Kami was silent.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Angela said, after a pause. “It’s a sore subject with me, but I’m glad you have someone. I am.”
“I have a lot more than just one person,” Kami told her, and patted her arm. “I’m sorry too,” she added. “I should know better than to talk to you about feelings before noon.”
“Nothing’s happening,” Angela said. “I don’t want anything to happen. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” said Kami.
There was a skull and crossbones on one of the graves. Kami hoped that meant there was a pirate buried here. She hoped even more that one of the last remaining stones would be Anne Lynburn’s.
“How are things going with young what’s-his-face?” Angela asked, in what for Angela was conciliatory fashion, which of course meant not very conciliatory at all. “You know the one. Blond. Scowly. Bad attitude, which I have some sympathy for. Sloppy dresser, which I have no sympathy for at all.”
“Also a terrible driver,” Kami said. “Wild about the eyes. Daddy issues so numerous the issues may be compiled into a book called Who’s the Daddy? Both Options Are Evil.” She sighed and touched another gravestone, which was for someone cursed with the name of Edgar Featherstonehaugh. “Well, I’m pressuring him into having a relationship with me, and I don’t know how into it he is, and there are even worse problems than that, but apart from that, it’s okay.”
“Anyone would be lucky to be emotionally blackmailed or physically forced into romance with you, friend,” said Angela. “What a jerk.”
“Thanks,” said Kami. “Anne Lynburn’s grave isn’t here.”
“It sure isn’t. What a pity, I was really looking forward to my first experience violating a resting place.”
Kami punched her in the arm.
“It must be in the Lynburn crypt,” she said.
“Which is located in the evil lair of evil?” Angela asked. “Terrific.”
“Let’s go get Holly,” Kami proposed.
“She’ll be in the Water Rising, going through the books as usual,” said Angela.
Angela sounded a little resigned, maybe upset that she wasn’t seeing more of Holly—Kami couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was an emotion there that was not annoyance or anger, and with Angela that was unusual enough to be remarkable.
Kami said nothing, though, besides a mild “I think it’s awesome she’s become a blond bombshell research ninja. Her powers have multiplied!”
She rested her head against Angela’s shoulder again as they passed her mother, and again they said nothing.
“So you’re going to walk through fire again?” Holly asked, looking dismayed.
Holly and Kami were alone in the back room of the Water Rising, but everyone else—including Kami’s father and the boys—had congregated at the inn as well. Kami was pleased that Angela had stopped to talk to Ash, because otherwise she felt like they would gang up on her with their judgment of her lifestyle choices.
“Probably,” said Kami. “I hear you’re a sorcerer who held off Rob’s people when they burned our house and came after me and my family. I think that’s terrific. Want to come with me?”
Holly swallowed. “I’ll come, but I’m not very good.”
“I trust you. And I want to tell you something real quick before Angela comes in,” Kami said.
“We don’t have to talk about anything like that now,” Holly said, looking at Kami with soft, sympathetic eyes.
Kami turned her face away. “Sure we do,” she said, insistently chipper. “I tried to talk to her but she stonewalled me. The thing about Angela is that she’s really private and really straightforward at the same time, so, and I totally understand if you don’t want to do this, but I think the only move might be—”
“Telling her,” Holly filled in.
“That move,” Kami said. “Yes.”
Holly nodded, her curls bobbing and the face framed by those curls resolved. “It’s my fault she thinks I don’t like her. I’ll do it.”
Kami got up, ostensibly to look at the book Holly was studying; she hung over her shoulder and got hold of her hand.
“It’s not your fault,” she murmured. “You went at a different speed from someone else emotionally. That’s not your fault or their fault.”
“On that topic, how are things going with Jared?” Holly inquired.
“I want to interfere horribly in my friends’ love lives and keep my own embarrassing and pathetic one private, is that so much to ask?”
“Mmm,” said Holly, and gave Kami a grin that reminded Kami of when Holly had been the sunny confident school goddess she had barely known and envied a little. “Now that you know that I’m not at all interested in Jared, is it inappropriate to say that I did get the impression that he might channel all those simmering repressed emotions in a useful way. I mean being explosively good in bed.”
“Viking tiger in the sack, I have no doubt,” Kami said lightly, and felt a blush stage a hostile takeover of her neck and march up to claim the territory of her face.
Holly stopped grinning and added in a low voice, “Kami, I can see you don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t just joke around. I have to tell you, I’m so sorry about—”Kami wanted to say that she appreciated it but did not want to talk about her mother, but feared even trying to say that would make her throat tighten up too much for her to speak. Instead, she looked at the drawing on the page Holly’s book was open to. “I know you are. How’s the research going?”
