Untold (11 page)

“Can we just get it over with?” Angela demanded. “I want to be friends with you again, without all this weirdness. If you think I’m disgusting or something . . .”

Holly looked at Angie then, stricken. “Oh no,” she said. “No.”

“Then can I just say,” Angela began, and stopped, then started again. “I don’t want to say I’m sorry, as if a guy hitting on a girl is a compliment and a girl hitting on a girl is an insult that should be apologized for. I won’t try anything again. I obviously picked up cues that were not there; I don’t have any experience and I’m sorry that—”

“Cues?” Holly asked. She felt cold suddenly, as if she had been turned to ice and might shatter.

“What?” said Angela.

“You thought there were cues?” Holly asked. Her voice sounded cold too. “You mean you thought there was a chance I might like you back . . . that way?”

There was a silence.

Angela said in a level voice, “I made a mistake.”

“Yes, you did!” Holly stood up, looking at anything but Angie. “I have to go home.”

Home might still be empty, or it might have her family in it, her family with blood on their hands. Holly was scared to go home. But she couldn’t stay here. The whole world had become terrifying and hostile; Holly felt like it was closing in on her like a trap with cruel teeth, and the only way to survive would be to lose some part of herself.

* * *

It was night, and the terribly few people who had come to Ash’s mother were mostly gone. Aurimere was silent. The sound of a door opening behind him made Ash start and twist around in his chair. As usual when he saw Jared, he got a sinking feeling. Every time was like the first time Ash had ever seen him: every time he felt the same horror. Another young Lynburn, when Ash had thought he was the only one, and this one was already everything Ash’s father wanted. This one was already a killer.

Jared leaned against the doors of the counting room, head tipped back against the carvings of fire and water.

“So you’re back,” Ash said. “I thought you were never going to darken these doors again.”

Jared smiled, the scar by the side of his mouth tightening. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to stay.”

“But you’re always welcome,” Ash told him. “My mother’s made that very clear.”

Jared’s smile spread. Of all the painted Lynburn faces in the gallery, Ash had never seen one that looked as distant as his brother’s.

“The heir of Aurimere,” Jared said, his voice mocking. “Don’t tell me you bought that. Imagine me ruling anything; imagine anyone trusting me with anything that mattered. It’s a joke. Your mother is just trying to punish you.” He left the doors and strolled over to the table. He pulled out a chair and reversed it, straddling it, leaning his arms along the chair back with his chin on his arms.

“You think?” Ash asked.

“I do,” said Jared. “Why, Ash. Don’t tell me you ever bought me as a real rival.”

Ash’s father had told him to watch Kami, and she had responded to the attention until Jared had arrived on the scene. His parents had spent all their time talking about Jared until his father left. Jared was the focus of everyone’s attention, and Ash was out in the cold.

“Kind of funny,” Jared observed.

“What’s funny?” Ash asked, wondering if he could edge his chair away without Jared noticing.

“That neither of us even knew the other one was alive,” Jared said. “And yet you were always trying to be the good one. And everyone always knew I was the bad one.”

“Trying to be the good one?” Ash asked. “By—by almost killing someone for my dad?”

“Yeah,” said Jared. “Isn’t that what you were trying to do, be good?”

Ash hadn’t thought anyone would be able to understand that, when he barely understood himself how he’d gotten so twisted up. He’d never thought anyone would understand, least of all Jared.

“The Lynburns,” Jared continued quietly. “Aurimere. They’re what matter to you. You’re better than me. You were born to all this. Of course you’re going to have Aurimere. I don’t want it. I’d ruin it. I ruin everything I touch.” He slanted a look at the Lynburn coat of arms, and apparently saw something different than Ash saw, because he smirked and added, “And let’s face it, the place is pretty screwed as is.”

Ash had no idea how to deal with him. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re not in competition,” said Jared. “We don’t even want the same things. There’s no reason for us to be at odds. There’s every reason for us to work together.”

Ever since the night in the woods when he’d disappointed both his parents, no Lynburn had given Ash the slightest sign they thought he was worth bothering with. Even though Jared made a two-legged table look stable, his offer was tempting. “What did you have in mind?” Ash asked warily.

