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Ten primly drank ice water and focused on his salad. “I am considering becoming a vegetarian,” he announced in a low voice. “Not that this isn’t excellent and nutritious,” he told Mum, blinking worriedly. “But I might owe it to my conscience.”
“Whatever you want,” Mum said.
“I do half the cooking, and by ‘half’ I mean three-quarters,” Dad pointed out. “And if you’re going to turn up your nose at all my carnivorous delights, ingrate child, you can sit under the table and gnaw sadly on a raw Brussels sprout at mealtimes.”
Ten smiled a tiny smile. He always knew when Dad was joking, though strangers’ jokes puzzled him.
Kami reached for the salad dressing and met her mother’s fingers stretching across the table for the same thing. Kami pulled away. Her mother’s hands were icy cold. Her mother’s gaze met hers.
“How was your day, Kami?” she asked, and picked up the dressing.
“Oh, fine,” Kami said. “The paper is going well. I’m working on a really big issue right now. I’m going to do an article on the old families of the Vale.” She looked at her parents.
Her father raised his eyebrows at her, and her mother’s gaze trembled and slid away.
“I heard that some of the old families were very powerful,” she added. “Can either of you help me? Any word about families who’ve got their own way a lot over the years?”
“That’d be all of them, wouldn’t it?” Dad said, rolling his eyes. “Especially the Lynburns. The other families say, ‘My way or the highway.’ The Lynburns say, ‘I am unfamiliar with the concept of the highway, so that leaves you with only one choice.’ Ha-ha.” Dad’s voice softened then, as it did every time he spoke of his mother. “She always said they weren’t important: that they knew so little they thought this small town was the world.”
Kami thought about the Lynburn boys, fighting over her as if they were dogs snarling over a bone and she had no choice in the matter. “Forget the Lynburns,” she said sharply. “Who else?”
Who else might be able to do magic? Who else might have wanted to kill Nicola?
“A lot of families in the Vale intermarried over the years,” Mum told her, staring at her focaccia. “There’s no real way to know who has inherited what, or who is descended from whom anymore.”
“Which brings us to the least sexy word in the English language, kids,” Dad said, kicking back in his chair. “Inbreeding. Avoid it. Think about dating outside the Vale.”
Mum sat with the line of her back so straight that it looked as if her spine was made of steel. Dad rubbed a hand over the curve of her shoulder. “You have a migraine, Claire?”
Mum gave him a faint smile. “It’s not so bad.” Stress brought on Mum’s migraines. Kami wondered how many of her headaches over the years had been about sorcerers and secrets. Mum looked back at Kami and said, “Some families were important once and aren’t anymore. Like the Prescotts. Power fades with time. All power but the Lynburns’. They’re the ones to watch. For your article.”
“Article,” Kami said. “Right.”
Dad reached over and pulled a lock of Ten’s wavy bronze hair. “Do you get the feeling that they’re talking about something other than an article?”
Kami stared at her fork, lying forlornly askew on her plate. “I don’t know what you could mean! You are talking crazy!”
“They are talking about boys,” Dad told Tomo and Ten. “I believe your mother may have concerns about Kami and a Lynburn boy. Possibly in a tree. Potentially k-i-s-s-i-n-g. I couldn’t say.”
Kami stood up from her chair. “Not likely.” And how true that was.
Her dad whistled cheerfully at her as she went out the door. Kami heard Tomo taking up the whistle as she climbed the stairs, and the murmur of her mother’s voice. She went to her bedroom and sat on her window seat, looking out the mullioned window. Through the old triangles of glass, she saw her town on one side. She saw the dark curve of the woods, starting from her home and ending with the manor.
Sorry-in-the-Vale, the Sorrier River, sorry, sorrier, sorcerer. Her town, and now she knew the truth of it. She’d helped shape her town with magic, added something new to the world with her story. Kami had never wanted to do anything but these two things: discover truth and change the world. What she needed to do now, before anything else, was discover all the truth.
The Prescotts, her mother had said. Holly’s family.
Kami found herself trying to figure out exactly when Holly had become friendly with her. She only had Holly’s word for it that Holly had ever been attacked. The Prescotts had once been powerful, her mother had said, and Holly had told Kami about the Prescotts’ grudge against the Lynburns. A Prescott might want to kill, and might choose the time of the Lynburns’ return to do it so a Lynburn would be blamed for the murder. A Prescott might be born a sorcerer. Power might tempt Holly, if she had the opportunity to take it.
Kami rested her cheek against the glass and shut her eyes against all the light and darkness of Sorry-in-the-Vale.
The next day, Kami couldn’t find a single member of her team in school. She didn’t have class with any of them on Wednesdays, but she didn’t see anyone in the cafeteria and her headquarters were deserted.
It gave her room to think.
By the time Kami cornered Holly in the corridor at the end of the day, she had already made up her mind how to behave. She smiled, determinedly bright. Holly smiled back, and Kami wondered if the smile looked a little fixed, a little false.
“How’s it going?” Kami asked.
