Untold (34 page)

The people in the pub had not asked any questions. The townspeople appeared to be steadfastly ignoring the fires burning around Aurimere.

Walking past one table, Kami heard Mr. Stearn say “Lynburns” and stopped to hear the end of his sentence. “Settled it among themselves,” he said.

Kami opened her mouth to speak and found she did not know what to say. There was too much: her brother, the sorcerers in the woods, how she had allowed her mind to be invaded for nothing at all. Mr. Stearn stared up at her, eyes bleary and defiant, as if he expected her to argue with him. She passed on to the bar, which Jared was leaning against, talking quietly to Martha Wright.

“If you want,” Martha was saying, in a low voice, “if things are bad with your folks, we have your room upstairs. Just like you left it. Your brother can stay too. As long as you need.”

If things are bad with your folks
. As if Jared had been grounded over his motorbike, when people were dead.

“Do you want to know what happened?” Kami asked.

Martha looked at the bar and not at her. “What can we do?” she said in return, very quietly. She didn’t mean it as an offer, that much was clear. She meant she was helpless. She meant they were all helpless.

“Thank you,” Jared told her seriously. Martha looked up at his face and smiled before she hurried off to the other side of the bar.

“You’ve got a fan there, Lynburn,” Kami observed.

“It’s my aristocratic bone structure,” Jared said. “Women of all ages are enslaved by it. My cheekbones command, and they obey.” His voice was flat, his fingers tracing the whorls and lines of the old wood that formed the bar. Kami could not force a smile, not even one as feeble as Martha Wright’s.

Ash was in her head, inescapable as water when you were drowning. He had no idea how to shield his emotions from her. She felt the cold weight of his presence even though he was wounded in bed, and felt like she could not breathe and would never be able to again.

“Come here a minute,” Jared said. He headed across the room to where there was an alcove, formed by a large diamond-paned window that was set deep in the wall and that opened onto the Wrights’ tiny yard.

Kami followed him and leaned against the wall on one side of the window. Through the small faintly green panes she could see the dusty gray of concrete, the steel gray of rubbish bins, and the crimson gleam of reflected fire. She realized she was too much of a coward right now to look at Jared.

She knew how he’d felt about their link. She’d known what her being Ash’s source would do to him. She’d done it anyway.

She’d thought she had to do it, and it had been her choice to make.

Except that she was so tired, and she knew what it was like, to feel as if he hated her. She didn’t know if she could bear it again.

“How are you?” Jared asked, voice pitched low, as if he was trying to be gentle.

Kami was startled enough to look up into his face. He was looking down at her already. She did not know what he was thinking and never would again, but she remembered with exquisite clarity how he had looked when he hated her and he didn’t look like that now. The once-cruel curve of his mouth was now a line that trembled a little out of shape when he saw her face. “I don’t know,” Kami said. “I can’t think about it, about Ten. I can’t think about it yet.”

“Because you don’t know what to do,” Jared said.

“Yes,” Kami agreed, feeling shock wash over her because of how exactly right he was. That all this could have happened, and she had been helpless. “With Ash wounded, and Lillian gone, if we do something before we’re ready and Ten gets hurt . . .”

“But you
will
do something,” Jared said. “You’ll work something out. You don’t have to know what to do right away. It’s all right not to know.”

Kami laughed and the laugh caught in her throat. “It doesn’t feel all right.”

It felt like she was drifting, floating as helplessly as the sorcerers in the Crying Pools. If she didn’t know what to do, if she didn’t have a plan, then everything was a mess and she could do nothing but be at the mercy of her own feelings, terror and longing and panic dragging her down.

She couldn’t be like this.

“It is all right,” Jared said. “It’s going to be.” He lifted a hand but did not touch her, fingers tracing the curve of her cheek in the air. She could almost feel his skin against hers. She wanted to turn her face into his hand but could not bring herself to make that move: he had not really touched her, and maybe he did not want to.

“Don’t hate me,” she said in a low voice, and turned her face away, resting her cheek against the glass.