Holly was tactful enough to stop talking, and disconsolate enough to sigh. “I keep wishing that there could be a movie montage. And I could put on a pair of glasses and flip pages at appropriate moments, until the music gets dramatic and I spot the crucial thing and I say ‘Voilà!’ ”
“I used to think that there was an awesome investigator lady called Viola, and when people made a discovery they would shout ‘Viola’ in her honor,” Kami said reminiscently. She turned a page and frowned at the sketch of a wall. “Is this about architecture?”
“It’s about the changes made to Aurimere over the years,” Holly said. “Basically a whole lot of ‘then we added essential drowned-lady décor’ and ‘then we turned the farthest wall into a rockery’ and ‘then—’ ”
“Oh,” Kami said.
“What?” Holly asked, somewhat apprehensively.
Anne was drowned and lost, the book had said, and Lynburns since then had filled their house with images of drowning women. The graveyard and the Lynburns’ crypt were both sacred ground, and Anne had died in a time when that mattered. She stared at the drawing of the wall, and remembered the wall she had knelt beside once, with Jared on the other side of it. She remembered the flowers strewn over the ground.
Kami felt her smile spread and warmth spread within her, the sudden sweet joy of discovering the truth. “Viola.”
The first thing to do was slip away from her father, who might have questions about why she kept insisting on going back to the lair of ultimate evil. Kami saw why so many teenagers who had adventures in books were interestingly tragic orphans. Parents were a real buzzkill, adventure-wise.
She would take fewer adventures, though. She would pay any price, she thought, if she could only find a way to free her mother from Rob Lynburn’s spell.
She thought she was getting out of the Water Rising clean, because she didn’t see her father anywhere around: there was only Ash and Lillian sitting at a table, and a few other patrons at as much of a distance from Ash and Lillian as they could get. She made for the door, at which point Lillian caught her arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Uh,” said Kami, eyeballing her wildly. “I’m going to buy some drugs.”
Lillian stared. “I beg your pardon?”
“This is a really stressful time for everyone,” said Kami. “So I thought maybe I could buy a little weed, take the edge off. I might be a while. This is a very clean-living town, apart from all the murders, so I don’t actually know any drug dealers. I realize Jared kind of looks like one, but he’s not, which is a shame because I think the drug dealer’s girlfriend gets her drugs free.”
“I realize you are attempting to be humorous,” said Lillian, after a pause during which she stared some more. “I don’t understand it.”
“Hey, you’re not the only family with a legacy. ‘Glass’ rhymes with ‘sass.’ Have you met my dad?”
“I have had that dubious pleasure,” said Lillian. “He is, in fact, meant to be meeting me in order to, and I quote, ‘teach me to integrate better with society, display leadership skills, win over the populace, and stop acting like a robot princess from space.’ I admit that the humor in his humor escapes me as well.” She paused and suddenly looked determined. “I’m going to start without him.”
She climbed off the stool and headed toward the group of people in the corner. Kami and Ash watched as they collectively shrank away.
“Come on, quick,” said Kami, and as if summoned by some spirit warning him of his child’s intended reckless behavior, her dad appeared through the inn doors.
He looked distracted. “Where’s Lillian?’
Kami checked over her shoulder. “Appears to be trying to wrest a screaming baby from the arms of her frightened mother in order to kiss it.”
“Oh no no no,” murmured Jon, and raised his voice as he made his way over. “Libba, we’ve talked about this!”
“The good news is the grown-ups are distracted by politics,” said Kami.
You mean that your poor father is distracted by my awful mother, said Ash, who was far too polite to say such a thing out loud and looked vaguely embarrassed to be thinking it.
Kami grinned. “Why quibble when we have the results we want!”
I wish I could ask you what you’re planning, but I know what you’re planning, said Ash. Lucky me. I know this is important information, but going to Aurimere at all is a huge risk.
“See, the thing is, if I ran a business it would probably be called Risky Business,” said Kami, and smiled at him. She felt affection radiating from Ash, so strong that she was startled.
He was right, though. The risks they were taking were worse now. Kami’s mother was lost. Jared had been tortured.
She didn’t know how to do anything than take greater risks in the face of greater danger, and hope that somehow they could all be saved.
As they walked out of the pub, Jared fell in with them. Kami let herself be weak and grasped for his hand. Jared linked his fingers with hers and matched her steps.
“We’re going to—” Kami began.
“I know,” said Jared. “Ash told me while it was happening. I was just grabbing my jacket.”
Kami felt wariness and something close to guilt pass between herself and Ash, as if Ash had been telling secrets about the things they both wished they had not done. She felt the urge to exchange a glance with him over her shoulder, but stopped herself from doing so because she didn’t want Jared to see the look, and then felt bad about that.
“You two are getting on well these days,” she said lightly instead.
“Bros before hoes,” said Jared. “By which of course I mean gardening tools, because I hold all the fine ladies of Sorry-in-the-Vale in the highest regard.”
Kami glanced up in time to catch the end of one of his shy, almost-not-there smiles. She smiled back at him, held on to his hand, and wished they were alone together.