Kami sat on the kitchen chair: parts of the yellow wood were blistered, and patches of it were worn white. She stared at the blank page in front of her until it seemed like a doorway into oblivion, until her eyes were so strained they burned, and she could not think of a thing to write or anything else she could do. She could not think of anything but Rusty, and how she had not valued him enough.
Rusty. She had known he was sweet, known he was loyal, known he was loving. But he had been so familiar to her, for so many years. She had not thought of her lazy, goofy Rusty, her best friend’s big brother, as a hero.
She had not told him she loved him too. She had not told him that she was grateful to know him as well. She had always prided herself on her way with words, but she had not told him how much he meant to her when she had the chance. He was gone and she would never have the chance again. He would never hear another word she said, would never say another word to her. He was lost to profound silence that no words could ever break. No words of hers could ever matter to him now.
She had almost wanted to give up, when she had told Angela she would. She did not know how to keep hoping and keep acting, how to say that she would not surrender at any cost, when now she knew what real cost was.
She had seen death before his. She had seen her old friend Nicola die at Rob Lynburn’s hand. She had seen the sorcerers on Lillian Lynburn’s side, people she had known all her life, dead because they had followed Lillian’s command, dead for nothing. But she had loved Rusty. And they had murdered him.
There was a light knock on the door. Kami flinched and looked up.
“What do you want?”
Jared stood in the doorway, one hand still raised and curled against the door as if he was going to knock again. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” said Kami. She felt short of breath, but flattered herself that her voice sounded normal. “I’m fine.”
Her love had not been able to save Rusty. She’d thought she knew that those she loved were in danger before, but she realized now that she had been a child, thinking everything would work out, thinking that love was magic and it would form a protective spell.
She had been so blithely arrogant, so happily stupid. Beloved people died every day. Her love was not special, and her wishes would not order the universe.
“You’re not fine,” Jared said.
“I’m not—I’m not happy,” said Kami, and pressed her hand against her mouth to stop the sob, as if she was stifling a hiccup. She did not even know how to react, when everything seemed like a ghastly, obscene version of itself. “I thought I had to always be in control, and then I thought maybe it wouldn’’t be that bad if I wasn’’t——but it’’s so bad, and I’’m so miserable. He’s gone and I have to … I have to do what he would have wanted, but I don’t know what I can do. He’s gone and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
She scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand. She wished Jared would go away, that she could go back to looking at the blank page and trying to think of something to do. Feeling numb and hopeless was better than this. She did not know how to deal with this.
“He’s not gone,” said Jared.
“Oh, and how do you figure that?” Kami demanded. “He seems pretty gone to me.”
“When my dad died … ,” said Jared. Kami stared at the blank page and the workbench instead of watching him come toward her. “Not Rob, but my real dad, the one I grew up with,” Jared continued. “When he died, he wasn’t gone. My mom and I could never be what we might have been without him. He stayed like a shadow in every corner of our home, stayed a stain on our hearts. I felt it. I can’t believe that good will leave us when evil remains. I will not. I do not.”
Jared knelt down, crouched at her feet so that she could not help looking at him, at his eyes filled with the light of the battered old lamp. He looked like he believed every word he was saying. He took hold of her wrists, his grip light but warm, touching her as if he always did it, as if he found it easy to do. She watched her tears fall on his hands like drops of rain.
“The way he made you feel, the way he felt about you—they can’t wipe it away. They can’t take away all he was to you. It was too much. They don’t have the power. Nothing can take that from you.”
His hands on her wrists were the only thing she could really feel, the only anchor when the rest of her body was so numb she almost felt like she was floating, about to come apart. She was held together, was able to remain whole and herself, because of his grasp on her.
“Whenever I thought about dying, I always thought that you would remember me,” said Jared. “I thought about living on in your mind. I knew I would be safe there, that I would be good there, remembered as better than I had been. I know all you have lost, I know everything is changed, but when I thought of death I didn’t think of going away. I always thought of it as still being with you.”
Kami knew she was crying, but had not realized how hard she was crying until she tried to talk and could hardly speak. “That’s because you’re kind of crazy,” she said, sobbing and tender, and it seemed strange and miraculous that tenderness could survive when she was in such pain, that she loved him through even this.
“Be crazy with me, then,” said Jared. “You’re always good at that. Believe me when no one else would believe me. You have faith in him, and I have faith in you. He didn’t want to leave you and Angela, and I don’t believe anyone could make him. They could change him, but they couldn’t change what was between you. They can’t make him leave you. He will not fade from the world. You would never let that happen.”
Jared’s voice sank as he spoke to her and looked up at her, as if he was murmuring in the hush of a church. Kami trembled looking at him and could not look away. She thought that she knew now why the words “scared” and “sacred” had the same letters, almost made up the same word. And she realized that she still wanted Jared when all thoughts of passion were dead, when other consolation seemed like a cruel joke—that she wanted to be with him when the thought of being with anyone else was unbearable, when the thought of someone else touching her made her want to scream.
“Do you think you could believe me?”
