“If you want to be with me … ,” Kami said, and hesitated. If a miracle happened, if they all survived and she and Ash broke the link, then what? But she didn’t think they were going to survive.
And she had never been sure of exactly what she meant to Jared, beyond the link and his memory of the link. She didn’t want to hear that her link with Ash meant Jared wouldn’t want her, ever. She was going to die. She didn’t want to have the memory of asking him to be with her, and having him say no.
But he said it just the same.
“Kami,” Jared told her, and he sounded sad. “I can’t keep pretending. I don’t want to.”
“Right,” Kami said. She’d thought her voice would be faint but it came out strong then and furiously, irrationally angry. “Fine. Forget it. But we’re doing the ceremony.”
She banged the door as she walked out. She felt sick with how unfair this was, as unfair as the choice she had had to make and the spell they would have to cast. She had never wanted love, the kind of love her childhood group of girlfriends had dreamed of, something that would cause her life to make sense. Her life had made sense already. It had seemed silly, all the clichés of being completed, of wild despair or transcendent joy, love at first sight or ever after, certainties when she had never been certain about anything but how much he mattered. It still seemed so far removed from the desolate pain she was feeling now. She had wanted college, and journalism. She’d thought that she was smart about life and about love.
She’d had Jared already, had him all along and wanted no one else. She’d had him and she’d lost him, and she had spent all this time scrambling to convince herself that she had not lost him, not really.
Nobody could tell a love story by themselves: people told love stories to each other, and Jared had refused to tell her what she had been hoping to hear.
Jared was right. Now when they might be about to die, it was time to be honest, time to admit the stark truth to herself. He didn’t want her. She had lost him.
Chapter Fifteen
The One I Love Best
The days passed, in spite of heartbreak and fear of what was to come, and Kami tried to keep busy. She kept living above her mother’s restaurant, wearing borrowed clothes. She kept living without her mother. She kept telling herself that if she did everything right, she could save her.
On the day of the party, she helped Martha Wright string red and white ribbons from the rafters of the Water Rising, standing on chairs and her tiptoes to do so, even though the shortest person on the team was probably not the best qualified for ribbon-hanging maneuvers.
“At least you won’t bump your head on one of the beams,” said Martha, the fourth time that Kami fell off a chair.
“I like your attitude,” said Kami. “Always think positive!”
A girl who fell off chairs and kept laughing at dumb jokes and messing up party decorations didn’t fit in with any idea Kami had ever had of heartbreak. Maybe if she just kept doing what she could, and acting like she did, it wouldn’t hurt as much.
She looked down at Martha, who was behind the bar making orange peel into delicate spiraling shapes.
“You’ve been such a big help. You’ve been so kind to us, and I don’t even know why. I hope you don’t mind my asking,” said Kami. “And I really hope you don’t say ‘Wow, now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why I’m doing this and it seems kind of risky, maybe I’ll stop.’ I’m a big fan of you helping us. I just wondered, since almost nobody else is helping us, since everybody is too scared of Rob Lynburn to even help themselves, I wondered what made you decide to help.”
Kami hoped that she was not coming off as asking why Martha dared to help, when she had no magic. She hadn’t had magic, in the time between breaking the link with Jared and forming one with Ash. She’d still fought. She refused to act like the Lynburns did, as if magic was the only power someone could ever have.
But Martha Wright had been raised in the time of Lillian’s parents, when the Lynburns had still held sway over the entire valley. When people had been glad to have the Lynburns’ power and, more than that, had been used to them. Habit could be stronger than happiness. So many of the people Kami had thought she knew had bowed their heads and let Rob Lynburn do what he liked. They had acted as if they simply could not see any other path to take.
She looked over at Martha again, her gray head bent over the bright orange shapes.
“You remember how Jared left his home for a spell, left his aunt and his cousin and came to live with us, just him,” said Martha slowly.
“I do, I do remember when he ran away to live in a bar. It was like the adult version of when I ran away to live in my friend’s tree house, but Jared lasted longer.”
Lillian had made Jared an offer he felt he couldn’t accept, and he’d thought that meant he should leave. Maybe he’d thought it meant he had to leave. She knew that Jared understood what a home was: he’d always known what hers meant to her. But he had never understood, perhaps, that “home” could be a word that applied to him, or describe something that could belong to him.
Martha didn’t seem to be listening. Kami understood: sometimes people responded like that when Kami talked.
“It was raining the night he came,” she said, and her voice was warm. “It was very late. The bar was shut up, and John and I were in our bed listening to the sound of the rain trying to take off the roof tiles. Then there was a hammering at the door. We knew the Lynburns were back, we knew that the sacrifices were being made again. We didn’t—we grew up with it, grew up in the days of red and gold. People were talking about it a little. Not a lot, everybody has always been too scared to talk too much about the Lynburns, lest spies carry word back to them or the very leaves on the trees whisper news to them. The old stories say that the sorcerers see your reflection in their mirrors, that they can look at you through the knotholes in wood. Some were saying that things had always been this way, that it might be better. Some were as scared as we were, but they knew as well as we did there was nothing to be done against sorcery. I was scared. Maybe I was being silly, but the noise sounded to me like the summons for Judgment Day. I held on to John and I wanted to say, ‘Don’t you go down there.’ But the Lynburns don’t like to be kept waiting, and they can never be ignored. The only thing worse than the thought of John going down was the thought of waiting there cowering in bed, and having him not come back up. So we went down together.”