Jared’s focus on Ash tightened, eyes narrowing, so Ash felt as if Jared had leaned closer even though he had not. “That ceremony with the Crying Pools Aunt Lillian was talking about,” he said. “Is there a book about it? How’s it done?”

“As far as I know, it’s pretty simple.” Ash tried to make out the expression on Jared’s face, but he got nothing. Ash’s reflection in Jared’s pale eyes looked back at him, worried and hopeful. “Are you thinking of going to my mother and getting her to do the ceremony?”

“Would she have to help me?” Jared inquired. “Does it have to be just one person doing the ceremony and one person helping?”

Ash hesitated.

Jared blinked, slow and considering. “I was thinking, what if both of us did the ceremony together. And we didn’t tell Aunt Lillian until it was done. Might do her good to get a surprise.”

His mother had said she didn’t think Ash would survive it. Ash wanted to prove her wrong, but he could not stop fearing she was right. “You don’t technically need another sorcerer to help,” he offered, tentatively. “Mum helped Dad, but she did it alone. There are just a few words you need to say; most of the ceremony is about what happens when you go into the pool. It’s a test. It’s more than that. It’s a trial—it’s about being strong enough to reach another place, from which you can access more power.”

Ash looked again at their coat of arms. Fire and water, Aurimere and the sword, and a drowning woman giving the lie to their motto,
We neither drown nor burn.
“There’s a way to open a channel of magic between us, so we can share power,” said Ash. “That’s what Mom did for Dad. We could do it. If we trusted each other enough.”

“We shouldn’t decide right away,” Jared said. “It’s a serious enough undertaking. We should both think it through.”

“Yeah.” Ash nodded. “That makes sense.”

Jared reached forward and took one of the papers from the table, flipping the worn-soft square of ivory paper casually between his brown fingers. “What are those words you need to say?”

Ash told him. Jared nodded, seeming mostly absorbed in reading the paper in his hands. “There’s someone here called Lydia Johnson who gave a lot of money for a love spell. Can we actually do those?”

“Not love,” said Ash. “If an attraction’s possible, we can direct and intensify it. But it won’t last.”

“So some long-ago Lynburn cheated the woman,” Jared remarked. “Aren’t we a charming family? Personally, I’m amazed the townspeople never barred all the doors and burned Aurimere to the ground with every last Lynburn inside.”

Ash stared. Personally, he was amazed by how crazy Jared was. The question about love spells made an awful suspicion occur to him. “What about you?” Ash asked. “You said that Aurimere and the Lynburns were what mattered to
me,
and that you and I didn’t even want the same things. So what matters to you? What do you want?”

Jared’s smile made Ash flinch. “Nothing I can have,” Jared told him. “Thanks for all the help, Ash.” He swung out of his chair, the piece of paper fluttering to the floor. Ash stooped to pick it up and it occurred to him that, crazy or not, Jared was the only member of his family who had reached out to him at all since that night in the quarry.

“Jared,” he called out.

Jared was already at the door, but he stopped and turned his head.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Ash continued awkwardly. “Good talk. I will think about it.”

Jared stood framed by wood carvings of fire and water, as if choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea, and the first feeling that Ash could empathize with crossed his brother’s face.

For an instant, he looked guilty.

“I’ll never take Aurimere away from you, Ash,” Jared said. “I swear. You can believe that.” Then the door carved with fire and water closed behind him, and Ash listened to his footsteps slowly fade away down the stone halls of home.

Chapter Ten

Past Saving

The kids were back in bed by the time Kami heard the creak of the front door opening, and instantly afterward the loud sound of her father’s voice.

He sounded furious in the same frightening way he had before.

“You just wanted to protect me, and protect our children, and protect the town.”

“Yes,” said Mum.

“So you told lie after lie, all for the best, until you had told so many lies you didn’t know how to begin telling the truth.”

“Yes,” Mum said again, desperately.

