Kami gestured at him to get down. Then she dived behind the desk, curling up small beneath it, her cheek against the floor. She waited, her cheek getting extremely cold against the floor, and listened.
“It’s a real shame about your children not having magic, but I know I can count on you and Alison to support me and train the others.” Rob’s voice was smug and calm.
Kami wondered why the name was familiar for an instant before she realized. Hugh and Alison Prescott, she thought. This was Holly’s father.
“Of course,” said Hugh Prescott gruffly. “That witch up on the hill drove my brother away and then blamed us for it. We only want our due.”
“You shall have it,” said Rob. “And Lillian will pay the price for her mistakes. Everybody in this town is going to get precisely what they deserve. And we know her numbers are laughable. But we want no doubt to remain in anyone’s mind. I want a sacrifice, and I want every soul in Sorry-in-the-Vale to offer up their tokens. We want to crush Lillian’s people in front of the town, and that is why the young ones need careful training. See to it.”
They might have exchanged nods or smiles. Kami heard one of them walk away, his tread heavy, and the click of someone else’s shoes on the floor.
“Can I have a word?” a woman’s voice murmured. Kami recognized this voice immediately: it was Jared’s mother, Rosalind.
Kami watched her tan leather boots cross the floor, heels clicking on the worn wood, closer and closer to the desk. Rosalind walked around the desk, and Kami froze. Rosalind’s step halted for an instant, and then she paced her way back across the room and toward Rob.
“You were talking with Claire Glass alone again,” Rosalind said, her voice sharper than Kami had ever heard it. “Why is that? It’s not like she can help us in any real way.”
“That’s right, she can’t,” Rob told her. “She’s not like us. You can’t possibly imagine she means anything to me.”
There was the soft sound of a kiss. Kami made a face: she wished that parents would just plan evil and not have discussions about their love lives.
“Claire Glass behaves the way the people of this town should all behave, that’s all,” said Rob. “You know we need them all to submit. You know why. There are so many of them—so many sorcerers even—waiting in their homes like scared animals in their dens. All of them need to choose a side. All of them need to choose our side.”
“I know.” Rosalind took a deep breath. “Tell the others . . . tell Ruth and Hugh, especially, not to go after our family. I don’t want Lillian or the boys hurt.”
“Nor do I,” Rob said. “I will make every effort to spare them. And I know you will do whatever you can to please me in return.”
“I swear,” Rosalind told him. “Now go.”
Kami watched Rosalind’s boots cross the floor after him, but Rosalind paused on the threshold. Before she went out, she said, very quietly, “You should leave.”
* * *
“I call that a very successful mission,” Kami said, safe in the library at Aurimere.
“Aunt Rosalind caught us. I think getting caught is sort of the opposite of success.”
“Except now we know she’s willing to protect us,” Kami said. “Knowing that an enemy has divided loyalties is useful information.”
Ash shrugged. Kami was leaning against one of the glass-fronted bookcases. Ash stood by the baby grand in the corner, staring down at the piano keys rather than at Kami. She wondered what it had meant to him, hearing his father and his aunt today.
His golden head lifted. She was surprised to see him wearing a tiny smile.
“Aha,” said Kami, her own smile spreading to encourage him. “So you had a little bit of fun being spies.”
“Well,” Ash said. “Not at the time. But maybe looking back on it. Do you think everyone will be impressed?” He began to play a little tune, the piano keys tinkling.
Kami tapped out a rhythm on the wooden surface of the bookcase. “How could they not be?” she asked.
Ash closed the piano lid with a flourish, crossed the floor, and held out his hand to her. Kami looked down at her tapping fingers as if they had betrayed her and realized she was standing in the exact place Jared had the night he said he wanted nothing to do with her.
“I can’t actually dance,” Kami objected, suddenly shy. “I mean, I’ve done it. But people tell me . . . that I shouldn’t.”
“What do they know?” Ash asked, his hand still out. After a moment more of hesitation, Kami put her hand in his, and Ash pulled her away from the bookcase into his arms.
Ash could dance as well as he could play the piano. He moved in gentle circles across the floor, navigating sofas and chairs with effortless grace. Kami just had to follow his lead. He’d been trained for this sort of thing, she supposed, being the young prince in the castle. Being a fairy-tale prince who could waltz any girl around a room, him all gold and the room all arched stone, the moment perfect no matter who the girl happened to be.
Ash twirled Kami and pulled her back in against his chest. When he dipped her, she had a moment of unease because she couldn’t stand up by herself and would have fallen without his arm supporting her. But she looked up into his eyes, soft and sparkling with laughter, and smiled up at him instead.
Ash bent and kissed her. The kiss went through Kami like summer sunlight.
Just then the door opened with a creak.
“Sorry,” said Jared. “Aunt Lillian was looking for Ash.”
They all stayed still for a little too long. Kami and Ash did not drop each other’s hands, and Jared was standing braced as if waiting to be hit.
“Great,” Kami said at last, the word falling like a drop of rain into a pool, absorbed into the silence. She tugged her hands out of Ash’s and took a step toward Jared; he took a step back, not looking up. “We’ve found out a lot of stuff we need to tell Lillian.”
