Untold (30 page)

“Things from Rob’s sorcerers,” she said. “Hair, blood, possessions. Anything we could get. You’re sorcerers, aren’t you? You can use these to protect yourselves. You can use them to fight . . . if you decide to fight.”

“This is for Sorry-in-the-Vale,” Holly said. “For the whole town.”

“I know that, girl,” said Aunt Ingrid. She picked up the two bags and laid them on the scales where she measured out gumdrops and peppermint swirls. “Clever idea.”

“Kami Glass’s,” said Angie, sounding proud. Holly wished Angie had a reason to sound like that, talking about her.

Ms. Dollard smiled at the name and touched one of the bags.

“That girl’s a pistol,” said Mrs. Thompson. “Seems like all three of you girls are set on getting into as much trouble as you possibly can.” She didn’t seem angry about it. Holly thought, actually, that it might be the first time Aunt Ingrid had looked at her with some approval.

Holly and Angie exchanged a slow smile.

“I guess we don’t mind getting into trouble,” Holly said, “as long as we get things done.”

* * *

After Kami was done handing out the spelled bags to sorcerers, she went back up to Aurimere and spent hours in the records room reading up desperately on Matthew Cooper, as if there might be some clue hidden in plain sight she was going to find at the eleventh hour. She just needed something to do so she would not go mad waiting.

There were some papers, obviously newer, white instead of yellow and with ink still blue instead of brown, which she had skipped over. She looked at them now and saw the year 1485 written in royal blue across the snowy white. If someone had wanted to preserve the records, and some of the older pages had crumbled or decayed almost past reading, transcribing them made sense.

Kami looked through them, hope surging in her chest, and saw it was just a long list of presents to the Lynburns that seemed to be payment. On the side was written “for the harvest.” She had seen that a lot in the records already, gifts given for good weather and luck with the animals and land. This harvest must have been pretty great, because the list of gifts to the Lynburns was long. It ended in “silk for the Lady Anne’s shroud, for she is drowned and lost, and will be buried by our farthest wall. Their memories lie under Matthew Cooper’s stone and wrapped in Anne Lynburn’s silk.”

Drowned in the Crying Pools, perhaps? But there was nothing else.

So much for eleventh-hour discoveries. Kami leaned her head in her hand. She’d been certain that Matthew Cooper and the Lynburn sisters had been the key to something. She still felt certain of it, but she did not know how to unlock the mystery. She did not know if she could trust her own instinct, and they were out of time.

The world outside the wall of windows had gone black as ink by the time Jared came up from the town and joined her in the records room. She’d given up on the contents of the records table and was standing at the windows watching the light in the sky die out completely when the door opened, and Jared was there at last. He looked as tired as she felt.

The wall of windows seemed to have captured the lights of the room, holding brightness trapped in its yellow panes like something in a display case. Beyond the windows was absolutely opaque blackness, as if the rest of the world had been cut away.

Kami watched Jared walking slowly across the room to her. It was oddly peaceful for a moment, just to watch him and stop thinking. He’d taken off his jacket and he was wearing a light, pale gray jumper. His eyes looked darker gray in comparison, shadowed and troubled but steady.

Here he was, the one of the younger Lynburn generation who people automatically took a step back from rather than a step toward. Like one of the marble Lynburn busts or one of the Lynburn paintings come to rough, vivid life: her imaginary friend and constant dream come to life.

When he closed the distance between them, not touching her but with his face bent down to hers, she turned up her face to his with only inches and light between them and felt like she had been waiting years for this. Here he was, at last.

“If you want to storm Monkshood Abbey right now, just you and me, I’m in,” he said.

“That would be a suicide mission. And before you say it, I know you would go on a suicide mission,” Kami said. “And how do I know that? Because you go on them all the time. It’s like the Land of Suicide Mission is your favorite holiday destination.”

Don’t do it anymore,
she thought.
Try to be safe
.

Jared’s eyes scanned her face. “You don’t have to worry,” he said softly. “I never wanted to die. I only wanted to be useful somehow. I would have done anything, and I was unhappy enough that I didn’t care what happened to me.”

