to wash her face. She felt better with the chocolate and any last trace of tears gone, and was able to go into Ten’s room smiling, ducking the model airplanes he had hung up around the place.
Kami stopped smiling when she reached her little brother’s bed. Ten was sitting up, arms around his knees. Both knees and arms were covered with his spaceship-patterned sheet. He was always serious, their Ten, the only one of the three Glass children who did not look Japanese, the introvert who was scared of people and had a love of encyclopedias. His face looked white and pinched. Behind his glasses, his eyes were huge and dark.
“Kami,” he said, on a quick raspy breath, as if he’d only just been able to let it out.
“Hey, little man,” Kami responded, and sat down on the bed. “I heard you’ve been sick.”
Ten huddled further into his bedclothes, like an animal burrowing into a hole. He looked very small. Kami felt a pang of protectiveness. She reached out to touch his shoulder and offer comfort, trying not to baby him. She could still cuddle Tomo, when she could catch him, but Ten was ten—unfortunate though that was, name-wise, this year—and had made it clear that he was too grown-up for hugs from anyone but Dad.
To Kami’s surprise, Ten immediately shuffled his bed-clothes toward her and curled into her side. Kami laid her freshly washed cheek against his hair. “Ten,” she murmured. “You must feel really bad.”
Ten whispered, “I’m not sick.”
Kami paused in the act of stroking his thin, pajama-clad back and felt him quail against her. She made a determined effort and resumed stroking, keeping her hands and voice steady and gentle. “What do you mean?”
“I was never sick,” Ten confessed in a low, reluctant voice, trying to lean into and shrink away from Kami at the same time. “Mum asked me to pretend to be sick, so we would all stay inside for the Scarecrow Trials.”
Mum had done a lot, had done the spell that linked Jared and Kami together, to prevent Dad from finding out about magic. But Kami would not have thought she’d do this.
“I see,” said Kami, and tried not to sound upset or scared. She kept her arm tight around Ten.
“I thought maybe it would be all right to tell you,” Ten whispered.
“It was,” Kami said with all the conviction she could muster. “It was absolutely all right. You did absolutely the right thing. I’ll talk to Mum and work this out. Don’t worry.” She rocked her little brother, and made him a promise she hoped she could keep. “I’ll take care of everything.”
PART II
THE LYNBURN WAY
For all night long I dreamed of you:
I woke and prayed against my will,
Then slept to dream of you again.
—Christina Rossetti
Chapter Four
Meeting
Kami had not been sure Lillian would agree to meet, but she did. Ash carried word back that his mother would come to their planning session against Rob Lynburn’s sorcerers that night. Kami dressed up for a business meeting, in a ruffled black dress that came with a silvery-gray waistcoat and a skinny tie, but she was still incredulous as she and Angela made their way to the Water Rising.
The private parlor in the Water Rising had been made considerably smaller to accommodate the pool table in the adjoining room, and a little dark corridor now lay between the doors. This meant she, Rusty, and Angela almost ran into Holly, who was lurking outside the parlor.
“Hi, Angie!” Holly said, then hastily transferred her attention elsewhere. “Kami, Rusty. I’m glad you guys are here. The Lynburns are all in the parlor being terrifying.”
Kami pushed open the door to reveal the parlor of terror. The room was crammed with jostling furniture and what looked like a jumble of things the Wrights had decided didn’t go in the bar. All three Lynburns were still wearing their jackets and scarves, as if they couldn’t wait to leave. It struck Kami as especially crazy that Jared had his leather jacket on, since he lived here now. She supposed now that he’d run away to live in a bar, bad fashion decisions were the least of his worries.
Jared was slouching against the low windowsill and smirking, seldom a good sign. Ash was sitting in a high horse-hair armchair, which of course he made look like a throne. Lillian Lynburn was standing at the ornate Victorian fireplace that dominated the furthest wall, looking extremely displeased to be there. She looked even more displeased when she saw Kami.
Holly slipped past Kami, and Kami saw Jared’s and Holly’s eyes meet. Jared’s smirk looked slightly more pleasant for a moment, and he jerked his head in her direction. Holly went over and joined him, perching on the window seat so her curls were brushing his shoulder. Jared and Holly had always gotten along. The idea of them as a couple had occurred to Kami before. It just hadn’t hurt like it did now.
She’d never be beautiful like Holly or Angela. She knew that.
“A Prescott,” Lillian said, eyeing Holly with disfavor. “Bad blood. At least there’s some magical talent in that family, but they do not tend to be trustworthy.”
“I trust Holly,” Kami snapped, angry with herself as well as Lillian. “We’ve all got to stick together and trust each other. We’re a team.”
“A team,” Lillian repeated, disdain overflowing in all directions. “So on this team we have, besides a Prescott, the former source who is now entirely useless.”
