Jared shrugged. “About how I always expected it would go, yeah.”
The bruise was fading under her fingers, like invisible ink disappearing into a page. Unexpectedly, Kami felt her knees go out from under her.
It was in no way a romantic feeling. It reminded her of having the flu, her body simply shutting down and forcing her to fall. Distantly, she heard Jared’s hoarse shout of alarm and felt his arms go around her, holding her close to his chest and keeping her on her feet.
“What’s wrong with her?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t have as much magic as she used to, now her sorcerer’s magic has been poisoned,” Lillian’s voice said dispassionately, from somewhere up in the air. “She pushed herself past her limits.”
“What if Rob’s sorcerers come?” Kami asked, trying to fight back dizziness with the urgency of that thought.
“There were only a couple of them left, hanging back maintaining the fire,” Ash said. “Holly and Angela dealt with them.”
“What amazing ladies,” said Kami, her voice distant in her own ears. “I am so lucky to have them in my life. The guys in my life are okay too, I guess.”
“Could be better,” Jared contributed.
Kami nodded. “Tell Angela and Holly I’m going to need to borrow some clothes.”
All her clothes. It was stupid to feel a pang thinking of them when her whole house had burned down, but she did. She had spent a long time building her wardrobe, begging her dad to let her use his credit card and buy things from the Internet, spending a lot of time in secondhand shops. She hadn’t wanted to dress like anybody else. When she was wearing one of the outfits she’d chosen, she would find herself looking in the mirror, both recognizing and approving of what she saw.
“Come on,” said Mum. “The kids need sleep. We can all go to the flat over Claire’s.”
She did not add “where I’ve been staying since your father kicked me out.” Dad looked a little uneasy, Kami thought, but they had nowhere else to go. They should have gone before now: they had been fools to believe Rob’s sorcerers would be out of commission, even for a night.
They all made their way out of the garden, down the crazy paving path and out the gate. Kami looked back over her shoulder as she went, and saw the black frame of the house, wrapped in devouring scarlet. The tree she had leaned against the window was also on fire, part of the house and thus part of its destruction. Around the house the grass stretched black as if their little house stood in the center of a black lake. Nothing was burning except their home.
Kami looked at it for a long moment, then looked away at the moonlit road ahead.
“Do you want my jacket?” Jared asked. He was taking it off as he spoke, a little awkwardly as he still had to hang onto her.
“Yes,” said Kami instantly. He drew it close around her shoulders. “Also your pin and your class ring. That’s how you do dating in America, isn’t it? You see, I know the ways of your people.”
“I don’t really know how dating works,” Jared told her. “High school for me was mostly musical numbers. That’s how it is in the States, you’ve seen the movies. Every time someone had an emotional dilemma or epiphany, they would burst into song, and we would all have to break out into perfectly choreographed dance sequences. It took a lot of intensive training. So many jazz squares, no time for love.”
Kami laughed, and the laughter was alchemy, a sound that disappeared in the air and yet changed the whole world. He didn’t change the world for her, but he offered her the opportunity to see the world differently and she chose to take it. It had to be both of them: they could choose to change the world together.
“That’s a real shame.”
“It’s possible I can make up for lost time. I hear girls like bad boys. I hope that’s true,” Jared said. “Because, baby, I’m bad at practically everything.”
Kami laughed enough that, still unsteady, she might have fallen if Jared had not been there to hold her up.
“I’d make a joke about falling for you,” she said. “But that’s cheesy and terrible, and I’ve decided I don’t believe in falling. I believe in something else.”
“What’s that?” asked Jared.
“The opposite of falling,” Kami said, after a long time. “I did not fall. I climbed, to a place high enough that I could see clearly. Once I saw, I was certain.”
Jared did not seem to know what to say, but he walked along with her, his arm still warm around her shoulders. She told herself that it was enough.
Dad and Ten and Mum all converged on each other, Lillian seeming disgruntled to be part of the group but walking with them nonetheless.
