“That’s right,” she said loudly. “Stay in school, all of you. Or I’ll get really riled.”
She returned to the headquarters, but there was no comfort to be found there now. She turned on the computer anyway, yelling at Jared in her head.
“Uh,” said Ash from the door, “are you—all right?”
“Fine!” Kami said. She typed out: “With the advent of sperm banks, women realized the sheer uselessness of men, and by the year 2100 they were largely extinct” with extreme force. “Absolutely fine, never better! Why do you ask?”
“Er, because I heard you and Jared had a screaming fight. Also, you are typing like a maddened weasel taped to a keyboard.”
Kami stopped typing. “You may have a point.”
“I just wanted to check and see if you were okay,” said Ash. “I thought you might need cheering up.”
Kami relaxed back in her chair. Ash was standing in the doorway, not leaning against it listening to invisible voices. Just standing, blue eyes concerned and voice gentle. “How were you planning to cheer me up?”
“Oh, well,” said Ash, and smiled his charming smile. “How about catching a movie tonight?”
He was so nice, Kami couldn’t help but think. She wasn’t dating anyone else. She wasn’t betraying anyone. Kami bit her lip, then smiled back, feeling the edges of her mouth strain to form the shape. “I’d love to.”
Down in the dark waters, there was gold gleaming. There was no air and the water was cold as death, dragging him down like chains. There was nothing here but darkness and the unreachable gleam of gold lost down so deep. If he did not get to the surface, he would die, and yet he knew with a chill, sure knowledge that if he did not reach that golden gleam, he would die anyway. Then he saw something else, lit by the underwater shine on the metal: a woman’s face at the bottom of the pool.
Jared broke the surface of the dream and woke gasping. He rolled onto his stomach and winced: he had been driving around for eight solid hours, and taken a few tumbles. He’d only eased up because he knew if he did actually crash, Kami would come for him.
So he hadn’t driven his bike into a tree, and instead Kami’d gone out on a date with Ash. That was much better. And instead of crashing his bike, Jared had stormed in here at evening time, crashed out, and dreamed about a dead woman.
Jared realized that his jacket smelled like he’d been on a bike for eight hours in it. He threw it off and headed for the shower. His bathroom at Aurimere was ridiculous and strange, each claw on his claw-foot tub clutching a tiny crystal, the showerhead a brass fist. At least the faucets worked, which was more than he was used to. It was better than he’d had in plenty of the apartments with his parents in San Francisco, and sure as hell better than the taps at fast-food places that he’d used to try to keep clean last summer.
The hot water stung on his new scrapes and bruises, sluicing between his shoulder blades. Jared cracked his neck, got out of the shower, and went to find a clean T-shirt and jeans. He left the room raking his hair back from his face, went up the steps past the tapestries, through the drawing rooms and down the long hall, calling for Uncle Rob. Uncle Rob was always kind to him, clapping him on the shoulder and calling him “son.” Jared wasn’t sure why he liked it or why he wanted to see Uncle Rob now, but he did.
Jared stalked into the parlor. There were no lights on, but a fire was burning, casting orange and black streaks on the windows as if the curtains were tiger hide. From the shadows, a voice said: “Can I help you?”
Jared said, “Aunt Lillian?” and turned on the light.
His aunt sat in a yellow armchair with a high back. Her hair was neatly parted, held back by a black band, which made her look like an older, evil Alice in Wonderland.
“Did you want a book?” Aunt Lillian asked. “I could not help but notice half the library has moved to your room.”
Jared felt vaguely unsettled that she’d noticed. He wasn’t used to adults scrutinizing his behavior. He hadn’t meant to take so many books, but they were all the kind he liked, about made-up olden days when the world made sense, about death and love and honor.
“I was looking for Uncle Rob,” he said, backing up. “Is he in the garden?”
“Don’t go outside, Jared; your hair is wet,” Aunt Lillian told him. She said it coolly, but it caught Jared off guard. It was such a mom thing to say, and something his mom would never have said. He hesitated on the threshold, and while he did, Aunt Lillian’s darkened and shaped eyebrows came together in a slight frown. She repeated, “Can I help you?”
Jared came to a decision. “Yeah. Yeah, you can.”
Lillian clearly did not much appreciate the word “yeah,” but she nodded for him to continue.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “we don’t know each other all that well, do we? I mean, like—for people who are related to each other. I wondered, and this might seem strange, if you have any stories about when Ash was a kid.”
Aunt Lillian blinked. Jared figured that was Aunt Lillian’s equivalent of staggering back with a hand pressed to her heart. “Yes,” she said, her voice chillier than ever. “Yes, I do.” She rose and went to the glass-fronted bookcase at the other end of the room and took out a cloth-covered photo album with sepia roses on the front. She stood by the bookcase holding the album in her hands and regarding Jared.
Then she strode over to one of the sofas with scarlet canopies. She sat down, her back straight, like someone trained at the most genteel military academy in the world. “You can come sit by me,” she said graciously.
Jared came and sat on the couch, enough of a distance away so that Aunt Lillian had her space and close enough to see the photo album. It was possible he slumped a little more than usual.
