Jared cursed. “What is that?”
Kami patted the object in an investigatory fashion. “I think it’s an exercise bike. My other theory, that it’s a giant whisk, seems unlikely.”
“Okay,” Jared said in a whisper, breathless from running, and sounding like he wanted to laugh. “Just a little gym. That’s okay. Let’s just go through here. Take my—” He cut himself off before he said “hand.”
Kami didn’t take his hand. It wouldn’t help; it would put them more off balance, and it wasn’t like they could lose each other.
They were both silent, pretending they couldn’t feel the other’s discomfort, until they went through into another room and Jared fell over what Kami thought was a massage chair.
His amusement flared through her. After a moment, she said, “Lucky that door was open.”
“If it hadn’t been,” Jared said, close by her ear, “I could have got it open.”
Kami negotiated past a massage table and into what seemed to be a cupboard full of bottles, which rocked ominously for a minute. She made for the next door, visible by the dim glow in the next room, not like there was a light on but as if there was a fish tank in there.
“No, you could not have,” she told Jared, smiling at him in the dark. “Not by breaking anything or jimmying any locks or indeed performing any acts of delinquency at all. Because you’ve reformed.”
“Oh yeah,” Jared said. “Obviously.”
Kami fumbled for the door handle, grasped it, and turned it. “This is different. As was the lawyer’s office. We’re in pursuit of justice.” She peered warily into the next room.
Jared came to lean against the doorframe beside her. “I just get confused,” he claimed, laughing low. “Being good’s only fun when it’s with you.”
Light reflected on the wall in the next room, a moving shimmer against the white tiles.
Kami advanced cautiously.
The room was circular, lined with pale tiles. At Kami’s feet lay a square of dark water. There was a skylight above the pool. The night sky turned the pool into a mirror, dusting the water with stars.
Kami heard Jared laugh again and turned. He was taking off his shirt: the apron was on the floor. She caught sight of a slice of stomach and looked hastily back at the pool. “Jared,” she said, mouth dry. “This is not being good!” She felt the inviting thrill course through her, the idea of abandoning just a little control.
“But it might be fun.”
“I’m not doing it and you’re not doing it either,” Kami told him.
Jared dived. His body cut through the water, disappearing in the dark with only a ripple. Kami could feel Jared’s thoughts chasing through her brain: his adrenaline, the pleasure of getting away with something, something as harmless as this.
Jared’s head broke the surface, his hair dark with water, the faint shimmer of light pale on his skin. “Come on,” he said.
Kami hesitated for a moment and ordered, “Turn around.”
Jared smiled, the little smile that went all the way through her, and did. Kami studied his shoulder blades with suspicion as she took off her apron and then the black T-shirt, being careful of the page tucked in the apron. She wished she’d worn underwear that matched, though that happened approximately three days of the year. But she wished she’d at least worn discreet black instead of a bright orange bra.
“Orange?” Jared asked. He answered her wave of indignation with a quick “Not peeking! Reading your mind!”
“I wonder what privacy would be like. Guess I’ll never know,” said Kami, and jumped into the water. It was a cool, lovely shock, her limbs floating in the new element. Her soft laughter echoed off the tiles and was swallowed by Jared’s light splash at her face.
Kami splashed him back, shivering in the cool water. Jared was thinking of grabbing and dunking her, thinking about it mostly just to tease her. Only, it would be weird if he did, and he was a lot bigger than she was.
“Hey,” said Jared, turning. The ripples in the pool as he moved washed against Kami’s skin. The hair on her arms rose, her skin tingling. “I would never hurt you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Kami said quickly. “It isn’t that.” It wasn’t that. It was the fact that he was here, which kept being disturbing, and that she was so terribly aware of him being there, all the time. She was thinking hundreds of things at once, like that they were going to get caught, and noticing the muscles in Jared’s chest and shoulders without knowing what to do about the fact that she was noticing.
In spite of all that, this was fun.
Kami’s eye was caught by the glint of the thin chain she’d noticed around Jared’s neck at the bell tower. She saw what had been hidden by his T-shirt now: an old penny, like the one she had sent him years ago.
Kami looked up at his face.
“I told you I got it,” Jared said. “I found it on the floor in our apartment.”
Kami looked away from him, feeling the weight of his gaze on her. And she didn’t want Jared seeing any of her thoughts, so she splashed at him and said, “Two laps. Race you.”
A noise in one of the exercise rooms beyond made Kami lunge for the side of the pool. She pulled herself out and grabbed their clothes, feeling in her apron pocket for the paper. Then she ran to join Jared. He was out of the pool, trying to pull open the glass door that led to a patio outside.
It was locked.
Kami could hear footsteps by now, coming closer. She shoved Jared’s clothes at his chest. I knew this was a bad idea. Pursuing justice is good karma! Pursuing illicit fun leads to being apprehended while unclothed!
The steps rang out, echoing clearly off the tiles and the skylighted roof.
Jared took a deep breath and said, “Kami, I’m sorry.”