“You’ll be surprised,” Kami informed her. She took a few steps to the cracked black leather sofa and sat on it. Rusty and Angela sat down on either side of her.
Lillian ignored this. “And two complete strangers who I believe are newcomers to Sorry-in-the-Vale.”
Angela said nothing, but curled her upper lip at Lillian. In a disdain-off, Kami knew where she would have put her money.
Rusty smiled. “We haven’t been introduced, have we? I’m Rusty. Enchanté.”
Kami glanced at him and mouthed, “Enchanté?”
Rusty just grinned at her.
“Rusty is a dog’s name,” Lillian remarked in her most quelling voice.
“It’s Russell Montgomery the Third, actually,” said Rusty, still grinning. He leaned back against the sofa, putting his arm behind Kami’s head. “But I’d be obliged if you keep that bit of information to yourself.”
“I don’t imagine any of us ca
res enough to remember,” Jared said.
Kami shot him a furious look, but he refused to meet her eyes.
Rusty grinned at him too. “They call me Rusty because I have a fetching red glint in my lustrous dark hair.”
“Yes, all right,” Kami said, intervening before Lillian could actually expire from annoyance at their feet. “We may be straying off topic.”
“The topic isn’t my stunning good looks?”
“Devastating though they undoubtedly are,” Kami told him, patting his knee, “no.”
“Shame,” said Rusty.
Kami fixed Lillian with a bright smile, full of team spirit. “So,” she said. “Let’s get planning.”
“I don’t want to plan with useless creatures who have no magic,” Lillian snapped. “I came because Ash said Jared was going to be here. I came because I want my nephew to drop this ridiculous farce and come home.”
“I will never go back to that tomb,” Jared informed her, every word clipped and precise. “You can rot there worshipping the Lynburn name and all the moldering Lynburn bones. I don’t care. I’m going to help destroy Rob and everyone allied with him, and then I’m going to get out of this town.”
Kami looked over at him again, as if her gaze was a compass always swinging north. The one thing she could read from his face was that the burning pallor of his eyes meant he was miserable. But his eyes looked like that all the time now.
“Destroying Rob,” said Lillian, “will not be so simple. That little trick with the scarecrows was only his first move. He is going to terrorize the town into supporting him. His goal is to make them all aware that magic has come back to Sorry-in-the-Vale, real magic. He wants to rule by fear: to have them so maddened by dread they turn against the Lynburns of Aurimere and to him.”
There was an appalled silence. Lillian’s words hung in the air, seeming to open up a dark vista in that little white room.
Kami cleared her throat. “Good analysis of the other side’s goals, Lillian. Now let’s discuss how to foil the enemy at every turn.”
Everybody stared at her as if she was speaking the language of aliens from a strange and far-off planet, emphasis on “strange.” Except Jared, who was staring out the window.
“Right,” said Kami, undaunted. “So a girl in my class called Amber Green, and our headmistress, Ms. Dollard, are both sorcerers. Amber’s with Rob, but we could use Ms. Dollard.”
“I never trusted Amber,” Angela remarked darkly. “Only the evil are that enthusiastic about volleyball.”
Holly hid a smile behind her hand. Kami decided to ignore this valuable volleyball-related input. “What we need are more names. We don’t know who the other sorcerers following Rob are. We don’t even know who in the town is a sorcerer. Lillian can tell us which families magic runs in, and we can check out the likeliest suspects. Any sorcerers who are on Rob’s side, we need to identify. Any sorcerers who aren’t, we need on our side.”
Lillian’s mouth curled in a way that was very reminiscent of Jared. “You can’t find them, and you can’t stop them,” she said. “So your plan is to make some lists.”
“For a start,” Kami said. “There are several strangers in town I have my eye on. We need to watch the newcomers. And we need to find out where Rob is. I went back to Monkshood Abbey—where Rob’s parents lived,” she added for Rusty’s benefit. “And I didn’t see anything. I’ve been watching the inns and the homes of the people who I thought might shelter him. But he can become invisible, of course.”
“Oh yeah,” said Rusty. “That’s very inconvenient. But very cool.”
Lillian’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that? Have you been looking at the Aurimere records?”
“I saw Jared do it,” said Kami. “He made himself invisible and me too. We broke into a swimming pool and didn’t want to be caught in our . . .” She stopped before saying underwear. “But that’s not important at this time. There are Aurimere records? Can I see them?”
“Certainly not!” Lillian snapped.
“We have to learn,” Kami argued. “We have to find a way to protect ourselves against magic. I want everyone to train to fight people physically”—Rusty and Angela perked up as one—“but there must be ways to shield against magic.”
“I’ll tell you how,” Lillian said. “Do not put yourself in the path of sorcerers.”
