You are not being very soothing, said Ash.
It was as if they had changed places. She could feel his resentment of her fears, and she could feel his resolve. Ash wanted to be useful, to be wanted and loved, wanted it with such passion she could see why he might become a tool in anyone’s hand. She tried not to come too close to that need of his, as if it was a black hole that might swallow her. They tried to avoid the dark unlovable corners of each other’s hearts.
I know this is our best option, said Kami, which was all the comfort she could give.
She stood at the door with her father and looked inside at the room. Lillian’s bedroom was dim, tall candles creating tiny islands of light in a murky sea. Ash was sitting on the bed, which was draped with white sheets, and Jared sat on a low stool at the opposite side of the room.
Kami’s soul shriveled slightly at the idea of taking romantic action in front of her father, but she was determined to determine this relationship, so she left the doorway and walked over to where Jared was sitting. When he lifted his face to look up at her, she leaned down and kissed him.
“Hi there, dream canoe,” she said. She got hold of his arm and sat on his lap, drawing his arm around her—which he allowed, although she supposed the lack of resistance could mean he was in shock—so she had her back to whatever expression he made.
Sadly, she could still see the expression her father was making.
“Do you have any tattoos?” Dad asked Jared suspiciously.
“No!” said Jared, and added hastily, “Sir.”
Her father looked like he had further questions for Jared, and Kami did not have high hopes about the answers—history of violence, check; poor academics, check; leather jacket, check; motorcycle, check; despoiling his innocent daughter, no check but not for lack of trying—but then everyone’s attention turned to Lillian Lynburn, standing at the door to her balcony. Moonlight streamed in on her long fair hair and the long sharp knife in her hand, surrounding them both with a silvery halo.
Kami pressed her back into the warm solid line of Jared’s chest.
“It’s a pity that Rob has our Lynburn knives,” Lillian said. “But any knife can be cursed or blessed.”
“Right, but can any knife be disinfected?” asked Jon. “Specifically, was this one?”
Lillian smiled thinly, holding her knife up to the moonlight so the metal glittered. She looked ready to use it, and Kami presumed she was.
Nobody else was coming. When asked if they wanted to see the Lynburn boys cut up and tied up, Holly had weakly claimed that she was absorbed in studying, Angela had said a flat no, and Rusty had assured them all that he would be washing his hair.
“You want to come downstairs with me, Henry?” Jon asked sympathetically.
Henry Thornton was standing in one corner of the room and looking pale, but he shook his head. “I’ve never seen this kind of spell performed before. I’m very interested to watch.”
Jon lifted his eyebrows. “Okay. Note to self: sorcerers are freaks every day of the week. Are you sure you want to stay, sweetheart? Or do you want me to stay with you?”
Kami looked up at her father. Dad looked back, his gaze steady: she knew he would stay if she wanted, and hold her if anything went wrong. And she knew that magic was new and strange, more terrifying to him than her.
“Nah, Dad, I’m good. Please leave me in this hotel bedroom with my handsome boyfriend. And several of his relatives, and a very sharp weapon.”
“Clearly I went badly wrong somewhere when raising you,” said Dad. “Well, best to go down before Tomo gets into the vodka.”
He pulled a lock of Kami’s hair gently, then fixed Jared with a deeply suspicious stare, which he maintained until he had backed out of the room.
The door closing softly behind him seemed to be the cue for the sorcerers to act. Lillian drew the knife up to her face, leaning the sharp edge against her forehead and her lips as she murmured. Ash got up, his nerves fraying the edges of Kami’s nerves, like two exposed wires sparking together. Kami tried to be calm and spread calm to Ash, and she felt Jared tense slightly more against her body.
“Good luck with your horrifying blood-and-knives spell, pumpkin blossom,” Kami said, unlooping his arm from around her waist and standing up so he could. She dropped a kiss on the side of his mouth as she did so.
Jared paused and then said, “Thanks.”