Tomo did not join them. Kami saw that he had taken one of his violent fancies to Ash, the way he had taken to lemonade, Mr. Stearn’s bulldog, and his favorite toy race car that had burned with everything else in their house. He walked happily alongside Ash, holding on to his hand, and clearly wished for nothing more.
Ash seemed alarmed to have been so firmly taken possession of by an eight-year-old. He and Tomo fell back a little, until they were walking with Jared and Kami.
“I am so sad about my underwear,” Kami announced, and Ash looked as if he regretted all of his life decisions.
“Not in front of the little boy!” he said reproachfully. “Anyway, you were saying that you would borrow clothes from Holly and Angela.”
“I’m the third tallest in my class,” Tomo informed him, with the air of one out to impress. “And I know all about underwear.”
“You heard the man,” said Kami. “Besides which, no. I cannot possibly borrow underclothes from Holly and Angela. Bras especially.”
“I know,” said Jared.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Kami inquired. “And how do you know, may I ask?”
There was a slight flush along the lines of Jared’s cheekbones. “Observation.”
It was probably sad that this cheered Kami up, but Jared usually seemed so wary about her body, the physical fact of it, that the simple knowledge that he had been looking did please her. She leaned back infinitesimally closer into the warm line of his arm around her shoulders, the warm line of his body against her side.
“Kami, would you maybe stop mentioning your unmentionables,” Ash said, spoiling the moment.
“I shall not,” Kami told him. “It’s a serious problem. I am, and I mean this absolutely literally, in need of support.”
I’d suspect you of going funny in the head from smoke inhalation, said Ash, but you always talk like this.
Kami laughed, and felt Jared’s arm go tense around her shoulders, but he said nothing. Ash must have felt something, from one of them—and it was so weird, that Ash was the link between them, that Ash was between them at all—because he fell silent too, and after a little while he let Tomo drag him forward and away.
When they approached the town square, Kami’s mother fell back, coming toward them over the cobbles. The stones under her feet were as dark as the stones lying underwater in a riverbed, and the shadows were combing her bronze hair. She gave Jared a look that was not hostile—Claire had never dared be openly hostile to any of the Lynburns—but wary, and more than a little afraid.
“I’ll go,” said Jared, and quieter, to Kami, “If you’ll be all right?”
“Always am,” Kami told him. She looked searchingly at her mother’s face, then glanced up at Jared. “See you in a few, sunshine puppy,” she told him, and lifted up on the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss on his mouth. She only caught the side, a little clumsily, but felt the curl of his small smile against her lips.
“Sunshine puppy?” he asked. “You’re not even trying anymore.”
“I am trying very hard,” Kami informed him. “To be ridiculous.”
She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back and she didn’t know why, but her mother had hold of her other hand, so she leaned into her mother and let him go.
She and her mother were quiet for a moment, leaning against each other, walking
very slowly.
“I was really proud of myself earlier,” Claire said at last.
Kami leaned her head down against her mother’s shoulder. “I’m really proud of you now.”
“I’m glad about that,” Mum said. “I don’t know how I feel now, but I’m glad.” She stopped walking and was silent for a moment. “I loved our home,” she said very softly.
“The Lynburns gave us that house so we would serve them,” Kami said. “I loved it too, but it wasn’t ours. I wasn’t willing to pay the price for it, and neither were you, Mum. Not really. Not in the end.”
Mum curled her fingers around Kami’s wrist, under the sleeve of Jared’s leather jacket. “No. But I was willing to pay the price for you,” she said. “For you and your brothers. I would make any bargain to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want to be safe,” Kami said.
“My fearless girl,” said Mum. “I always wanted to be braver. Sometimes I think that was another bargain I made, that I would be twice as afraid but you never would be.”
“I’m not brave,” Kami whispered. “I’m so afraid sometimes.”
“I’m always so afraid,” Mum whispered back.
