“Uh, no,” said Jared. “Sorry.”
“Stop bothering my guest,” Kami ordered.
“If I do …,” Tomo began his bargain. “If I do. Can I have four glasses of lemonade?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you drank four glasses of lemonade, you would explode,” Kami said. “Dad would come downstairs and ask, ‘Where is my youngest born?’ and I could only point to the floor, where all that remained of you would be a pool of lemonade and a heap of sweetened entrails. You can have one glass of lemonade.”
Tomo gave a cheer and leaped from the sofa, heading for the kitchen at top speed.
Kami sighed. “The current theory is that he is a lemonade vampire. C’mon.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jared said awkwardly to Ten, who went red and muttered something into the pages of his book.
“He likes you,” Kami commented.
“Oh yeah,” said Jared. “I could tell.”
“He once hid under the sofa from a cocker spaniel,” Kami said. “You’re doing fine.” She opened the door to the kitchen, and once more it was like seeing familiar things for the first time, wondering what Jared thought of them: the red stone tiles that were worn orange in places, the swags of dried herbs swinging over the wide wooden counter, the round table and the fat green sofa strategically placed in the square of sunlight that came through the window. And, of course, her brother doing what appeared to be a mystical lemonade dance.
Strangers said Tomo looked like Dad, although Dad’s black hair stood up straight as a brush and he had cheekbones that could cut glass, while Tomo had a black silky cap of hair with a face as round as a dish. They looked nothing alike, except that they both looked Japanese. Ten did not look even slightly Japanese, and Kami was the only one who looked like a mix of both, like she wouldn’t quite fit in on either side of her family.
Kami stood on her tiptoes to get the high cupboard open. The lemonade was kept in the highest place they had. Keeping it in the fridge had resulted in finding Tomo curled on the floor in sugar delirium, clutching an empty bottle, one too many times.
“Here,” Jared murmured. He reached up and took down the lemonade.
Kami glanced around and saw the way he’d leaned, angled so his body would not brush hers. “Thanks,” she murmured back, and went to grab glasses.
“You are a tall person!” Tomo announced approvingly, pausing mid-dance. “How did you get that scar on your face?”
“Tomo!” Kami said.
“Broken bottle,” Jared told him curtly.
“I’m sorry,” Kami said, once Tomo had pranced off with his glass of lemonade.
Kami, it’s fine, said Jared. He looked especially tall in her kitchen, big and edgy and out of place here as he had not been in the woods. “I thought I made all of this up,” said Jared, very quietly.
Kami heard what he left unspoken, the things people had said to him: Creating a fantasy life to compensate for the situation at home, not able to deal with reality, some faraway ideal of what he imagines a home is like. Not real. Not real.
“I thought I made you up,” Jared continued, still so quietly.
“Well,” Kami said. “You didn’t. Want some lemonade?”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jared.
He kept hovering uneasily as Kami went and sat on the sofa with her lemonade. It had been a long day. Not just because of the longest detour through the woods ever made, but because of the talk with the others in the office, having to drag into the light the thing she had been trying not to say. The thing she had not wanted to even think of: Someone had pushed her into that well. Someone was trying to kill her.
Kami was determined to solve the mystery and tell the story. She was going to be fine. But for now she was tired, and all she could do was sit, stare out the window, and feel cold and scared.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Jared said, leaning against the sofa behind her. His breath stirred her hair. “I believed you.”
“Yes,” Kami said. “Because you know I’m telling the truth.” She had not even looked at Jared while she was absorbing the reactions of everyone else at headquarters. She had not had to: your own heart did not betray you. Jared could be counted on, always. But he hadn’t been real before. It was different now.
Yes, said Jared.
“It’s not one-sided,” he added abruptly.
Kami kept her eyes locked on the window. “What do you mean?” she asked, and her voice trembled.
He said, “I’m always on your side too.”
Kami leaned back, just a little, and let the back of her head rest against his collarbone. He did not flinch away, though she heard his breath catch and thought that he maybe wanted to. He was solid, real, in her home and in the sunlight. She felt the warm curve of his neck, the catch of his breath a whisper against her hair.
“Yes,” Kami murmured. “I know.”
He pulled away as soon as she spoke. Kami twisted around on the sofa and looked at him. She was reminded of the way he had fit in with the woods, and thought again how out of place he seemed in her home.
“Is there,” Jared began, voice rough as it had been when they first met. He wasn’t looking at her. “Is there anything I can do to make you happy?”
“I don’t understand.” Kami reached for him in her mind, but his walls were up and his face stayed turned away.
“Nobody’s ever been happy I was there before,” Jared said. “That’s just the kind of effect I have on people. I want you to be glad I’m here. I want it badly. But I have no idea how to make it happen.” He looked at her then, fixing her with that pale gaze. He hardly ever looked at her, but when he did his attention was absolute, and profoundly unsettling. “I’ll do anything you want. All you have to do is tell me.”
Kami bit her lip. “I am happy you’re here.”