“She’s in the drawing room,” Jared said, backing up, and they both followed him. When they got there, Jared opened the door for them.
When Kami gestured for Ash to go in ahead of her, he touched her arm. She turned to him and he gave her a worried glance, as if he thought he had done something wrong but was unsure of what it was. Kami gave Ash a quick reassuring smile, then looked back at Jared, catching a glimpse of his face as he looked down again.
“Hey,” Kami said softly. “Is everything okay?” She felt dumb asking. It wasn’t like Jared was ever subtle about it when he was upset: this was just him being quiet and not meeting her eyes, a little withdrawn. He was just feeling awkward about interrupting; he wasn’t unhappy.
That was confirmed when Jared answered, in a level voice, “Fine.”
“Okay,” Kami said uncertainly. She lifted her hand to bridge the space between them somehow, and a faint shudder ran through Jared’s body. He stepped away from her and into the drawing room, going to stand by the fireplace.
Ash was already sitting on the window seat, his mother standing beside him. He was telling her the story of what they had discovered.
Lillian was listening, a bored look on her face. She was wearing a mulberry-colored shirt that made her hair look lemon-colored in comparison, very much the self-assured lady of the manor.
“Mum, he’s training his sorcerers too. He thinks he’ll crush us.”
“He’s wrong,” Lillian said. “I’m better than he is. I always was. If he’s forgotten that, he’s going to get a surprise. And how dare you take a risk like that without consulting me first?”
“It was my idea,” Kami said.
“How terribly surprised I am,” Lillian remarked.
“And I think,” Kami said, forging ahead, “that now we know for sure where their base is, we should attack Monkshood. We’re the ones at a disadvantage when it comes to numbers: we need to catch Rob by surprise.”
“You need to stop concerning yourself with the affairs of sorcerers,” Lillian said. “From what Ash tells me, it was only my sister’s mercy that spared you
r lives.”
From Lillian’s tone, it was clear she considered this hint that Rosalind was not entirely committed to Rob’s course of action the only valuable intelligence Kami and Ash had gathered.
“I’m sorry if you feel I should have consulted you,” Kami said, which was a bit of a non-apology, but she doubted Lillian was going to think it over that much. “But I think it’s important—”
“I am not attacking Monkshood Abbey like a thief in the night!” Lillian snapped. “Rob betrayed me and broke my laws, and the whole town has to see him punished. I have to do this properly. Of course you do not understand. You are not a sorcerer. This is none of your business.”
Kami stared at her. She didn’t throw up her hands in exasperation, because she’d never made that kind of gesture in her life and she didn’t know how to start, but she wanted to.
“This is everyone’s business,” she said finally, and turned to leave.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Ash said behind her, and Kami appreciated the defense without imagining that it would do much good. She kept walking, down a couple of stone steps through yet another hall, heading through the cold maze of Aurimere until she was out.
She was in the great hall when she heard the footsteps running after her and saw the shadow fall on the golden wall of windows.
“I’m all right,” Kami assured him, but when she looked round it was Jared. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were Ash.” She bit her lip as soon as she’d said it.
Jared said curtly, “Sorry to disappoint. What do you want?”
Kami blinked up at him. He leaned against a window and she stopped and leaned against it with him.
“Well,” she said. “How do you . . . mean that?”
“You told Aunt Lillian that you wanted to attack Monkshood.”
Kami seized Jared’s arm. “Jared,” she said. “Listen to me very carefully. You are not to attack Monkshood on your own.”
He looked down at her hand on his arm, fingers clutching the leather sleeve tight. Kami released her grip.
“Why not?” Jared demanded.
“Because there are too many of them,” Kami said. “And you would die. And then we would have even fewer sorcerers than we currently do.”
Jared nodded and stepped away from her, out of the picture. Kami did not know what made him act like this, as if he didn’t care what happened to him and nobody else did either.
She walked away from the window, away from him, and continued across to the front hall and out of Aurimere.
The wind met her on the front steps in a cold rush, and she realized she had left her coat out to dry in the library.
Kami squared her shoulders under her jumper, pulling the floppy green sleeves down over her hands and her cauliflower-shaped knitted hat down to her eyebrows. She began to walk the icy path down from Aurimere.
“Wait,” Jared said, close behind her, and she felt his jacket settle warm on her shoulders.
Kami put up her hand and held the collar of the jacket closed at her chin. It hung loose around her, warm inside from his body heat, the leather rough under her fingertips.
He circled around to meet her eyes. “I just want you to know,” he said. “I don’t care what Aunt Lillian wants. You don’t trust me, or you just don’t want me bothering you anymore. I don’t blame you. That doesn’t matter. You can count on me doing what you want. You can be sure I’ll take your orders and not hers.”
It was beginning to snow again, Kami realized. Faint, almost transparent pieces of white, like ghosts torn into shreds, were drifting and settling around them.
“I don’t want to give you orders,” Kami said.
She thought they could walk back together, at least for a bit, that perhaps he could explain what on earth he was talking about, but Jared backed off as soon as she spoke. The look he threw her suggested that any attempt to accompany him would not be welcome. He walked away through the falling snow, hunching his shoulders against the chill. All he was wearing was a long-sleeved T-shirt.
