Chapter Seventeen
The Montgomery Secret
Kami did not know how to tell Angela about her brother’s decision to date evil.
The next day,
The Nosy Parker
came out, with the article Kami had written to explain sorcery to her brothers in it. The article did not specifically mention magic, or Rob Lynburn’s demands. It talked about Sorry-in-the-Vale being under threat, the temptation to do nothing, and the absolute necessity of standing against evil.
Kami left the table in the front hall of the school stacked high with newspapers, and when she came back with Angela before her first class, the table was bare.
“You realize this means you have to photocopy some more in your free class,” Kami instructed Angela sternly.
“I like to think of it as my nap class,” Angela said. “I’m a very advanced student, but I’ve got to keep in training.”
“We have to spread the message of rebellion.”
“I don’t know how you expect me to fight evil while insufficiently rested,” Angela complained.
They were walking down the hall together. Angela was swinging her messenger bag and there was a multicolored scarf flying blazing colors from her neck. She seemed, insofar as one could tell with Angela, happy.
Angela changed the direction of her sphinxlike smile suddenly, and Kami glanced around to see Holly approaching in a cloud of bright curls and fuzzy pink jumper.
“Hi, Angie,” Holly said, and in a more subdued manner: “Hi, Kami.” She fell into step with them, walking on Kami’s other side, and said, “I got you some of my parents’ things.” She pressed a little bag into Kami’s hand, like a peace offering.
“Thank you,” said Kami.
Her hope that they could leave it at that died when Holly said, “So we should probably talk.”
“I have no objection to talking, ever, at any time at all,” Kami said. “You most likely know this about me already. But if you’re thinking of what I think you’re thinking of, we don’t really need to talk about it. I mean, it’s none of my business. Though I’m sorry about my amazingly awkward timing.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Holly said. “It wasn’t anything, I swear. I don’t want to have caused any trouble between you guys.”
“There’s always trouble between us,” Kami told her. “But none of it is your fault. We had a talk after you were gone; I think it went okay.”
“Oh, good.” Holly glanced at Angie and bit her lip. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Kami said firmly. “But if you have any free classes today, please photocopy some extra copies of the paper and I promise to love you always and forgive you for any evil you ever do. Some say love cannot be bought, but mine is available at this time for anyone with a good heart and the ability to use a photocopier.”
Holly looked uncertain, but Kami kept a stare of laser-like focus on her and she gave in. She dropped the subject, and offered, “I do have a free class after lunch.”
“So do I,” said Angela, and did not mention napping.
Kami gave her a betrayed look, which Angela deserved for being one of those girls who was willing to go above and beyond in the cause of fancying people and not in the sacred name of friendship. “Also, I have some good news,” Kami said, and then saw Amber Green go into the ladies’. “Which I will tell you later! Go on ahead without me!” she finished brightly, and darted after her quarry.
Kami was in luck. There was nobody else in the bathroom. Amber was in front of the mirror applying lip gloss. The little tube clattered into the sink when Kami came in and leaned against the door.
Kami saw her face in the mirror, eyes wide and lips parted. Then her expression shut down, every feature clicking into place and forming a mask.
“Hey, Amber,” Kami said. “I want to talk.”
Every tap in the bathroom glittered as they all turned at once. A half dozen streams of water were in sudden hissing unison, like a chorus line of snakes. “Well,” Amber said, “I don’t.”
Kami looked at the sinks splashing with water. “Is that meant to intimidate me?”
Over Kami’s head, the skylight splintered. She looked up and saw the sudden cracks, reflecting rainbow points, racing to join together and form a spiderweb. Then the skylight imploded, sending shards raining down on her shoulders and hair.
Kami closed her eyes and waited for the glass to stop falling. When she opened them, she saw Amber standing with her back to the sinks, hands behind her back gripping onto the porcelain. Amber was standing in a flood with her shoes getting wet. She didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at Kami.
Kami saw her own face in the mirror. There was a cut on her cheek, and the rising red of blood.
“Maybe you killed some animals,” Kami said with growing confidence. “But we’ve known each other since we were born. We sat together in class for five years. You got in trouble for talking during a test once when you loaned me a sharpener.”
