Untold (16 page)

He looked at her, winter in his eyes. He hated her sometimes, he said: she was sure he hated her then.

“Whatever you want,” said Jared, and turned away. He paused at the kitchen door. “Thanks for the first aid,” he added. “You didn’t have to do that.”

It was a simple enough thing to say. It didn’t change anything. But it made her want to cry. She didn’t cry. She watched Jared pass her mother at their gate, and saw her mother turn pale in Jared’s shadow.

Kami put her hand in her pocket and drew out the two objects she had in there. She looked at them glitter in the November sunlight: Ruth Sherman’s lipstick and the button she had pulled off Sergeant Kenn’s uniform when she pushed him away. She didn’t need comfort, not from anyone. She had a way to fight.

PART IV

WINTER SONG

I have been torn

In two, and suffer for the rest of me.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter Fourteen

Call upon My Soul Within the House

Several weeks of attempting to hunt sorcerers had passed when Kami woke and found that the world had turned white. It was as if someone had tipped a layer of powdered sugar over Sorry-in-the-Vale, turning the landscape into a vast wedding cake.

Kami stirred in a warm nest of blankets, blinking at the brilliant pallor of the world outside her window. Her lashes stuck to her cheeks, and her hand was pinned under Tomo’s head.

Mum and Dad had spent the night shouting at each other. Tomo and Ten had climbed into Kami’s bed and huddled there, all of them listening miserably together.

Kami pulled herself upright in bed. Tomo was sprawled over three-quarters of the mattress, and Ten was curled at the bottom of the bed like a cat. She’d seen other families fighting and breaking apart, but it had never seemed like something that could happen to hers.

There was a trail of footsteps in the snow: a dark line leading from their doorstep to Kami did not know where. Her mother was already gone.

The creak of the bedroom door made Kami startle. Her father looked in, and Kami saw the crease of worry between his brows ease when he saw them all there. Another thing that shocked Kami was seeing both her parents so scared.

“I’m calling this one a snow day,” Dad said. “Come on. Let’s all have porridge and honey and hot chocolate, and build snowmen. You in?”

Tomo woke up, flailing wildly like a small windmill that had found itself trapped in a bed. Ten was already uncurling, looking alert and happy.

“Thanks, Dad,” Kami said. “But though your offer is generous and chocolaty, I think I’m going to school. Lots of work to get done.”

You can’t find them,
Lillian Lynburn had said. But she was wrong.

* * *

It seemed like everyone had had the same idea as Kami’s dad. There were a few kids standing in front of the school, but the school’s windows were dark, the doors barred. None of Kami’s friends were in sight except for Ash: Kami imagined Angela had taken one look at the snow and decided she was officially in hibernation.

But Amber Green was there, and Kami had stolen one of her pencils. Ash had said he could use Amber’s possession to make sure they could see Amber no matter what spells she cast to make herself invisible. Ash had also agreed to help Kami.

“I think your plan is insane,” said Ash.

Ash agreeing was really the important part.

“Trailing someone is a classic maneuver,” Kami told him. “My plan is elegant in its simplicity. Walk with me now.”

Kami gestured to Ash to follow her through the school gates. She walked with him down the path along the wall, ostensibly heading up toward Aurimere, then gestured to him to go down low.

Ash crouched in the icy grass and gave Kami another baffled and pleading look. Kami smiled at him encouragingly and moved back along the wall, keeping low, so nobody would see their heads over the wall as they returned to the school. Just before a curve in the wall, Kami stopped. She could see the gate from here, and see people trickling out.

Ash leaned toward her, his jean-clad knee pressing against hers. “What on earth are we doing?”

“Shhh,” Kami reproved him. “The first rule of stakeout is no talking on stakeout! And you’re already in trouble for not remembering the second rule of stakeout, which is bring me doughnuts.”

Ash subsided into a worried silence, which he preserved until they watched Amber Green and her boyfriend, Ross Phillips, take a left directly from the gate, instead of heading down to Sorry-in-the-Vale and their homes. Kami squeezed herself against the curve of the wall and prayed they would not see her, gesturing for Ash to do the same.

Once Amber and Ross had passed, Ash said, “What if they’re just going off to . . . uh, you know. Be alone together.” His already cold-flushed face turned even pinker. He was so handsome and so embarrassed it was impossible not to smile at him.

