She sat down in a fragile wooden chair by the fire, because it was the closest to the sofa where Dad was sitting and Tomo slept. She gave Dad a faint smile and reached out her hand across the distance between them. He clasped her hand in his.
Jared knelt down on the floor by her chair. “I’m just going to see if Martha needs help with Ash,” he said quietly.
She looked down at his face, that planed, cool Lynburn face glossed with gold by the fire. His eyes were touched by firelight too, lit up and warm when he looked at her.
Kami smiled at him. “I’ll be here.”
Jared got up. “I’ll be thinking about you.”
He went out, and after some time while they all sat around and tried to talk their way to a solution, Ash came downstairs and stood by the fire, not kneeling but looking down at her with concern. He looked pale, and he was walking unsteadily, but he was walking.
“How are you?” Kami asked him.
“Can’t complain,” said Ash. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh,” Kami said, acutely conscious of her own emotions because she knew Ash could feel them. She could feel that he agreed with her, that things had to be controlled and smoothed over, and this genuine accord made their situation seem more bearable. “I’m holding on.”
Ash put a hand in the space of the wooden frame of her chair back, and touched her lower back. It was a gesture of support, nothing more, his fingers spread out warm on her skin and his honest wish for her well-being spreading warmer all through her.
It was possible for a moment to believe that Jared was right, and all would be well.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Lost Love
He’d lied to Kami.
Jared had been careful not to say anything to her that wasn’t true, but he had left her with a false impression about where he was going to be and what he was going to do, and that was as good as lying.
He didn’t know how much time he would have before someone noticed he was missing. He was hoping it would be all night, but he couldn’t count on that.
So there was no excuse for him to be standing in the dark of the High Street, looking in through the window. It made no sense. He was going to get caught.
It was strange and terrifying, being able to lie to Kami. He’d been so sure, when he lied to her last time and told her she was nothing special, that she could see right through him.
This time he knew she’d believed what he had wanted her to believe.
He hoped that he had helped her feel better: it was a selfish and awful hope. He should just want her to feel better without caring who was responsible for it. He did want that, wanted her happy, but he could not untangle that from wanting to be the cause of her happiness.
He did not know where that left him, except standing in the dark, staring in at her.
The pocket shutters that folded into the window casements were spread out but still hanging open so a large slice of the room showed, a white wall painted over with warm yellow light, a shadowed angle where the wall and ceiling met. Angela and Holly were on their feet, a blur of swinging hair and long legs in his way. Angela returned to the sofa and Rusty, and Holly followed her, and finally Jared could see.
She was sitting by the fire, turned away from the window. Turned toward Ash, leaning in his direction. The swing of hair that was just one brown shade away from black had come untucked from behind her ear, casting a shadow on her gold-touched skin, against the curve of her jaw.
She was smiling. Her mouth was almost always a slight curve, and though her smile was shadowed today it was still the brightest thing in the room. She was like that, always: the vivid point in every room. He thought that was why he had never been able to truly believe she was imaginary.
She had always seemed like the real one. She would be all right. He’d told her that, and he’d meant it. She’d get her town back, and put her family back together.
And the last link between them was broken now: the last couple of days between them did not matter anymore. She’d felt still tied to him because he was the only one she had been tied to, but now she was tied to Ash. The link was new, but Jared knew what it would become.
Ash was a good person. He would do the right thing for her, be what she wanted, not helplessly want to make too many demands.
Jared could be nothing to her now: Kami was free of him at last.
He looked in the window for one instant longer, even though he knew there was no way to memorize her. She was always changing, not like other girls, who looked like pictures. She was more like a river, all constant motion.
There was never going to be a time when he could think, Yes, all right, enough. So he turned away, because he had to, and turned to Aurimere.
It was easy to see in the dark. The flames around it were still burning.
* * *
By the time he was halfway up the hill, the heat of the fire felt as if it was scorching Jared’s skin. Standing on the crest of the hill looking into the flames, he could barely see Aurimere at all. The house was hidden by fierce light, the fire crackling like harsh laughter.
Sweat stung at his hairline, burned in his eyes like tears. There was no way through the fire. Unless you were a sorcerer.
Jared concentrated on the fire the way Ash had taught him. It felt different from regular fire, like running your hand over a tire and knowing it had been mended. Magic had been used recklessly to make it. He could put this whole fire out now, and Sorry-in-the-Vale would be glad.
He didn’t. Somebody in Aurimere would be bound to notice. He created an opening for himself, like pushing a door ajar. A shadow fell across the fire and he walked in it, through to the other side.
Once inside the fire, he could see Aurimere, the sheer walls turned silver in the moonlight. There were yellow lights in the windows.
There were invaders in Aurimere.
Jared asked the night to cover him, and it did, loaning him a little of its darkness and wrapping him in shadows so that when he passed by windows all the people inside saw was night. He moved around to the garden, the crumbling wall where he and Kami had talked once, and found the back door under one of the eaves, the one that had a door handle shaped like an iron hand. The small hand, fingers curved, was moon-silvered and moonshine-cold against his fingers. He felt as if there was a cool press on his hand for a moment, before he released the handle and slipped in the door.