“I’m
not
your friend,” Amber told her sharply. “We were never friends.”
“I know that,” Kami said. “But you know me. And you’re not going to kill me.” She took a step forward and Amber’s body tensed. The memory of Sergeant Kenn’s thorns slicing into her arms came back to her. She could get really hurt if she was guessing wrong. Kami stepped forward again, and Amber’s eyes dropped.
“What are you doing with Rob Lynburn?”
“What are you thinking, standing against him?” Amber asked softly. “Don’t you realize he can—we can do magic? This town was built for sorcerers to rule. What makes you think you can stand against us? What are you,
stupid
?”
“Is that what you want?” Kami asked. “To rule?”
Amber flushed, color contrasting sharply with the fox fire of her hair. “I’m a sorcerer. I don’t want to live in a city, getting sick every autumn because the year is dying and I don’t have enough magic to thrive. Sorry-in-the-Vale is where I belong, and it’s going to belong to Rob.”
“It doesn’t have to. What if—”
“What if I said no, and he killed someone I love?” Amber demanded. “Have you even thought about what the cost of standing against him would be?”
“Have you even thought about what the cost of
not
standing against him would be?” Kami asked.
Sorcery had turned the bathroom into its own self-contained pool with the water rising. The broken glass was floating now, so much sharp, glittering debris.
“It’s all right for you,” Amber said. “Your family were always the Lynburns’ pets. What’s the plan for you, that you’ll just be passed from one Lynburn boy to another as a source? Or are you hoping to become the next Matthew Cooper, and have them both? You’ll always have something to protect you. And you’re not a sorcerer. Once Rob gets what he wants, once the town is back to the way it used to be, things will be relaxed. The people who want to keep the benefits of Sorry-in-the-Vale will stay, and those who don’t will leave. You can go away. But I can’t.”
Kami thought suddenly of Henry Thornton, skin sickly gray in his London flat, confessing on the phone that he didn’t know many sorcerers. Sorry-in-the-Vale offered a sense of community for sorcerers like Amber. It was made for her, in a way. “If you don’t want to leave,” Kami said, “surely you want this to be a place worth living in?”
“I can live with what Rob wants,” Amber said. “It comes with all kinds of advantages for me. There’s no guarantee of living on your side. You should think about that. It’s less than two weeks until winter solstice, and the other Lynburns are going to lose. There’s no guarantee, even for you.”
“I’ll take my chances. What does Rob Lynburn want with Rusty?”
Amber blinked, then smiled a very careful, cool smile. “Why would you think he wants anything to do with Rusty? He’s not magical. Maybe it’s
me
who wants something to do with Rusty,” she said, a faint touch of slyness in her smile. “He’s very good-looking. Perhaps you’ve noticed that already.”
“Jared, Ash, and now Rusty?” Kami asked. “This is a frenzied romantic merry-go-round I’m on in your imagination. I’m kind of flattered. And don’t you have a boyfriend?”
Amber had always been that girl, the one who seemed to have been born with a boyfriend. Now that Kami knew Ross and Amber were both sorcerers, the idea that Amber had been born with a boyfriend was disturbingly close to the truth.
Amber shrugged. “Ross and I aren’t exclusive. It doesn’t matter. He knows how I feel about him. He knows I don’t take Rusty seriously.”
“You can tell Ross, and anyone else who’s interested,” Kami said, “that I do. I take Rusty extremely seriously. If anyone has any plans concerning him, if anyone even thinks about hurting my friends, I will—”
“Oh, what will you do?”
Amber’s laugh rang out, and Kami saw the pieces of glass actually moving in the water now, like tiny transparent sharks. She was braced, but it was still a shock when it happened: the blast knocked her off her feet. Amber concentrated the cold air from the broken skylight between her palms and aimed it at Kami’s chest.
Kami fell backward, lying gasping amid the water and broken glass. Amber’s face above her was a haze of red with a pale center. “There’s nothing you can do,” Amber explained, very softly, and left.
As soon as she could move, Kami got up and retrieved Amber’s lip gloss from the sink.
