“Doesn’t it make you wonder who was hurting them before?” Dorothy patted Kami’s back with a heavy, concerned hand. “Tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” Kami said numbly.
She instantly proved herself a liar by putting her head down on the cool plastic of the desk, in the cradle of her arms.
She had two choices. Either have a nervous breakdown in front of a librarian or pull herself together. After a moment with her head in her arms, she sat up and told Dorothy that she really was fine, she’d just been startled, and she was okay to walk home alone. She left the library with a weak wave.
It occurred to Kami that she might have left Dorothy with the impression that Jared had exposed himself to her in the lift. If so, it served Jared right. She crossed her arms to protect herself from the hungry bite of the night wind. She was determined to think practically about the situation, because if she didn’t she was going to lose it completely.
She still found herself stumbling through the night as she cut across the Hope family’s fields, colder than she should have been, lost in a familiar place. Her mind was enemy territory now. There was a stranger in it. She felt invaded and abandoned at once. She had stopped wishing for this and dreaming of it years ago. She’d had to.
It wasn’t fair that he was real now. She was so angry, she felt like she wanted to kill him. She felt like he’d killed the Jared she knew, crazy as that was. She had to stop it, stop being crazy: she had to go home and put her thoughts in some sort of order, get herself under some sort of control. She kept visualizing those walls, to protect herself from him and keep him away.
She would handle this in the morning. She was going to sort everything out.
The wind rose up with a sudden shriek, the trees raking clawed fingers against the night sky. Across the fields Aurimere House glowed like a ghost in the darkness. Kami made out a black shape standing in her path. Her heart beat a frantic tattoo against her ribs until she realized that it was just the Hope Well.
She was staring straight ahead, the wind howling in her ears. It must have been some sixth sense instilled by years of Rusty jumping her from behind. She had no other explanation for why she suddenly dodged, but whatever made her do it, it saved her life.
The blow hit the side of her head rather than the back. Kami staggered, blackness shimmering before her eyes, but she was still conscious when she was shoved between her shoulder blades. Panic cleared her head for a moment as she was airborne, the sick feeling of falling turning her stomach. Then she hit the water at the bottom of the well.
Kami! Jared shouted in her head.
Kami went under, up, and under again. She reached out and dug her fingers into the crevices between the stones. The spaces were tiny and the stones were slick, but she clung anyway. The bursts of heat at her fingertips told her that she was rasping the skin right off her hands, but the pain helped her stay aware.
Her head was a throbbing ache, but she couldn’t lose consciousness. She felt her grip on the stones slipping and did not know if it was the slickness of the stones or her own grip slackening. Kami was low in the water without even being aware she’d slid down until icy water touched her lips and filled her mouth with bitterness.
Kami clawed for a higher handhold, but her palms found nothing but wet stone. She did not know if she could have grasped a handhold if she had found one. She was losing hold of everything, it was all being wiped out, panic and fury and Jared. She knew nothing but the coldness of the well water and the heaviness of her own limbs dragging her down as blackness flooded her mind and she sank.
Kami. Kami.
“Kami!”
Kami coughed well water down Jared’s back, spluttering, the taste of stale water and bile thick in her mouth, her lungs filled with searing pain.
“Oh, thank God,” Jared said. “I couldn’t work out how to hit you and hold on to you at the same time.”
“Hit me?” Kami croaked. “I’ve had enough of this abusive behavior. And we’ve only just met! You’re making a terrible first impression.”
She coughed and her throat came up dry this time. She was distantly aware that she was still up to her neck in well water. She felt mostly numb, as if part of her mind was floating about halfway up the well. Kami figured that was probably a good thing, since what she could feel of her body, her head and lungs and the chill in her bones, felt so awful.
Something else she felt was Jared. He was holding her against a wall for the second time today, but as this time it was keeping her from drowning, Kami thought she might let it go. “Jared?” she said, weakly questing for information even though her mind felt pretty numb as well. She lifted her arms and locked her hands behind his neck.
“Yeah?” said Jared.
“What are you doing here?”
