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He doesn’t understand that things like you looking at me and being silent are in fact you making an incredibly dumb joke in my head rather than counting all my eyelashes.
A hundred and seventeen, said Jared, his amusement teasing up the corners of Kami’s lips.
“Seriously, if I couldn’t read your mind,” Kami said, “law enforcement would be summoned. Immediately.”
They went through a glen of black trees with red-and-purple-tinted leaves. When she looked up at Jared and their eyes met, there was that shock, but she was growing used to it. Their awareness of each other hummed in the air.
The movement in the corner of Kami’s eye should not have caught her attention. It was just a flutter up in the tree branches. Something about it struck her as wrong, and she found herself turning and creeping closer to the tree, with Jared beside her. They were very close by the time they were able to believe what they were seeing.
Perched on a branch, small and terrible, was a creature made entirely of eyes. It was half the size of a thrush. It should have looked silly, its body wobbling in a way no other creature’s body did because so much of it was jelly, but it was disturbing instead.
Okay, either we have both been drinking before breakfast, or that’s weird, said Jared.
Hyakume, Kami thought. Sobo used to tell me stories. Creature with a hundred eyes.
The woods did not seem like a safe haven any longer. Kami took one slow step back, and another. Then she was running through the woods, Jared beside her. They ran for the light breaking free of the trees at the edge of the woods. There they paused, panting, in the middle of the road.
Jared glanced at her and their minds surveyed the situation together, all senses making sure they were okay. Their breathing slowed and went regular in sync. They headed up the hill to the school together, toward safety.
Kami went through the school gate first, and they saw they had escaped nothing. Horror washed through her, and from her to Jared and back again. Kami was drowning in horror. She could not breathe.
Nicola Prendergast was lying, arms outflung, on the merry-go-round in the playground. It was painted blue and yellow, cheerful colors. She was still wearing her clothes from last night, though they were cut or torn open to show her skin, all scarlet on white.
There was so much blood.
Blackness flashed in front of Kami’s eyes as if she was blinking. Nicola’s face was imposed on the dark. She thought of Nicola at age six, pouring mud into a teacup for Jared, before Nicola grew too old for imaginary friends and Kami chose Jared over her.
Jared turned Kami, one hand light at her waist, away from the sight of Nicola, and she was grateful. He used the tentative touch to draw her in carefully, neither of them daring to move much. Kami’s fist closed on the leather of Jared’s jacket. Jared leaned down and rested his forehead against Kami’s, and Kami was able to breathe.
She only caught one desperate breath, one that was their breaths mingled together. Then Jared shuddered away from her. Kami turned her face to the wall that surrounded the school, not bricks and cement but slates stacked together so that they never fell. She stared at the stones and stood with her back to Jared and the dead girl as she called the police.
The police kept Jared in the station much longer than they kept Kami, who had a brief interview with kind, wire-haired Sergeant Kenn. The sergeant made her a cup of tea and patted her hand and told her that her statement was very helpful.
They kept asking Jared about his past, about his father, about his relationship with Nicola. Even though they had both said that Jared barely knew her, that they had never actually exchanged words. Everyone had heard the stories about his father. The police thought he was the one who had attacked Kami. And Kami would not be able to convince anyone Jared was innocent without proof.
Obviously there would be no school for anyone today. Kami’s dad had collected her and taken her home, and she’d asked to be alone and slipped out the back door.
She went to the library. Dorothy wasn’t working behind the desk, so Kami could not ask her about the new laws of the Lynburns. But that didn’t matter. These weren’t animals being killed now. This was a person being killed, and dead people meant records.
Kami found big bound volumes marked LOCAL HISTORY, with old newspapers fixed to the heavy cardboard like pictures in a photo album. She remembered Dorothy saying, “This boy’s grandparents made a law that nobody would hurt the people of the Vale.” She went back fifty years, and then a few years more, until she found a tiny note in a list of obituaries. It read, “Adam Fairchild,” listed the dates of his birth and death, and said, “He will be remembered for his sacrifice.” Almost every year before that date, there was a similar obituary.
Sacrifice.
Kami stopped writing notes for her article, her lists of all these deaths. She laid down her pen and remembered the children’s skipping song, the one they’d sung in the same playground where she had found Nicola.
Almost everyone grows old.
She remembered Jared’s story about the knives that were Lynburn family heirlooms, and her mother calling the Lynburns creatures of red and gold: red blood on their gold knives. She remembered Nicola asking for protection from the Lynburns—but protection from who, or what? Nicola had not, in the end, been protected from anything.
She sat with her head bowed over the obituaries for a long time. Then she got up and went back to the police station.
Rosalind had not gone down to the station to collect her son.
You shouldn’t be here, said Jared. Kami continued sitting on the bench outside the station because he had said that at least a thousand times.
Kami, said Jared. Look up. Kami looked up and he was there in front of her, looking tired, with a hollowed-out feeling when she reached out for his mind.
He did not seem surprised that they thought he might have done it. He crouched down by the bench, close to her knee like a guard dog, but not sitting beside her. Kami sat with her hands folded, and they were silent outside the police station together. The people passing by knew that Nicola was dead. Everyone in town did, those who were haunting the school grounds and those who had shut themselves in their houses, like Kami’s family.
