Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy (27 page)

Jared thought of Nicola lying dead. Nobody had stopped a sorcerer from killing her.

He looked around the stone room echoing with that word, “sacrifices”: from Uncle Rob’s kind eyes to Aunt Lillian’s cold ones, to Ash with blood still gleaming on his mouth. This den of monsters was his family. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he whispered.

His mother had not moved from her position beside the fireplace and Uncle Rob. Her hands were folded in her lap and she did not even turn to look at him as she spoke, her voice very calm. “I did tell you,” she said. “I told you that you killed your father.”

The storm had turned all of Sorry-in-the-Vale into the woods. The storm clouds were like dark boughs painted on the sky, and the cold, rain-laden wind hit Kami’s eyes like the slap of wet leaves.

The last thing in the world Kami wanted to do was go into the actual woods, but Jared had stopped talking to her after he left Aurimere, and here was her best guess for where he might have gone.
Come on!
she yelled at him.
Talk to me!
All she got was sound and fury, a sensation as if the storm was inside her head. She shook her head, wet locks of hair whipping across her face, and plunged from her garden gate into the wild woods.

A town of sorcerers
, she thought. Kami stumbled, and her knees scraped against a fallen log, but she didn’t fall. She grabbed onto a branch, using it to struggle on through the howling woods.

The pools were huge twin black eyes. They stared at Kami in the glen full of whispering trees. The surfaces of both pools were still as spilled ink. Kami could not tell which pool to choose, so she just sent out an appeal to Jared, lashing out at the same time as reaching out.

Jared broke the surface of the pool on the left. He shook his head, droplets flying out into the rain as he held on to the muddy bank of the pool. His shoulders bunched and she felt his mind focus again, preparing to dive back down.

Kami lunged, on her knees in the dirt, grabbed his arms, and tried to haul him up out of the lake. Jared looked at her, his eyes not focusing. She held on hard, her fingertips biting deep
into the muscles of his arms. “No,” Kami said.
No
. “You’re not going back down there, you’ll drown, I said no.”
No
.

Jared was breathing in hoarse, shallow pants: she could actually hear the scrape of his breath catching in his throat. His body was caught too, in a continuous tremor.
There’s something down there I have to get
, he said.
There are people down there who want me to stay with them
.

“Well, you’re not going to,” Kami said. “You’re going to stay here with me.”

Jared said nothing, but when she tugged him up out of the water again, he dragged himself out onto the ground. He bowed his head as if it was too heavy for him to hold, and the water from his hair dripped onto her shoulder like cold tears. Kami put up a hand, her palm hitting his chest, the icy material slick over his skin.

His breath came harsh in her ear. “With you,” he said. “And why would you want that?” He lifted his head and watched her, the lightning in the murky sky touching his hair with electric-pale glints. His eyes were gray hollows set in his strained face. “You were right all along,” he said. “We shouldn’t be—it shouldn’t have happened. It’s twisted and evil. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Kami demanded. “You weren’t even born! Your mother did it, and my mother agreed to it. You didn’t do anything.”

So, she did it, terrified your mother, trapped you in a cage you can’t escape. She got what she wanted. She didn’t care who she hurt. That’s what she is. I got what I wanted too. I was fighting with my father and I wanted him blotted out of the world. I threw him down the stairs and snapped his neck. That’s what I am
.

As Jared spoke inside her head, the rain cascaded down in the silence, thudding into the earth and crushing the fallen leaves, breaking the blackness of the lake with glints like hidden needles.

Jared had been angry and thrown his father down the stairs, without even meaning to. He’d been angry with her the night someone threw her down the well, and she did not remember hands on her: magic could have hurled her down. Just as magic had hurled down Jared’s father.

No. She wouldn’t believe it.

“I’m not sorry,” Kami told him. “I wouldn’t go back to a time before we were born, make it right, and lose you. I wouldn’t be me without you. I wouldn’t, I never want to—” The crashing drum and rattle of the rain ceased, with a suddenness that made it seem like silence was echoing through the woods. Kami sat on the wet ground looking at Jared and said, on a breath—“Lose you.”

Jared studied her face. The air between them felt new, the world remade by the storm. He leaned away from her.

Kami threw up walls, forbidding him to touch her mind, wanting to die if he heard this, and thought:
He’s never going to kiss me. He’s never going to want to
.

Jared’s shoulders tensed, as if bracing for an attack.

Kami felt him misread the way she’d withdrawn. She couldn’t tell him what was really going on. Instead she said, “So, we’re all right? We’re going to work out this magic stuff together?”

“Yeah,” said Jared. “What do you want to do about it?”

Kami told him.

H
olly was the last one to arrive at headquarters, humming and carrying her motorcycle helmet under her arm.

By then Kami was already sitting behind her desk, where she retreated when she wanted to feel more secure. She was wearing a blazer because she wanted to be taken seriously, though it was possible the matching headband with the bow ruined the effect.

Angela was standing on the other side of the desk, a tower of orange silk and outrage. Jared was behind Kami, arms crossed over his chest, looking like he was her bodyguard.

“No,” Angela was saying as Holly walked in, “I don’t believe you. And encouraging her to spin some crazy story isn’t helping me like you,” she added, to Jared.

Kami stood. “He isn’t encouraging me,” she said. “I make up my own mind, and I’m not crazy. Neither of us is crazy. It’s true.”