“Then we’ll go away very quickly,” Kami promised. “This is how it goes. Shadowing people is frequently the tawdry part of an investigation.”

“How many investigations have you actually conducted?” Ash asked doubtfully.

Kami chose not to dignify that with a response. She moved past Ash and followed Amber and Ross, whose path soon diverged away from the wall, the town, and Aurimere. Their course was clearly set west of the town, which was mostly overgrown fields. It was like a moor, crisscrossed with dirt lanes leading nowhere. One such lane led to Monkshood Abbey, the house where Rob’s parents had lived, and killed.

Amber and Ross were tiny dark figures in the lane, small shadowy shapes against a framework of pearl-glistening boughs, banks of snow-crowned undergrowth, and snow-lined stiles and gates. Carts or cars had obviously passed down the lane this morning: there were two dark furrows in the pale surface of the snow. Amber and Ross were each walking in one of the lines in the snow when they blurred, their dark shapes suddenly lost to Kami’s eyes as if they had been stirred into the landscape like sugar cubes in a glass of hot milk.

Ash cut himself off midswear with a guilty look at Kami, clutched at the pencil, and muttered some other words under his breath.

Amber’s form coalesced back into view, blurred at first, then clearer and clearer. Kami could see snowflakes settle, like shining pieces of lace, in the fox fire of her hair.

“Come on,” Kami said. “Shortcut.” She plunged into the undergrowth, brambles clawing at her jeans. She scrambled over a stile half concealed in the bush, grabbing at the snow-piled wood to boost herself over, and her white woolen gloves were instantly soaked.

The fields stretched wide and far, a pristine blanket of white fringed with the curling darkness of trees on its borders. The sky pressed down low against the earth, a dense layer of pale gray cloud that seemed like a dark, dim reflection of the snow. Cutting diagonally across these fields meant that they would get to a certain turn in the lane before the other two did. She faced an expanse of trackless snow, a perfectly blank page.

Kami began to run.

* * *

Monkshood Abbey was set at the top of a snowy slope, the dark crest on a white wave. The foot of the slope was ringed with fire.

Last time Kami had seen Monkshood, the house had been deserted and the moat had been empty. The only difference now was that the door was not barred, and they watched the beacon of Amber’s hair disappear through that door into the dark.

Monkshood seemed to lurk on top of the low hill. It was not built with the towers and wide-open windows of Aurimere. It had been built for the cadet branch of the family, Kami guessed sometime in the Victorian age: it was square and respectable, menacing as well as humble, like the cringing henchman you always knew was up to no good.

Kami bet Rob could not wait to return to Aurimere.

Once past the moat, Ash looked more and more nervous. Kami was aware there was nothing he wanted less in the world than to see his father. She put out a hand and slipped it in his. Ash’s fingers curled gratefully around hers.

“We’ll just take a detour around the back and peep in through the windows. See what we can see: see if there are sorcerers there we don’t know about yet,” Kami said. “Then we’ll go.”

Ash squeezed her hand and did not answer, but Kami took this as agreement and set off, boots sliding in the ice, away from the fire and toward the house.

Kami headed for the window that Jared had broken last time they were here. She was not expecting to see the window still broken. Beyond the jagged glass there had been an empty room.

“I wonder if Rob has bothered to cast a spell to protect his house from useless unmagical little me,” said Kami. “I bet he hasn’t.”

When Ash did not move to boost her, she got a leg up on the mossy windowsill and did it herself with a grunt of effort. Her palms got skinned as she tumbled in.

“Kami,” Ash whispered, from the other side of the window frame. “Kami, you can’t—”

“I’m just going to take a look,” Kami whispered back.

There was furniture in the room now, a desk, a chair, and a lamp. Kami picked up a pen from the desk and put it in her pocket, because she was now a kleptomaniac for great justice. The door leading to the rest of the house was slightly open, and through the small space Kami saw movement and heard voices. She turned and met Ash’s horror-struck gaze through the broken window.

Kami gestured at him to get down. Then she dived behind the desk, curling up small beneath it, her cheek against the floor. She waited, her cheek getting extremely cold against the floor, and listened.

