Jon rubbed his forehead. “Please never become a motivational speaker, Lettice.”
Lillian was dressed in one of Martha Wright’s knitted cardigans, but she wore it with the air of a queen wearing a mantle. She drew it closed now with an air of offended dignity.
“I don’t believe in telling children comforting lies,” she said. “It lets them delay growing up. I wanted to lay all possible choices before my children, so they can decide what to do.”
She directed her coolly demanding gaze to Ash and Jared. Jared looked badly startled.
“I get to decide what to do as well,” said Kami. “Don’t I?”
Lillian made a small face, as if she agreed that Kami got to decide but Lillian didn’t have to like it. “It’s Ash’s decision.”
“If I’m the source, and he’s my sorcerer, wouldn’t his being linked to someone else affect me too?”
Kami had never laid claim to Ash like that before, and she felt a ripple of his surprise go through her, but she wanted to be clear and she wanted them both to be safe.
“Maybe so,” Lillian said. “All I know is, two sorcerers can share power, give each other power, and Ash has the most power of any sorcerer in Sorry-in-the-Vale right now. We need more power.”
“So you want to link up Ash and Jared to create some sort of magic nuke,” Dad said.
Rusty laughed. “Please come to all our meetings in future.”
Lillian’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t call it that, but essentially, yes. Though Ash could choose to share power with me, or Henry, if he wanted.”
Henry and Holly looked about equally alarmed, but Holly got over it faster and patted Henry on the arm. Kami wondered how much Holly liked Henry, if she was scared for him and comforting him.
Kami did not have to look at Ash to know that he was the most alarmed person in the room.
“One of Rob’s people told me,” Kami said, and bit her lip and hoped she was not going to seem as if she was discussing kinky magic threesomes in front of her father. “She said that Matthew Cooper, the source who was married to Anne Lynburn, that he—was, um, attached to both Anne and Elinor Lynburn. Could she have meant that?”
Kami felt betrayed when her father and Lillian both gave her the same narrow-eyed doubtful look. Matthew Cooper, and Elinor and Anne Lynburn, had lived in the 1480s; Matthew and Anne had both died young.
Ever since Amber had mentioned them, Kami had been sure there was something more to their story.
“Perhaps,” Lillian said eventually. “Matthew was Anne’s source, and they both died. Elinor could have been using Anne’s magic: she didn’t die. She ruled in Aurimere for half a century. That’s proof that one sorcerer sharing another sorcerer’s magic will have no ill effects.”
Kami was not surprised that suddenly her speculations about people long dead were “proof,” now that they might get Lillian something she wanted.
“We have to think about it,” Kami told Lillian.
“This may be our only hope,” said Lillian. “Don’t think too long.”
Lillian turned and left, the baggy back of her cardigan seeming to sweep behind her like a cape.
“I wasn’t kidding. Someone really has to talk to her about her motivational speaking,” said Dad. “She’s meant to be the town leader, isn’t she?”
“She’s the only adult sorcerer alive who isn’t strictly evil,” said Rusty. “So she wins the crown by default, I guess. Unless Henry wants it.”
Kami supposed Henry was technically grown up, though he was only a couple of years older than Rusty.
“Your town seems very nice,” said Henry, in the tones of one being very polite when offered a large unwanted present that was on fire. “But I only just got here. I don’t feel qualified to lead.”
“Okay,” said Dad. “So she’s all we’ve got to work with, as Ash and Jared are both so extremely and tragically seventeen. Fine. So what we need to do now is get the town behind her. Worse politicians have been elected every day.”
“I don’t think Lillian will be kissing any babies anytime soon,” Holly said doubtfully.
“Since she probably hates babies. And kittens. And rainbows and sunshine,” said Angela, who sounded like she had a certain amount of sympathy for Lillian’s viewpoint.
“I’m going to have a talk with her,” Jon said, and got up.
“You’re so brave, Mr. Glass,” Rusty told him soulfully. “You’re everything I aspire to be when I grow up, in like ten to twenty years.”
“You’ll never have my dashing good looks, Russell,” said Dad, and ruffled Rusty’s hair before he went out.
Kami stood by the mantelpiece alone and watched everyone.
Holly was whispering to Henry, while Angela and Rusty whispered to each other. Kami knew that Holly and Henry were both living at Angela and Rusty’s house, since Holly’s family were on Rob’s side and Henry was new to town, but she had not realized they were friends. She hoped for Angela’s sake that they were nothing more than friends. Angela liked Holly so much; Kami was hoping Holly would not get a boyfriend until Angela was over her and maybe liked someone else.
Of course, Angela hardly ever liked anything or anyone, so that might take several years. Or a decade.
Kami felt a note of comfort, in the midst of the steady distress Ash was projecting to her. She looked over to see Jared clasp the back of Ash’s neck. It would’ve been completely ordinary if it had been anyone else, but Jared did not touch people with casual affection often enough for this touch to be anything but noteworthy.“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Jared, low enough so that Kami wasn’t sure if she was hearing it or understanding it through Ash. “Your mom’s not the boss of you.”