“Well,” Jared said, his voice sounding strained, “I don’t really understand it myself, but I was in this elevator—”
“I remember that,” Kami said. “Honestly, Jared, one thing at a time. Why are you in the well with me? This is a really bad rescue!”
“You lost consciousness and slipped under the surface of the water!” Jared pointed out. “There was no time.”
“But now we’re both trapped! Now we’re both going to die!”
“No, we’re not,” said Jared. “I called the police as I was running to the well. I’m sure they’re coming.”
“Did they say they were coming?” Kami asked suspiciously. “Or did you shout ‘Kami’s in the well!’ and then jump in the well too, thus losing your phone and making sure that the police think it was some kids playing a dumb joke?”
Jared paused. He was breathing quickly, the dreamy part of Kami noticed, his chest rising and falling hard. She wasn’t sure if it was because he’d had to run so fast, because he’d had to dive to grab her, or if it was panic.
“Alternate plan,” Jared said. “Do you have a very intelligent collie who might communicate through a system of barks to your parents that little Kami is in the well?”
Kami closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against the wet planes of Jared’s collarbone. “We’re going to die.” Something else dawned on her. “And where is your shirt?”
“Let me explain,” said Jared. “I had just gone to bed, like a reasonable person, when you decided to get tossed into a well like a crazy person. And then it was a matter of some urgency to reach you. You’re lucky I tripped over my jeans on the way out the door.”
“You leave your jeans on the floor?” Kami asked, horrified. “You’re messy on top of everything else? This day just keeps getting worse.”
Jared had nothing to say to that. Perhaps he was overcome with shame at his slovenly habits, she thought dimly. The well water seemed to be getting warmer.
“Kami, keep talking!”
Jared’s shouting hurt her head, which was inconsiderate of him. “You’re so mean,” Kami marveled. “You have a leather jacket and you are just so mean!”
“Keep talking,” Jared commanded. “Stay awake.”
“If you were in bed, what did you do with your pajamas?”
“I don’t own any pajamas.”
“That is so sad,” Kami said. “Boys can have pajamas too, you know. Tomo and Ten both have lots of pajamas. Tomo’s favorite pair is red with trains on it.” Her voice seemed to be floating away from her too, up in the air with that crucial bit of her mind.
It wasn’t so bad now, Jared being real. He was holding on to her tight. She was certain he would not let her drown. She couldn’t see him, which helped. She couldn’t remember why she couldn’t see him, until it occurred to her that she’d closed her eyes. Even when she pried her eyes open, all she saw was his collarbone painted ghostly gray in the well-dim light.
She gave up and laid her forehead back down on Jared’s shoulder. He was shaking, she noticed, but even shaking and wet, he was still warmer than she was.
Her fingers came unlinked from behind Jared’s neck, and now they were resting on the solid
support of Jared’s arms. She didn’t think she could keep hold of him. But that was all right. He wouldn’t let her drown. “Jared?”
“Yes?”
Kami closed her eyes. “Hey, Jared.”
“Hey, Kami,” said Jared. His voice was gentle. Everything went quiet and dark, and he was still there.
Kami was sorry when the police rescued them and she was wrenched back into consciousness and agony. Her mother was there: someone had called, and she must have shut the restaurant early. For some reason, that filled Kami with more worry than anything else, as if it was confirmation that this was serious. Her parents were not supposed to put themselves out for her. Kami was meant to be self-sufficient.
Kami curled on the stretcher, shudders wringing her body, her teeth chattering hard, and her head hurting worse and worse with every chatter. “Someone pushed me in the well,” she told her mother.
“Did you see who, my darling?” asked Mum, who was not usually given to endearments.
Sergeant Kenn was asking Jared the same question, though he was not calling Jared “darling.” Actually, it didn’t sound like he liked Jared much. “If you weren’t there, how do you know someone pushed her?” Sergeant Kenn asked.
“Well …,” said Jared.
“And what were you doing, running through a strange town at night?”
“I was jogging?” Jared offered.
“Without your shirt or your shoes?”
