Holly was a bit concerned about Ross’s physical well-being, though. “Uh, I heard head trauma is actually kind of a serious thing to happen to someone. It’s not like in the movies. It can cause permanent damage.”
“I heard that about burning people’s houses down as well,” Angela spat, as if she was a fire herself, throwing out sparks.
Holly knew it was hard for Angie, not being able to go to Kami and help her. Lillian Lynburn had sailed in with her boys behind her, assuming she would lead, and someone had to guard the perimeter. But that didn’t mean Holly wanted to kill anybody, or to let Angie kill anybody either.
She was silent, thinking of how to phrase this. She didn’t know what showed on her face, but Angie drawled, “Oh, all right,” and knelt down to check Ross’s pulse.
“He’s alive,” she said in a voice that sounded so bored Holly might’ve been imagining the thread of relief running through it. “That’s the best I can do for him. His evil sorcerer buds can heal him or take him to the hospital and bring him an evil magic fruit basket for all I care.”
Holly barely had time to feel relief herself, just the beginnings of it, like beginning to take a breath and then being hit again. She saw in the darkness something darker moving. She saw her parents were coming toward her.
Holly felt dumb. She should have known Rob Lynburn would send more people than Ross to do his work.
She had run between her father and Angie once before, at the great battle in the town square. Her father had backed away, lifted his hands as if in surrender, and then turned them on another of Lillian Lynburn’s sorcerers, who had died later that night. Holly didn’t even remember who it had been. All she remembered was kneeling down beside Angie on cobblestones that were iced by night but warm with blood, and being so thankful that Angela was all right and that her father did not put his loyalty to Rob Lynburn above his daughter.
She was the baby of the family, the youngest girl; nobody had particularly wanted her when she was born, and she had no reason to think that since she was born she had impressed anybody enough to make them change their minds. About the only thing her parents had ever said positively about her was that she was pretty, and they had been clear that being pretty did not matter.
It was so strange and horrible that now, with the night wind rushing through her hair and her blood pounding in her ears, her parents were looking at her as if they loved her. Now when she was afraid that she was going to hurt them to stop them from hurting her or those she loved, now when love was nothing but a double-edged weapon that would hurt them all worse than they already were.
“We don’t want to hurt you, baby,” said Holly’s mum, speaking as if she could read her mind.
“Holly, you never were that bright, but this is the outside of enough,” her dad snapped. “Do you think you have a hope of standing against Rob Lynburn and Aurimere? It’s not for us to decide what the best course of action is. We know the bargain. We have all known the bargain, generation after generation.”
“So you’re ready to burn down houses with children inside them because Rob Lynburn tells you what to do now, and you’ve decided never to think for yourselves again,” Angela shouted back. “How dare you call her stupid because she doesn’t want to be herded like a sheep?”
“She’s not a sorcerer,” Holly’s mum whispered. “We can go through her, if Holly would just stand down—”
Angela lifted her branch, and Holly’s dad lifted his hand.
Angela looked down at her branch. It was burning but not quite enough to burn her—not yet. She pursed her mouth and shrugged.
“Thanks,” she said, and lunged at Holly’s dad.
Flames would devour the branch in a moment, but in this moment it was a weapon. There was the sudden sharp smell of burning fabric as Hugh Prescott’s shirt caught on fire. Holly’s mother darted in toward Angie, but Holly got in front of her. She was standing in front of Angie, facing down both her parents, before Angie had to drop the branch.
“I won’t stand down!” Holly shouted. “You stand down! You have to surrender, because I won’t!”
She saw her father’s face twist in anger, as it did when any of them stepped too far out of line, gave him too much lip. She saw his arm rise and braced herself, stupidly again, as if she was about to be felled with a physical blow.
A blast of wind knocked Holly off her feet, sent her spinning through the air. Holly landed hard on the ground and rolled, jolted and sick, helpless as a doll sent tumbling down a hill.
She gasped, blood but no air in her mouth, and watched his big, heavy boots moved toward her across the earth, every footfall a thunderclap. She remembered being woken by the sound of those boots on their stone floor when it was still dark. She remembered raw, cold mornings, with her dad already in the fields, hearing her mother say that her father was out there working for them, only for them.
“Hugh, no, no!” her mother screamed, and threw herself between them, blocking Holly’s view of those dirt-streaked boots. “Not my little girl!”
Angela hesitated. She had dropped the branch, but Holly knew she would have gone after him with her bare hands—except now they were all waiting, and listening. Even Holly’s father seemed to be listening.
“Listen to me,” her mother said rapidly. “If we take young Ross and say that we felt we had to get him to safety, that they were ready for us—well, that’s true, isn’t it? What if we just left, eh? We don’t need to hurt Holly. Leave it to someone else. Come on now, do.”
Holly lifted herself painfully, a long streak of pain aching across her ribs, her palms dug into the cold earth. She called through a mouthful of blood, “He killed Edmund!”
There was a pause that Holly thought might be a heedless silence, but then she heard her father say, gruff and grudging, “What?”