If it hadn’t been for Martha’s tone, Kami would have thought that she was telling a story to frighten children. That was what the Lynburns had always been to Sorry-in-the-Vale, she supposed. Masters and monsters, as if one word meant the other.
“Young Jared was standing at the door and he was wet to the skin. He has a look about him sometimes, like a stray dog that has been kicked too many times and has gone all the way past snarling and biting until all it does is shiver, waiting for the next kick. They’re almost patient about their misery, creatures like that, and they look at you with such eyes, beseeching you to make it all stop but not—not hoping that you will. It’s like they know you won’t, that the world isn’t going to be kind to them. Do you know what I mean?”
“I know,” said Kami.
“I’d heard people whispering about him, Rosalind Lynburn’s son, that she’d gone mad out there in America and that he wasn’t right either, that he might kill for sport and not sacrifice. I didn’t believe it, exactly. I didn’t know what to believe and what not to believe about those up there on the hill. I’d seen him on his bike, driving like a bat coming out of hell and about to hit a fence, and I’d seen him on the streets a few times. I’d thought he had funny eyes: they go right through you. I didn’t like the look of him at first. But he came into my bar one night with his cousin and young Rusty, and he was a bit different from how I thought. Some boys ask for drink, and honestly sometimes I give it to them, if they’re boys I
know won’t get stupid with it. Some boys don’t dare ask. But he said ‘I don’t drink’ in this straightforward kind of way, as if he’d thought about it and he wasn’t going to do it when he grew up either. I’ve been in the business a long time. There was something about the way he said it that made me wonder about his dad: not Rob Lynburn, but that American Rosalind ran off with. He smiled at me and it looks odd, you know, with the scar. I didn’t quite make it out at the time, whether he was trying to scare me or not, but later I thought he might be shy. And then there he was on a wild winter night.”
Why hadn’t he come to her, Kami thought: why had he preferred to throw himself on the mercy of strangers? She tried to swallow past the prickling knot in her throat, which felt as if she had swallowed a bit of holly bush. She tried to smile and look attentive as Martha continued her story.
“He asked if he could spend the night in one of the inn rooms. I was the one who stepped aside from the door. John thought I was mad for doing it. I don’t know if I would’ve let another Lynburn in. If I had, it would’ve been only that I was scared not to. And I was scared, don’t mistake me about that. I didn’t sleep all the rest of that night for fear of what he might do to us while we slept. But it wasn’t the only reason I let him in. Even if he was a Lynburn, he was a boy, and I couldn’t leave that boy out in the winter cold. The next morning, he looked as tired as I was, as if he hadn’t slept either, but he had it all thought out, that he would stay and earn his keep. We said yes because we didn’t know what else to do, what he might do if we said no—but he did the work. He’s a big brawny lad, and a good worker,” said Martha, with an unmistakable note of pride in her voice, the words simple and casual as if she was talking about a favored nephew. “He always takes the time to help about the place, even now. He noticed right off that John has a bad back and he made sure he was on hand to do all the heavy lifting when boxes or casks needed hauling up from and down to the cellar. I kept waiting for him to do magic, I used to think about it at night and feel a choking in my throat, I’d think what a fool I was, that I knew what they were. And then I did see him do magic, and it wasn’t so bad. He kept the other sorcerers from our door. Even after he went back to Aurimere, back to her—” and Kami understood then from Martha’s tone of voice, something she hadn’t known before, that Martha did not like Lillian. “He’d come down, make sure we were safe from them.”
Kami thought of how Jared had lashed out when Rob’s man Sergeant Kenn went after her, how he’d threatened to bury Kenn alive at her garden gate if he touched her again. She did not doubt that he would do everything in his power to keep safe whatever he cared for.
“But it wasn’t like he was our guard dog,” Martha said anxiously. “That wasn’t how I thought of him, not at all. And it wasn’t that he’d come down like the stories of old lady Lynburn’s mother, with her charity basket on her arm and magic in her hands. He took care that he’d be here on the days when we bring boxes up from and down to the cellar. He’d do all the heavy lifting. He didn’t forget.”
Martha had not forgotten, either. She had taken him in not once but twice. She had harbored Lillian and Ash Lynburn, whom Kami knew she was frightened of, for months while Jared was immured in Aurimere and they had all believed him dead. She had arranged flowers at the bottom of his bed when he had a fever.
“He’s a good lad,” said Martha. “That’s all. He does his best and I want to do my best to help.”
Kami looked out at the narrow streets of her town, at the winds rippling through the woods, at Aurimere and its circle of fire against the sky. There was something burning in this woman, brighter than the red and gold. Jared had not forgotten, Martha had not, and Kami did not want to forget this reminder: there was hope for the town. There was something stronger than fear in the world.
