Kami felt a note of comfort, in the midst of the steady distress Ash was projecting to her. She looked over to see Jared clasp the back of Ash’s neck. It would’ve been completely ordinary if it had been anyone else, but Jared did not touch people with casual affection often enough for this touch to be anything but noteworthy.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Jared, low enough so that Kami wasn’t sure if she was hearing it or understanding it through Ash. “Your mom’s not the boss of you.”
Ash smiled, rueful and charming. “My mom’s kind of the boss of me.”
“Nope,” Jared said easily. “We time-share bossing you around, and it’s my turn. I say do whatever you want.”
Kami could not feel what Jared felt anymore, but she could feel what Ash felt, all right: warmth and trust and wanting to be closer. Ash inclined toward Jared, but Jared didn’t notice and took his hand away.
She knew enough to know that the choice about who Ash would link with was made—that it had never been in doubt.
But no matter what Lillian said, Kami thought it was going to end up more complicated than Lillian imagined. Lillian, after all, was the one who had suggested that everyone perform the ceremony at the Crying Pools to get them more power. Jared had almost died. All the other sorcerers on Lillian’s side had died.
Kami thought it might be a bad idea to be any more tangled up with Jared than she already was.
They weren’t going to have a debate about it now. Kami made for the door. She was in the passage that led to the room with the pool table when she heard Jared say “Kami” urgently behind her. His tone suggested that if he was anyone else, he would have caught at her elbow and stopped her.
In this instance, Jared was right about not touching. Kami didn’t want to be grabbed. She preferred to choose, so she chose to turn around.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Jared said abruptly.
His hands were shoved into his jeans pockets; he was wearing ordinary clothes for the first time since they had taken him away from Rob, but he didn’t look normal yet. His face was still thinner than it should be, strained in a way it had never been before. There were tiny new lines about his eyes, and there was something else about his eyes too: the haunted look of a child who had been hit and, worse, feared he would be hit again.
Kami found it harder to be angry when she was looking at him, so she wanted to stop looking at him as soon as possible.
“You said that yesterday.”
She didn’t want an apology for what was supposed to be a magical first time of taking wanton liberties with each other’s persons. She just wanted him not to be a jerk, but apparently she could not have the things she wanted.
“About the last thing I said yesterday,” Jared said. “I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just surprised. I didn’t realize you thought about it that way.”
“Okay, thanks for that,” said Kami, and began to walk determinedly down the passage away from him.
“Kami,” Jared said behind her. “I’m—I’m honored that you did.”
Which was not, Kami noted, “Let’s be together, then.” It was one of those nonsense things that people said, like “It’s not you, it’s me” and “You’re too good for me.” It meant, “I would like to very politely and very swiftly escape this relationship, like a Victorian gentleman in a rocket.”
“Okay, brilliant,” Kami told him. “All cleared up now! Please stop talking! I’m not mad! Let’s forget it. We have more important things to think about.”
She walked quickly away, past the pool table and into the bar. Her father and Lillian Lynburn were standing beside the bar itself, absorbed in a conversation that seemed to be ninety percent intense disagreement and ten percent keeping it civil for the kids. Her little brother Ten was at Dad’s side, holding his hand and leaning heavily against him, staring up at Lillian with huge wary eyes.
Kami’s brothers were dealing as well as anyone could ever have expected with the sorcerers, their mother leaving, and what had almost happened to Ten. To anyone who did not know them like she did, they were the same as they had ever been. Except now Ten was even quieter, his shyness transformed into a confirmed distrust of the world, and Tomo was even more boisterous, as if he could be loud enough to scare away his own fear.
They were so brave it broke her heart.
Tomo broke away from old Mr. Stearn and his bulldog, who were both apparently puzzled by Tomo’s recommendation of lemonade over beer, and came rushing across the floor to Kami. She knelt down and he almost knocked her down, flying into her arms and knotting his arms around her neck.
“Hey, Kami,” Tomo said brightly. “Did you have a good meeting? Is stuff fixed yet?”
Kami stroked the back of his head, and tried to keep her voice light too.
“Almost fixed,” she told him. “I promise.”
Lillian had not had to tell her. Kami knew how very little hope there was, and how very few choices they had left.
Kami went back to the parlor once it became clear that her dad and Lillian had a lot to say to each other and once she was sure via the link that Ash and Jared were long gone. She found Holly there alone, leaning against the window with a huge leather-bound book.
Holly glanced up. “You did say we should go through the books,” she said, looking mildly abashed.
“I did,” Kami said with conviction.
“I haven’t found anything yet. I might be missing something, of course—”
“I’m sure you’re not,” said Kami. “But I can help you, if you like.”
She went and leaned against the window beside Holly, lifting up a wedge of pages so she and Holly could read from different sections in the book. Holly leaned companionably into her side.
“So, there was a lot of intense glaring today,” Holly said at length. “Did something happen between you and Jared?”
“Uh,” Kami said, and kicked herself very suavely on the ankle. “Not exactly.”