“But you do care now,” Kami said unsteadily.

“Yes,” Jared told her. “I care now.”

He touched her then, not to kiss her but to put his hand on the small of her back, draw her in against his body. He was solid against her, lean muscle supporting her weight. Kami rested her cheek against the soft material of his jumper.

“I like your jumper,” she said into it.

“You like my what?” Jared asked. Kami tugged at his sleeve in response and he laughed. “In the civilized land of the Americas, we call that a sweater. A jumper is a dress. You might as well have just said, ‘Why, Jared, what a fetching frock you’re wearing today.’ ”

“Why, Jared, what a fetching frock you’re wearing today,” Kami said instantly, raising her head so she could lift her face up to his. “You look ever so pretty.”

Jared laughed, a soft huff of breath, and rested his forehead gently against hers. “Your frock’s fairly fetching as well.”

Kami closed her eyes, embarrassed to let him see she was happy he’d noticed. “Thanks.”

“Not as fetching as mine, of course,” Jared added. “I am the prettiest.”

Kami pushed him with no force behind it, because she did not want him even a fraction of an inch farther away. “One of the few reasons to be glad you came to Sorry-in-the-Vale. We live until summer, and you can make your bid to be Queen of the May.”

“Kami,” Jared said, “I could never be sorry I came. No matter what happens. I want you to remember that. I’ll always be glad.”

Kami punched him hard enough to make him stumble back a step and let go of her.

“You jerk,” she said.

Jared looked extremely surprised.

“You could never be sorry?” Kami repeated. “You want me to remember that? No matter what happens? Don’t you dare give me the soldier-marching-off-to-his-death speech. That’s rubbish. Remember this, Jared Lynburn. I will not let you die.”

Jared started to laugh, a quiet but real laugh, tipping his head back against the golden glass. Then he reached forward, still leaning against the glass, snagged the material of her dress at her waist, and pulled her in toward him.

She slid her arm around his neck and felt the curl of his hair against the nape, the solid press of his body against her, and thought,
Real, and mine
. It was enough. “I have to go,” Kami said. “I should go home.”

It occurred to her after she said it that he might ask her to stay. Kami had been stroking his hair; now her hands closed, one on the warmth of his neck and one in the waving ends of his hair, getting a grip on him. Panic and anticipation wound through her, twined. She did not know how to untangle them. The idea was like cupping a burning coal in her hands, shifting it from palm to palm, and yet the brightness of it held her eyes and she could not bear to put it down.

Almost every time he touched her, he hesitated, and she was scared too: she remembered being in the shower thinking about her skin as new territory. She thought about his skin now like a land to be discovered, and her grip on him loosened. Her hands trembled.

“Of course.” Jared stepped away from her and made a gesture toward the door. “You should go.”

Kami nodded and hesitated. She’d already been gone a long time. She really should be getting home. She went toward the door, and looked over her shoulder to where Jared stood leaning against the window, looking after her as she went. She put her hand on the brass hand doorknob. Then she let go of the metal hand and ran back to Jared, so fast that she almost knocked him backward. He caught her by the elbows and she ignored the fact that gravity had just almost defeated them both, and kissed him until she felt his mouth curve against hers, until she could forget for a moment that the world was closing in dark all around them, that the sorcerers were coming for blood tomorrow. She did not know how he felt, but she knew how she did: she was no longer scared to want him, intensely and absolutely, to keep and to the exclusion of all else. She felt like he had taught her how to want: she had never felt even a shadow of anything like this for anyone but him.

“Remember,” she said, “I will not let you die.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kami’s Sacrifice

The sun was setting on the bare branches and frost-touched stones of Sorry-in-the-Vale. It was almost the night of the winter solstice.

Three hours before Rob Lynburn was due to appear in the town square, they were getting into position. Kami had already rung the bell and looked through the windows of the Kenn household and seen that the house was empty. Their garden was up for grabs.