By the time darkness was lapping up against their windows, the inn was full of light and noise. People who had not come at Lillian’s battle cry would turn up for a party.
Kami tried not to blame them. She tried to be glad that they were there: that was what Kami and her friends had all wanted, to make it seem as if they accepted that Rob ruled now, that this was the new normal and they could all live with it. She saw that, in people’s faces—saw they believed in Rob’s promises and were willing to make Rob’s bargain, or at least thought there was no other choice than to make Rob’s bargain.
As if it didn’t matter that Rob had asked for a spring sacrifice. As if they were going to do it, choose a death, or at least turn a blind eye like they had with Chris Fairchild. His wife and his little boy had not come to the party.
Dorothy the librarian was there, though, wearing a festive red cardigan instead of her usual pink one. Amber Green was there, though her boyfriend Ross was not. Henry Thornton went shyly over and asked her to dance. One of Holly’s brothers and her sister had shown up, tentative, as if they were not quite sure of their welcome, but Holly had gone over to talk to them and it looked like the talk was going well.
Dad was giving Lillian very firm instructions on how to ask after people’s health, and ask how life was treating them, and how their jobs were going and their children were getting on.
“I fail to see the point of all these questions,” Lillian told him in acid tones.
“These questions are going to show that you have basic consideration for others, Lilliput. Such a thing will come as a surprise to many, but with luck it will be a nice surprise.”
“If I show consideration for others,” Lillian Lynburn said grumpily, “will you tell me again about how you shot my husband?”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Yes, Leigh, if you manage to approximate human behavior for half an hour, I will tell you your favorite story again.”
Lillian propped her chin on her hand, looked smug, and bestowed a smile on old Roger Stearn as he went past. He looked briefly dazzled, but that might have been his cataracts.
More and more people kept coming: Alan Hope, who had inherited the Hope farm now that his cousins were dead in Lillian’s service, but who had not inherited any sorcerous powers. Terry Cholmondeley, who seemed to have brought two dates to the party and thus to be engaged in a complicated game that Kami could not imagine would end well. Some people had brought their kids. Alan Hope had brought his fiddle, and he struck up a tune. More people began to dance, whirling about or going slower. Roger Stearn took a gradual creaky turn with Dorothy across the floor.
Rusty looked at Kami, a laughing dark-eyed inquiry, and in response she started to dance. Rusty also began to dance, in a way.
Rusty was significantly more graceful than Kami but also could never resist a joke.
“It’s cool that you’ve been practicing your self-defense, but I am trying to dance here?” Rusty said, ducking theatrically from one of Kami’s enthusiastic gestures. Kami danced up on him and Rusty backed away in mock terror.
The people around them laughed. Kami waved and Rusty had to duck for real.
“Save your loving brother!” Rusty appealed to Angela, who was sitting on a bar stool and smirking at them.
“Take that insulting ruffian away,” Kami ordered, giggling, and shoved him toward her.
Rusty led Angela out onto the dance floor: they danced beautifully for about ten minutes and then sat down and refused to get back up again for an hour.
It should have been fun.
Everybody was mad to pretend that life could be happy again, could be something close to what it had been before. Kami could understand the impulse to forget, even if she could not do it.
She felt Ash’s infectious happiness before she saw him. Ash loved to see people enjoying themselves around him. He was so conscientious, felt so responsible for the happiness of others.
His smile made her smile, before she even saw it.
“Hey, Kami. I was wondering if I could get a dance with the best-looking girl in the room.”
“Sure,” Kami said.
“Go ask Angela. Take your life in your hands. I’ll miss you and all, but I’m going to give her an alibi for the murder, because that’s what best friends do.”
Ash laughed and put his hand over hers, which was resting on the bar. He linked his fingers with hers and used his hold on her to tug her gently off the stool.
“You look great,” he said.
She was wearing a black silk dress of Angela’s, tailored to flow, because anything of Angela’s that was tailored to cling would not fit. It did fit, though the silk clung to her short legs and strained slightly at her bust. She might even look simple and elegant. She hadn’t seen anything wrong with her image in the mirror before the party, except that it was not an image she would ever have chosen. Kami knew Ash could feel how uncomfortable she was with how she looked. He was trying to make her feel better: it wasn’t his fault that this was not the way to do it.
She could feel his concern for her, though, and the sincerity of the compliment. She let both course through her, as the music was coursing through the air, and she let him pull her all the way off the stool and into the middle of the floor.
Ash spun her into the center of the dancing couples, and moved smoothly to catch her when she stumbled. The glittering lights and the music became a whirl, like being wrapped in a bright gentle storm. When the dance was over, Kami was blinking the dazzle out of her eyes, briefly blind and laughing.
People were clapping, happy to see people enjoy themselves, with a certain amount of indulgence for the young people even if one of the young people was a Lynburn.
Jared was gone. He did not come back. When Kami asked Martha, she said she thought that he’d gone up to his room.
“—glad to see they’ve decided to accept things,” Kami heard Alan Hope say as she shoved past him.
Kami was glad he was fooled, but she had not accepted anything. She did not even know how.
Kami told herself that she should definitely not go after Jared, even as she was climbing the stairs.
Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) Page 19
