Kami liked getting results. She hadn’t realized how much of Sorry-in-the-Vale the Lynburns owned. It must be half the town. Lords of the manor, indeed.
She was not surprised to find they owned the land where she’d calculated the hut stood. It didn’t impress her as significant. The Lynburns owned almost the entire wood. Her fingers moved automatically, pulling out the next file. It was the deeds to the Glass house.
The Lynburns owned that too.
Kami stood transfixed.
Kami’s grandmother had said years ago that she and Kami’s father stayed in the Glass house because it was all they owned free and clear. Kami’s parents might lie to her for her own good, the way parents did, but Sobo had never lied. She’d been a believer in the stark truth.
So was Kami. But this made no sense. This couldn’t possibly be true.
Kami made her mind up fast. She drew the deed out of the drawer, folded it, and slipped it in her jeans pocket. Then she ducked down and ran, half-crouched, to the bathroom. She scrambled onto the toilet, launching herself onto the sill. In her haste, she overshot and landed on her hands and knees on the strip of grass between the building and the wall.
Kami took a moment to catch her breath. Then she stood, still dizzy, and looked into the faces of Holly and Angela. They were peering around the side of the building from the back, Holly’s bright curls mingling with Angela’s black waterfall of hair. They were both helpless with laughter.
Oh my God, what have you done? Kami demanded. She led the charge to the front of the building, where Jared stood at the top of the steps, looking pleased with himself.
At the bottom of the steps was a ring of amazed onlookers, and Ash with a split lip.
“Hi, Mrs. Thompson. Hi, Mr. Stearn. My gracious, Jared, is that the time?” Kami asked loudly. “We have to go!”
“Is what the time?” Jared asked, giving her a brilliant smile. The smile and the feeling that followed it flashed through her like sunlight.
Kami raised her eyebrows. I think it’s probably beat-down-for-Jared o’clock, she said. Once I find out what you did.
They made it halfway up the street, to the statue of Matthew Cooper, who had died heroically sometime in 1480, and then everybody collapsed. Holly and Angela fell in a heap at the base of the statue, Ash leaned against it, and Jared leaned back against the railings that ran along the front of the inn and smiled like a devil.
“He is totally insane,” Ash said, at the same time as Holly said, with equal conviction, “That was hilarious.”
“What happened?” Kami demanded.
“Some people stopped in front of the office,” Angela said. “I don’t think they suspected anything, though; they were just looking at the Lynburn boys acting crazy.”
“Who left them together at the front of the house?” Kami asked, giving Holly an accusing glare.
“You didn’t say who was meant to go where,” Angela said calmly. “I don’t like Jared and I am indifferent to Ash, so I made Holly come with me. It’s not my fault there’s no such thing as the perfect crime. Anyway, I’m glad I did it, because I—and he—” Angela’s face was usually sternly beautiful. It was weird to see her sentence swallowed by a laugh.
Angela laid her head down on Holly’s shoulder while Kami looked around for answers.
“He punched me in the face,” said Ash, who understandably did not seem to find the situation humorous at all. “And then he yelled at me for sleeping with our personal trainer!”
“I was told breakup scenes were a good way to distract people,” Jared said with beautiful simplicity.
“Ash looked so surprised,” Holly said. “He had no idea what was going on. He said, ‘I didn’t sleep with our personal trainer! We don’t even have a personal trainer!’ ”
Angela and Holly giggled. Ash held the back of his hand to his bleeding mouth and glared.
Jared was still grinning like a maniac. “In that case,” he told Ash solemnly, “I will consider taking you back.”
Kami sighed. “You are the worst team of operatives any master criminal has ever had.”
Chapter Fifteen
Burning or Drowning
Kami ran home to change out of her criminal mastermind jeans into a debatably datelike dress for Ash. Dad called out to her as soon as she was in the door. “Kami, ring for a forklift and tell them it’s the usual problem: we’ve got a Montgomery asleep on the floor.”
Kami peeked around the door, vaguely surprised Angela had made it there so fast. Instead, she found Rusty stretched out on the hearthrug with his arms behind his head.
“You disgraceful object,” said Kami. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m buying a shotgun,” Dad announced. “I live in the country. A shotgun is a reasonable thing to own.”
Kami abandoned the issue of Rusty’s home invasion in order to run upstairs and put on a black dress with white polka dots, and red tights. Then she had to go back to the sitting room because the best mirror was over the fireplace and she wanted to check her lip gloss. “Rusty, Dad needs to work and I’m going out, so you’re babysitting.”
“I like that word,” Rusty said, settling down for a nap. “Come, babies. Let us sit together.”
Tomo sat down in the vacated space by Rusty’s head and began pulling his hair. Rusty smiled beatifically and did not open his eyes.
“Why are you putting on lip gloss, my daughter?” Dad asked. “Trip to the library? Trip to the nunnery? I hear the nunneries are nice this time of year.”
“Not a date; I still remember Claud,” Rusty said, and grabbed her ankle. “I forbid it.”
“You introduced me to Claud,” Kami pointed out.
“I’m a bad person,” Rusty mumbled. “I do bad things.”
