“Okay,” Angela said.
“I mean, it’s not just staying with you, of course. This is a tough time, and—and I bet Henry is grateful for the support. And of course Henry really enjoys your company.”
Angela made a slight face. Holly couldn’t interpret it, other than knowing it meant things were not going well. It was possible that Angie hated appreciation, Henry, the very sound of Holly’s voice, or all of the above.
“Okay,” Angela repeated.
She got back to turning the pages of her book. Holly felt more and more like a creeper, the kind of guy who didn’t say suggestive stuff but did insist on having a conversation, who hassled beautiful girls who obviously wanted to be left alone.
She only knew one way to do things. She didn’t know how girls were supposed to go after other girls.
And yet Angie had fancied Holly once before, and Holly hadn’t even meant to do that. Maybe the problem was that Holly was being too subtle.
“You look tired,” was Holly’s next venture.
She knew that was not the smoothest possible thing to say, but she had a plan.
“Almost constantly,” Angela replied, staring at her book and resting her fingers against her temples. “I am tired of ass**le sorcerers, I am tired of having my life threatened, and I am tired in the sense that I want a nap. Yes. And your point would be?”
The temptation to say “Never mind,” and also hide behind the sofa because Angie was terrifying, was almost irresistible.
But Holly wanted to be brave, and she wanted to have this. Guys were often really persistent, and it worked: she didn’t want Angela to think Holly wasn’t trying hard enough because she didn’t like her enough.
Holly braced herself and jumped to her feet.
“Oh, I was just thinking,” she said with forced and perhaps slightly manic brightness. “You must be super tense! How about a massage?”
Before she finished speaking, she had her hands on Angela’s shoulders, so much narrower than a boy’s shoulders and almost fragile-feeling, even though she knew Angie was strong. She felt for an instant a sense of accomplishment.
Angela’s shoulders moved under her hands in a shudder of indignant recoil, like a scandalized maiden snake whose Victorian sensibilities had been deeply offended.
The movement was enough: Holly had her hands off Angela and up in surrender, but Angela spun around in her chair and wheeled on her anyway.
“What,” said Angela, and the ice in her voice chilled Holly, “do you think you are doing?”
“Sorry,” Holly muttered. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It was right out of order, Holly,” Angela said.
She was not even standing up, but she was a tower of outrage. Angie might go around traumatizing people, but she always knew exactly what she was doing.
Holly didn’t know how to behave, had never quite known how to be friends, let alone anything more. She was the fluffy idiot her parents had always believed, the girl the other girls didn’t want to be around, not someone who knew the magic trick of being taken seriously. She was so, so stupid.
Holly knew she was blushing and was afraid she was going to cry, which would be even more humiliating.
“I was just trying to—” she got out.
“What?” Angela demanded. “What were you trying to do?”
“Never mind,” said Holly. She turned her face away and looked at the door, just before it burst open to reveal Ash Lynburn, in a T-shirt and shoes but also blue pajama bottoms.
“Come quickly,” he said. “It’s Kami.”
That was when it occurred to Holly, horribly and for the first time, that now that Ash and Jared had no magic she was one of only three sorcerers left on their side.
“I can help,” she told Ash. “I can do magic.”
Holly pushed past him. She did not want to see the hope lighting his face. She had to act, since there was nobody else to do it, but she was so scared. If she messed up, people she loved could die. And the one thing Holly was sure of about herself was that she would mess up.
Kami had gone to sleep warm and happy, Tomo sharing her pillow because she wanted to be sure he wouldn’t disturb their parents. She woke up with a combination of shouting in her head and the sound of glass breaking.
She sat up, bewildered and sick, still warm but coughing now. Her nose stung with smoke. Her vision swam and coalesced into the sight of Ash crouched on her bedroom floor, glass shards around his feet and glinting in his hair.
Kami opened her mouth to ask what was going on, and burst into another fit of painful coughing.
What’s going on? she asked, her hands moving almost of their own volition until they found Tomo’s silky hair and narrow back. Her palm flattened against the worn, much-washed material of his favorite pajamas, the one with the pattern of trains on them. Someone had broken through her bedroom window, and her little brother hadn’t even stirred.
Ash did not answer her, in her head or out loud. He staggered forward, through the broken glass and the general debris of Kami’s room, made for her bedroom door and flung it open, saying, “Ja—”
A roar answered him. An inferno waited beyond. What had been Kami’s familiar old corridor, the floorboard that squeaked, the wall that bore a terrible painting of Kami’s that her mother had framed and hung up against her father’s wishes—because, he said, he loved her but it was truly terrible—the corridor where Tomo had kicked off his shoes today and which she had called good nights and good mornings down all her life, had become the dark hole for a glowing, growling monster. All Kami could see was shadows and consuming flames—the fire seemed to leap at Ash, and he slammed the door again.
Kami was coughing with her eyes smarting because of the smoke. She shook Tomo frantically, ignoring his groggy protests, and looked at the door. She could see the fire now, see the burning orange light around the edges of the frame, smell the smoke as it hit the door.
