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Angela’s hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. Her mouth was a snarl, and from one of her hands a knotted chain swung. She looked ready to use it. Her other hand was in Ash’s. He looked as if he had gone wild too, but wasn’t adapting to it as well as Angela. His face was distorted and marked with signs of tears.
For a moment, they all stood staring at each other.
Then Holly shattered the stillness by throwing herself at Angela. “God, Angie!” she exclaimed, arms locked around her neck. “What happened?”
Angela started and went still, seemed about to say something and checked herself. Her face changed, the snarl dropping away. She dropped Ash’s hand and lifted her own hand to gently touch Holly’s bright hair.
Ash looked very alone. Jared felt a presence at his elbow and glanced to see his aunt Lillian had drawn level with him. She had her eyes fixed on her son.
“Yes, Ash,” she said, her voice horribly, ferociously calm. “What happened?”
Ash swallowed and suddenly looked innocent, a storybook hero beholding horror in the woods. Jared wondered exactly how much practice he’d had looking innocent for his mother. Nicola Prendergast had died the night she asked Ash for help. Jared was prepared to bet that Ash had told his father.
“Your husband is the one killing people,” Jared informed her flatly. “I’m guessing Ash knew it. And I don’t care which of our nest is the worst monster, because he has Kami. We have to get to the quarry now!”
Angela’s eyes narrowed, the snarl returning. She looked eager to use that chain. Jared felt in perfect accord with her for the first time, and his lips curled in a silent snarl back.
Then they were all running, Angela holding Holly’s hand and carrying her along with them, Ash and Lillian at their backs. And still most of Jared was with Kami, alone with a murderer and trying to make a bargain.
Oh God, please don’t do it, he begged her. Please hold on. We’re coming.
Kami spoke rapidly, ignoring her cracking voice, trying to replicate her usual reporter’s tones, sweeping someone into an interview with the force of sheer conviction. “That’s why you came to my house and told me I was the one who could break the connection. You’ve been recruiting sorcerers who you thought would agree with you about the best way to get power—you tried to recruit a stranger from London; why wouldn’t you want your own nephew? If I die, he dies. But you came to me and asked me to cut the link because you didn’t want him to die, and you didn’t want his powers to be chained to me. You want him free? I’ll free him.”
Kami could see the sudden calculation in Rob’s eyes. He had to believe she had a reason for severing the connection.
“I told you it was something I might want to do already, in my garden,” Kami went on. “I had no reason to lie. I might get magic out of the deal, but people shouldn’t be tied to each other like this. I don’t want either of us to be a parasite. I don’t want his voice in my head, his feelings running through me like a disease. I want to be my own separate self. I was thinking of cutting the connection anyway. I swear I’ll do it.” She stopped, out of breath, her throat one long, silent scream of pain.
Jared was quiet in her head now. She’d had to be convincing, and truth was the most convincing thing of all. None of what she’d said she felt, none of what she’d said she wanted, had been a lie.
“Do it right now,” Rob commanded her.
Kami hesitated.
“I would rather my nephew was dead than your slave,” Rob said. “And I am not waiting for you to recover and hurl your stolen magic at me.” He picked up Ash’s knife from off the quarry floor, smaller but with similar carvings on the hilt to the one in his hand. He offered it to Kami, blade first. “So do it now. Or I’ll free him by cutting your throat.”
“I don’t understand what you want me to do!” Kami eyed the kn
ife and weighed her chances of fighting Rob with it. Nonexistent, she thought, with his strength and reach.
“Take this,” Rob instructed her. “And do what I say.”
Kami took the knife, holding it very lightly. Her hands wanted to shake, but she refused to let them. No matter how little chance she had of defending herself with this, it was a weapon, and she was not planning to let it go.
“Do you see your shadow?” asked Rob.
Kami looked up at him and remembered how she’d seen him look like a sorcerer in her garden. He had the same wild, powerful look about him, but now he looked vicious as well. There was blood in his hair and an open wound on his cheek. Someone had been able to hurt him, and that had maddened him: he wouldn’t feel in control again until he had hurt someone else.
And here she was.
Kami lifted her hands, the empty one and the one with the knife in it, saw how he tensed as she moved, and gave up the idea of a lunge. She obeyed him, finally, looking down at the quarry floor and the trembling dark shape of her own shadow. Her shadow was lying across the bloodstained stone, touching the chains.
“Lay the knife at the tips of your fingers,” Rob commanded. “So close you can feel the blade against your skin. Then cut the shadow away.”
Jared had been silent in her head. Now Kami turned her mind to his and let his thoughts and feelings flow through her. It was like being on a boat watching your homeland receding in the distance, seeing it for the last time under rain and thunderclouds.
Kami, please, please wait just another moment, Jared begged. I’ll save you, and later I’ll be better, I’ll do anything you want, be anything you want me to be. Please don’t do it.
His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in a cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.