“Since that’s not happening, do we have an option B?” Kami inquired. “The way I see it is, we have to know exactly who our enemy is and work out exactly how to fight them: it’s the only plan that will work.”
“Let me tell you my plan,” said Lillian. “My plan is to kill Rob, and anyone else who continues to defy me once he is dead. How many times must I point out to you that you are useless?” Lillian asked, using her voice like a knife, and twisting it. “This is a matter between sorcerers: this is a question of magical power. Any use you could possibly have had, you lost when you broke the link between my nephew and yourself. You cost us a great deal of power that day.”
“So is there a way to get us more power?” Ash asked. “A way that’s not—not Dad’s way?”
“There is a way for Jared to gain more power,” Lillian said, looking at Jared rather than Kami or her son. “It is very dangerous.”
Jared absorbed her words in sullen silence, head bowed and shoulders bunching under his jacket. At last he asked, “What would I have to do?”
“There is a ceremony a sorcerer can go through,” Lillian said. “One must go down to the depths of one of the Crying Pools, and come out reborn. At the bottom of the pools there is—”
Jared glanced up, his face looking younger suddenly, and shocked. “Gold,” he whispered.
Lillian gave a tight little smile of satisfaction. “So the pools have been calling out to you,” she said. “I thought they might. Not as a human would mean gold. But yes, in a way. There is power to be found there, a ceremony you can perform to enhance your own power. Complete the ceremony and you can see into the heart of the woods. You might gain the power to wake the woods again. And you would have the magic to remake a link that was broken. To have a source again.”
“No,” Jared said, his voice full of loathing. “I won’t do that.”
“I simply thought, as the young lady seems so anxious to help—”
Kami felt a chill run through her. She could have the link back, have him back.
Jared said, still in that disgusted voice, “No.”
Lillian spread her hands, as if to say As you wish. “If you do this,” she said, “you will have more power than any sorcerer in Sorry-in-the-Vale, save two. Only Rob and I have completed the ceremony.”
“I could do the ceremony,” Ash said suddenly, his voice cracking. His eyes rested on his mother, obviously hoping for her approval. “I want to do it,” he said, his voice getting stronger as he went on. “I want to help. You can count on me.”
“Absolutely not,” Lillian told him. “You wouldn’t live through it.”
Ash leaned forward in his chair. “And why not?”
“How many people have died trying to complete this ceremony?” Kami asked, her voice rising.
“Rob would have died, if I had not linked myself to him and shared my magic. The ceremony calls for courage and determination,” said Lillian. “Without those qualities, the sorcerer who goes through the ceremony will not survive.”
The implication was very clear. Kami saw Ash flinch.
“Sure,” Jared said, sounding tired. “I’ll do it.”
“You most certainly will not,” Kami said in protective terror, at the same time Ash demanded, stung, “Why do you think Jared has a better chance of surviving than I do?”
“She doesn’t,” Jared drawled. “But I’m not much of a loss, am I? I’m a half-breed: isn’t that how you put it once, Ash? Not really a proper sorcerer at all. And nobody cares much if I live or die. Why not risk it?”
“I care,” Kami said loudly, and found herself the sole focus of everybody’s attenti
on.
They all looked sorry for her, she thought. Except for Lillian, who looked faintly contemptuous, and Jared himself, who looked away.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”
“I think Jared has a good chance of surviving the ceremony, or I would not suggest it,” Lillian said. “I am not in the habit of recklessly throwing away my resources.”
That made Jared let out a sound almost like a laugh, though it seemed to get stuck in his throat. “Why, Aunt Lillian. You old softy.”
Lillian ignored this as she did everything she did not like. “And who says,” she asked, “that you’re a half-breed?”
“My father was a lot of things,” Jared said, and Kami remembered all the things Jared’s father had been, before Jared threw him down a flight of stairs in the dark: violent and hateful, all the things Jared thought he was too. “But he wasn’t a sorcerer.”
Lillian’s voice rang out in the hush. “Who says that he was your father?”
Ash started, not Jared.
“Look at Ash,” Lillian continued, not even seeing how her son flinched. “Look at yourself. My sister was in love with my husband. She was pregnant before she ever left Sorry-in-the-Vale. I think your father was a sorcerer. I think your father was Rob Lynburn. You can talk about leaving this town, about leaving Aurimere. But you can’t get rid of yourself, no matter how much you want to. There’s magic in your blood. Every drop.”
Jared was looking down: not at the floor, Kami realized, but at his own hands, knuckles linked together and bone-white. He stood up and crossed the floor to Lillian in two strides. She tilted up her face to look at him. Their eyes met.
“Is that supposed to change something?” Jared asked softly. “It doesn’t change a thing. Either I already killed my father, or I’m going to kill him soon.” He turned away from Lillian and left the room, banging the door behind him.
Untold Page 4