“I am pleased you are taking an interest in the family, Jared,” Aunt Lillian said. “It matters a great deal to me.” She paused and added, “It is the only thing in the world that matters to me.”
Jared felt a stab of guilt. He felt okay using Aunt Lillian and having underhanded motives, but it got more complicated if she actually cared what he did. It also made him accept something he really had known before. Back in San Francisco, in the last of a long string of apartments, he’d woken up to hear Mom and Aunt Lillian arguing. Mom had never lost her accent, but it had been weird to realize that he couldn’t differentiate between their voices. It was like lying in the dark listening to his mother arguing with herself. Except that the two voices had very different things to say.
He’d wanted to believe it was Aunt Lillian who said “He won’t be any use” and his mother who said “Of course we’re taking the child. I do not care if you don’t want him: I do.”
But he’d known, really, that it wasn’t.
Which begged the question, why would Aunt Lillian want him, and what for?
Jared leaned farther backward into the cushions, even though the straight line of Aunt Lillian’s spine reproached him. “So,” he said. “Tell me about Ash.”
At the point when Jared relayed Ash’s habit of hiding his cuddly toys in the freezer, Kami started to laugh in the movie theater.
Ash glanced over at her.
“Sorry,” Kami murmured. “Just—the movie’s funny.”
Ash looked back at the movie, in which a small blond child was dying of leukemia.
“I have a very warped sense of humor,” Kami whispered.
What she had was the deep desire to beat Jared’s head in. She knew how this date should have gone. She would have sneaked looks over at Ash. A few times their gazes would have met and parted after an instant too long. She would have left her hand lying on the arm of the seat invitingly, and he would have taken it. But instead she’d been trying to maintain a poker face while being regaled with the story of when Ash was four and had stuffed a prawn up his own nose.
After the movie, Ash and Kami left the theater and meandered down to walk by the riverside. It was twilight, the moon turning the Sorrier River into a silver ribbon and turning Ash’s fair hair into silver threads.
“So, that movie was …,” Ash said. “Uh …”
“Very much so,” said Kami. “There’s only one cinema in Sorry-in-the-Vale, and we only play one movie a week, so they pretty much know that they’ve got a captive audience. Not that this is an excuse for how many times I’ve watched Casablanca.”
“Do they change it up?” Ash asked. “Like, one week, touching stories of love and loss and the human condition, and the next week—er—mutant killer werewolves? Not that I’m saying I personally would choose werewolves.”
“If we ever got a shot at werewolves,” Kami said, “I’d choose werewolves too. For the novelty value alone.” She slanted a look at Ash. “Regretting your parents’ rash decision to move back here, oh cosmopolitan traveler?”
“Nah,” said Ash. “Everything’s better here. The air is easier to breathe, and my mother’s much happier. My family’s—different.”
“I had not noticed that,” Kami told him. “At all.” She thought of the Lynburns running out to soak up a storm. It was bizarre, and seemed impossible now, with Ash walking beside her in the quiet night and holding her hand in his. She could touch him, and it was easy.
Ash shrugged, and his hand tightened on hers. “Families,” he said. “They can be hard. But you have to try your best for them, don’t you?”
He swung Kami’s hand, and they exchanged a smile going over the arch of the wooden bridge.
“So,” said Ash. “What were you and Jared fighting about? I heard—”
“I don’t want to talk about Jared!” Kami said, and decided to give another stab at being Mata Hari and extracting information from men with her wiles. “So … tell me about the difficulties in your family.” She wondered if Mata Hari had ever found it tricky to know how to put things.
“Well,” Ash said doubtfully, “you already said you didn’t want to talk about Jared.” He grinned at her again. “I don’t really want to talk about my family either.”
He used her hand to spin her into him a little, as if they were doing a subtle dance. He stood looking down at her, now close, and the moonlight trembled on his lashes. He leaned down while Kami leaned against the rail of the bridge and turned her face up to his. The first touch of his mouth was gentle, light, and sweet.
Fun fact, Jared put in. Ash wet the bed until he was five.
Kami spluttered out a laugh against Ash’s lips. Ash drew back sharply.
Kami tried not to die of mortification. “I’m so sorry,” she said instantly. “I was thinking about something else.”
Ash’s voice had an edge to it now. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that—” Kami floundered, a fish on the dry land of shame. “That—that purple is a funny color?” She couldn’t blame Ash for his look of incredulity. She was feeling something along the same lines herself. “Look, I’m so sorry,” Kami said. “I’m feeling really weird. I should probably go home.”
She crossed the bridge over to the road running along the woods. When she glanced back, Ash still stood on the bridge in the moonlight, looking like an outraged angel. Jared was loud in her head about the fact that she was walking home through the woods alone at night.
I’m not going into the woods, Kami snapped. I’m not a total idiot. And if I’m alone, whose fault is that?
Jared rolled out of bed, trying to ignore Kami’s angry silence in his mind. It had been keeping him up for hours. He just had to move, as if by moving he could get past the feeling he had done something even more messed up than usual.