* * *

She took a detour on her way home, walking up the High Street and heading for the Water Rising. She told herself that she just wanted to check Jared was there. She found out that she was lying to herself as she approached the statue of Matthew Cooper, a pale gold form in the darkness, and saw Jared coming down Shadowchurch Lane toward her.

Kami’s first thought was that he looked terrible. He was wearing only a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, which was ridiculous on a winter night. It was worse than that, though. In the half-light cast by a streetlight three dark shop doors away, his face was all set lines, hollows, and shadows.

“I was looking for you,” Kami said.

Jared walked closer to her, step by step, but slowly, as if he was being dragged toward her against his will. Kami walked to meet him at the corner: she put out her hand and laid it on the support of the low stone wall.

“Why?” Jared asked, his voice scratchy. “Was Ash talking to you?”

“Actually, he was. He asked me if I wanted to be his source.”

Kami saw the way he changed color, the check in his step that was almost a stagger, and she was fiercely glad to know that he and Ash had not discussed passing her from sorcerer to sorcerer like some convenient magical parcel.

“He did?” Jared said. “He asked you that? I’ll kill him.”

“Don’t,” Kami said, her voice brittle. She felt brittle all over.

“Kami, please,” Jared said. “I know I have no right to ask you, I know how he must seem to you, compared to me. I know you meant to kiss him and not me that night at the Water Rising. I know I’m—I’m different, I’m not right, I want too much from you and I’m asking too much now, but please don’t do it.”

The yellow light cast by the streetlamp was like the circle from a stone being thrown in a lake, a ring spreading and turning faint as it spread. Jared stood at the wavering edge of light looking at her, his face exiled and haunted, and Kami realized he was begging her.

“How dare you?” she demanded, and her voice was stronger now. “You think I’m going to do that? You think I would even consider it? I told Ash that I would never do it. I meant it. I hate that you act as if you’re the only one in this. It wasn’t just you who was ripped into pieces. It was never just you, any of it. I miss you too. I think about you too. And I hate it, I hate feeling so pathetic. I wish I had wanted it to be Ash in the Water Rising. But I didn’t. I wanted it to be you.”

Jared hesitated, moving forward a fraction so the light struck his face and then going very still. She couldn’t read his expression.

“You did?” he asked.

Fury failed Kami, and fled. “Yes,” she said helplessly, her hands loosening from their fists and hanging empty at her sides. “But that doesn’t matter. What do you—”

Jared erupted from stillness into movement so suddenly Kami almost flinched back, but she did not. She stayed where she was and he reached her in a step, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her mouth. Kami turned her face up to his, her hands full of the worn cotton of his shirt. She wanted to get a grip on this moment, standing in a circle of light with darkness all around, but with him, with him at last, and hold it tight.

They clung to each other and stumbled against the wall.

“Come here,” Jared half gasped. He dropped his hands, but she did not have time to register the loss before they were at her waist, lifting her onto the wall so her face was closer to his. “You are really small,” he told her breathlessly, stroking her hair back from her face with hands trying to be gentle and not quite managing it. “I’m always afraid that I’ll hurt you.”

“What,” Kami said, laughing against his mouth a little, incredulous, “you’re afraid I’ll get a crick in my neck?”

“Well, that is a worry,” Jared said, trying for solemnity.

Kami could only see pieces of his face this close up, the gold fringe of his eyelashes, the silver strike of his scar. Then he kissed her again, kisses showered down on her lips, the side of her mouth, her cheek, her chin, his mouth open against the line of her jaw and pressed on her neck as she leaned her head back. She shook under the rain of kisses and slid her arms around his neck, bringing him in closer, the line of his body drawing up against hers.

“Kami,” he said, his breath warm on the sensitive skin of her throat. She could feel his heartbeat, she thought, or her own against his mouth.

She opened her eyes and said, “Yes?”

She was almost off the wall, crushed for an instant with the cold stone against her back and his body against hers. Then he stopped kissing her, pressing their foreheads together.

“Are you okay, is this all right?” he said in a whispered rush.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back, her voice shaking out of control. “Don’t stop.”

She touched his chest, tentative, her hand light against the flat hard muscle. It came as a shock, for the hundredth time: he was real. She felt his chest lift, fast, as his breathing changed, and touched his collar. She pulled him a little closer, cheek against his cheek, feeling the satin line of his scar, the slight roughness where he had not shaved. Her hand brushed a slender line of metal, and she realized it was the chain he always wore.

Maybe not out of habit after all.

“I’m glad you asked, though,” she said. “Asking’s sexy.”

She laid her palm against the small cool circle of the coin that hung around his neck, and against his warm skin. Her fingers tangled with the thin chain and she pulled on it, turning his face back to hers, catching the tiny sound he made with her swollen mouth.

She smiled, and the sensation of her own lips curling on his sent heat curling through her body. “And you?” she whispered, tucking the smile like a secret against his skin. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know either,” he said, and she felt his hand shaking against her face, palm steadying as he rested it against the curve of her jaw. He kissed her, slow and long and trembling, and said against her mouth, “I’m not usually all right. But I—I love you. God, don’t change your mind. Don’t stop.”