That was almost encouragement, Kami thought. She didn’t even know where the dumb terms of endearment had come from, except from her inherent terror of being serious about anything, but they appeared to have the effect of a stun gun on Jared. They worked when nothing else had worked, and she had to use what she had.
Kami wondered if she should count it as a victory that he did not seem to be actively attempting to foil her plan of going out with him. Of course, he wasn’t actively participating in it either, so maybe it was a draw.
Lillian ran her blood-red nails along the shining surface of the knife.
“Kneel down,” she told her boys, “and bare your arms.”
“Good thing I wore a wifebeater,” said Jared, looking back to exchange a brief smile with Kami. “Because there is no way I’m doing this shirtless.”
Ash undid the button of his shirt cuff, rolling it up well past his elbow. Jared went over to the table beside the door and picked up the small coil lying there, unwinding the thin rough length of rope quickly between his hands.
“Be careful not to cut along the artery,” Lillian commanded. She walked over to the end of the bed, where Ash sat, and handed him the knife.
Ash looked up at her, face naked and unguarded in the moonlight, obviously seeking reassurance. Lillian met his gaze for an instant, her face calm and still as a statue’s, touched by moonlight but not emotion. She turned and walked back toward the balcony door, where she stood outlined, an impassive silver silhouette against the glass.
Ash knelt slowly on the rug at the foot of the bed, in the circle of lamplight. Kami could sense how alone he felt, as though the circle of light was an island far away from anyone, because nobody cared enough to cross the floor and go over to him.
Compassion flooded Kami, so overwhelming and warm it felt for a moment like passion. Ash’s face and heart both turned to her, as toward the sun. He looked like a young poet with his gilded hair and rumpled shirt, and his eyes bright with hope.
Kami lost sight of Ash for an instant as Jared walked across the bedroom rug toward him, casting a shadow on Ash’s face. She looked at Jared and saw him looking back at her, just a glimpse of his cool eyes for a brief instant before he glanced back at Ash, and she knew with a sinking feeling that he was putting the way Kami had leaned forward and Ash’s uplifted expression together. He towered over the kneeling Ash.
“You all right?” he asked Ash, voice gruff with discomfort at evincing any evidence of concern.
Kami found herself smiling at the same time as feeling a pang. It felt viscerally wrong, being in this position, slightly intimidated by Jared from the outside when she should not be outside at all. She should never be surprised by his lurking secret kindness, because she should always be wrapped in it.
It had been months since she had linked with Ash: months and months since she had broken the link with Jared. It should be something she was used to by now.
But she could feel Ash’s fondness for Jared too. She smiled at Jared’s back, then saw the knife in Ash’s hand and stopped smiling.
Ash swallowed and said, “I’m all right. I’m only worried I’m going to forget the lines.”
“It is not the words that matter,” said Lillian. “It is the intent. And the blood, of course.”
“Thank you, Aunt Lillian,” said Jared dryly. “You always know just what to say.”
A faint smile crossed Ash’s face. He offered Jared the knife.
Jared knelt down, rope wrapped around his fist, and took the knife in his free hand. Ash took a deep breath in the hush and offered up his arm, veins long
twining lines of pale blue under his skin, so white it was almost glowing in the low light.
Jared turned the knife with a flick of his wrist that looked disturbingly expert, laid the point against Ash’s arm, and drew the keen edge along his skin. The skin parted, simple and easy, and for a moment the blood was beads of red against white.
Until the gleaming drops turned into a stream, then a river, of red.
Kami felt the pain strike through Ash, saw his expression contort and heard the low sound of pain he made, before he buried his face in Jared’s shoulder. Kami saw the shudders run through his kneeling body.
Jared’s hand, the one holding the rope and the knife, hovered over Ash’s hair in an unfulfilled gesture of comfort.
He spoke instead, intoning the words of the spell in a steady voice.
“Pain buys power, power pain
Mine to you and back again.”