“It’s a real shame about your children not having magic, but I know I can count on you and Alison to support me and train the others.” Rob’s voice was smug and calm.

Kami wondered why the name was familiar for an instant before she realized.
Hugh and Alison Prescott,
she thought.
This was Holly’s father.

“Of course,” said Hugh Prescott gruffly. “That witch up on the hill drove my brother away and then blamed us for it. We only want our due.”

“You shall have it,” said Rob. “And Lillian will pay the price for her mistakes. Everybody in this town is going to get precisely what they deserve. And we know her numbers are laughable. But we want no doubt to remain in anyone’s mind. I want a sacrifice, and I want every soul in Sorry-in-the-Vale to offer up their tokens. We want to crush Lillian’s people in front of the town, and that is why the young ones need careful training. See to it.”

They might have exchanged nods or smiles. Kami heard one of them walk away, his tread heavy, and the click of someone else’s shoes on the floor.

“Can I have a word?” a woman’s voice murmured. Kami recognized this voice immediately: it was Jared’s mother, Rosalind.

Kami watched her tan leather boots cross the floor, heels clicking on the worn wood, closer and closer to the desk. Rosalind walked around the desk, and Kami froze. Rosalind’s step halted for an instant, and then she paced her way back across the room and toward Rob.

“You were talking with Claire Glass alone again,” Rosalind said, her voice sharper than Kami had ever heard it. “Why is that? It’s not like she can help us in any real way.”

“That’s right, she can’t,” Rob told her. “She’s not like us. You can’t possibly imagine she means anything to me.”

There was the soft sound of a kiss. Kami made a face: she wished that parents would just plan evil and not have discussions about their love lives.

“Claire Glass behaves the way the people of this town should all behave, that’s all,” said Rob. “You know we need them all to submit. You know why. There are so many of them—so many sorcerers even—waiting in their homes like scared animals in their dens. All of them need to choose a side. All of them need to choose our side.”

“I know.” Rosalind took a deep breath. “Tell the others . . . tell Ruth and Hugh, especially, not to go after our family. I don’t want Lillian or the boys hurt.”

“Nor do I,” Rob said. “I will make every effort to spare them. And I know you will do whatever you can to please me in return.”

“I swear,” Rosalind told him. “Now go.”

Kami watched Rosalind’s boots cross the floor after him, but Rosalind paused on the threshold. Before she went out, she said, very quietly, “You should leave.”

* * *

“I call that a very successful mission,” Kami said, safe in the library at Aurimere.

“Aunt Rosalind caught us. I think getting caught is sort of the opposite of success.”

“Except now we know she’s willing to protect us,” Kami said. “Knowing that an enemy has divided loyalties is useful information.”

Ash shrugged. Kami was leaning against one of the glass-fronted bookcases. Ash stood by the baby grand in the corner, staring down at the piano keys rather than at Kami. She wondered what it had meant to him, hearing his father and his aunt today.

His golden head lifted. She was surprised to see him wearing a tiny smile.

“Aha,” said Kami, her own smile spreading to encourage him. “So you had a little bit of fun being spies.”

“Well,” Ash said. “Not at the time. But maybe looking back on it. Do you think everyone will be impressed?” He began to play a little tune, the piano keys tinkling.

Kami tapped out a rhythm on the wooden surface of the bookcase. “How could they not be?” she asked.

Ash closed the piano lid with a flourish, crossed the floor, and held out his hand to her. Kami looked down at her tapping fingers as if they had betrayed her and realized she was standing in the exact place Jared had the night he said he wanted nothing to do with her.

“I can’t actually dance,” Kami objected, suddenly shy. “I mean, I’ve done it. But people tell me . . . that I shouldn’t.”

“What do they know?” Ash asked, his hand still out. After a moment more of hesitation, Kami put her hand in his, and Ash pulled her away from the bookcase into his arms.

Ash could dance as well as he could play the piano. He moved in gentle circles across the floor, navigating sofas and chairs with effortless grace. Kami just had to follow his lead. He’d been trained for this sort of thing, she supposed, being the young prince in the castle. Being a fairy-tale prince who could waltz any girl around a room, him all gold and the room all arched stone, the moment perfect no matter who the girl happened to be.