Chapter Twenty-Eight

Laugh at the Night

Kami’s father did not blame her. He did not ask a single question when she told him about Ten, only drew her close and rested his cheek against her hair. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he said.

It had been a silent unanimous decision to come to the Water Rising. Kami’s home did not feel safe any longer. Tomo seemed glad to be somewhere else, or just glad to be with her and Dad. He was sleeping in the parlor, head pillowed against Dad’s chest. If Dad even shifted position, Tomo whimpered in his sleep.

Kami was thankful he was sleeping, because it meant he had stopped asking for Mum. None of them had any idea where she was.

Henry had taken a room and disappeared in there. Holly had gone back home, to see if her parents had returned or whether they were installed at Aurimere with Rob. Angela and Rusty had gone with her.

“We’ll be right back,” Angela had said, holding on to Kami’s hands. “Holly won’t stay with them. She just has to see.”

“Of course,” Kami said.

Angela had held both her hands, which had felt intensely strange as a gesture from undemonstrative Angela, and looked into her face. “Rusty can go with her,” she’d offered at last. “I could stay.”

“No,” Kami said. “I have Dad and Tomo and Jared here. I’m fine. You should go.”

Angela’s eyes had searched Kami’s face, Kami didn’t know for what. She had to turn her own eyes away from that gaze.

“I’ll be right back,” Angela promised, and gave her a swift ferocious hug before she went, Angela’s hair and perfume blocking out all the rest of the world for a moment.

Despite how numb Kami felt, it was a comfort. She closed the door of the inn behind the three of them, Holly looking anxiously over her shoulder at Kami as they went down the street, and turned back.

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.