Holly did not lift herself up again. She spoke with her eyes turned to the ground, bitter earth between her lips. “Rob Lynburn killed Uncle Edmund. He didn’t run away, he didn’t want to leave Lillian, he didn’t want to leave you. Rob shut up Jared with—with all that was left of him. You hated your brother for leaving you to suffer, but he didn’t. He suffered. He died. Rob Lynburn killed him. He never left Sorry-in-the-Vale. He died when he was seventeen.”
“It’s a lie,” her father said hoarsely.
Holly thought for a moment that she might have made a mistake: her father, when presented with what he did not want to hear or could not understand, became baffled and enraged at once. She didn’t want to be hurt again, and she wouldn’t let Angie be hurt. She began to lift herself up again.
She saw her mother physically turning her big husband, small hands firm on his shoulders.
“Hugh, Hugh, it doesn’t matter. You never knew her to lie, did you? Holly’s not a liar. She believes it if she said it. Maybe someone lied to her and—and maybe they didn’t, but we can’t get anything else from her. We agreed to go, didn’t we? Let’s go.”
A lot of family fights had ended this way, with her mother leading her father away, patting and coaxing and ending the whole scene. It was so normal, and that made it seem bizarre and awful on this burning magic night.
Holly watched their pale backs receding from her until Angie blocked the sight, her dark eyes wide with concern.
“Holly,” she said, and knelt down, pulling Holly into her lap. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Holly did not know if Angie’s carefully gentle hands meant what she wanted them to mean, or if it was just what she had thought for so long was all that was between them, simply friendship, as if she and Angela had exchanged feelings as simply as swapping each other’s jewelry.
If Holly had to feel all the pain and longing, she would take the comfort. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Can someone see about a magical fruit basket?” and heard Angie yelp with bright sudden laughter. She laughed too, even though it hurt.
Chapter Twelve
Stone Marks the Spot
The night air was so different from the air inside that stifling house that it felt like plunging into deep cool water. Kami gasped with relief even as she turned to her mother and sank her hands into her mother’s burning hair, putting the fire out, turning the trails of sparks back into long smooth tresses. Kami stroked her mother’s hair lightly, before she let Claire go. She thought she understood why parents stroked hair so much: it was a gesture that said, Here you are, lovely and alive and entire. I did that.
“Mum!” said Ten, and Claire turned to the sound of his voice. Kami’s hand dropped from her hair, and her mother caught that hands in hers and pressed it, then let go to lean down and scoop Ten into her arms as he ran to her.
“Claire,” said Dad, with the softness of deep relief.
“Jared, thank goodness you’re all right,” Lillian said pointedly. “And well done for saving What’s-her-name, I suppose. I would have been devastated if anything happened to her.”
Kami looked at Jared. She hadn’t been able to look at him, not properly, when he was on the other side of her mother, when she’d had to think of protecting and saving them. All she’d known was that he was whole, and now he was safe. They were all safe.
She was smiling, which was probably wildly inappropriate, but he nodded at her. “You did it,” he said.
“I didn’t do it alone,” said Kami. “Thanks for saving my mum.”
The corner of Jared’s mouth twisted up a little, in the small smile she felt he was always trying to sneak past people without noticing. “You’re welcome.”
The firelight cast his face half in light and half in shadow. There was a dark smudge along the side of his eye, across his temple: Kami had thought it was soot, but now she could see the raised skin and recognized a bruise.
She hastily lifted a hand to the spot. Jared flinched back, but she grabbed his wrist and held him still so she could heal him, and tried not to mind.
“What happened?”
“Well,” said Jared. “Your mother threw her bedside lamp at me.”
Kami looked over at her mother, who looked apologetic. She could picture the whole scene: her mother waking to fire and chaos, and finding a Lynburn’s face framed against the nightmare. She was quite proud of her mother for fighting back.
“That’s what happens when you insist on going around wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle,” she remarked. “When you start dating a girl, parents are going to have strong words. Deliver lectures. Set curfews. Hurl projectiles.”
Jared shrugged. “About how I always expected it would go, yeah.”
The bruise was fading under her fingers, like invisible ink disappearing into a page. Unexpectedly, Kami felt her knees go out from under her.
It was in no way a romantic feeling. It reminded her of having the flu, her body simply shutting down and forcing her to fall. Distantly, she heard Jared’s hoarse shout of alarm and felt his arms go around her, holding her close to his chest and keeping her on her feet.
“What’s wrong with her?” he demanded.
“She doesn’t have as much magic as she used to, now her sorcerer’s magic has been poisoned,” Lillian’s voice said dispassionately, from somewhere up in the air. “She pushed herself past her limits.”
“What if Rob’s sorcerers come?” Kami asked, trying to fight back dizziness with the urgency of that thought.
“There were only a couple of them left, hanging back maintaining the fire,” Ash said. “Holly and Angela dealt with them.”
“What amazing ladies,” said Kami, her voice distant in her own ears. “I am so lucky to have them in my life. The guys in my life are okay too, I guess.”
“Could be better,” Jared contributed.