It tasted like a lie in her mouth, when they had never lied to each other before. Kami glanced involuntarily away from him, eyes falling to her clasped hands, even though she knew that would make her look more like she was lying than ever.
She wasn’t lying. It wasn’t that she was unhappy he was here: it was just that it was all so complicated. He had been so safe in her head, her constant companion. Now he had come crashing into her life, a stranger with his own life separate from hers whose emotions were all tied up with hers, someone who she barely knew and who sometimes seemed cruel. She could not help being afraid of him: he could hurt her, more than a stranger should be able to, and she did not know if he would.
“You’re not happy,” Jared said, his voice flat, and he headed for the back door.
“Come on, I am,” Kami said. “We’re going to fight crime together. I totally need you to be corporeal.”
He was holding the door open already, but when she spoke she felt him reach for her. She reached back, and felt his little shock of recognition, as if he had only just caught sight of her in a crowd, relief and joy spilling through the connection. She was not quite sure if it was his or her own.
“I could throw thugs out windows for you,” he offered, and there was life in his voice again.
“I can defenestrate my own thugs,” Kami informed him. “But you could maybe get clues for me. You know. Clues on high shelves.”
Jared laughed. “You’re not happy yet,” he said. The afternoon sunlight transformed him into a brightly limned shadow, already turning away. “But you will be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Belief and Unbelief
The back door slid open, softly and gradually, in the dark. The moonlight formed a hazy halo around fair hair, and the silhouette of a woman moved quietly as a shadow into the room.
“Boo!” said Kami, from her sentry position beside the dishwasher.
Her mother gave a little scream and dropped her parcel of baked goods. “Kami! You scared me,” she said as Kami knelt down and began to pick up the contents of the parcel.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kami said reasonably. “So I lay in wait for you.”
Mum had known Kami since Kami was born, so she just sighed at this brilliant logic. And Kami did feel it was logical: Claire’s was both a bakery that Mum opened at six and a restaurant she did not close until midnight. Mum got home to see the boys in between, but lately Kami was at her newspaper headquarters then. So midnight lurking it was.
Her decision may have been slightly influenced by the fact that Mum always brought home treats. The bakery box was mostly intact, and the pastries on the floor still looked good. Kami handed her mother the box, then picked up a chocolate chip cookie from the floor.
“Don’t eat that,” Mum said.
Kami bit in. “Mmm, floor cookie.” She leaned against the counter and said, “Spill it.”
Mum slid the box onto the counter. “What are you talking about?” she asked warily.
“Mum,” Kami said, “have you met me? You tell me to stay away from someone, and you thought I’d say ‘Oh yes, Mother, of course, no further questions’ and sit about in the garden making daisy chains?”
“I’d like to hear ‘Oh yes, Mother, of course, no further questions,’ ” Mum said, sighing. “Just once.” She leaned forward, meeting Kami’s eyes in the dark kitchen as if they were going to do a business deal. “All right, Kami, I made a bit of a miscalculation there. I was slightly overwrought. Sometimes that happens when you get phone calls saying that your child has tumbled into a well. But can’t you trust me that these people are dangerous?”
“Trust you?” Kami said. “Of course I can trust you. But I want to know why.”
Mum suddenly looked more tired than she had before. “I hoped they would never come back,” she whispered. “A lot of us hoped that.”
“Whatever the Lynburns did,” Kami said, “Jared and Ash aren’t responsible. They weren’t even born.”
A branch knocked on the window, its leaves silver in the moonlight. Kami and her mother both jumped.
“It wasn’t what the Lynburns did,” Mum said very softly. “It was what they were. What they still are. Creatures of red and gold. The whole town was terrified of them. Lillian Lynburn thought she was queen of every blade of grass in the Vale, and Rosalind Lynburn looked through you as if you were too unimportant to even notice. If she did notice you, it chilled you to the bone. But Rob Lynburn’s parents were dead, and the twins’ father was sick for a long time before he died. All the time we were growing up, the Lynburns were losing their grip on the land, and then Rosalind left and the others went after her. I was so glad they were gone.”
Kami’d always thought her mother had a face like a woman in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She wasn’t like Angela, always fashionably dressed with flawless makeup. Claire Glass was usually in quiet rebellion against her beauty, pinning her hair up, always in loose jeans and sweatshirts. Kami had never seen her mother look tragic before.
“What about Rob Lynburn?” Kami asked. “Dad said he was the one you knew best. He said he had an office above Claire’s and he had lunch early so he could talk to you. Were you afraid of him?”
“Rob?” Mum echoed, sounding startled. “I was, but I understood him better. You don’t get how people felt about the Lynburns back then. We were terrified, but we were fascinated too. There were a lot of people who would follow wherever a Lynburn led. Rob Lynburn was used to having a crowd of girls after him, and he liked the attention. He expected it from all of us. He came and had lunch with me, the way men do when they’re set on catching your eye.” Her voice was unself-conscious as she flipped open the lid of the bakery box to examine the damage done to its contents.