“But—Holly—” Kami murmured, slipping out the couple of words against his mouth.

“I don’t care about Holly,” Jared snarled at her, then swallowed, and touched her hair again with that awkward not-quite-gentleness, pushing a strand off her cheek and looking at her with a sort of hungry wonder. “Not like that.”

Maybe he was just telling her what she wanted to hear. But it was what she wanted to hear, she found, exactly what she wanted.

She leaned forward and kissed him again. She let go of his collar and touched his shoulders because she couldn’t seem to stop touching him long enough to complete a simple task like undoing her own coat.

“Let me,” Jared asked, voice hushed, and drew back a little, kissed a place just above the corner of her mouth as he slid the zipper of her coat open. She could feel his hands shaking; the zipper snagged a couple of times, and her breath caught. “Why are you wearing this?” Jared asked in a fraught whisper.

“Golly, I don’t know, a winter coat on a lovely December night, what was I thinking?” Kami twined her fingers in his hair, felt it soft and curling loosely at the ends around her fingertips, as if trying to hang on to her. Yes, she thought, and wished he could hear it. Don’t let me go.

Jared laughed, the sound barely louder than a breath in the hushed bright space between them. “Golly,” he repeated softly, sliding his hands inside her coat. She felt the warm touch of his fingers through her thin jumper, at the small of her back, pressing her closer. “I’m not used to your English dirty talk.”

Kami almost laughed back, but his mouth touched hers, and the laugh was lost.

“Actually,” Jared said, and kissed her again, featherlight, “I’m not used to any of this.” He caught her open mouth with his, less careful now. “I haven’t done it a lot,” he added, the whisper scraping his throat and a hint of teeth touching her lower lip, the faint sting sending a shiver coursing through her body. “And I want to get it right.”

She did not know her lips had parted with the shiver until the kiss turned deep and her breathing shallow. Every time he touched her, the touch felt new, like something they had just invented together. It never stopped being a shock, that this was Jared. It was always a little scary, even something as small as his fingers stroking the nape of her neck.

He started back slightly, making a low sound that was half hunger, half distress. She looked up at his eyes, almost black, darkness swallowing all but a vanishingly faint ring of silver.

“Jared,” she said, and reached out to have him back.

Her fingers trailed light along the line of his collarbone, nails tracing the dip at the base of his throat, and she felt the shudder run through his body. She curled her fingers in under the collar of his shirt and used her hold to pull him in again.

She kissed him and he made another low sound, this one deeper in his throat. Touching him would have been unthinkable a few months ago. She felt almost dangerously happy, afraid at any moment that it was all going to be taken away from her, dashed into pieces before her eyes, that it would turn out to be a horrible mistake.

She felt dizzy and shuddered a little, pulling away from him, but even as she leaned away she could not stop the shivers coursing through her, could not stop kissing him back. A point of cold touched her neck, causing another shiver, and she looked up and realized it was snowing, bright white-feather points against the dark curtain of the night and the spotlight of their streetlamp. Kami felt a brush of warmth against her face and looked down to see Jared brushing a snowflake from her hair. She smiled and closed her eyes against the dancing glints of snow, the melting icy kiss against her skin, and met his warm mouth. They kissed and kissed, shivering and shaking apart, neither of them daring to touch each other anywhere risky, both scared and trying not to scare the other off.

Kami linked her arms behind his back, felt the breadth of his shoulders and the reality of skin and muscle and bone, and thought again, Don’t let me go.

Chapter Twenty-One

Her Legacy

Kami swung open her gate, and the sound of its creak tore the cool peace of a very silent, very early morning. She followed the crazy paving, gray in the ghost-gray light, to the door of her house. When she walked through to her kitchen, she found her mother there, already swinging her bag onto her shoulder, ready to go out.

Mum looked up. “Kami,” she said in a low voice, “where have you been? I thought something might have happened.”

Mum’s voice sank on the word something, as if she had not been able to even imagine what might have happened to Kami, only able to nurse dark and insubstantial fears. Kami looked at her mother, her mother’s always-beautiful face above a zipped-up black hoodie and jeans. Her gray eyes looked huge: she looked younger than she usually did, and terrified.

Kami had been so angry with her mother, but looking at her now, she felt the fierce urge to shield her from everything that was making her so scared.

It was strange to feel protective of your own mother.

“I’m sorry,” Kami began.

Her mother interrupted: her voice as sharp as one of her culinary knives. “Were you with that Lynburn boy?”

Kami shrugged off her coat and dropped it on a chair. “Yes,” she answered, sympathy draining away. “Actually, I was making out with him all night. Tell me, are you going to the bakery or are you going to Rob Lynburn? My Lynburn doesn’t have half the body count yours does.”

Her mother went even paler. “I’d never betray your father,” she said, her voice very low.

“Then what are you doing, Mum?” Kami demanded.

“The Lynburns are mad!” Mum snapped. “They all want a show of submission; they want you to act like their servants. And I’ll do it, I’ll play the humble villager, if that’s a way to keep my family safe. That’s all I want, for you all to be safe. That’s all I’m trying to accomplish. And you’re scaring me, Kami. You’re breaking my heart. You have to be more careful.”