Ash breathed in again, released his hold on Jared’s shirt and straightened up. He was even paler, sweat beading on his face as blood had on his arm, but he looked at Jared and saw something there that made him square his shoulders. Jared pressed the knife into Ash’s palm and held out his arm: the underside was as pale as Ash’s and looked unexpectedly vulnerable.
Kami’s hands formed into tight fists, fingernails biting into her palms. She didn’t want Ash to touch him.
The only thing that helped was Ash’s expression, and the feeling coursing toward her beneath his pain: he didn’t want to hurt Jared either, not at all.
The knife came down, and Kami had to set her teeth as she saw how Ash flinched and slipped, the hesitation surely causing Jared more pain, the slash on his arm jagged.
Ash’s voice was shaking too, but the words of the spell rang out clear.
“That which was whole, now make it part
That which was hidden, show the heart.”
No sooner was he finished speaking than Jared took hold of Ash’s injured arm and pressed the insides of their wounded forearms together, each of their hands clasped around the other’s elbow. Their labored breathing was coming in sync, the blood dripping between their locked arms, dappling the rug where the knife lay now.
Jared wound the rope around their arms. As he did so the moonlight crept in through the glass door and wound around them in shining tendrils: shimmering around their sealed arms, moving like the lines of light cast on water along their backs and circling their fair heads, bowed together so their bodies formed an arch.
They spoke together, and Ash’s voice was no longer trembling, and Jared’s was a little less rough.
“Blood to blood and breath to breath,
Until spell’s breaking or our death.”
The rays of moonlight shivered and rippled around them. Kami felt a strange sensation, as if what was happening with the moonlight was happening inside her. As if the light that lit the world within her was changing, expanding and luminescent, and on the edge of darkness but moving into the light was a loved one she had not seen in too long.
Kami leaned forward on the chair even farther. Jared turned to look at her.
Their eyes met, and Kami felt the spark between them turn into leaping flame, recognition and yearning twisting together at the same time. She could feel Jared’s familiar feelings, brushing at her consciousness. She could not be mistaken: she knew the exact edge of his anger, the rush of his surprise, the taste of his grief, and the enveloping warmth of his affection. Nobody else felt the same.
Ash had not been able to fill the space Jared had carved out in her heart: he could not fit the place made by someone else, and it hurt to have him there.
But now Jared was almost back, where he had been before.
Ash was there too, a rush of feeling like a channel separating her and Jared, but she could almost reach Jared, as if they both had hands outstretched and there was only an inch between the very tips of their fingers.
And then Kami found herself drawing back in her mind, in alarm that she did not for a moment understand.
It was like seeing a loved one coming toward you, and seeing a shadow behind him, having your joyous desire turn to fear even before you realized that the shadow was an avalanche.
Kami threw up the mental walls she had spent so much time constructing with Jared, had used so often with Ash, trying to protect herself. She concentrated on shielding the small bright place in her mind that she used when she was writing, which she thought of when she tried to do her magic. She could still feel them, but more distantly, as if she had taken a hasty step back.
The rays of moonlight wrapping around Jared and Ash were turning darker, from ribbons of smoke to what looked like trails of ink, circling them in, binding them tighter and tighter.
Until they disappeared, leaving only a faint grayness in the air like traces of ash.
Jared was still looking at Kami, but his expression was wary.
“Did it work?” Ash asked, his voice hoarse.
Jared unwound the rope from around their arms. “I don’t know.”
Lillian moved from her place at the door and strode toward them, stepping over the fallen knife and spilled blood until she was by Ash’s side, her fingers hovering over his wounded arm.
That was something Kami could do, at least. She jumped up and hurried over to Jared, kneeling down beside him and taking hold of his wrist as gently and carefully as she could. He’d been hurt too much, by too many people: she did not want to be one of them.
She shut her eyes and concentrated. It took more of an effort than she had thought, but she had healed someone only once before.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that Jared was breathing more easily, and when she touched the blood on his arm it came away on her fingers, showing whole skin beneath the stain.