“What?” Jared asked. He spoke loudly enough so that she looked up at him again, and saw his face had gone colder, scar pulled tight and eyes like white ice with black water rushing beneath.

“I know that you said—that you were begging me not to, with Ash,” Kami told him unsteadily. “I know I said I wouldn’t do it.”

“But you
had
to,” Jared snapped, staring at her.

“I know I had to!” Kami snapped back. “But I knew how you would feel about it. I did it anyway.”

“You assumed I would hold it against you,” Jared said. “That’s what you think of me.”

That was what she thought of him, and she was right. He’d told her as much, told her that he wanted the link back more than anything in the world. She knew what it was he valued. The bleak look on his face made the words die on Kami’s lips, turning them into silence and a sigh.

“I broke the link with you because I had to, and you hated me for that,” she said at last.

“No, I
didn’t
.” Jared’s voice was so intense, Kami thought that if they had been alone he would have shouted. “I thought you wanted to break away from me, and I didn’t want to go crawling back to you, so I lied to you and insulted you. I hated you for wanting to break away, but—but you know how I feel about you. I could never hate you for long.”

It was like they were in different worlds entirely, trying to tell each other about what they saw.

“I didn’t want to break away from you,” Kami said at last. “And I don’t want you to hate me. I thought you did once, and I can’t bear anything else today. I can’t bear even the smallest thing.”

“You don’t have to. I was wrong and I was lying to you, but I’m not lying now,” Jared told her. “It’s all going to be all right. I’ll get Ten back for you. You’ll make a plan for Sorry-in-the-Vale. And you don’t ever have to worry about what I feel. The way I feel about you won’t change. You can do whatever you like to me. You could turn this town to dust, burn the woods until they were cinders, you could cut out my heart. It wouldn’t matter. It would not change a thing.”

“What if I ate a baby?”

Jared’s mouth curved up at the corners, slow and not cruel after all. “I’m sure you’d have a good reason,” he said. “Such as, babies are delicious.”

Impossibly, Kami found herself smiling. It was a strange small miracle. Everything was still completely terrible, but she was able to look up at Jared and smile, as if their worlds overlapped just enough to give them this small warm place to stand together.

She reached for him. He withdrew, a tiny, almost imperceptible flinch away from her, only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. She let her hand fall by her side. “What if I wanted to rule the world?” she asked lightly. “I might desire to sit on a throne of skulls and be the universe’s dark queen.”

“I’d totally help you with that,” Jared told her. “I am so willing to be a minion, you have no idea. I will throw people into aquariums full of mutant octopi and sharks with lasers on their heads on command.” He moved a little closer to her, as if to make up for before, for not wanting her to touch him. “I do understand, Kami. I could never blame you. Don’t worry about that.”

Kami gave a small shrug. “So I’ll just worry about everything else then.”

“I’m not,” said Jared. “Rob’s an idiot. He thinks that this town belongs to him, that he can control it? He thinks that the people in it belong to him? He’s underestimating Sorry-in-the-Vale. He’s always underestimated you.”

“And you,” Kami said.

She had meant it as a statement, not a question, but Jared answered almost casually, “I belong to you. He has no idea what he’s up against. And that will get him in the end. I believe that. Everything’s going to come right for you.”

“And you,” Kami said again.

“If everything’s right for you,” Jared said at last, “everything’s right for me.”

The door of the Water Rising opened again, and Kami saw Holly, Angela, and Rusty. A weight of anxiety Kami had not even realized she was carrying eased off her shoulders. She was able to smile over at them.

Holly beamed back, and even Angela betrayed relief. Kami had not guessed quite how badly off she must have seemed, or how worried they had been. They all went to the parlor together, and the mood was a little giddy as well as desperate.

“This place is starting to feel like a home away from home,” Rusty said, settling on the sofa. “We come here, we discuss evil sorcerers, we eat packets of peanuts. It’s a soothing and familiar routine. Or it would be if people would just bring me some peanuts.”