She had been so stupid to count on the sorcerers not recovering quickly, to believe that they would not strike back right away.
This was what came of standing against Rob: this was the retribution of the Aurimere sorcerers.
Her house was on fire, with her family inside it.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go
—Theodore Roethke
Chapter Eleven
Those in Glass Houses
“Okay, Tomo, don’t panic, don’t panic, you’re fine,” said Kami, patting him frantically.
Tomo peered at her, eyes still sleepy. “You seem like you’re panicking,” he said in a small, smoke-cracked voice.
“Well, that’s all you know, because I’m not!” Kami exclaimed.
She climbed out of bed, and tried to pull Tomo with her, but he resisted, fighting her, his whole small body locked in a panicked spasm: he clearly did not want to get any closer to the surge and hiss of the fire.
Ash walked over to where Kami stood, then sat on the bed.
“Come here,” he said, his voice still clear, and always charming. He held out a hand to Tomo, eyes on him. He had a compelling gaze, Ash, blue and sweet and shamelessly utilized. “I’ll keep you safe,” he promised.
Tomo obviously found his argument persuasive.
“Okay,” he said, tumbling promptly into Ash’s arms.
Kami was the one who would have to save him. She had magic, and Ash did not. Ash was as vulnerable as Tomo. She would have to save them both.
She ran over to the closed door. The floorboards already felt hot under her bare feet, almost scorching her, on the point of kindling.
Throwing open the door again, she threw her magic at the fire, willing it down with all her might. It only surged at her again with a sound that was almost furious, erupting into her room and making her jump back.
She could not only see and hear and taste the fire raging into her room, choking their air away: she could feel what had created the fire, the spell that was pushing her magic back. This fire was Rob’s devouring fury, his rage and pain channeled into nature and intent on destruction.
Ash stood up, still holding Tomo, who was clinging around his neck. He was looking to Kami anxiously.
“Ash, how did you get in here?” she demanded.
“My mom floated me up,” Ash said. “You can make the air light around someone, but—I don’t know how to do it, and Mom went to get your father.”
“I can’t put out the fire,” Kami shouted, above the crackle and thunder of fire bringing down her home. “I can’t even hold it back, there’s so much magic behind it. We have to find some other way out.”
She stopped and shoved her feet into black backless mules with silver and black sequins, shoes she’d planned to wear when summer finally came, before she ran over the shards of glass to her broken window.
It was not so very far down, but it was far enough. Ash joined her at the window, moving toward the cool air and away from the fire.
“You could try to float me down!” he yelled.
“I’d take that risk with you,” she said, “but not with my baby brother.”
Oh well, Ash said. Thanks very much.
She felt a hint of amusement from him, as well as panic, and it was reassuring in the same way that having Tomo laugh had been. It calmed her too.
Her room was a burning trap. Kami looked out of her bedroom window at her familiar view. Her little garden and the wild woods beyond, the woods that made magic stronger. She tried to block out the hiss of the fire and listen for the whisper of the woods.
She gripped the windowsill tight, grains of glass prickling into her palms as if she had grasped thorns, and saw the silver-tipped tops of the trees in the woods all sway and incline toward her like a crowd of courtiers at the sight of a queen.
In the moonlit square of grass that was her garden, the laburnum tree that stood against the fence stirred, shook leaves suddenly bursting with vivid yellow splashes of color, and woke to life.
Kami pushed magic into the tree with such determined force that she could almost feel her magic, as if it was blood coursing into new limbs. As if she was bearing the heavy weight of leaves, stretching her tall trunk, pulling her long roots out of the clinging earth.
“Mum says I’m not allowed to climb,” Tomo remarked, watching the slow progress of the tree across the garden.
“That’s okay, buddy, I’m old enough,” said Ash.
“Anyway, you never listen to Mum,” said Kami, who knew her brother and did not believe in coddling children like Ash was doing.
They could all feel the fire, hot at their backs. It was easier to breathe at the window, but the whole house felt like it was being split apart into splinters by a fiery giant. Kami refused to let the knot of panic in her throat rise. She stared out at the tree, and it came closer and closer, creeping across the ground leaving broken twigs and fallen leaves in its path, until its branches hit the windowsill outside.
“Ash,” said Kami, “take Tomo and go.”
Ash hesitated. You’ll come right after us, won’t you?
Kami hesitated in turn, and Ash read her anxious love as clearly as she had been able to read his fear.
He reached out with his free hand and touched her face.
We came for your whole family, he said. I promise they’ll all be safe. Come out right after us. There’s nothing you can do, and I can’t bear the idea of something happening to you.
“Get my brother out of here,” Kami said. “Now.”
Ash gave her one desperate look, and then he was climbing out of the window, the knee of his pajamas tearing on the glass still scattered on the sill. He caught the top of the window frame in his free hand for balance, then leaned and grabbed one of the branches hanging up above where she could see, and swung himself and Tomo into the tree.