“I could have forgiven you for any of those lies,” Dad said, though he didn’t sound forgiving. “But there were so many of them. You didn’t know how to begin telling the truth? I don’t know how to begin trusting you again. There was no time in our lives when you weren’t lying to me. There’s nothing to go back to.”

Kami crept down the stairs, trying to walk softly and sidestep every creak, until she was in position to look down into the hall. She could see her parents’ shadows, black against the yellow wall, and how far apart they stood.

“There was nothing you could have done if I had told you,” Mum said, low. “I did wrong, but I did it because I love you and I love the kids.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make!” Dad said. “They’re not just your kids. They’re
our
kids. That’s what it meant when we got married, that we promised to make those choices together, and I always have.”

“I know you gave up a lot to come back to Sorry-in-the-Vale when I told you I was going to have Kami,” Mum told him unsteadily. “And you never threw it in my face, until now.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I wanted to make it up to you, I wanted to make things right for you,” said Mum, her voice changing, becoming more like her usual voice, trying to be calm, trying to explain matters. “So I did a spell, and it hurt Kami. After that I was sure I could never tell you any of it. I was sure you would never forgive me.”

“Well then,” Dad said. His voice had changed too: it was very soft. “At last we find something we can agree on.”

They went into the kitchen. Kami heard the clatter of their movement, the absence of noise that was their furious silence. Her hand was still locked around the banister, gripping the wood as if there might be some comfort there. As if wood and stone were what her home was made of. She thought of Aurimere House, where Angela had said people were going to Lillian, where there might be answers.

Angela had said Jared was there too.

No. She wasn’t going to do it. She was going to go back to bed and sleep, and in the morning she would be in control of herself. In the morning she would fix this.

Kami pried her hand off the banister. She walked slowly back up the stairs and into her room, shutting the door behind her with finality, as if she could make the world outside stop. She lay down on the bed, still in her clothes, and closed her eyes so she could not see the fires burning. Scarlet traces lingered in the darkness behind her eyes. Falling asleep felt like giving up, like she could not bear her own thoughts a moment longer and was snatching at oblivion.

She didn’t get oblivion. She dreamed instead of water and gold, drowning and burning, and not caring. She dreamed that Jared was back in her head, where she could be utterly sure of him. Everything else was chaos in her dream, and it did not matter. She was happy.

Kami woke with a violent jolt that snapped her into awareness, curled up in her sheets with every muscle tense and aching.

She got out of bed to close her window and found herself just kneeling instead, her whole body shaking. She laid her face down on the icy cushions of the window seat and reached out, hand on the windowsill. As if there was anything there to grasp but the bitterly cold night air.

Kami had never been like other people. She had never had to cry herself to sleep alone. It was overwhelming to realize that there was not going to be any comfort ever again. She was going to spend the rest of her life living the way other people did, in terrible everyday loneliness, and she did not know how to bear it.

She wanted to make any bargain to have him back.

Kami rose after a long dark while and slipped down the stairs and out the door as quietly as she could. Then she began to run, along the curve of the woods to where the path led straight up to Aurimere.

The windows were all lit up, and the hall was so bright that for a moment when the door opened all Kami could see was someone tall, and light on fair hair.

Ash said, sounding surprised but pleased, “Kami?”

“Is Jared still here?” Kami asked.

“No,” Ash answered, after a brief pause. “But he’s all right. Actually, we had the first good conversation we’ve ever had. What would you think about us doing the ceremony together?”

“The Crying Pools ceremony?” Kami asked. “The one Lillian said was dangerous?”

“Yeah,” Ash said. “I mean, we both know it’s a big decision. But it’s something to think over. It might make all the difference to the town. Look, do you want to come in?” He stepped a little aside. The night air was pulling frost-tipped fingers through Kami’s hair, but she stayed where she was.

“Did Jared say that? That it was a big decision?”

“And we both needed to think it through,” Ash said.

“Think it through?” Kami repeated, above the sound of the wind. “Jared? Don’t you know him at all? If he sounds reasonable, or sensible, or capable of any sort of rational thought, it means he’s lying through his teeth! What did you tell him about the ceremony?”