“Don’t hate me because, et cetera,” Angela murmured, but her ears went pink. Kami was never going to inform Angela about that little tell.
It was soothing for Kami to have Holly confess to feeling a little overshadowed by Angela’s good looks as well, especially after Jared’s reaction—or conspicuous lack thereof—to her dress.
“I’ll just be a second,” said Holly, gesturing toward the door to the extension that led to the bathroom. “Then I believe you good-looking ladies owe me a dance.”
Kami sipped her drink and glanced at Angela. Angela was watching Holly maneuver through the crowd, tall in her high silver heels, smiling and moving politely past some guy despite his clear wish to detain her. Angela’s look at Holly was fond, but the gaze she swept toward Holly’s suitor and then the rest of the bar was scathing.
“Why are boys such a nuisance?” Angela wanted to know, after a long pause in which she apparently brooded over this unanswerable question.
“It’s hard to say,” Kami answered. “I put it down to irresistible charm and sparkling wit and try to move on. Though the heap of suitors at my feet makes moving difficult.” She made the straw in her drink walk across the bar, tripping over suitors that were actually cardboard coasters.
Angela raised a perfect eyebrow. “Sparkling wit?”
“Don’t feel bad, Angela,” Kami said. “You know guys, they only want one thing. Repartee. I can’t count how many times men have admired my well-turned phrases. The shallow jerks.”
“Holly’s been a while; I’m going to go find her,” Angela said, rising from her stool in one easy, twisting movement. “But hold that thought. I’m working on something about witticisms in your bra, and it’s going to be good.”
Kami waved her off and took another sip of her drink. She looked around, back at Nicola, who was talking to a guy, and then at her own reflection over the bar, in the darkened glass behind the rows of bottles. Her gaze was dreamy, drowning-dark, and strange, like she was avoiding meeting her own eyes. That was what unsettled people about her and Jared, that their eyes were so often looking at something that wasn’t there.
Holly really had been gone a long time.
Kami lifted herself slightly from the barstool, because she was a lot taller from there than she was standing. She could not see Holly or Angela.
Then she heard the scream, and she knew Holly’s voice. The sound cut through the cheerful noise of the bar, dead serious over all the laughter. Kami jumped off her stool and charged through the crowd toward the extension door. She was halfway there, using her elbows like paddles in an uncooperative sea, when the door burst open. Holly stood on the threshold, hair mussed and another scream on her lips, brandishing one of her high heels like a sword.
Angela was there before Kami was, coming from Kami didn’t know where and grabbing Holly. Her arm locked around Holly’s neck and Holly hid her face against Angela’s red silk shoulder.
Kami reached them and asked the question the whole pub was asking. Her voice was clear and made Holly’s head lift: “What happened?”
“I was walking back, along the extension to the bathroom,” Holly said unsteadily. “Then the lights went out. I put my hand against the wall to guide myself back, and I was touching brick, and then—I touched something else, something warm. A person. I jumped back just before whoever it was grabbed at me, so they only caught at my arm instead of getting a real grip on me. And they missed my—” Holly choked for a minute, hand pressed against her neck. “My throat,” she whispered. “I felt the edge. Whoever it was had a knife.”
The whole pub went still around them, as if the word “knife” was a stone thrown in the center of a lake, changing the whole surface of the water, spreading a ring of silence.
“What did you do?” Angela asked. Kami could see Angela’s hands trembling—Angela!—and she clung to Jared in her mind, to his instant support and concern.
“I screamed, ‘Don’t hurt me,’ and I tried to make my voice all shaky, and crouched down, being all—like a scared girl in a horror movie,” Holly said, stumbling over the words. “Maybe it was stupid, but it was the only thing I could think of. And when I was crouching down, I got my shoe off, and I hit out with the heel, and I think I caught whoever it was in the face. I heard a shout like I did. They were taller than me, I could tell that much, but I don’t know if it was a man or a woman. And then I ran.”
Angela stroked Holly’s hair, even though her hands were still trembling. “Think you got them in the eye?”
“No,” Holly admitted.
“Shame,” said Angela. “Next time.”
Kami rested a hand on Holly’s back and said, “I think you were really smart.” She turned to look at the others with an authoritative air, because pretending to be in control made her feel more in control and less scared and useless. “Has anyone seen any strangers?” she asked, thinking of Henry Thornton from London.
The front doors of the Bell and Mist swung open, and Kami turned with the rest of the pub’s clientele to see the two Lynburn boys standing framed against the night.
The crowd of people in the bar stood watching Jared, silently accusing.
Your timing is amazing, Kami told him. By which I mean, I am amazed by it.
Jared looked across at her, standing in a ring of space in a throng of people, like a tiny drill sergeant. Relief broke from him and toward her like a wave to shore. She was safe. Then Rusty pushed past him. Jared looked at Angela and Holly, who were hanging on to each other. This was a bad sign, he realized, because Angela was as nurturing as a barracuda. Jared looked to Kami again.
Rusty was doing a fine job of making Jared actually hate him as he went over to Kami and hugged her. Kami’s arms went around Rusty’s wet neck and hung on. A vaguely familiar red-haired girl stepped out of the crowd and up to the door where Jared stood, her jewelry chiming like tiny bells.
