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“What did she say about me?” Lillian inquired.
“She said you used to think you were queen of every blade of grass in the Vale—” Kami stopped, horrified at herself.
Lillian’s mouth curved in a slow red smile. “I still do.”
Her gaze shifted to a point above Kami’s shoulder. The brief warmth in her eyes, like a glint of sunlight on a frozen lake, made Kami unsurprised to look around and see Ash. She was also not surprised to see he looked alarmed. Ash put a hand on Kami’s back as he came up to her, as if in apology for anything Lillian had said. He was naturally kind, she was starting to realize, which was better than being charming.
“Mother, this is Kami,” said Ash.
“So I am continually informed,” Lillian murmured.
“Kami, Mother,” said Ash in an undertone. “Let’s go see some more of the garden,” he added, and used the hand on her back to guide Kami away.
“I am fascinated by gardening,” Kami agreed solemnly. “Tell me about fertilizer, Ash.”
“I dunno, we haven’t known each other that long, that’s kind of racy talk,” said Ash.
They walked to the other side of the garden, where Rob was pruning, more because it was far from Lillian than because Ash had anything special to show her. There was a gate there. Kami peered over it and saw the dip and slope of the fields below the hill.
All Lynburn land, she was sure, and she thought of the piece of paper at home in her jeans pocket. She looked at the ground and saw a dark object sticking out from the bottom of the gate. It was a life-size hand, part of the gate, its fingers reaching up to Kami as if in appeal.
Kami took a step back. “Have you noticed that a lot of your décor is kind of human-hand-based, Ash?”
“Uh, no,” said Ash, sounding puzzled.
Kami started to list off examples—the hand doorknob, the hand holding the sword hilt, the hands clasping the light, and now this. She refrained from mentioning the fact that the other Lynburn theme was drowned women.
They were standing by the manor wall. Ash was examining his own hands, held out before him, and calling comments over his shoulder to Rob as his father gardened, when Kami felt an impulse to turn around. Like a mental nudge.
Kami, said Jared, and then in an urgent, real whisper: “Kami!”
Kami edged toward the tower that stood nearby, joined to the manor but somehow apart from it, a bright column with a door into the dark. When she was a step closer, she saw Jared standing against the wall in that darkness.
“Come here,” he said, and grinned. He was fresh from a bike ride, hair ruffled, chest rising and falling hard, the glitter of a thin chain and a glint of sweat at the hollow of his throat. There was a thrill running through him, a feeling of discovery, something wild that crept into her blood as well.
I can’t, she said automatically, and looked toward Ash.
Kami, Jared protested, just as automatically.
Kami looked back at him, and then at Ash again. Look here upon this picture, and on this, she thought, calling up the line from a play about an evil brother and a good one.
It was a striking contrast, Ash standing in the sun laughing and calling out to his father versus Jared in the dim stairwell like Ash’s lurking shadow self, scar pale in the darkness. The worst part was that Jared saw it too, through her eyes, saw who looked like an angel and who looked like something else.
In a bleak rush of feeling, like an icy river with his thoughts tumbling jagged stones caught in the cold, Jared did not even blame her. He thought: No wonder.
Kami threw herself into the shadows and the stairwell. That’s not it, that’s not what I meant, she told him, grabbing his jacket.
Jared broke away from her and ran up the steep curve of stairs in the darkness. Kami ran along with him. They barely checked their steps when a storm broke out of a clear sky and sent shuddering pale reflections of lightning through a window Kami could not even see yet. Thunder followed and they kept running, even though Kami felt like the tower would be shaken by the storm at any moment. It almos
t made sense to her whirling mind as they ran: sunlight with Ash, and lightning with Jared.
They reached the top of the bell tower panting and breathless, Kami dizzy from the turns of the stairs. The bell was in the river, so it was just a room that had four vast glassless windows. Rain swept in from all sides in sheets. Jared and Kami stood in the center of the room.
“I was riding my bike really fast and I saw it,” Jared murmured, breath still ragged. He pointed and Kami saw it too, the dark curve of the wood from the foot of the hill where Aurimere stood, reaching in a perfect comma toward the little house at the other end of the woods. Toward Kami’s house, which the Lynburns owned.
“What does it mean?” Kami asked.
Jared said, “I don’t know.”