Ash smiled, rueful and charming. “My mom’s kind of the boss of me.”
“Nope,” Jared said easily. “We time-share bossing you around, and it’s my turn. I say do whatever you want.”
Kami could not feel what Jared felt anymore, but she could feel what Ash felt, all right: warmth and trust and wanting to be closer. Ash inclined toward Jared, but Jared didn’t notice and took his hand away.
She knew enough to know that the choice about who Ash would link with was made—that it had never been in doubt.
But no matter what Lillian said, Kami thought it was going to end up more complicated than Lillian imagined. Lillian, after all, was the one who had suggested that everyone perform the ceremony at the Crying Pools to get them more power. Jared had almost died. All the other sorcerers on Lillian’s side had died.
Kami thought it might be a bad idea to be any more tangled up with Jared than she already was.
They weren’t going to have a debate about it now. Kami made for the door. She was in the passage that led to the room with the pool table when she heard Jared say “Kami” urgently behind her. His tone suggested that if he was anyone else, he would have caught at her elbow and stopped her.
In this instance, Jared was right about not touching. Kami didn’t want to be grabbed. She preferred to choose, so she chose to turn around.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Jared said abruptly.
His hands were shoved into his jeans pockets; he was wearing ordinary clothes for the first time since they had taken him away from Rob, but he didn’t look normal yet. His face was still thinner than it should be, strained in a way it had never been before. There were tiny new lines about his eyes, and there was something else about his eyes too: the haunted look of a child who had been hit and, worse, feared he would be hit again.
Kami found it harder to be angry when she was looking at him, so she wanted to stop looking at him as soon as possible.
“You said that yesterday.”
She didn’t want an apology for what was supposed to be a magical first time of taking wanton liberties with each other’s persons. She just wanted him not to be a jerk, but apparently she could not have the things she wanted.
“About the last thing I said yesterday,” Jared said. “I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just surprised. I didn’t realize you thought about it that way.”
“Okay, thanks for that,” said Kami, and began to walk determinedly down the passage away from him.
“Kami,” Jared said behind her. “I’m—I’m honored that you did.”
Which was not, Kami noted, “Let’s be together, then.” It was one of those nonsense things that people said, like “It’s not you, it’s me” and “You’re too good for me.” It meant, “I would like to very politely and very swiftly escape this relationship, like a Victorian gentleman in a rocket.”
“Okay, brilliant,” Kami told him. “All cleared up now! Please stop talking! I’m not mad! Let’s forget it. We have more important things to think about.”
She walked quickly away, past the pool table and into the bar. Her father and Lillian Lynburn were standing beside the bar itself, absorbed in a conversation that seemed to be ninety percent intense disagreement and ten percent keeping it civil for the kids. Her little brother Ten was at Dad’s side, holding his hand and leaning heavily against him, staring up at Lillian with huge wary eyes.
Kami’s brothers were dealing as well as anyone could ever have expected with the sorcerers, their mother leaving, and what had almost happened to Ten. To anyone who did not know them like she did, they were the same as they had ever been. Except now Ten was even quieter, his shyness transformed into a confirmed distrust of the world, and Tomo was even more boisterous, as if he could be loud enough to scare away his own fear.
They were so brave it broke her heart.
Tomo broke away from old Mr. Stearn and his bulldog, who were both apparently puzzled by Tomo’s recommendation of lemonade over beer, and came rushing across the floor to Kami. She knelt down and he almost knocked her down, flying into her arms and knotting his arms around her neck.
“Hey, Kami,” Tomo said brightly. “Did you have a good meeting? Is stuff fixed yet?”
Kami stroked the back of his head, and tried to keep her voice light too.
“Almost fixed,” she told him. “I promise.”
Lillian had not had to tell her. Kami knew how very little hope there was, and how very few choices they had left.
Kami went back to the parlor once it became clear that her dad and Lillian had a lot to say to each other and once she was sure via the link that Ash and Jared were long gone. She found Holly there alone, leaning against the window with a huge leather-bound book.
Holly glanced up. “You did say we should go through the books,” she said, looking mildly abashed.
“I did,” Kami said with conviction.
“I haven’t found anything yet. I might be missing something, of course—”
“I’m sure you’re not,” said Kami. “But I can help you, if you like.”
She went and leaned against the window beside Holly, lifting up a wedge of pages so she and Holly could read from different sections in the book. Holly leaned companionably into her side.
“So, there was a lot of intense glaring today,” Holly said at length. “Did something happen between you and Jared?”
“Uh,” Kami said, and kicked herself very suavely on the ankle. “Not exactly.”
She hadn’t told anybody much, but she knew Angela suspected something and she was pretty sure Holly did too. She looked around the room, at the mismatching chairs and sofas crammed in the tiny space. They were as safe here as they could be anywhere.
“We were kissing, a bit, before he was taken,” she said. “And then yesterday we did a bit more than that, and then Ash interrupted and Jared seems to be of the opinion we were never going out. So I guess we weren’t.”