“Uh,” said Jared.
The injustice forced Kami to sit up, even though Mum tried to make her lie back down. The EMTs chose this moment to load her in the ambulance, talking about taking her to the hospital in Cirencester.
Kami waved her hands at them furiously. “Stop!” she ordered. “Stop it, all of you! Jared didn’t push me down the well.”
Jared was leaning against the well and away from Sergeant Kenn, arms crossed defensively over his bare chest. He looked hunted, as if he did not realize Kami would take care of things.
“He would never do something like that,” said Kami. “And he didn’t kill his father.”
There was a hollow silence. Jared looked smaller to Kami suddenly, leaning against the well with his wet head bowed, shivering in the night air.
Kami tried to go to him, but the effort made her dizzy. Her mother pushed her down flat on the stretcher. Then she was strapped down and loaded into the ambulance, despite her protests. “Mum, stop them,” Kami begged at last. “I have to stay with Jared. I have to tell them—”
Mum betrayed her by climbing into the ambulance after her and taking one of Kami’s cold hands in both of hers. The ambulance door shut, so Kami could not even see what was happening to Jared. Then her mother bent forward as if she was about to tell a secret.
“Kami, sweetheart,” she murmured, her bronze hair falling like a veil between Kami and the rest of the world. “I know you’re hurt and you’re scared, but you have to listen to me. Whatever you do, never, never go near that boy again. It is not safe.”
Kami turned her face away. “He didn’t push me,” she said. “He didn’t.”
Chapter Seven
You Are Not Safe
When Kami woke the next morning, the walls of the hospital ward, white and spotless as her hospital sheets, seemed to be mocking her. The minutes stretched on and on, but at last her dad came. He slipped in the door past a nurse, saying, “Kami, I know all the other kids are throwing themselves down wells now, but your mother and I have a firm policy of no danger sports until you’re eighteen.”
The nurse gave him a startled look because of the perfect English and the Gloucester accent. Jon Glass, born and raised in the Vale, gave her an amused look back.
Kami’s grandfather Stephen had been the wandering soul and the last member of the Glass family, who had been farming in Sorry-in-the-Vale for years. He had sold off the farm, but he’d kept the family home, even while he spent years wheeling and dealing in Japan, where the economy was booming. He brought his Japanese wife to the Vale for a visit as they went through Europe. She was going to have a baby, and he’d thought that she should have a holiday. They stayed for the rest of their lives, which for him was less than a week. With him dead and her only asset the house, Megumi Glass was stranded in a tiny English town where everyone found her alien and suspect.
“Have mercy, Dad,” said Kami. “Tell me you’re here to rescue me before they break out the Jell-O.”
“I even brought you clean clothes.” Kami’s dad held out her headband with the tiny pair of gold spectacles attached to one side.
“You are a god,” Kami told him.
“All I ask in return is your eternal reverence and worship,” Dad said. “Also, it would be nice if you did the ironing occasionally.”
Getting out of the hospital and into the car made Kami’s headache worse. She rested her head against the car window for the first part of the drive, watching the green fields roll by and be replaced by hills, curving gently on all sides. On the hill farthest away from them, as their car began the gradual drop down, was Aurimere House, witnessing her return.
“Dad,” Kami asked, “what do you know about the Lynburns?” She watched him carefully, expecting something like the fear on Mum’s face at the very mention of that name.
Instead her father glanced back at her, unconcerned. “Not much,” he said. “The twins were a few years older than me.”
This was a detail that nobody else had mentioned. Kami could not believe she had been pestering everyone else in town when her father had been willing to offer up information all this time.
“The twins?” repeated Kami.
“Rosalind and Lillian Lynburn,” her father said. “I knew who they were, of course, but I don’t think they ever spoke to me. They held themselves apart, being the girls from the manor. Rosalind Lynburn got together with an American and moved away, and Lillian married Rob Lynburn and they moved as well. I heard Lillian and Rob went to check on Rosalind, but I guess they went traveling, as you don’t have to search for family for seventeen years. Even your mother answers her email more often than that.”
