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“Me neither,” Kami said thoughtfully. “Time we did.” She hopped off the sink and started toward the door, but then stopped. “That is,” she said, “if you both still want to be part of the investigation. I understand if this freaks you out too much. I know it’s a lot to deal with.”
“It would be all right if it freaked you out,” Holly said cautiously to Angela, as if hoping for permission to admit she was freaked out herself.
Angela had not grown up with a father hating the Lynburns like Holly had, or a mother keeping the Lynburns’ secrets like Kami had. She had not had Aurimere waiting on the horizon all her life. Kami could understand it if Angela wanted nothing to do with this.
“It doesn’t matter,” Angela said.
“It doesn’t matter?”
“What matters is Kami,” Angela said, avoiding Kami’s eyes. “I do not trust that guy. He looks at her as if she was his heart, made of glass and suspended on a thread that might break. If the thread breaks, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“His mother made me what I am to him,” Kami told them quietly. She did not want to discuss his heart. Whenever he looked at her, he looked away fast. He didn’t look at her the way he must have looked at Holly when they first met.
She felt ashamed for that moment of resentment when she saw Holly’s concerned expression.
“I don’t want Kami hurt,” Holly said.
“I won’t have her hurt,” said Angela. “Or you.”
Holly bowed her head and hugged her knees to her chest, as if she had been hoping that wouldn’t come up, that they would never have to discuss the fact that someone had tried to grab Holly the night Nicola died. Someone had meant it to be her, and they could not go to the police with a tale of magic and blood. They only had each other to solve this, and Kami did not know what she would do if Holly or Angela opted out.
There was a pause, and then Kami heard the click of Angela’s heels on tile, walking across the bathroom floor. Eventually Angela’s shining leather boots were touching Holly’s worn running shoes.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Angela promised her.
“Sure,” Holly said, smiling up at Angela, even if her smile looked
strained. “I still have several pairs of deadly high heels.”
They all laughed. None of their laughs sounded particularly convincing.
“So, Angie,” Holly went on, “you’ve never …”
There was a silence neither of them seemed inclined to fill. Then Angela said, “Ah, no.”
“Bit hard to believe,” Holly mumbled, and Kami saw her flush. “Since you’re about the most beautiful person in town.”
Angie’s scarlet-painted mouth tugged up at one corner. “You forget one small detail,” she said. “I kind of hate people.”
A real laugh was surprised out of Kami and Holly both—a laugh that started out a little wild, but ended up making Kami think that only having each other might just work out.
“No, you don’t,” Holly said.
“I really do,” said Angela, and Kami laughed again as Angela continued. “Have you met people? They’re very annoying.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monkshood Abbey
Monkshood was a good hour’s walk from the town proper. The very narrow lanes meant that occasionally you had to throw yourself in the ditch to avoid a car, and once they had to throw themselves in the ditch to avoid a farmer coming by in a blue cart.
“The Americans have these inventions called sidewalks,” Jared noted.
“We call them pavements,” Kami said. “And we see them as luxuries that you just can’t have with every road.”
“You know what goes faster than us? Or even pretty, pretty ponies?” Jared asked.
“Your head, spinning through the air when detached from your shoulders after a grisly motorcycle crash?” Kami raised her eyebrows and Jared ducked his head, his ripple of amusement going through her anyway. It felt good. Not so good was the fact that Holly and Angela were rambling ahead, obviously uncomfortable about being near her and Jared. Kami could understand it. Just the fact that they could talk to each other silently must be off-putting, in the same way that speaking in a foreign language in front of someone you knew couldn’t speak it was off-putting—but worse, because a foreign language could be learned.
