He kept talking, rubbing soothing circles on Holly’s back, as if what she had said was no big deal at all. He was such a weird guy, so casual about everything: maybe nothing she could say would upset him.

“You don’t understand,” Holly said, and began crying harder. “I can’t.”

Rusty fell silent. After a moment, he got up and Holly heard the creak of the door opening and closing again.

Holly was not surprised when someone else settled on the step beside her. Angela was careful not to lean against her, but every molecule of Holly’s body was aware of Angie’s.

“Holly,” Angela said, her voice low. “What’s wrong?”

Holly looked up again and saw Angie’s face this time, not anyone else’s, just Angie with her dark intent eyes, looking at Holly as nobody else in the world did, as if she took her seriously.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she whispered, leaning in closer.

Angela blinked, mouth tipping at one side as if she might be about to make a joke about pinky swears. She nodded instead.

Holly looked at the hands she’d been cradling her head in, her damp cupped palms. There were teardrops glistening on her fingers.

Each of the teardrops burst silently into a point of light, lucent and shocking. Fireworks, contained in the curve of Holly’s hand. They were beautiful, but Holly didn’t even know who she was anymore.

“I’m a sorcerer,” she said, very quietly, as though if she said it in a lower voice, it would be less true. As though it might not change her life.

Angie slid an arm around Holly’s shoulders gradually, making sure Holly was all right with it. Holly leaned back in the circle of Angela’s arm and closed her eyes.

Chapter Sixteen

A Preference for Breathing

There was a small mirror hanging on the stone wall of the little inn room. Kami looked into it because she had to look at something else when Jared was doing up his jeans. Her face in the glass looked young and small, as if she didn’t have a clue about the world, as if life was never going to stop surprising and hurting her.

“Well,” she said, smoothing the jacket over her arm and then laying it on the tangled sheets. “Now I’ve returned this, I’d better get going.” She was reluctant to let go of the jacket, her fingers lingering stupidly on its scarred brown surface. “Sorry again.” She let go of the jacket and stepped away from the bed.

“Kami,” Jared said as he lunged between her and the door.

Kami was forced to look at him. She had to tip her head back because otherwise she was eye level with his collarbone: his shirt was still all undone, crumpled white cotton against an expanse of pale-gold-tanned skin, a thin chain glittering at his neck.

He’d kept wearing the coin she had sent him. By now Kami supposed it was habit. Possibly Holly had grabbed it, the way she had obviously been grabbing at his hair.

“You’re in my way,” Kami said, keeping her voice level. “I suggest you get out of it.”

“I want to tell you something,” Jared said.

Kami had absolutely no right to mind what Jared and Holly did, and she was perfectly prepared to listen to what Jared had to say. But was this the time or the place, Kami thought, for a heart-to-heart?

Was this the outfit? She had seen Jared in nothing but his underwear before, but that had been in the darkness of a closed swimming pool. This was an actual room, an actual bedroom with actual lights on. He seemed a lot more na**d now, with his shirt pulled open and the blurred touch of Holly’s candy-pink lipstick on his jaw.

“Kami,” Jared repeated. His voice scraped on her name: it sounded like it hurt him to say, but maybe it just hurt to hear. He reached out a hand, fingers curved as if he was going to cup her face. He never touched her, and she couldn’t let him start now. Kami took a step back, even though that meant being a step closer to the bed Jared and Holly had obviously been rolling around and around in.

Jared surveyed the place as if he was startled by his own room, the mess of the bed, his reflection in the mirror, and then looked back at Kami. “I didn’t mean it,” he said.

“You didn’t mean what?” Kami asked. She was furious with him: this wasn’t the kind of thing you did accidentally.

“What I said to you in the library at Aurimere,” Jared said. “After you broke the link.”

So he wasn’t talking about something that had happened moments ago in this room. He was talking about something that had happened weeks ago.

“You wanted to break the link,” Jared said.

“Rob would have killed me if I hadn’t broken it!”

Jared bowed his head. “I know. I just meant that even before Rob, you didn’t want for me to be dependent on you like that. I was furious with you for breaking the link, for wanting to. I didn’t think that you would believe me or care, but it was still stupid of me, and wrong. I’m sorry.”

“That’s why you said it?” Kami asked.

“I told myself it was best to make a clean break. I didn’t want to hang around and have you taking pity on me. I thought it would be best for you. And I was angry with you and I wanted to hurt you. I didn’t think I could hurt you, but I tried. I know it was terrible of me to feel that way, wanting to hurt you and wanting the absolute best for you, at any cost, all at the same time. I know that it makes no sense.”

It made less sense than anything Kami had ever heard in her life. Everything Jared was saying, about what she had said about the link, it was true but not the whole truth. And why would she take pity on him?

He had told her, in the dark cold heart of Aurimere, that she was nothing special. She had been at her most lost and lonely, and she had carried around with her the lingering fear that it might be true.

He knew her better than anyone.

Now he said it wasn’t true. It was like a weight had been taken off her, a stone that had been pressing against her chest so long, she had almost become used to it.