“I think I could,” Kami whispered, her throat clogged with tears and aching. “Since it’s you.”
Kami moved closer, rested her weight against the solid warmth of his body. She closed her eyes and laid a hand on his chest, felt his heartbeat until her own heartbeat gradually fell into rhythm with his, so her heart felt like his heart, so they were as close as they could be.
She had not realized before that she had thought that there must be another way, that she would find some alternate route to victory. She knew now that there was no other way, that she was going to have to do the ceremony, go down into the lakes and down into the darkness of death afterward.
Rusty had known what a willing sacrifice meant. He had guessed that if he went to Aurimere, if he offered himself up—not one of the Lynburns, not a sorcerer or a source, but one of the group of rebels that Rob hated—Rob would think it was close enough to the equinox, and that a willing and certain sacrifice would make his triumph certain as well. Rusty had done it to save Kami’s brothers. He had done it to make sure that nobody else died defending them, so that Kami, Ash, and Jared would be alive to do the ceremony and save the town.
Rusty had taken such a terrible chance; he had gambled and known his life would be the price no matter if he won or lost. The price was paid. Kami could not fail him now. He had trusted her with all he had.
Kami laid her head down on Jared’s shoulder, rested her cheek against the worn leather of his jacket. She rested in the circle of his arms and cried and cried, for Rusty, for Angela, for herself, for everything that they had lost. She wept for love and wept for the new dark strangeness of the world.
Chapter Twenty
Turn Ag
ain Home
Holly opened the door of her brother Ben’s room to check in on Angie. She kept doing it, like a nervous cook checking on dinner in the oven.
The creak of the door seemed terribly loud in her ears. Holly didn’t know what else she had expected, but she was alarmed when the light from the hallway fell across the white sheets, the swell of a pillow, and Angela’s open eyes.
They stared at each other for a little while.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Holly said in a meek voice. “I just wanted to be here if there was anything you wanted. If there was anything I could do.”
It sounded feeble and stupid to her, but Angela looked at her for a long time, then nodded and made an obvious attempt to smile. The smile trembled on her lips and then slipped away, but the effort was real. Holly let go of the door handle and crossed the floor, went and sat down tentatively at the foot of the bed.
“Thank you,” Angela said slowly. “You’re a good friend.”
She disentangled herself from the clinging sheets and crawled to the end of the bed. Even bowed down by misery, Angie had a certain inherent grace.
Holly thought, What if I wanted to be more than your friend? On one hand, this was not the time for thoughts like that. But on the other, there might never be any more time. They were only a day and night away from the equinox. Angela might want to know now. Angela deserved to know, at a time like this, that there was someone who cared about her more than anybody.
Holly risked a look over at Angela. Angela looked tired and worn, softer than she usually did, as if she needed to be cared for. Holly let her hand creep across the covers and touch Angie’s hand. Angela glanced at their hands touching, and laced her fingers with Holly’s. Holly caught her breath and determined to act.
She leaned forward, and Angela knocked her back, so hard that Holly’s shoulder caught a glancing blow off a bedpost. Holly nursed her pain-dead arm and stared, bewildered, at Angela’s cold face.
“Don’t you ever try that again,” said Angela. “I don’t want you like that. Do you think you could possibly make me feel better? Your ego is out of control, and your pity is insulting.”
“I didn’t mean to—I never meant to insult you.”
“I don’t care what you meant,” said Angela. “All I want from you is for you to get out.”
Holly went out.
Mr. Glass was in the hallway, looking uncertain about which way to go—Kami in one direction, the boys in another, and Angie behind her door. Holly was amazed that he had feeling left to spare when his dark eyes lit on her and softened. She suspected that she just looked that pathetic.
“Oh, kiddo,” he said.
Holly flung up an arm as if he was attacking her instead of consoling her. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t need any help. Angela is the one who needs help. And I don’t know how to help her.”
“Nobody knows how to help at a time like this,” Jon Glass said. “Nobody even knows how to go on. Yet somehow we do. We always do.”
Holly shook her head mutely.
“Would you do me a favor?” asked Mr. Glass. Holly blinked, stunned, and he went on, “Would you watch the boys for me? Let me sit with Angela for a bit.”
He looked at her the way kind teachers had sometimes looked at Holly, when she had given them a piece of homework she thought she had done all right with and was waiting around to maybe hear them say so. Holly felt pathetic again—she was seventeen years old, someone had died, and she was still hanging around hoping for an adult to call her a good girl.
“You’re a brave girl,” said Mr. Glass instead.
They had put two beds into the storage room. The little room had no windows. It was intended to keep the boys safe, to keep everyone else out, but when Holly walked in she felt like she was walking into a prison with white walls.
Tomo was sitting on a chair with a comic book on his knee. He smiled when the door opened, and though there were tears on his cheeks he seemed honestly all right, uncomplicatedly and cheerfully pleased to see her.
Ten was different. Ten was sitting on the edge of his bed, and the curve of his back was like the curve of a bowstring so taut it might snap. Holly hadn’t ever thought of herself as good with kids, she wasn’t comfortable with them, but she found herself rushing over to put her arms around him.