“When you called me and said bring garden shears, I really thought it might be for decapitation purposes,” said Angela. “I truly wish that had been the case.” Despite her words, Angela wielded the shears effectively, able to reach branches of the fir tree that Kami simply could not stretch up to. Across from them, Jared and Ash, and Holly and Rusty, were, respectively, shearing at a holly bush and a yew tree. They were stacking branches up on the low stone wall to make a screen to hide behind.

Kami had noted that Holly had come with Rusty and Angela, on quite a different path from the one that led to where she lived.

“Did Holly stay with you last night?” Kami asked in a low voice.

“Yes.” Angela saw Kami’s look. “No,” she added very firmly, “it’s nothing like that. Things are so bad with her family, and there’s other stuff too. I’m just being a friend.”

“Okay,” Kami said.

Angela’s lip curled. “I don’t want to be anything besides friends,” she stated. “Not anymore.”

When annoyed, Angela was not a mistress of stealth. She spoke a little too loudly. Over Angela’s shoulder, Kami saw Holly register the words. Kami couldn’t quite read Holly’s expression: Holly moved toward Jared, handing him another branch with a smile and removing herself from earshot.

Kami could read Angela’s expression perfectly well: it said that Kami had been silent for much too long. “Whatever you say, Angela,” she said hastily.

Angela narrowed her eyes. “I
don’t
.”

“I believe you,” Kami said, making her voice even more innocent.

“I’ve been your friend for years with no ulterior motive,” Angela reminded her, scowling.

“I don’t know that,” Kami said. “You could secretly harbor a fevered passion for me. You could have bodaciousasianbeauties.com bookmarked as one of your favorite sites. This could have been your motive for friendship all along.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “I first met you when you were twelve. You were not exactly bodacious at twelve.”

“I had hotential,” Kami said.

Angela pinned her with a despairing look.

“When you see somebody who is too young to be actually hot, but you can tell they’re going to be one day? Hotential. Like potential, but hot.”

Kami set another branch on top of the wall, this one screening her face. When she looked back at Angela, she saw Angela regarding her with an odd expression on her face.

“What?”

“You always make jokes about your looks,” Angela said. “You really shouldn’t. You’re all right. You know, fairly fanciable.”

“I knew it!”

“But not to
me
,” Angela said. “Not ever. Not because of your looks, because you are half a ton of crazy in a five-pound sack.”

“Ah, but is it a bodacious sack?”

Angela sneered at her. Kami grinned back, and after a minute, Angela’s sneer turned into a smile.

“Holly’s lucky to have you,” Kami said. “So am I.”

“I know, right?” Angela asked. “I have no idea how you got so lucky. Speaking of which.” Her eyes slid over to the holly bush, where Jared and Ash were cheating by using magic not to get cut by the spiky leaves. “What’s going on with Jared?” Angela asked.

“I can’t . . .” Kami didn’t know how to explain it, hope and fear, wanting and shrinking from touch, kissing and talking about love but not talking about anything in normal, casual ways. She didn’t know if she had a boyfriend.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “But I’m—I’m really happy.” It was confusing, but it hurt significantly less than the confusion of him wanting nothing to do with her.

“Well,” Angela said, “that’s good.”

That was when Kami realized that Angela had tricked her into having one of those in-case-we-die moments. She glared over at Angela, who naturally glared back.

She was lucky, Kami thought. Her friends had all followed her lead: she’d said they should hide so they could surprise Rob and his people, try to help Lillian and her sorcerers. They could have done what Lillian had wanted, could have run away.

They’d trusted Kami, even though she didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t let them down: she couldn’t let any of them die.

* * *

Both of the adult sides followed the rules. They came when the last light of the sun had died, Lillian’s people sweeping down from Aurimere and Rob’s coming from Monkshood in the west. They had to take Shadowchurch Lane to get to the square, and that was a bad moment: Kami and her friends crouched in a huddled row behind makeshift screens of foliage sheared from their enemy’s garden, which seemed all at once utterly fragile and foolish.

She saw Rob’s profile through a framework of leaves as he passed, his pale blond hair and his carved Lynburn features. In some ways the Lynburns all looked like variations on a theme, different expressions of personality set in the same ivory and gold.