Kami grinned up at him and asked, “Who is Rob Lynburn?” Aside from Ash’s father and not Jared’s, since Dad was talking about him as if he was still alive.
“He was a cousin, I think,” Dad said. “He lived with the Lynburns. Everybody always said he was going to marry one of the twins, though Lillian was dating someone else for a while. Edmund Prescott, I think it was, but he left town. People were a bit nasty about it. Said he was running away from Lillian. I don’t think it broke Lillian’s heart. She married her cousin Rob a few years later.”
Ash was shockingly attractive for someone whose parents were cousins, Kami thought. “Strange they’d want to move back, if they don’t have any friends here.”
“I know, there’s nothing for them here,” Dad said. “Except the mansion.”
Kami snorted and her father turned Shepherd’s Corner, down along the road by the woods.
“I may know why they came back,” Dad said slowly. “They didn’t have friends here, but you know how this place is, occasionally forgetting we don’t live in medieval times. There is always a trace of that feudal worship for the lords of the manor. People never gossip about the Lynburns; they talk about them a lot in reverent tones. They won’t get that anywhere else.”
Kami remembered Mum’s face in the stark lights of the ambulance. Maybe everyone talked about the Lynburns in hushed tones because they were afraid.
“If you want information on the Lynburns, you’re asking the wrong parent,” Dad added, parking outside their gate.
Kami tried to keep her voice casual as she asked, “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Rob Lynburn had an office above Claire’s,” Dad said. “He’d have lunch at the counter so he could talk to her every day. Who could blame the guy? Your mother always was the most beautiful girl in town.”
Like Angela, Kami thought with a tiny sigh. It was just her luck that she spent her life surro
unded by amazingly beautiful women.
“You okay, kiddo?”
Kami blinked and looked over at her father. The expression he wore was unusually serious. Her parents had been so young when they had Kami; her grandmother had always been the adult of the house, and her father mostly joked around with her as if he was Angela or Rusty, as if they were just pals together. It was strange and touching to see him protective.
Kami gave her father a piteous look. “I’m just really tired. I can’t wait to go up to my room and sleep.”
Dad held open the door for her. “You got it,” he said. “I’ll keep those mini mutants we found in the sewers and pretend are your brothers downstairs, okay?” He put an arm around her shoulders as they walked into the house, and Kami leaned against him a little more heavily than she had to. He kissed her on the forehead before she climbed into bed, and gently closed her bedroom door as Kami lay there feeling guilty.
The instant she heard him walking down the stairs, she jumped out of bed. Jared was resolutely silent in her head, all his walls up, but Kami couldn’t stay furious at someone who had saved her life, and she couldn’t let things continue like this. She was shrugging her coat back on when it occurred to her that she had just been in the hospital, and her parents would be legitimately frantic if they discovered she was gone. So she tore a page out of her notebook and wrote her parents a message: “Dear Mum and Dad, I hope you don’t read this, but if you do, you should know that I haven’t been kidnapped or abducted by aliens. I had to run an errand that can’t wait. I’ll be home before dark. Kami.”
She left the note on her pillow and crept downstairs, past the living room, where she could hear the television and her family’s voices blaring. She opened the front door quietly and slipped down the path. She went up the road by the woods, headed straight for Aurimere House.
It was a fifteen-minute walk until the road rose sharply up and away from the woods, and Kami started to feel nervous as she ascended. The road to Aurimere was so steep that anyone who made their way to the manor would be bound to arrive out of breath, hot, and already not at their best, struggling the most at the exact moment when the road curved and the wall of the manor appeared. Following the curve, Kami’s line of sight hit the front of the mansion just as the sunlight struck it full force. Since the fifteenth century, the Lynburns had been building onto the house. It was a mass of contradictions: medieval and Tudor and Georgian architecture, all made of the same pale gold stone. The great bay windows blazed, the wood of the door glowed, and above the door was a carving in stone: a gate with a sword struck through it. Beneath the carving there were words engraved in the stone: YOU ARE NOT SAFE.