The floor of the quarry trembled, a crack running between Angela’s feet, and Angela pivoted and slammed her foot down on his neck.
“I don’t think so,” she said, and rained down blows.
The wish for revenge burned fierce in Kami too, along with Jared’s, protective and furious. Even so, Angela looked almost terrible. When Angela’s arm was caught and her next blow fell short and useless, she nearly snarled in thwarted rage, blinked and focused on Ash.
Ash was panting. “You can’t beat my father to death!”
“Can’t I?” Angela panted back. She let her mouth curve more fully, into the shape of a scythe. “Watch me.”
Ash did not let go of her arm. Angela looked down at Rob Lynburn.
Kami had promised to stay still and be quiet, no matter what. She believed in Angela enough to keep her promise. Rob was down, Ash was on their side, and Jared and Lillian were coming. They could contain Rob.
Angela flicked her gaze from the father back up to the son and stepped back abruptly. Then she offered Ash the hand not holding the chain.
Ash glanced at her upturned palm, then back at her face.
“You unchained me so I had a fighting chance,” Angela said. “Which, as you can see, is the best kind of chance. So you can come with me and Kami, if you want. Or you can stay with him.”
They both looked down at the murderer, lying sprawled in his own blood at the bottom of the quarry.
Ash put his hand in Angela’s.
Angela turned, with a chain in one hand and Ash’s hand in the other, toward where Kami was hiding. “All right, Kami,” she called out, and moved toward her. “You can come out now.” Her eyes were blazing with pride and fury.
Kami was so proud of her, and so sorry about what she had to tell her.
“Angela,” she said. “Look behind you.”
Angela and Ash both whirled around. The blood was still there, scarlet trails over stone. But Rob Lynburn was gone.
Kami had only looked away for an instant. She had not considered how the wild power of the woods and a source’s blood might help a sorcerer heal.
Angela took a deep breath and said, low and calm, keeping her grip on Ash and her chain, “We should run.”
“You both run,” Kami told her. “Go get Jared and Lillian and Holly; they’re coming toward us. Find them and bring them here.”
“Why can’t you come too?” Angela snapped.
Kami saw fear under her anger for the first time. Angela was never, ever scared for herself. Kami looked at Ash’s face and saw he understood.
Kami kept her voice steady. “Because the rock has closed in on me. Rob did it, and I’m trapped. I can hold him off, I’m a source, but you need to go get help. Angela, I trusted you, please trust me now. Please go.”
Angela hesitated, then whirled around and left. She used her grip on Ash’s hand to help him as they scrambled out of the quarry, Angela more familiar with the terrain. She stood on the lip of the quarry and pulled him up to stand beside her with ease.
Kami watched their heads, one dark and one bright, going into the woods, until they disappeared from her sight.
Angela did not know Rob had spilled Kami’s blood with that knife. She did not know how weak Kami felt, trembling in her stone prison. She would be furious if she found out that Kami had made her leave when Kami could not defend herself, but Kami wanted to be sure Angela was safe.
Kami drew in a slow shuddering breath, and reached out for comfort where she could always find it. I can hear him coming back, she told Jared. I’m scared.
One of Rob Lynburn’s boots hit the heap of chains with a dull clang. Kami looked at him stepping over his own blood and shivered.
Don’t be scared, Jared told her. He won’t touch you. I’m coming, and I’m going to kill him.
Kami swallowed. Her breathing was so loud in this small space, hissing and furnace-hot, like the roar of a dragon in its cave. She was afraid Rob might hear. Kami turned her head as far as she could and looked at the dark stone instead of at Rob Lynburn. She turned her mind toward Jared. Come soon.
The hollow closed in tighter on her, like a stone fist. Stone pressed against her back, her sides, and her face, cold against her lips. Its grip seemed to go right through her flesh and promise to grind her bones to powder. She could not help it: she let out a small, stifled sound of agony.
Rob Lynburn made a soft, delighted noise. “Come out,” he called.
Kami stayed where she was. The stone tightened around her. She did not know if she would be crushed or suffocated first. Jared’s cold, clear terror cut through the dark confusion of her brain.
If she did not get out of here, she was going to die. She had to take her chances with Rob.
“Come out,” Rob repeated. “Or be buried alive.”
She tried to will the stone to open and free her, but she had no air and he had her blood. Kami made a small, strangled sound of assent. The stone grip released her, easing by just a fraction. She turned her face toward the light and began to drag herself out on her raw, bleeding hands and knees.
Rob stood over her, smiling against the sun and looking like Jared’s dependable uncle. The knife was shining in his hand.
Kami looked up at him, her vision hazy so his golden hair blurred with the autumn leaves. She cleared her throat and whispered, low and hoarse, every word painful: “I’ll cut the link.”
Jared was running through the woods, trees and light going by in a blur. He could hear Holly and Aunt Lillian running after him, neither of them able to keep up. Holly was still shouting questions somewhere in his wake. Aunt Lillian had given up asking.