“Is this true, Kami? Are you going out on a date?” Dad asked tragically. “Wearing that? Wouldn’t you fancy a shapeless cardigan instead? You rock a shapeless cardigan, honey.”
“I’m not going out with anyone,” said Kami, almost sure it was true.
Rusty tugged at her ankle until she knelt beside him. “He sounds nice,” Rusty murmured, as if mostly asleep. “And maybe it will distract you from chasing maniacs in the woods. I’ve been worrying about you.”
“You know me better than that,” said Kami. “I’m on a mission. And you really do not appear to have been losing sleep.”
Rusty levered himself up on his elbows and opened his eyes. Firelight made his hazel eyes gleam; he seemed almost alert. “The stuff you were saying, about people doing rituals to get what they want,” he said, “except the rituals won’t work, because they are crazy and magic isn’t real. I don’t like thinking about how frustrated crazy people might get.”
Kami was silent, because she knew something Rusty didn’t. She knew about herself and Jared, and their connection. If that was real, who knew what else was? If the rituals were working, what did they do, and what else might these people sacrifice?
“I’ll be careful,” she said at length. “I’m just going to do an interview.”
Rusty collapsed back on the hearthrug. “Have fun, and don’t be home late. I get dinner out of babysitting, right?”
“I’m buying a shotgun tomorrow,” said Dad. “Rusty, you might as well call your sister if we’re feeding you. Kami, you really should sit and tell me more about this ill-advised social outing—”
“Gotta go! Love you, bye!” said Kami, and fled.
You had your fun for the day, Kami told Jared severely. By which I mean that you punched your cousin in the face. That means I get to go around Aurimere House and have Ash tell me everything he knows about the Lynburns.
Ash was the one who had asked Kami up to Aurimere. If he wanted to show her around and spend a little time alone with her, she thought that was only fair. He’d had a bad day. And if in the process he spilled any dark family secrets, she was ready to hear them. She was investigating, after all. Reporters did what they had to do to get their story. But it didn’t hurt her ego that Ash seemed to actually like her. So she ignored Jared’s sulking, tucked her hand in the crook of Ash’s arm, and let him show off the manor.
Aurimere was all long corridors and huge rooms. Ash escorted her into one room that was drenched in light because one wall was a vast casement window. The small rectangular panes stretched from stone floor to the white ceiling, each of them yellow and filtering in the sunlight dyed twice with gold, translucent rather than transparent.
The ceiling was painted white, but its surface was raised, covered with shapes and symbols. Kami made out stars, flowers, satyrs, and a woman’s face, repeated over and over until the ceiling finished with the elaborate cornices at each end. It gave her an uneasy feeling. She glanced at Ash, who smiled down at her.
“I know,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Kami blinked and took comfort from the fact that not every boy could read her mind. “Settling in easily, then?” she asked as Ash led her up a short flight of steps to another room. This one had to be the fanciest parlor in the world. It had sofas with scarlet canopies.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life to get here,” Ash said. “Ever since I was small, it’s all I can remember my mother and father talking about. Once Mother found Aunt Rosalind, we were going home to Sorry-in-the-Vale. We never stayed anywhere long, and I never wanted to. We were always coming home.” He gave her his charming smile. “Just taking the long way around.”
“Your family’s lived here a long time,” Kami said encouragingly. “You must know a lot of stories.” Or incriminating secrets or whatever.
“You’ve lived in Sorry-in-the-Vale all your life,” Ash said, politely encouraging in his turn. “You must know a lot too.”
“What, me? No, hardly any. You should tell some,” Kami said. “I think your dad knew my mother back in the day. Claire Glass?”
Ash shook his head. “He’s never mentioned her.”
They passed through a little hall, the ceiling curving over their heads. The light fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling was a sphere cupped by ringed hands.
Kami tried to think of leading questions, and caught sight of the Lynburn family crest over the door. It was a foursquare shape. The outline of Aurimere House on a hill was in the top left, the wood on the top right. On the bottom left was a square of pale blue, and on the bottom right was a woman’s profile. Cutting through the pictures was a sword hilt with a hand wrapped around it. Below the crest in gold letters were the words HAUD IGNEUS, HAUD UNDA.
“Gosh,” said Kami, in the innocent tones of one who knew no Latin, none at all. “What is that?”
“It’s the family motto,” Ash said.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Kami said, since Ash showed no signs of telling her. “Your motto is ‘Blonds really do have more fun.’ ”
Another Lynburn motto possibility, if her mother was to be believed, was “Hot Blond Death.”
“I think brunettes are cute, personally,” said Ash. “Something like, neither fire nor water. It’s meant to convey—I think—‘We neither drown nor burn.’ Of course, that might mean we were all born to hang.”
Kami glanced up at him. His face was oddly serious. “I doubt you were,” said Kami and squeezed Ash’s arm.
“Well, thank you, ma’am,” Ash remarked, exaggerating his Southern drawl. Kami laughed, delighted, even though Ash went back to being serious the next instant. “The way my parents have always talked about this place, and about what it meant to be our family …” He hesitated.
“Yes?” Kami prompted, and gave him a “Give me a clue, you big, strong, handsome man” glance under her eyelashes.