* * *
Kami had already missed her first class by quite a lot, so she figured there was no harm in slinking up to her headquarters. She could sit with her back against the radiator and dry off, and nobody would see her and get upset.
It was a good, solid plan. It was a shame that it immediately collapsed when she opened the door and Jared looked up from his desk. The only thing to do was brazen this out.
“Oi,” Kami said. “Did the orders not get passed down to you? Everyone with a free class has to be photocopying the paper. I wish I could get our staff to work more like a well-oiled machine.”
Jared said nothing. He just got up from the desk, chair crashing to the floor behind him.
“I see you’ve spotted that there’s something off,” Kami observed. “Well, good. I want you all to be honing your observational skills.”
He was advancing on her. Kami tried to retreat toward the security of her own desk.
“Uh, but verbal skills are important too,” Kami suggested. “So please say something.”
“What,” Jared demanded, “happened to you?”
“Small contretemps with a sorcerer,” Kami admitted. She backed up until she hit her desk, at which point Jared was right there. “Very small,” she said, looking up into his still face. “Tiny.”
Jared touched her then, the back of his fingers light against her face, just below where she had been cut. “You’re bleeding.” Then his hand fell away.
“There may have been a limited quantity of broken glass involved.”
“Oh God,” said Jared, in what appeared to be furious prayer. “Oh God.” He moved in closer, as close as he could be without touching her. She leaned against the desk and he bowed his head over her shoulder, turned his face into the curve of her neck. She felt his ragged breath run uneven down the skin at her nape, the brush of his wavy hair against her chin.
“Who was it?” Jared asked. “I’ll kill them.”
“You are not inspiring me with a desire to give you a name, Captain Murderface of the good ship
Unbalanced,
” said Kami. “It was nothing new, just a sorcerer trying to scare me. I can handle myself.”
What she’d said to Amber worked in reverse as well. She couldn’t imagine hurting someone she’d gone to school with.
Jared seemed to realize she was serious. He took a deep breath, and asked no more questions.
“You can’t ask me not to do dangerous stuff,” she warned him. His hands were braced on the desk, arms surrounding her but not around her.
“I know that,” he said, words falling on her neck like kisses. “It would be like asking you not to be you. But I’m not with you, and I was always with you before. I keep thinking about something happening to you when I’m not there, when I won’t even know about it.”
Kami lifted her hand, intending to stroke his hair, but somehow she couldn’t quite do it. Her fingers curled, almost touching him. “Sometimes I think about that too,” she whispered. She had almost been too late at the Crying Pools.
“I wish,” Jared began, and stopped, breathing in. “Do you remember how you used to believe I wasn’t real? Sometimes I wish that was true. If I was just a thought in the back of your mind, then I’d be with you, and I’d be better.”
In the back of her mind, Kami was aware that what Jared said was irredeemably crazy. But that didn’t disturb her like it should have: the only thing that upset her was the thought of how he must feel about himself.
“I’d miss you if you weren’t real,” she said. “I wouldn’t like that. Do you never think about me?”
To her embarrassment, it came out almost like a plea.
Jared moved and the muscles in Kami’s stomach jumped as he did so, his breath traveling up the line of her neck, warm and light on the sensitive skin.
He said into her ear, “I think about you all the time.”
Maybe, Kami thought, maybe if she turned her face into that whisper, he would kiss her.
Maybe he would if he thought that was what she wanted. But he had been with Holly yesterday, because that was what
he
wanted. She wondered with a sinking feeling if he had kissed her, Kami, in the Water Rising because he’d thought that she wanted him to. If that was why he had done it in the dark. He could need her without wanting her: he could want the link back and nothing more.
Kami did not turn her face toward him. Her fingers stayed hovering over his hair until their breath reached a mutual rhythm but their skin did not touch at any point. “I was thinking about what you said yesterday,” Kami said at last. “About me taking pity on you, about making a clean break. And I was thinking—what on earth were you talking about?”
“You told me I was too dependent on you.”
“I said
we
were too dependent,” Kami said. “I never said
you,
I was never talking about you, I was talking about the link and what I worried it was doing to both of us. That we were all twisted up, like two linked trees that had grown together into weird shapes.”