“I don’t think you’re weak,” Jared said. “I want to guard you because you are important to me. Because you are—God, this is going to sound so stupid, I can never think of a way to say it—you are precious. I can never think of how to describe the value you have to me, because all the words for value suggest that you belong to me, and you don’t.”

“All right,” Kami answered at last. “Thank you for telling me.”

He looked up when she spoke and kept looking, eyes fastened on her. She felt his gaze like a pull on her, as if he expected some response. She wanted to say she forgave him, but she couldn’t prioritize his feelings over hers, not when he was the one who had lashed out.

“Now you know you can hurt me,” she said. “So don’t.” She waited for him to nod and added quietly, “You’re important to me too. I want to be friends again.”

“Then that’s what I want too,” he said.

She had come intending to tell him of the discovery she had made, and to talk to him about the kiss. She could still tell him about the discovery. But she wanted out of this room.

“I have something to show you,” she said. “But not here. I’m a little uncomfortable being here—not that I mind, of course I don’t—”

Jared repeated after her, his voice flat, “Of course.”

“Can I just go?”

“Of course,” Jared said again, still standing in front of the door.

“Can I go through the door,” Kami asked, “or do I have to execute a super-spy rappelling maneuver and make it out through the window?”

Jared looked torn between a smile and some other expression Kami couldn’t read. He didn’t move away from in front of the door. “What do you have to show me? Tell me where you’ll be and I’ll come.”

“I was thinking I would be outside the pub,” Kami said. She would have settled for the other side of the door. All she wanted was to be out of the room, and he obviously understood the situation so little that he thought they could hang around chatting forever.

Kami moved forward and Jared stepped aside, eyes following her as she went. She reached out for the handle and pulled the door open, and escaped at last.

Outside in the dark street, she lifted her face to the winter-torn sky, the cold wind washing her heated skin, and she told herself that she must be the stupidest person alive.

When Jared came out of the inn, his shirt was buttoned and his jacket was zipped up to the chin, and his face and hair were wet as if he’d run a tap over his head. There were droplets of water running down his brow, and his collar was damp.

“I really am sorry for interrupting,” Kami said.

Jared frowned at her. “You didn’t interrupt anything.” He’d never lied to her when they were linked, but she supposed he was embarrassed.

“So I performed a little experiment,” Kami said. “Ash had to have Amber’s possession to break her spell. Ash and Lillian had to use Rob’s and Rosalind’s hair to make their spell work on them. I figured that this spell twisting our voices might not work on a sorcerer. I hypothesized, if you will, that a sorcerer might be able to hear us.”

Kami took her phone out of her pocket with a flourish and said, “Look what I can do.” She rang a London number and waited a few moments before a voice came on the line.

“Hi, Henry Thornton speaking.”

“Hi there,” Kami said. “This is Kami Glass? You remember me from when we visited you in London and couldn’t help but notice you were a sorcerer. You pulled a gun on my friend and I hit you with a chair.”

“Don’t call me, Kami.” There was the sound of a quick indrawn breath and then the beep of a dial tone.

Kami looked triumphantly up at Jared. “The magic doesn’t work on other sorcerers! Henry can hear us.”

“Henry, our new best friend,” Jared said, circling around her in the nighttime street. “I hope he can put this whole trying-to-shoot-me thing behind us. He doesn’t seem that keen to help out.”

Kami grinned at him. “Because I have not yet worked my persuasive mojo on him.”

“I didn’t realize it was a matter of mojo.”

“I want to be a journalist,” Kami said. “That means I have to coax my sources into trusting me and spilling all their secrets. It’s a very subtle, yet effective, process.”

Jared tilted his head, a streetlight combing his hair with gold. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Kami redialed Henry’s number. This time Henry answered after one ring.

“Don’t call again. I am not interested in anything you have to say.”

“We hate Rob Lynburn too,” Kami said quickly. “He tried to kill my best friend. She beat him half to death with a chain. And he’s trying to take over our town.”

“Isn’t that what the town was made for, though?” Henry asked. “Maybe you should all get out of there and leave them to it.”

Isn’t that what the town was made for?

Sorry-in-the-Vale, where she had been born, where she had run through sun-bright streets every summer. Made to be ruled, made to thrive on blood. “You expect us to run away and abandon our home? You didn’t close the door and hide behind it when we came to see you and you thought Rob had sent us,” Kami said. “You got a weapon and you came out and faced us. You were ready to fight.”

Henry was silent for a moment longer, then said in a low voice, “People shouldn’t use sorcery like he does.”

“We need you to fight again,” Kami said. “Rob is going to sacrifice someone on the winter solstice, and there aren’t enough sorcerers to stand against him. We need help.”

“I can’t exactly call the police,” Henry told her.

“Officer, I have a serious magical emergency,” Kami said. She was pleased by Henry’s quiet laugh. “No. Surely there are other sorcerers you could talk to? People who wouldn’t agree with what Rob Lynburn is doing?”