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Rosalind had not invited Kami in, so Kami just poked her head inside and saw the wide gray flagstones and the vaulted ceiling, its arches dark with age and shadow. There were a couple of narrow windows with diamond panes that alternated crimson and clouded glass.
The sound of footsteps was clearer now, above Kami’s head, retreating to the back of the mansion. Kami counted the steps and tried to measure where Jared’s room might be.
The manor was all stone and arches, turning echoes into ghosts. Jared heard his mother coming long before she knocked. She didn’t wait for him to tell her to come in. He’d always wondered why she bothered knocking, until he met Aunt Lillian, Uncle Rob, and Ash and saw that they all did it. Being polite and imperious at the same time was the Lynburn way.
The curtains were closed. He had actual velvet curtains like you might have at a theater. Jared thought it was ridiculous. He hadn’t opened the curtains; the show wasn’t going on, not today.
Jared leaned against the wall and watched his mother walk over to the window, the point of the room farthest from where he was. Rays of sunlight stabbed like golden knives through the chinks in the curtains, toward her bowed head.
“That girl is here,” she said. “The one who took that tumble down the well.”
It was not exactly a surprise to Jared. Awareness of her kept tugging at the edges of his mind, as if her voice was always just on the cusp of his hearing. He had to choose not to listen, or he would be able to make out the words.
“I didn’t push her,” he told his mother. Not for the first time.
“Oh no,” she said. “She fell down the well. Your father fell down the stairs. Funny how people fall down all around you.” Her lip curled.
Jared thought of Kami, suddenly and terribly real. He’d had his arms around her in the well, knew the precise dimensions of her. She was so small he could crush her.
“I knew we should not have brought you,” Mom said. “The Lynburns built this town on their blood and bones.”
“That was their first mistake,” Jared said. “They should’ve built a city on rock and roll.”
Uncle Rob would have laughed, and Aunt Lillian would have smiled her chilly smile. His mother looked at him, and he saw her lips tremble with the effort of doing so, with how afraid she was.
“This town will only make you worse,” she whispered. “Being a Lynburn means we hurt each other. Being a Lynburn means we hurt everyone.”
Jared turned his face from the sight of his mother. He stared at the curtains, the velvet drapes that seemed black in the gloom, shutting all the brightness out. “Send her away.”
Chapter Eight
Yet She Says Nothing
Kami heard the sound of Rosalind’s steps returning and leaned away from the threshold, hands behind her back, trying to look as if she was admiring the weather.
Rosalind looked even more wavering than she had before. “He doesn’t want to see you,” she said, her voice barely there. “He doesn’t want you here.”
It was weird, having a parent be rude to you, even if she was just delivering someone’s message. Kami flinched. “Okay,” she said uncertainly. She waited for a moment, expecting Rosalind to offer excuses or apologies, but Rosalind did nothing but stand at the threshold, watching Kami with her pallid eyes.
Jared, what the hell? Kami demanded.
Jared was as silent as his mother. Kami bowed her head and retreated. On her way down the road, she turned at the sound of footsteps and looked up into Rosalind’s face.
“Don’t come back,” Rosalind whispered, and fled. The door to Aurimere House slammed behind her.
Kami stood stricken.
How dare she? How dare Jared?
Her own mother couldn’t warn her off, and neither could his. She was not going to have a piece of her soul closed off from her. She was not going to be chased away.
Kami ran back up the road and headed around the rear of the mansion, pushing open the unlocked gate to the garden. The gate towered above her, depicting delicate wrought-iron women with flowers falling from their hair, but it swung open easily at her touch. She stumbled as she came into the garden. It had once been the kind of garden tended by gardeners. The curves and rectangles of it could still be made out, but order had been drowned in vivid floods of poppies, dahlias, and cornflowers. The deep red sunburst of a crape myrtle exploded through the dark boughs of a yew to embrace a bridal autumn cherry tree.
Kami almost fell over the husk of a tree trunk, swathed now with the red ribbons of love-lies-bleeding. She waded through the garden until she was at the back of the house. Kami didn’t actually have to figure out which room was Jared’s. She knew which one was his because the curtains were closed and she could feel him sulking behind them.
Kami strode through a froth of daisies to a half-fallen wall that might once have been part of a fortress, but was now a tumble of stones studded with spiky yellow blooms. She bent down, rummaging in the wild tangle of garden around her feet, and chose a pebble. A large pebble. Kami wound her arm back, took careful aim, and threw.
The “pebble” crashed through both glass and curtain.
