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“So, I know what the ladies like,” Dad said. “I used to be a bad boy myself.”
Kami raised her eyebrows. “Oh, you were?”
“I won’t go into it, because I know you honor and respect me as your parent, and I don’t want to spoil your illusions,” said Dad. “Also I don’t want to give you any ideas. Let’s just say there were fires.”
“Dad! You set fires?”
“Fires happened,” said Dad. “And then there was your mother. She had no time for any of that. She didn’t try to reform me. She wasn’t allured by my wiles.”
“You had wiles?” Kami inquired, with even more disbelief than she’d shown regarding the fires.
“Damn good wiles,” said Dad. “And I was smoother than that sullen blond kid too. Way smoother.” There was a glint in his eye.
“You were saying about Mum?” Kami asked hastily.
“Claire was working in a restaurant and taking classes in business management when we were fifteen years old,” said Dad. “She knew what she wanted. There was no reason for her to bother with me. Unless I made myself less of a bother. What I’m trying to say is, you can’t change a guy. Concentrate on your own life. Someone whose hobbies include trying to break his neck on a motorcycle and slipping into a girl’s bedroom first thing in the morning isn’t worth bothering about.”
“He’s actually been here since last night.”
Dad’s fingers tightened on the doorknob even though his voice stayed light. “I really need to buy that shotgun.”
“He was sick and needed to lie down,” said Kami.
“Uh-huh,” said Dad.
“He was literally unconscious, and Mum and I had to carry him up the stairs.”
“Oldest trick in the book,” grumbled Dad, but his brow cleared. “Claire didn’t mention anything about this.”
“Maybe because she thought you’d go out and buy a shotgun?”
“Maybe,” Dad conceded. He left the doorway and went over to Kami, sinking onto the mattress beside her and sliding an arm around her shoulders.
“It’s not what it looked like,” Kami said. “We’re not like that. He’s my friend, that’s all.” Except that wasn’t all. He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.
They were like Jared, in a way. If they were real, they would be terrifying.
Kami did not know what Jared wanted. Kami didn’t know what she wanted either, except that she was scared all the limits she’d set would be burned away, all control lost, and she would be lost too. And she was scared to want anything. It felt as if their parents had traded away so much of their children and so many of their choices on that night long ago.
“I want you safe, that’s all,” said her father into the silence of her thoughts, and the shadow in his voice let Kami know he was thinking of Nicola. “I want you safe in every way.”
Her mother had wanted to keep them all safe. Her father didn’t know anything. Kami leaned her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. “I know.”
Which was when she became aware of the current of Jared’s thoughts turning cold. He was alone in the woods as he followed her memories of what her mother had told her last night.
Jared went stumbling through the undergrowth, twigs pulling at his clothes. He made for the Crying Pools. He dreamed of these lakes every night, two wide eyes reflecting the sky and hiding secrets. He didn’t know why he wanted to be near them, but he did. When he reached them, he threw himself down on the mossy bank beside the pool on the left and bowed his head over his clenched hands.
Kami had been right, and he had been wrong. The link was not some undeserved but beautiful gift sent to redeem the rest of his life. His and Kami’s connection was the ugly side effect of his mother threatening and terrifying hers. A shadow falling on his clenched hands and turning the lake black made him look up at the sky. There were clouds that had not been there when the sun was streaming through Kami’s window, black rags like tatters of mourning cloth hiding the sun.
The skin at the back of Jared’s neck crawled. He looked around, the air chill as if he was underwater. There was someone leaning toward him—a girl, her translucent green body bowing out of the heart of a tree. Jared held still, feeling like a startled animal, staring into her face.
Her eyes were hollows, green as the woods. Her hair swayed, moving like willow leaves in the wind. She leaned in close and kissed his cheek, soft as rain.
Jared shuddered, then panic exploded through him. He wanted to go back to Kami. Instead he wrenched himself up from the bank and away through the woods, up to the manor house. The double doors, above which blazed the legend YOU ARE NOT SAFE, crashed open. Jared hadn’t touched them. He strode into the echoing dark hall and came face to face with Ash at the bottom of the stairs.
> “A green girl in the woods just kissed me,” he announced furiously. “What is wrong with the world?”
Ash stared at him, and to Jared’s amazement a look of stunned joy shone in his eyes. “You woke the woods?”
