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 a 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.
Jared was not in his room. Kami checked Lillian’s room and Ash’s, and she opened the door a chink and checked the spare guest bedroom where they had put Tomo and Ten. After the appropriate time of knocking, calling out a polite inquiry, and waiting, she checked all the bathrooms. She considered that evildoers might have kidnapped him, and then she noted the open window in his room.
Kami leaned as far forward out of the window as she could manage, squinting at the difference between the brilliant enclosed lights of the party downstairs and the wide, dark expanse of the sky outside.
“Hi, Jared,” she said, leaning out of the window. “Are you brooding?”
He was leaning back on the roof, looking up at the sky, at the gray clouds spiraling as if to make steps to climb up to the silver hook that was the moon. His hands were linked behind his head, his body one long lean line.
“No, I was about to strip off all my clothes, stand on the edge of the roof, and shout, ‘I’m a golden god,’ ” Jared said. “That’s the cool thing to do at parties; I saw it in a movie. Except I’m afraid that in this town, considering I’m a Lynburn and the worst family trait we have besides the constant murdering is our crushing arrogance, people would take it seriously.” He paused. “Just kidding, I was brooding. Brooding’s my favorite.”
“I know the ambiance isn’t as good as a starry night overlooking your shadowed town, but might you consider coming down and brooding on a bar stool?”
“What was I going to do in there? I can’t dance.”
Kami wanted to protest that she didn’t care, but before she could open her mouth she told herself she was a fool. Jared had not said anything about dancing with her.
She recalled a couple of little digs Ash had made about Jared’s table manners or being held back a year at school. She remembered Jared feeling self-conscious about it, though he would never have shown anyone what he felt. She wondered if he wished he could dance in the same way he wished he could do a lot of things Ash did so easily, with grace so perfectly trained it looked natural. There was Jared’s aunt Lillian, and there was Martha Wright: they adored him and would be pleased if he took them for a turn around the room. They wouldn’t care if he didn’t dance as well as Ash, any more than Kami did.
She didn’t think that he wanted to dance with a specific other girl. Maybe one day he would, but not yet. At least that was something to hold on to, poor comfort though it was. She wasn’t worried about him having a real girlfriend, one that he wanted, one that he’d asked. Not yet.
“Nobody expects you to be able to do everything Ash can do.”
“I’m aware,” said Jared.
She put her knee on the windowsill and hauled herself up and then out, walking on her knees for a moment. It wasn’t graceful. Probably a tall, skinny girl could have slid from the window and onto the roof like Jared’s dream come true, but Kami was focused on not showing her underwear in this dress.
She eventually scrambled to her feet and almost overbalanced because of the slope of the roof. Jared leaped up, but didn’t catch her arm: he hovered around her while she steadied herself. He would’ve caught her if she’d fallen, she knew, but it was another reminder of the way he did not touch her unless he absolutely had to.
“You looked like you were having a good time in there,” said Jared.
“Sure, I was,” said Kami. “But I’d be having a better time if you were in there. We’re—we’re still friends, right?”
“Course,” said Jared.
“And parties are a time for being with your friends,” said Kami. “Not brooding alone up on a roof. That’s basic party etiquette. Come on, it’s not like I’m any good at dancing. You know this about me.”
“You looked like you were doing fine.”
He didn’t say it with any rancor. It might’ve made Kami feel a little better if he had seemed at all jealous, but at the same time she appreciated that he wasn’t trying to make her feel bad. He’d been the one who broke up with her. He had no right to make her feel lousy.
“All an illusion,” Kami told him cheerfully. “Ash is able to mask my many failings.”
She began to dance as an illustration of this fact. Jared ducked out of the way of one of her flailing hands, and she caught the edge of his little smile, in the light cast by the sliver of a moon.
Ash could smooth anything over, make anyone look good, but Kami liked to figure things out for herself. Encouraged by the smile, she caught hold of Jared’s jacket and pulled him in a little closer to her. He started to dance with her, and promptly kicked her on the ankle.
“Sorry,”
said Jared. “Sorry, sorry—I’m really bad.”
Kami tucked her smiling mouth, her silent laugh, into the collar of his T-shirt. “Me too.”
Jared wasn’t good. He was too awkward and she was too enthusiastic, and she kicked him in return, once lightly on purpose and then quite hard by accident. He let out a short shocked gasp and she hung onto his jacket and grinned up at him. Combined terrible dancing made them lurch, and Kami grabbed hold of Jared tight in panic that they were going to topple right off the roof. He let her stay there, tucked up against him, even when they had steadied themselves and started dancing again, in extremely poor rhythm to music almost too far away to hear. Hope flickered in her chest, a sweet small flame curling warm under her breastbone, and Kami thought, Maybe.
“Come on,” Jared said against her hair. “We can’t.”
He said We can’t, but Kami remembered what he had said before. She didn’t have to be able to read his mind to know that he was saying it again.
I don’t want to.
Kami came in from the cold, rubbing her hands. They felt numb. Jared walked in behind her, but he did not stay with her for long. He walked over to Martha Wright behind the bar, lifted a box of fresh glasses from over her head, and chased her off to dance with her husband. Martha hesitated about going, and Jared put his hand near hers, testing, waiting in case she flinched, braced to yank himself away. But Martha didn’t flinch, of course. She tipped her head back, her white hair limned with light so it looked butter-yellow, and said something to Jared Kami didn’t catch. Kami did catch the fond note in her voice, and Jared caught Martha’s hand and twirled her, a little awkwardly and looking self-conscious about doing so, until she was out from behind the bar.