Jared’s heart was louder in his ears than their footsteps or their voices. Most of him was with Kami, stone on all sides and closing in. He thought nothing would be able to stop him, and then Angela and Ash burst out of the trees.
Angela’s hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. Her mouth was a snarl, and from one of her hands a knotted chain swung. She looked ready to use it. Her other hand was in Ash’s. He looked as if he had gone wild too, but wasn’t adapting to it as well as Angela. His face was distorted and marked with signs of tears.
For a moment, they all stood staring at each other.
Then Holly shattered the stillness by throwing herself at Angela. “God, Angie!” she exclaimed, arms locked around her neck. “What happened?”
Angela started and went still, seemed about to say something and checked herself. Her face changed, the snarl dropping away. She dropped Ash’s hand and lifted her own hand to gently touch Holly’s bright hair.
Ash looked very alone. Jared felt a presence at his elbow and glanced to see his aunt Lillian had drawn level with him. She had her eyes fixed on her son.
“Yes, Ash,” she said, her voice horribly, ferociously calm. “What happened?”
Ash swallowed and suddenly looked innocent, a storybook hero beholding horror in the woods. Jared wondered exactly how much practice he’d had looking innocent for his mother. Nicola Prendergast had died the night she asked Ash for help. Jared was prepared to bet that Ash had told his father.
“Your husband is the one killing people,” Jared informed her flatly. “I’m guessing Ash knew it. And I don’t care which of our nest is the worst monster, because he has Kami. We have to get to the quarry now!”
Angela’s eyes narrowed, the snarl returning. She looked eager to use that chain. Jared felt in perfect accord with her for the first time, and his lips curled in a silent snarl back.
Then they were all running, Angela holding Holly’s hand and carrying her along with them, Ash and Lillian at their backs. And still most of Jared was with Kami, alone with a murderer and trying to make a bargain.
Oh God, please don’t do it, he begged her. Please hold on. We’re coming.
Kami spoke rapidly, ignoring her cracking voice, trying to replicate her usual reporter’s tones, sweeping someone into an interview with the force of sheer conviction. “That’s why you came to my house and told me I was the one who could break the connection. You’ve been recruiting sorcerers who you thought would agree with you about the best way to get power—you tried to recruit a stranger from London; why wouldn’t you want your own nephew? If I die, he dies. But you came to me and asked me to cut the link because you didn’t want him to die, and you didn’t want his powers to be chained to me. You want him free? I’ll free him.”
Kami could see the sudden calculation in Rob’s eyes. He had to believe she had a reason for severing the connection.
“I told you it was something I might want to do already, in my garden,” Kami went on. “I had no reason to lie. I might get magic out of the deal, but people shouldn’t be tied to each other like this. I don’t want either of us to be a parasite. I don’t want his voice in my head, his feelings running through me like a disease. I want to be my own separate self. I was thinking of cutting the connection anyway. I swear I’ll do it.” She stopped, out of breath, her throat one long, silent scream of pain.
Jared was quiet in her head now. She’d had to be convincing, and truth was the most convincing thing of all. None of what she’d said she felt, none of what she’d said she wanted, had been a lie.
“Do it right now,” Rob commanded her.
Kami hesitated.
“I would rather my nephew was dead than your slave,” Rob said. “And I am not waiting for you to recover and hurl your stolen magic at me.” He picked up Ash’s knife from off the quarry floor, smaller but with similar carvings on the hilt to the one in his hand. He offered it to Kami, blade first. “So do it now. Or I’ll free him by cutting your throat.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do!” Kami eyed the knife and weighed her chances of fighting Rob with it. Nonexistent, she thought, with his strength and reach.
“Take this,” Rob instructed her. “And do what I say.”
Kami took the knife, holding it very lightly. Her hands wanted to shake, but she refused to let them. No matter how little chance she had of defending herself with this, it was a weapon, and she was not planning to let it go.
“Do you see your shadow?” asked Rob.
Kami looked up at him and remembered how she’d seen him look like a sorcerer in her garden. He had the same wild, powerful look about him, but now he looked vicious as well. There was blood in his hair and an open wound on his cheek. Someone had been able to hurt him, and that had maddened him: he wouldn’t feel in control again until he had hurt someone else.
And here she was.
Kami lifted her hands, the empty one and the one with the knife in it, saw how he tensed as she moved, and gave up the idea of a lunge. She obeyed him, finally, looking down at the quarry floor and the trembling dark shape of her own shadow. Her shadow was lying across the bloodstained stone, touching the chains.
“Lay the knife at the tips of your fingers,” Rob commanded. “So close you can feel the blade against your skin. Then cut the shadow away.”
Jared had been silent in her head. Now Kami turned her mind to his and let his thoughts and feelings flow through her. It was like being on a boat watching your homeland receding in the distance, seeing it for the last time under rain and thunderclouds.
Kami, please, please wait just another moment, Jared begged. I’ll save you, and later I’ll be better, I’ll do anything you want, be anything you want me to be. Please don’t do it.
His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in a cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.
I love you, Kami told him, and cut.