She hadn’t told anybody much, but she knew Angela suspected something and she was pretty sure Holly did too. She looked around the room, at the mismatching chairs and sofas crammed in the tiny space. They were as safe here as they could be anywhere.
“We were kissing, a bit, before he was taken,” she said. “And then yesterday we did a bit more than that, and then Ash interrupted and Jared seems to be of the opinion we were never going out. So I guess we weren’t.”
“Ah, the problem is that you didn’t DTR,” said Holly wisely.
Kami stared. “What?”
“D. T. R.,” Holly spelled out, slowly and helpfully.
“Do try rollerblading?” Kami guessed. “Dump the recycling. Don’t taste reptiles. No, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Holly wrinkled her nose. “Because the others made perfect sense?”
Kami shrugged, and Holly grinned.
“Determine the Relationship,” Holly said. “That’s when the two of you have been kissing a bunch and then you find yourself on a sofa or somewhere and someone’s like, ‘Oh, do you want to be my girlfriend?’ or ‘Is this an exclusive thing, then?’ And then you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and then you’ve either determined the relationship or determined that there isn’t a relationship. You guys needed to DTR.”
“Well, we have,” Kami said. “We D’d the R, or rather he D’d that there wasn’t an R, and now we’re done.”
Holly put out the hand that wasn’t holding the book, and wiggled it noncommittally.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He—we talked about you, once.”
“That one time you two made out?’ Kami asked with a sinking feeling.
“Uh, I don’t remember exactly when.” Holly looked shifty.
“It was totally that time you made out, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, come on,” s
aid Holly. “What’s that thing you say? The past is another country. You make out with different people there.”
“That’s not how it goes but I admire your creative weaseling,” said Kami. “You are the most promising reporter on my newspaper staff.”
It gave Kami a pang to mention her newspaper. She was still writing it and putting it out, but so few people were coming to school these days. She didn’t know if anyone was still reading it.
Holly blushed. “Oh no, Angie’s really smart.” She changed the subject back quickly, always so surprised when she was praised, almost as uncomfortable as she was pleased. “But when Jared talked about you—”
“Did he say he wanted us to go steady and he was planning to offer me his pin and/or letter jacket?”
Kami crossed the fingers of her free hand, mouthing “Please say yes,” and Holly grinned and batted at them. “I may not remember exactly when this conversation took place, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the 1950s, Kami.”
“I don’t understand why magic can be real and time travel can’t,” said Kami. “I want to go back in time and meet Jane Austen and Dorothy Parker and bet on the horse races.”
Holly leaned against Kami a bit more heavily this time, as if she was nudging her with her entire body.
“Try not to make a joke for maybe five minutes. Or, like, three. You know he cares about you, and if he was messing around with you, it wasn’t because he didn’t take it seriously. He takes you seriously. You matter to him in a way no one else does. That’s obvious.”
Kami leaned her head back against the window. She wondered if she could just not talk for three minutes until she was allowed to make jokes again. She suspected not.
“That’s obvious,” she repeated. “But I don’t know if it’s because of the link we used to have, and because he had nobody else for his whole life. He can have messed-up feelings about me, and not—not those feelings.”
He can love me, and not want me to be his girlfriend, Kami thought, but she didn’t know how to talk about love.
She’d always thought she was sensible about romance: she hadn’t ever wanted any sort of wild destructive passion that would interfere with college applications. She had thought love would change the story she told about herself too much, that love would make her story less smart or less meaningful. She’d had Jared in her head all the time, though. She’d had love already. Only those who already had love could afford to dismiss it.
“He might,” Holly said. “I don’t know. But if he only backed off after Ash interrupted, that could mean something.”
“You think he’s in love with Ash?” Kami asked. “I mean, could be. It’d explain why he’s so grouchy all the time.”
“That was only two minutes without a joke,” Holly told her sadly. “I believed in you.”
“I have no idea why,” Kami told her. “No, I think I get you. So, we need to Determine the Relationship, where you both get to talk over what the relationship actually is, because discussion’s a two-way street. Unless of course one side of the street is being an idiot about psychic bonds, at which point it’s okay to make decisions without him.”
“I don’t think that’s quite what I said,” said Holly.
“Thanks, Holly, you’ve been a big help, I have a plan now and I feel much better,” Kami told her.
Holly still looked alarmed, but she also looked as if something had occurred to her. “If I have helped,” she said tentatively, “and I don’t think I have, and I don’t know what you’re planning but I’m mildly scared about it—”
“You’ll see,” Kami told her. “You’ll see the plan.”
“Not feeling any better,” said Holly. “But if I have helped, I was wondering, could you help me? With, uh. With romantic stuff.”
“Oh no, who are you interested in?” Kami wailed, then remembered what a great friend Holly was and instantly regretted it. “No, I’m sorry, that was not supportive. Let me try again. Oh wow, who are you interested in?”
Holly laughed at Kami’s fake chipper voice and then blushed. “Well,” she said, and ducked her head, examining the book’s pages with sudden enormous intentness.
Kami turned her own page, which was focused on spells about maintaining the health of a sheep flock.