“Oh, magic is real?” Angie said scornfully. “That’s true?”

Holly’s helmet slipped out from under her arm and tumbled to the floor. Everyone turned to look at her. Holly stared at the gleaming blue helmet rolling at her feet.

“Do you know something about this, Holly?” asked
Jared. There was an edge to his voice that made Holly look at him and flinch back.

Kami glanced at Jared, and then at Holly. Holly had always seemed to like Jared, to think, in her words, that he might be fun. Kami couldn’t blame Holly for the way she was staring at Jared now. The remote look in Jared’s eyes wasn’t fun, it was frightening. Kami understood that Holly might like the
illusion
of danger and not want danger that was real. She couldn’t blame her for that.

“Only what everybody says,” Holly said, low.

“And what does everybody say?” Jared demanded.

“I’ve never heard anybody say anything,” Angela announced.

“You’re an outsider,” said Holly.

Angela’s face was both angry and hurt for a moment, before she forced her expression back into pure anger.

“You
are
,” Holly told her, looking desperate to make her understand. “You and Rusty only moved here six years ago. Most of the families have been here for generations and generations. Some have been here since the start.”

“The start of what?” Jared snarled. “Since the Lynburns founded their private kingdom of all the sorcerers together? Since then?”

“They’re just stories,” Holly said. “Stories about settling in Sorry-in-the-Vale because it was a good place, a magical place. Where we were all meant to be, and the price paid is worth it. They’re just local legends, though, just stuff my dad says when he’s drunk. They’re not true. Nobody can really do magic! The Lynburns are gone!”

It was something Kami had heard other people from the
Vale say. They said it when they were wishing for crops not to fail and storms to pass, but she realized now she’d heard her mother say it when something happened to scare her, as if to reassure herself: the Lynburns are gone.

As if the Lynburns were genies who could grant wishes, and monsters waiting to leap, all at once.

Jared watched Holly with cold eyes. He said, “Now we’re back.”

At Holly’s feet, her helmet shattered into pieces of crystal and bone. Holly bit her lip and looked to Angela as if she was her only possible source of comfort, as if Kami and Jared were her enemies. Angela stared at the pale and translucent shards on the floor, and her expression grew even more outraged.

Kami got up, with her hands placed flat on the desk. “You’re paying for that, buddy,” she said mildly.

“I don’t believe you can read each other’s minds. You can be a magician or a criminal or a balloon-animal giraffe for all I care,” Angela told Jared, and then looked at Kami. “But you’re my best friend in the world. And that controlling freak is not convincing you that he can talk to you in your head, for God’s sake.”

Kami could not help smiling, even though it made Angela look even more furious. Angela was asking for proof, and that Kami could handle.

“What we need to do,” Kami said, “is run a test. I want you to come downstairs with me, Angela, and tell me something you’ve never told me before. And then Jared will tell Holly what you told me.”

“I will do no such thing!”

Kami tipped up her face to look Angela in the eye. “You’re so sure it’s not true,” she said. “Don’t you want to prove it?”

Angela held her gaze for an instant longer. “Fine,” she snapped, and turned, her black hair flying like a cape from her shoulders. She went for the door, her legs eating up the ground in four long, smooth strides, and stopped beside Holly at the threshold. Angela’s curled mouth softened a little. “You all right?” she asked.

Holly reached out and touched Angela’s hand, fingers twining briefly around hers.

“Yeah,” she said, and smiled back with an effort.

Angie nodded at Holly and walked on.

“This is all going to be totally fine, I have a plan,” Kami assured Holly, brushing by.

“Right,” Holly said. She looked doubtful, but that was possibly because Kami and Angela were abandoning her with a guy who looked on the edge and ready to jump.

Angela did not look doubtful in the least as she and Kami walked down into the shadowy stairwell. Her high-heeled boots sounded like gunshots, going down every step.

“You’re my best friend,” Kami said, looking up into Angela’s stern face. “I could always trust you never to think I was crazy.”

“Your faith is touching but totally misplaced,” Angela said. “I believe you to be a permanent inhabitant of cloud-cuckoo-land, and this year you may be getting elected mayor.” She reached the bottom of the stairs and wheeled on Kami, her eyes boring into Kami’s. “But you can trust me.”

“So trust me,” said Kami. “Tell me a secret.”

Angela hesitated for a moment, looking down at Kami.
She still looked furious, but she leaned forward. Her face was still set and angry, but she brushed the hair gently back from Kami’s face and whispered in her ear.

When they got back, they found Jared kneeling before Holly. Kami raised her eyebrows at the sight: Holly was pretty popular with guys, but in Kami’s experience they seldom literally threw themselves at her feet. They all looked down at Jared’s bowed blond head and saw he was gathering up the shards of crystal and fragments of bone in his hands, and his hands were shimmering with magic.

The air in their headquarters seemed thin suddenly, like being up on a high mountain. The Lynburns were gone, Kami thought. But not anymore.

The crystal sparkled like sun hitting snow, while the bone glowed ivory as if discovered by candlelight at night.

Jared looked up. “I can’t fix it,” he said. The corner of his mouth came up in a tired, crooked half smile. “No surprise that I’m better at breaking things than mending them. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”

“Okay,” said Holly. “I like bright colors. Maybe red or orange.”