Kami looked away from her mother’s face when she heard a soft sound.
Down the narrow black street by the church, something was moving that wasn’t human. The streetlamps touched brindled fur, striking silver off the ends, and lit watchful yellow eyes. Kami and her mother stood holding on to each other and watching the wolf pad toward them. It gave them a baleful look and passed by Kami, so close she could feel the thick fur brush the thin cotton material of her pajamas. The creature could have clamped its jaws down on her leg. It could have leaped at her, knocked her down, and torn out her throat.
It continued to trot steadily on, and they turned to keep it in sight. The animal crossed the stretch of cobbles to where its master stood. He was standing beneath one of the streetlights. His hair glowed the same fierce yellow as the wolf’s eyes.
“You’re right to be afraid, Claire,” said Rob Lynburn.
Kami summoned every drop of magic she might possibly still have left. It was like drawing down a bucket into a dry well, hearing it scrape the sides and clatter in the dust at the bottom. Her mother’s fingers bit into her arm, the sharp sudden pain drawing her attention.
“Don’t scream,” Mum murmured.
Kami understood. Jared and Ash had no magic; only Lillian had power, and she was not strong enough to stand against Rob with any certainty. Everyone else was helpless, and everyone else included Dad and, worse than that, Tomo and Ten. They could not put the boys at risk.
She could already feel Ash’s alarm, beating at her fragile calm like a battering ram into doors of glass.
Don’t come, she said. Don’t tell anyone, don’t help us. Keep going, say we’re fine. Make them keep going until you have my brothers somewhere safe.
“You didn’t think the house would be enough to pay for what you did?”
It appeared to be a rhetorical question. Rob did not have the air of someone looking for answers. He took a step toward them and Kami saw the new stiffness of the motion, the wince as he set down his bad foot. A smile curled Kami’s mouth without her mind giving permission, and Rob’s face darkened.
He walked forward, his leg dragging, shoe stuttering over the uneven cobbles. Kami knew it would do no good to run, and her mother was shaking too hard to do it anyway. Rob came closer and closer, and Claire’s grip on Kami grew tighter and tighter.
“Run,” Mum whispered.
“No,” Kami whispered back, and louder: “No. What do you want, Rob? You want everybody in this town to submit to you, to give you their tokens of obedience and your sacrifice. You thought my mother was one of the people who would do it, who lived to serve you. But she is more than you thought she was. Everybody in this town is more than you think. Nobody in Sorry-in-the-Vale will live or die to serve you anymore.”
Rob smirked at her. “I don’t want servants. But you’re right, I don’t want Claire’s ill-advised actions to give anybody ideas.”
He reached out a hand to them. Kami felt her mother flinch violently, her grip on Kami only getting tighter.
Kami shoved herself at her mother, directly into the path of Rob’s hand. She grabbed at his wrist, moved forward and past him, twisting his hand behind his back. She heard his shout of pain and the wolf launched itself at her. Her head cracked against the cobbles and her world was a nightmare of darkness and teeth and Ash screaming in her head.
She could feel the moment his resolve broke and he began to run back. She knotted her fingers into the rough fur at the wolf’s ruff and held it back for an instant, forced the snapping jaws and hot panting breath an inch away from her face, so she could twist her head and look across at her mother.
Rob was stalking through the light of the streetlamp, and Claire was shrinking into the shadow cast by the statue of Matthew Cooper: her husband’s ancestor, the man who’d been the source for a Lynburn, whose family had been left the house that Rob had burned down tonight.
Rob reached out and touched Claire’s hair. He lifted his hand, one long tress curled in the center of his palm. It fluttered in the night breeze, a bronze ribbon, and the light struck it so it shone white.
“You were always so pretty, Claire,” Rob said. The only sound besides his voice was Claire’s breathing, fast and harsh with fear. “Maybe you thought I’d spare you for that. But I have only ever loved one woman in my life.” He paused, and added, with an almost gentle finality, “And it certainly wasn’t you.”