The corridor was shadowy, the only lights coming from somewhere up the stairs and far away. Jared was glad: he didn’t want to see Aurimere overrun, not all at once.
He tried to walk softly, because the high ceilings and stone of Aurimere carried echoes.
He remembered how alien it had seemed, this echoing chilly place, when he’d first come. But he’d missed it while he was living in the Water Rising. He hadn’t realized Aurimere meant something to him until he found how much he hated having it taken away.
Maybe it was just that, chilly and strange as it was, it reminded him of Aunt Lillian.
He couldn’t lie to himself. This mission wasn’t just for Kami. He was coming to get Ten, but he wanted to save Aunt Lillian as well.
Aunt Lillian had stolen away Kami’s little brother, like an evil sorcerer in a fairy tale, as if a sorcerer had to be something the whole town was afraid of. As if his family hadn’t done enough to Kami’s family already.
Aunt Lillian had more than proven Kami’s mother’s point. No wonder Claire Glass wanted her daughter to stay away from him.
And Jared still wanted to save her. Maybe to save her so he could murder her himself, he was that furious with her. But he remembered the night he had moved back into Aurimere, when he had woken to a feeling like someone stroking his hair, very lightly so he would not wake. Except that if you slept on the streets for any length of time, you learned to always wake when someone was touching you.
He hadn’t woken fast, or in alarm. It was like he knew even in his sleep that he was safe, that he was being watched over, and that meant he stirred more slowly than he would have usually.
That gave whoever it was time so that when Jared opened his eyes and lifted himself from his pillow, all he saw was a crack of light made by the not-quite-closed door.
Maybe he had not quite closed the door himself when he was going to bed. Maybe it was just a lingering remnant of a dream about family, turned into a memory by his sleepy mind and wishful thinking, and nothing real at all.
He was still going to get Aunt Lillian out.
Aurimere had no place to keep prisoners: no dungeons or crypts to use in a pinch. Jared’s guess was that Rob would’ve put his wife in her room and sealed the door.
He slipped up the stairs by the library, past the marble bust of a Lynburn, silent as a shadow. The night was still wrapped around him, a kind cloak, though glints of moonlight off furniture and glass tore at it.
He reached the second floor, crossed to the wing where Aunt Lillian’s room was, and had to flatten himself against a wall as two sorcerers ran by. They rushed heedlessly past where he stood in the shadows, shoes clattering on the marble floor: one was a girl who looked younger than he was, hardly more than a child. Her face was familiar, as if he’d seen her in school.
Jared felt the shadows cling to him as he left the corner, the night of Sorry-in-the-Vale telling him that he could not remain hidden long.
He paused and looked at himself in a mirror as he passed down the hall: it had an ornate gold frame and the glass was speckled. His face faded in and out of vision, his hair a gleam in the dark. He looked like the ghost of a Lynburn, still walking Aurimere’s halls.
There was a little table below the mirror, with a lamp on it. The lampshade was fringed with points that glowed in the moonlight. Jared’s eyes went to their light: they were seed pearls. Seed pearls, caught in the hollow of paws belonging to some very small animal. The lampshade was hung with paws and pearls.
This crazy house, Jared thought, and almost smiled.
His quiet progress down the hall was stopped when he came in sight of Aunt Lillian’s door and saw his guess had been right.
The door was closed. He couldn’t see Aunt Lillian.
But he could see his mother, standing in front of the door. She was looking at it as if there was some riddle inscribed on the dark wood, as though if only she could make out what it said, she would know what to do and how they could all be happy.
Jared didn’t know if she was a guard, or if she had simply come to visit her sister. But he remembered that once she had protected Aunt Lillian from Rob. Once, she had even protected him.
She stood hesitating and trembling in front of the door, her streaming hair a cascade of moonshine. Jared wondered how long she had been there; it could have been hours.
He walked softly until he was standing very close to her.
Then he pulled the shadows away so they were standing face to face.
Jared smiled at her, baring his teeth. “Hi, Mom.”
* * *
His mother started backward in surprise and hit the wall, holding up a hand as if to ward him off. It made him sick to see her flinch, always had, but this time Jared bit his lip and looked away, and did not back down. Her intake of breath was shuddering and sharp, echoing in the hallway louder than her whisper: “What are you doing here?”
“I missed you,” Jared said. “Come on. What do you think?”
His mother pressed her hands together briefly, as if she had to pray for an instant. “If you go to Rob, he’ll forgive you. He wants you.”
“Is that what you want?” Jared asked.
His mother’s hand fluttered to her throat, a gesture reminiscent of a bird startled out of a tree. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You hate me.”
“I don’t,” his mother said, sharply. “I don’t—hate you.”
“Well, you don’t want me around, do you?” Jared asked. His mother looked at him in the same blank way as she had looked at the door, as if he was a riddle she could not figure out and had given up trying. “And you certainly don’t want Aunt Lillian around, do you?”