Or rather, she tried to put her arms around him. He fought against her hold, staring at her as if she was attacking him, as if she was slowly and deliberately hurting him.
“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Ten said, “Yes. I want to punish them. Bad people have to be punished. I know I’m a—a source. And you’re a sorcerer, aren’t you?”
Something about the little boy’s eyes, his lost mother’s eyes, made Holly feel as if that was an accusation.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m not very good yet.”
For no reason Holly could see, news of her enormous incompetence seemed to reassure Ten. The terrible tension of his back eased slightly under her hand, though he was still straining away from her, not letting her really hold him.
“That’s okay. You’ll be good, once you have a source. If you promise to guard everyone, I’ll be your source,” Ten said between gritted teeth.
Holly’s stomach sank. The idea of it, being so close to anyone the way she’d seen Kami struggle with, was horrible. Worse was how Ten looked, trembling and ashen, like a child being dragged to a stake to be burned.
“I can’t do that,” Holly said, hushed. “You’d hate it.”
“But if someone else is going to die otherwise,” Ten said, “it doesn’t matter if I hate it. Rusty is dead. And my mum is dead. They are never coming back.”
Tomo gave a sudden wail like a siren. “Mum’s not!” he said. “She’s not! Dad said she would be all right.”
“You’re a baby and you don’t understand,” Ten snapped. “But I do! My dad and Angela don’t have any magic! Someone might kill them. And that lady, that Lynburn lady, she likes my dad but she doesn’t like Angela. You don’t want anything bad to happen to Angela, do you?”
His eyes made Holly feel not just accused but invaded. They saw too much. His eyes looked too old. Kami had always talked about Ten as shy, as quiet and sweet. Holly didn’t know how he had been, before people started dying and the whole world had changed around him, but he was not sweet now. He might be a child shaking in her arms, but he was clear-eyed and cold.
“No,” Holly whispered. “I’m sorry. I still can’t do it. Not now.”
“Will you do it?” Ten asked, his voice inflexible. “If it looks like we really need to. If there doesn’t seem like any other way, will you swear to me you’ll do it?”
Holly swallowed. “I swear.”
“All right,” said Ten.
Maybe he was relieved to be spared the necessity of having to hand his soul over immediately. He did not show it. He slipped out of Holly’s arms entirely and lay down on his bed, motionless and facing the wall.
“Sorry, but I don’t wanna be your source,” Tomo said, kicking his chair legs. He seemed calm, now that Ten had not directly contradicted him about his mother. “I like you okay and all.”
“Thanks,” said Holly. “I get it. Sometimes you’re just not feeling it.”
She found herself able to grin at him, though it was a rueful grin. Rejected by an eight-year-old. It seemed in keeping with the rest of Holly’s day.
“Ash could be my sorcerer if he wanted. He’s my favorite.” Tomo looked thoughtful. “But I guess he’s Kami’s sorcerer, as well as the other one with the—you know, the messed-up face.”
“Don’t talk about Jared that way!” Holly yelped.
Tomo rolled his eyes and shrugged, seeming to accept this. “Kami seems awful worried about sort of having two. She’s responsible and stuff because s
he’s the oldest, and it means she doesn’t really enjoy herself. Not like me. I think it would be brilliant fun.”
“I don’t think anything about sorcerers is fun,” Ten said in a low voice.
There was a long silence.
“Are you sure Rusty isn’t coming back?” Tomo asked. “Are you really sure? I think maybe someone made a mistake.”
When he turned the pages of his comic book, his hands shook and he crumpled the pages. But his face stayed smooth. He saw Holly looking at him, and he grinned again.
Holly really hadn’t thought she had any special fondness for children. But she looked at Tomo, so determinedly blithe, and she looked at cold, wounded Ten curled like a comma on his bed and ready to do something that terrified him. She knew suddenly why someone would do anything to protect them. She knew why Rusty had given up everything.
Kami had gone to bed and even slept a little, wrung out after all her tears until misery and exhaustion seemed like the same thing. She was still lying in bed when she felt the shell in her pocket pulse into life.
She called for Ash in her mind.
Come quickly, she said. Get Jared. It’s your mother.
Kami threw herself onto her knees at the foot of the bed, placed the shell on the white bedspread, and waited. Ash and Jared came in and knelt down on the floor at either side of her. Rob Lynburn’s voice, calm and reasonable and reassuring, the voice of a good-old-boy politician, filtered from the shell and echoed around the room.
“I can understand how you must have doubted me,” said Rob. “There was Rosalind and Claire Glass. I know you must have been jealous.”
“Of you?” Lillian demanded, sounding almost amused.
“Perhaps not of your sister,” said Rob. “You have always had such a touching loyalty to your family. But—”
“But Jon’s wife?” Lillian asked, her skepticism as vast as space. “Why would she ever look at you? Did you two even know each other? I would never have noticed. I would never have cared. I have no interest in your behavior or in hers. I suppose you thought it was your due to have every beautiful girl in town at your feet, as the lord of the manor.”
Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) Page 24