The world exploded into noise and fragments. The wolf’s snarl and running footsteps echoed and Kami’s eyes were blinded by dust. She heard Ash’s voice in her head, calling her name over and over, and felt his hands on her arms, dragging her backward. The cobbles scraped roughly against her back, protected only by Jared’s leather jacket.
She heard the wolf make a choked-off sound and blinked until her vision cleared and she saw Jared with his fist actually in the wolf’s mouth.
They had both come back for her.
Jared clearly thought this was a very efficient way of making sure the wolf did not bite anybody else: did not bite her. He was breathing hard, strained, his chest heaving against the wolf’s back, but the wolf did not try to savage him. It twisted around in his grip and ended up staring at Jared, its pointed muzzle close to his face, its yellow eyes on his eyes. They were alike for a moment, these snarling sorcerous creatures of Rob Lynburn. They stared at each other until the wolf turned tail and disappeared into the dark.
Kami looked around at the white shards scattered all around the town square, and thought for one sick, terrible moment that they were bone. But when she moved her foot, her shoe struck against one shard and it was like kicking a pot—the shards were heavy, dense stone.
Rob had shattered the statue of Matthew Cooper. Kami had no idea why he would do that, and at this moment she did not care, as long as her mother was safe and whole.
She turned to Claire.
Rob was gone and Claire was on her feet, looking at the spot where Rob had been with eyes that were turning blind. Kami’s whole body went cold. Her eyes refused to register what they were seeing. Claire’s clear gray eyes had a milky sheen to them, and her hair was slowly turning white, from her crown downward. While the bronze locks of her hair were ruffled in the night wind, the white of her hair shone perfectly smooth in the moonlight. There was a gleam to her high cheekbones, and a new carved look to her lips.
Kami had always thought that her mother was so lovely she looked like art, but now she saw the difference between what was alive and what was only beautiful.
Her mother tried to move. Kami saw it, saw the slow gradual movement, what had been natural to her becoming impossible. Claire lifted a hand, moving as jerkily and slowly as a puppet held in inexpert hands. Her searching, turning-to-pearl eyes fixed on Kami.
Her pale lips parted.
“You are alway
s brave,” her mother whispered, her voice soft as the wind coming through a chink in stone, “and I am always proud.”
Kami scrambled up, hands in the dust and fragments, until she was on her knees and able to grasp at her mother’s hand. But they did not truly touch: it was no longer truly her mother.
Kami’s hand met cold stone.
Matthew Cooper’s statue, made in memory of a time when their town had once been endangered and then saved, put up in honor of a hero, was in shattered pieces. And her mother stood a pale and silent witness to the fact that nobody in their town was safe. Her hand was outreached, but Kami could not hold it and she could not help her. Love could not reach her now.
Kami sank back down onto the cold stones, and was enveloped in warm arms. More than arms—there was comfort, all around her, concern and hope and misery for her, about her. For an instant it felt like love.
Shhh, said Ash, shhh, though Kami was not speaking. It can be undone. This can be undone.
Who can undo it? Who has enough power? Kami demanded, but she knew the answer before she asked.
The same man who had done it. Rob had woken the woods enough so he could bring forth the creatures of his imagination from it, could bring wolves running to his call. He could turn a living woman from flesh to stone, and from stone to flesh again. Rob Lynburn was the only one who had enough power.
And he would never do it.
Kami thumped her fist on the cobblestones as if she could kill him, as if she could force him to do what she wanted. A sharp sudden pain went through her hand, the feeling of her skin being cut by something jagged rather than bruised or torn by stone. She swallowed, her throat dry and tight, and her fingers closed on what had hurt her.
She lifted her hand to her face and opened it. In her dusty, filthy palm lay a small metal object.
It was a key. Someone had hidden a key in Matthew Cooper’s statue.
Kami remembered old words, written in an old book.