“Is it someone you’re currently living in the same house with?”
“Well,” Holly said again, and nodded tentatively.
“Oh my God,” said Kami.
Holly peeped out at Kami from behind her falling clusters of golden hair. Kami had never seen Holly Prescott, Sorry-in-the-Vale’s good-time girl, acting shy about anything to do with romance.
Kami didn’t know Henry well, but he had come to this town to fight for strangers, for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do. She patted Holly’s arm with perhaps more force than necessary.
“You’re great and smart and beautiful and amazing,” she announced. “If he doesn’t like you, he’s an idiot.”
Holly blinked. “He?” she asked, and shook the hair back from her face.
Kami blinked back. They sat blinking at each other, like a pair of bemused owls.
“Is it … ,” Kami said very slowly. “Is it … not a he?”
Holly’s hands clenched on the book. For a long moment, Kami thought she had got this absolutely wrong, but then, even more slowly than Kami had spoken, Holly nodded.
Kami launched herself at Holly, trying to hug her and hit her on the arm and let out a triumphant war cry all at once. She almost punched Holly in the chest but stopped herself at the last moment.
“Kami, watch the book,” Holly warned, laughing and breathless.
Kami kept one arm around Holly’s neck.
“I shan’t watch anything, I’m too happy,” she declared. “Ahhh! I’m so happy! This is so great!”
“Yeah?” Holly asked, shy again. “You think so?”
“Uh, you are two of my favorite people in the world, so yes, I do,” Kami declared. “Oh, wait, okay, you need my help. What do you need? Do you need practice kissing girls? That’s totally fine. I can do that. Come here, I’ll kiss you right now.”
The creak of the door made Kami look away from Holly and Holly look up from the book.
Ash looked as if he seriously wondered why it was always him. “Ah, don’t stop on my account,” he said. “Please go on.”
“Get out right now, we’re talking,” Kami commanded. “Come back in a few minutes.”
“There’s no need—” Holly protested.
“Yes, there is,” said Kami. “Out! Get out! We don’t like your face and we don’t want to see it around these parts.”
No, seriously, I mean it, I need a few minutes, Kami warned, and sent the need for privacy at him. They were both sending that message to each other all the time, and Ash didn’t need to know that it was Holly’s privacy Kami was concerned with right now. He would still be able to feel what Kami felt, but he would not know exactly what was going on.
“Okaaaaaaay,” said Ash, and backed out.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Holly said, blushing.
“Yes, I did,” Kami informed her. “What can I do to help? I’ll do anything. I’m serious about the kissing.”
“Please don’t kiss me,” Holly said, with conviction.
“Hurtful,” Kami commented. “But all right. What else can I do?”
Holly stared fixedly at a drawing of a sorcerer’s hand, limned with light. “I know Angie used to—like me,” she said in a low voice. “But I heard her say to you that—that she didn’t anymore. I wondered if you could find out if she does or not.”
“Absolutely,” Kami said. “I’m sure she does, but I’m happy to do it. Holly, I’m so happy for you guys.”
“I’m—I’m a bit scared,” said Holly, and Kami took her hand, held it tight in Kami’s own. Holly to
ok a deep breath, seeming encouraged, and went on: “I’m scared of everything, what people will think, and of not doing things right, and what it means about me, but when we were all fighting Rob in the square I realized that of all the things that scare me, the one that scares me most is losing her, without her ever knowing how I feel. I’m trying to get up my nerve to tell her. I’d like to be brave enough to try.”
Kami pressed Holly’s hand. “You’re brave enough for anything.”
“Kami,” said Holly, seeming stricken with a sudden terrible thought. “Please be subtle.”
“Totally,” said Kami. “You can rely on me absolutely. I will have the stealth of a lioness stalking the grasslands. In this metaphor Angela is an antelope, and she’ll never know what hit her.”
Holly did not look reassured.
“I promise you, Holly, ‘Subtle’ would be my middle name, except I’m too subtle to have a middle name that’s such a giveaway. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Is it safe to come in?” Ash’s voice asked. In Kami’s mind, he asked with a certain amount of excitement, Are you guys kissing?
“Yes,” Holly called out.
When the door opened, it was suddenly clear that Ash had brought reinforcements. Jared’s face was relatively unmoved, so Kami presumed that Ash hadn’t told him about any potential ladies kissing.
You’ll never know, sucker, she told Ash.
“Hi, Ash,” she said out loud. “Hi, darling.”
Jared’s face looked slightly less unmoved.
“One moment. Holly, please keep my place in the book,” Kami said, and rose from her position leaning against the window to make her way purposefully across the room.
Ash got out of the way very quickly. In fact, he went to stand behind a chair, as if there was about to be an explosion and he wanted protection from the blast.
Jared stayed where he was, leaning against the doorframe and watching her. His hands were in his pockets, which Kami thought was excellent because it meant he couldn’t defend himself when she caught him off guard.
“I just wanted to make something clear, cupcake,” she told him, and his eyes widened fractionally as she grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt, stood on her tiptoes, and pulled him down into a kiss.
Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) Page 9