The glitter of stars on the pool water caught Kami’s eye. She looked at it, even with the echoing steps, even while a man’s voice called out: “Who’s there?”
The light in the pool was so bright it seemed like there was something under the water, light radiating like underwater treasure.
What the hell is that? Jared asked.
I have no idea.
The beam wasn’t a trick of the night. It wasn’t their panic. Luminescence was coalescing in the air, like a curtain of crystal, stretching from the pool water beside them and reaching to the skylight. Through that gleaming curtain Kami saw a security guy, his uniform dark and his expression the same.
The guard looked around the room. He did not seem fazed by the shimmer of light in the air, or the two wet teenagers in their underwear shivering behind it. He frowned, nodded, and turned around. He hadn’t seen them. He hadn’t seen anything.
As soon as the man left, the lights faded, like dust motes glittering for an instant and then quenched by a sudden shadow.
Kami leaned weakly back against the glass door. “Not to steal your line,” she murmured. “But what the hell was that?”
“I have no idea,” said Jared.
Chapter Seventeen
Alone upon the Threshold
When they went back through the guesthouse and found the others outside, Kami was too dazed to do more than mumble something about it being good work, team, and go home. She went to bed in a state of shock.
She did believe in the paranormal, or was open to believing in it: there was no other explanation for her and Jared’s link. But how could she work out something as impossible as an event that interfered with reality, that made someone blind to what was there? What, or who, had caused it?
Kami slept uneasily, plagued by bad dreams that felt as if they left stains on her mind as they passed through. She woke early, pulling herself out of bed and into the dress she’d laid out the night before. Kami slipped into green shoes decorated with daisies and went downstairs. It was past six in the morning, so her mother was gone, but everyone else was asleep.
The house was so quiet it felt like the morning sunlight had to flow in more gradually, as if the whole morning was conspiring with Kami in trying not to disturb her family. She couldn’t stay here in all this quiet.
She walked to school, thinking that she would get to her headquarters and feel better, but once she was there she just found herself sitting in her chair, staring at her notebook with two words, “Lynburns” and “Magic,” written on the page, and nothing else.
She didn’t know how to make a plan for magic, why anyone might kill for it, or why someone might help them using it. She wasn’t in control, and she didn’t know what to do. She wanted the magic to stop, and at the same time she wanted Jared.
Kami reached out and felt the rush of his concern. Then she looked up at the sound of the door sighing shut and saw him. She started, but he crossed the floor toward her, eyes on hers, and she was soothed past the strangeness of it. She felt like he could put his arms around her, she could hide her face in that ridiculous leather jacket, and she would feel better.
He stopped on the other side of her desk and said, “What can I do?”
“Well,” Kami said, and looked down at her notebook so he couldn’t see her face, “I wish I knew what those rituals with the animals did.”
“Rituals with—you think they worked?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Something happened at the guesthouse last night. And there’s us—we can read each other’s minds. I know there’s an explanation, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a reasonable one. So, what if the rituals do work in some way?”
“What we are isn’t related to any of this,” Jared said. “In any way.”
The sudden chill blast of Jared’s emotions made Kami flinch back. “You don’t know that,” she said evenly. “Logically, there might well be some connection.”
“Logically, it must be magic?” Jared said, shaking his head. “And logically, what you and I have is on the same level as some sick freak killing animals and trying to kill you. That’s what you think of us.”
No, it isn’t, Kami argued, reaching out to him with her mind, but the emotion she got from him was like a hand flung up, warning her off.
Jared’s body language followed suit. He backed out of the room, his big shoulders set in a furious line, and Kami got up from behind the desk and ran after him. She resented him for leaving and for being there at all; she was angry with herself for letting it matter so much.
“You’re taking this the wrong way,” she told him, her voice echoing down the stairwell.
“You wonder what privacy would be like. You wish I didn’t exist,” Jared said. “How am I supposed to take that?”
“What am I supposed to believe?” Kami sneered. “That we’re soul mates?”
This time Jared’s fury hit Kami’s own: it felt like a forest fire leaping between them, feeding off each other in a burning destructive loop. Kami was aware of what was happening and she still couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, and she hated it.
“Oh no, that wouldn’t be logical,” said Jared. “You always want an explanation for everything!”
“Yes,” Kami snapped. “I do. What’s wrong with that? And what’s wrong with wanting a little privacy? It is different now that I know you’re real. It is hard for me to deal with.”
“I’m sorry I’m so hard for you to deal with,” Jared snarled.
Kami took three steps down toward him and Jared backed off, reaching the ground floor. Kami stormed down the steps after him, raging enough to think things she would never have said: I’m sorry you’ve latched on to this without question because you’re messed up and desperate.
Jared turned and stalked down the hall, Kami in pursuit.
“Where are you going?” she asked. She ran to the main doors as Jared banged them open and barged through. She stood at the top of the steps as he got on his battered bike and screeched past. Kami yelled down, “Oh, be a delinquent and skip school, that’s very constructive!” She slammed the door shut behind her and glared around at the students standing wide-eyed around the hall.