“I will actually stuff peanuts up your actual nose,” Angela informed him.

“You’re so cruel,” Rusty complained. “My own sister. Why are you so cruel?”

“Some would say it’s part of her charm,” said Holly.

They were all together, Kami thought, and they were going to pull together, and not be in opposition anymore. That was worth something. No, that was worth a lot.

She sat down in a fragile wooden chair by the fire, because it was the closest to the sofa where Dad was sitting and Tomo slept. She gave Dad a faint smile and reached out her hand across the distance between them. He clasped her hand in his.

Jared knelt down on the floor by her chair. “I’m just going to see if Martha needs help with Ash,” he said quietly.

She looked down at his face, that planed, cool Lynburn face glossed with gold by the fire. His eyes were touched by firelight too, lit up and warm when he looked at her.

Kami smiled at him. “I’ll be here.”

Jared got up. “I’ll be thinking about you.”

He went out, and after some time while they all sat around and tried to talk their way to a solution, Ash came downstairs and stood by the fire, not kneeling but looking down at her with concern. He looked pale, and he was walking unsteadily, but he was walking.

“How are you?” Kami asked him.

“Can’t complain,” said Ash. “How are you holding up?”

“Oh,” Kami said, acutely conscious of her own emotions because she knew Ash could feel them. She could feel that he agreed with her, that things had to be controlled and smoothed over, and this genuine accord made their situation seem more bearable. “I’m holding on.”

Ash put a hand in the space of the wooden frame of her chair back, and touched her lower back. It was a gesture of support, nothing more, his fingers spread out warm on her skin and his honest wish for her well-being spreading warmer all through her.

It was possible for a moment to believe that Jared was right, and all would be well.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Lost Love

He’d lied to Kami.

Jared had been careful not to say anything to her that wasn’t true, but he had left her with a false impression about where he was going to be and what he was going to do, and that was as good as lying.

He didn’t know how much time he would have before someone noticed he was missing. He was hoping it would be all night, but he couldn’t count on that.

So there was no excuse for him to be standing in the dark of the High Street, looking in through the window. It made no sense. He was going to get caught.

It was strange and terrifying, being able to lie to Kami. He’d been so sure, when he lied to her last time and told her she was nothing special, that she could see right through him.

This time he knew she’d believed what he had wanted her to believe.

He hoped that he had helped her feel better: it was a selfish and awful hope. He should just want her to feel better without caring who was responsible for it. He did want that, wanted her happy, but he could not untangle that from wanting to be the cause of her happiness.

He did not know where that left him, except standing in the dark, staring in at her.

The pocket shutters that folded into the window casements were spread out but still hanging open so a large slice of the room showed, a white wall painted over with warm yellow light, a shadowed angle where the wall and ceiling met. Angela and Holly were on their feet, a blur of swinging hair and long legs in his way. Angela returned to the sofa and Rusty, and Holly followed her, and finally Jared could see.

She was sitting by the fire, turned away from the window. Turned toward Ash, leaning in his direction. The swing of hair that was just one brown shade away from black had come untucked from behind her ear, casting a shadow on her gold-touched skin, against the curve of her jaw.

She was smiling. Her mouth was almost always a slight curve, and though her smile was shadowed today it was still the brightest thing in the room. She was like that, always: the vivid point in every room. He thought that was why he had never been able to truly believe she was imaginary.

She had always seemed like the real one. She would be all right. He’d told her that, and he’d meant it. She’d get her town back, and put her family back together.

And the last link between them was broken now: the last couple of days between them did not matter anymore. She’d felt still tied to him because he was the only one she had been tied to, but now she was tied to Ash. The link was new, but Jared knew what it would become.

Ash was a good person. He would do the right thing for her, be what she wanted, not helplessly want to make too many demands.

Jared could be nothing to her now: Kami was free of him at last.

He looked in the window for one instant longer, even though he knew there was no way to memorize her. She was always changing, not like other girls, who looked like pictures. She was more like a river, all constant motion.