Kami wanted to be angry with him, but the emotion would not quite resolve in her chest. She had been so frustrated with Lillian, had felt like no matter what she tried to do, the sorcerers would make sure she was ultimately helpless, and he had come to her. He could not fix things any more than she could, but one thing he could do was always be on her side. She pulled his jacket closer around herself and walked home warm.
Chapter Fifteen
Wild Night
The snow was melting by the next morning, and school was open. Kami didn’t see Holly except in their last class, which was English, where Holly was sitting at a desk with Derek Fairchild. Kami stopped on the threshold of the room, startled: she and Holly usually shared a desk.
Holly was laughing, all curls and lip gloss, casting out so much color and sparkle that it took a moment for Kami to see she looked tired. She shot Kami a glance through her tumbling hair that might have been apologetic.
Kami took a seat on her own and tried to catch Holly after class, but Holly was using boys as bodyguards, and Kami could not get through. She was distracted at a crucial moment by the appearance of Ash.
“Damn it, I lost her,” Kami exclaimed as Holly’s crowd melted around a corner.
Ash blinked and smiled. “Who were you trailing this time?”
“Holly,” Kami answered. “I think—I thought she might need to talk. But maybe she doesn’t want to.”
“I’d like to,” Ash said. “If Holly has left a gap in your schedule.” He inclined his head toward the school doors. Together they went through them and down the steps.
The slate roofs and yellow stone of the town were visible now, wreathed with snow. As they walked through the gates, Ash offered her his arm, and she looked up into his eyes.
The very first time she had ever seen him, she had thought he looked like a dream come true. Now she knew that he tried to live up to everyone’s expectations, and that worried her but did not really take away from his charm. It was an amazing relief to know that how you felt about someone mattered to them.
“What did you want to talk about?” Kami asked.
“Anything,” said Ash. “It doesn’t matter. I only want to talk to you.”
All she had to do was smile at him. He wanted to charm her, wanted her to make him feel good about himself and wanted to make her feel good about herself too. She could feel wanted with him: wanted in the right way, and she could want him back the right amount. This was how things should be between a boy and a girl. This was healthy.
“We should probably talk about kissing,” Kami blurted out.
Smooth. She was so smooth.
“Kissing?” Ash repeated. “I wasn’t aware we really needed to have an in-depth conversation on that topic. Since all I have to say is ‘Sounds great.’ ”
“I mean past kissing,” Kami said. “Specifically, in the Water Rising. We never talked about it, and now that we—I think we should. I know I gave you the impression that I like you. And I do, I do like you, but I wasn’t—I didn’t—”
There was a reason Kami had not brought this up before, she discovered. She had thought it would be humiliating, but she had not realized she would find it literally impossible to tell Ash what had happened.
The last thing she expected was for Ash to finish the sentence she could not.
“That wasn’t me,” he said.
Kami swallowed down the tangled debris of words rising in her throat. Then she swallowed again. “I beg your pardon?”
Ash dropped her arm and moved away from her, leaving a cold space against her side where he had been.
“I never kissed you at the Water Rising.”
“You didn’t?” Kami said.
Ash shook his head. Nothing about his manner was trying to be appealing anymore. He seemed all shut up inside himself rather than reaching out to her. Kami felt desperately sorry for him, for what must have seemed like someone choosing to forgive him. Her smiling and speaking to him a
fter the Water Rising must have made it seem like she had chosen him, wanted to be with him, not that she wanted to stop thinking about someone else.
“So it was Jared,” Kami said slowly, and saying the words aloud made them seem real. She had been right the first time, right to trust that she knew him well enough to know him in the dark.
And he had kissed her.
Kami realized that Ash was looking expectantly down at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a rush. “I’m terribly sorry, what an awful mistake to make, you must think I’m a complete fool. This is very embarrassing,” she added. “I really thought it was you.”
Ash’s eyes were bleak. “It wouldn’t matter who it was,” he said quietly, “if you had wanted it to be me. But you didn’t, did you?”
Kami opened her mouth, and closed it.
Ash had wonderful manners, almost always. He was too much of a gentleman to leave her scrambling for an answer he already knew. He nodded, and walked back toward the school so she would not have to walk with him. Kami put a hand on the gate, wanting to call after him, but she did not know what to say except that she was sorry again.
The sun was glittering on the lingering snow and turning it to water, washing everything clean.
Jared had kissed her.
She could go home, Kami thought, and get his jacket. She knew his hours at the Water Rising: when he was done with work, she could go return it to him, and maybe they could talk. She had a secret to tell him.
* * *
Holly could not talk to Angie and Kami. She was scared they would be able to see right through her and know the secret she wasn’t ready to tell. And she couldn’t talk to boys, because they knew nothing: all they wanted was pretty surfaces and nothing underneath.
Being angry at the world made her think of Angie, and thinking about Angie made her miserable. She told the guys she was talking to that she had to go to the bathroom and walked out of school alone, ready to get on her bike and escape it all for as long as she possibly could.
Untold Page 13