“If you want to know if it worked, do a spell,” Lillian suggested. “Test your new power.”
Ash glanced from Lillian to Jared, and got up, stumbling as if he had forgotten how to walk, uncertain on his legs as a newborn foal. He lifted a hand and gestured at the balcony door.
Kami could feel it even behind her walls, the strange void where once there had been something that surged.
She did not know what Ash had been trying to do. Nothing happened.
“I don’t understand,” Ash said, his voice rising with panic. “What’s going on?”
“You can’t do the spell?” Lillian inquired sharply. “You don’t have the power?”
Ash shook his head. The light through the glass door of the balcony illumined his face: he looked lost. “I can’t do anything. I don’t have any power.”
“That’s impossible!” Lillian snapped.
“Is it?” Kami asked.
Nobody answered her. Kami looked at Jared. She didn’t want to say this, didn’t want to seem as if she blamed him when none of this was his fault, but she had to speak.
“The night before we saved you,” Kami said. She held on fast to his wrist, tried to hold her eyes with his. “When Rob was torturing you, when he and Amber hurt you, he was using the Lynburn knives. Wasn’t he?”
Jared nodded.
Lillian wheeled on him. “Have you done any magic since you were taken from Aurimere?”
“No,” Jared said. “Rob was drugging me, I got used to not using it. Also, you may have noticed I’ve been delirious most of the time.”
His voice was sarcastic, but it was obvious he understood the horror of what had happened as well as any of them.
They could all see the edges of the scars Rob had left on Jared’s skin, not quite hidden beneath the material of his shirt.
“I see he’s learned some new tricks from his strange sorcerers,” Lillian said at last. Her voice was vicious. “Rob used the Lynburn knives and your Lynburn blood to taint your power, to twist it so you could not use it again. Rob poisoned your magic, and now you’ve poisoned my son’s.”
“Yes, Lillian, this was all Jared’s idea,” Kami said sharply.
Lillian looked at Kami as if Kami
was mad. “I am not blaming Jared. I am simply stating the facts. Try to use magic, Jared, if you can.”
Jared looked at the mirror hung above Lillian’s dresser. Nothing happened: his reflection stared balefully back at him.
Kami looked at it and it broke, splitting clear across, so he would not have to look at himself anymore.
“I can still do magic,” she said. “I put up a block between us, between me and Ash … and Jared, I think. While the spell was happening. It protected me.”
Lillian did not look greatly relieved at the news that Kami had been spared.
Kami could not blame her for despairing. Kami could not even blame Lillian for suggesting this spell, not really, no matter how it had turned out. They had all agreed to do it: none of them had thought it would work out like this.
They’d all known they were badly outnumbered before, and now the two Lynburn boys were powerless and helpless.
They had been desperate, and now they were more desperate still.
Kami was too tired to even despair. And from the look of Jared, he was more tired still: bleeding all over the floor could not be good for him.
“You need to go to bed,” Kami decided, and hauled him away and out of Lillian’s room. “Come on. Everything will still be ruined in the morning.”
It was a brief walk down the narrow hall to Jared’s little room. They did not speak until they were at his door.
“Can you believe that we screwed up everything about twice as much in the space of a couple hours?” Kami asked.
“I can,” said Jared. “But only because I truly believe in us, the utter depths of our incompetence, and that it must inevitably lead us to our ultimate epic failure.”
“Aw, sugar flower,” Kami told him. “You always know just what to say.”
“And just how to poison my brother,” said Jared.
She looked up at him, leaning against the doorway with his white shirt stained with blood and sweat, his too-thin face sick and weary of the world. She’d known he would take that to heart. Kami grabbed a handful of Jared’s shirt and stood on tiptoe so she could press their foreheads together. She closed her eyes and did not try to kiss him, because insisting on determining a relationship all by yourself was hard work and she didn’t, couldn’t, know if he wanted her to.