“Lynburn,” she said, as if Jared and Ash were a unit, as if she was calling on a totem or a god rather than speaking to a person.
“Yes?” Ash said softly, at Jared’s elbow.
Jared gathered from Kami’s mind that the girl was called Nicola. He saw Kami detach herself from Rusty and head across the floor to him.
“The people in this town are meant to be safe!” Nicola looked right at Jared. Her throat moved as she swallowed. She’d seen something in his eyes she was afraid of, Jared thought. She looked back at Ash. “Isn’t that the bargain? Wasn’t that the promise?”
“What do you mean?” asked Kami, which Jared could tell was partly about being a journalist and partly about insinuating herself between Jared and Nicola. As if she could glare people into not being afraid of him.
Nicola gave Kami a pitying look and shook her head, her red ponytail fluttering in the wind blowing in from the open doors. She retreated into the embrace of her friends, who welcomed her back as if she had just come home from war. Her eyes stayed fixed on Ash, imploring and accusing.
“What did she mean?” Kami asked.
Jared turned to look at Ash. The open door was a square filled with darkness, cut by silver points of rain. Ash was gone.
“I don’t know,” Jared said slowly. “Ash was talking about something that happened—somewhere. In a place. Monkshood.”
Kami’s brows drew together, dark eyes firing. “Monkshood Abbey is a derelict manor house outside of town,” she said. “About twelve miles. It’s been empty for years.”
Jared raised his own brows. “Kids must go there all the time.”
“No,” Kami murmured. “No, I don’t think they ever do. We never did.”
“I think it might be an idea to effect our getaway,” said Rusty, appearing by Kami’s side. “Your friend chose an unfortunate time to make an entrance,” he said in her ear. “People are looking for someone to blame for what happened to Holly. And he’s a Lynburn.”
“And what does that mean?” Jared demanded. “What do you know?”
Rusty glanced up at him and the alertness was wiped away from his face, blurring his features like someone breathing onto a mirror. It was replaced with the usual lazy good humor. “Nothing,” Rusty said in his slow, pleasant voice. “But then, we’ve only been here six years. The Vale doesn’t give up its secrets that easy.” He looked around for his sister. Angela advanced on them, Holly rushing after her and wobbling slightly. She seemed to have broken her heel.
Jared grinned at Holly. “Hey, Warrior Princess.”
Holly beamed back at him, gorgeous and flirtatious with it, as if looking the way she did it was easier to flirt than not. She stepped up to him and Jared hugged her lightly, her cascade of curls tickling the bare skin of his arm. “Sorry I’m all wet,” he said.
Holly smiled up at him. “It’s a good look on you.” Her eyes slid around the room, making sure that everybody had seen the tearstained victim hug the Lynburn. Holly was a great girl, Jared thought as she drew back and went to hook arms with Angela.
“What’s our next step?” he asked Kami.
“Leave the pub,” Rusty said, urgency creeping into his drawl. “Now.”
They went out into the rain, the girls pulling on their coats as they did. Kami flipped up her hood, which had teddy bear ears on it. She walked beside Jared, four inches of rain-dashed darkness between her hanging wrist and his.
“Next we get answers,” Kami said. “Nicola Prendergast knows something. I can get her to talk to me.” Her voice was practical and cheery, but Jared felt a ripple of wistfulness go through her. “We used to talk all the time.”
“Can I get you to talk to me, Cambridge?” asked Rusty.
Jared gave Rusty a look, and then congratulated himself on being the stupidest man alive when Rusty’s sleepy hazel eyes went sharp again. Kami wasn’t going to like him antagonizing Rusty.
Jared slowed so he was behind the rest of the group, bowing his head against the rain. This close to Kami, able to feel what she felt, he might just as well have been sitting on her shoulder. He was able to gather what Rusty was saying, a few of the actual words floating over to him through the rain.
“—I’m older than you,” Rusty said. “I know guys like this.”
“—introduced me to Claud,” Kami said.
“—worse things than Claud,” said Rusty. “—just an idiot. When some guy gets all silent and obsessed—I’ve seen some really bad situations. Kami, watch yourself.”
Kami’s voice cut clearly through the sound of rain. “You don’t understand.”
“I’ve heard girls say that before now too.”
“You haven’t heard me say it,” said Kami, his girl, and the chill sluicing through his shirt, the chill of knowing someone decent like Rusty could simply look at him and know that he was somehow irredeemably twisted, none of it mattered. “Trust me to know what’s best for me, Rusty Montgomery, or I’ll beat you up.”
“Oh, please no, help, mercy,” Rusty said, his voice lifting now he was no longer whispering warnings.
“Besides,” said Kami, “it’s not like that. It’s never going to be like that.”
They walked in silence together for a little while before Kami pulled her hand out of his. Rusty pressed Kami’s hand before he let her go. It was as scary to see Rusty clinging as it was to see Angela trembling, Kami thought. She wanted to protect them both, let them relax and be detached the way they liked to be, so that they would not be hurt.
She was not as scared about being hurt herself, so she walked back to Jared through the rain falling light as petals on her hair.
She crossed the wet cobblestones of the town square, past the statue of Matthew Cooper. Jared looked up at the sound of her footsteps, eyes bright and pale under the streetlights.