Kami had texted for everyone to meet in the headquarters after school on Monday. Jared and Ash were still not here.
“Rob has made a fatal mistake by giving us time to band together and make amazingly cunning plans, which we are doing,” Kami said.
She did not let herself think about how little time they had left. She was busy at her desk, separating out all the sorcerers’ possessions they had stolen into a dozen even parcels in small brown bags. If a teacher came in, Kami was going to claim it was a craft project.
“Are we?” Angela asked. “We don’t even know if these spells work. We haven’t tested them out.”
“That’s why we’re going to test them out now. Because we’re a team,” Kami said. “The six of us.”
Angela looked around the room, her lips moving as she counted the number of people there. Her eyes slid along the gray walls and the fake-wood desks as if she thought Jared and Ash might be hiding under Kami’s ruler.
“Yes, all right, I take your point,” Kami grumbled.
“But I did not make it aloud,” said Angela. “Because I hold you in true affection.”
She said it mockingly but Kami smiled at her, and after a moment Angela smiled back, white teeth against scarlet lips, the most beautiful girl in Sorry-in-the-Vale by a thousand miles.
The door opened, and Kami saw Ash on the threshold. Jared was behind him, a shadow whose face she could not make out, but she saw how Ash was briefly dazzled and dazed by Angela’s smile. She wished for a shameful moment that they had not appeared at that exact time.
Ash nodded to them all and walked in. He smiled at Kami too, his smile as soft as Angela’s was bright. “Kami,” he said, and she realized he looked happy for a change. “Hey, you look great.”
She was in the same outfit she’d worn Sunday, down to the earrings. She’d wanted Jared to see it.
“Thank you,” Kami said, the little compliment shoring up her confidence. She wondered about how Ash and Jared had come in together, apparently in amity. Then she nerved herself, hoping no change showed on her face, and looked at Jared. He was leaning against the wall of the headquarters, the way he always had to lean against something.
He looked more or less the same as ever, in his scarred leather jacket, his smile a twist that could not be compared to Ash’s or Angela’s. But this was his smile; she knew how it felt from the inside out, and it always made her smile helplessly back.
“At last!” said Kami. “We’re going to go down to the woods, and the two of you are going to try and kill or capture the rest of us.”
“Sounds like a good time,” Ash responded doubtfully.
Jared went over to Kami’s desk to examine the tiny pouches: dabs of Ruth’s lipstick, a corner torn from Amber Green’s notebook, hair from brushes left behind by Rob and Rosalind. The flotsam and jetsam of sorcerers’ daily lives.
“One more ingredient before the spell,” said Kami. “Come here, Samson.”
She picked up her tiny pair of scissors, sharp and glittering in the afternoon light, and Jared leaned helpfully across the desk. It was easy to grab a piece of his hair: one lock curled around Kami’s finger as soon as she touched it. The afternoon sun touched it too, turning it into spun gold.
Jared was looking up at her for a change. He said, “Hey there, Delilah,” and her scissor blades sheared the lock away.
Kami put the lock into one of her little bags, then tied the bag closed with twine and put it in Jared’s hand.
“A drop of blood, a single tear, a lock of hair, what you hold dear,” Jared murmured, and Kami thought she could hear magic crackling behind his words. “Do not touch me. Do not come near.”
Light not from the sun passed over his cupped hand, making the bag shine as if it had suddenly become a cache of jewels. Then the bright moment was over, and Jared tossed the bag back over to Kami. She caught it.
“So. Think I can hurt you?” Kami asked, grinning.
He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her sidelong. “I know you can.”
* * *
The woods were alive with ice and fire, the leaves whispering tales to sorcerers. Kami ducked behind a holly bush, its waxy leaves and bright berries providing some slight cover, and watched Jared stalking through the trees. She kept her breathing as quiet as she could, watching him turn his head her way.
Tree branches reached out for her from the other direction, flame sparking along the bark, and Kami had to retreat fast from the cover of the bush, still crouched low on the earth, and made as if to rise as she watched Jared’s jean-clad legs approach.
He threw a fireball at her, and Kami held up her little pouch that contained so many stolen relics from sorcerers and one waving lock of Jared’s hair.
“Noli me tangere,”
she said, the words to activate the spell.
The fireball disappeared into a cloud of something paler than smoke, like a puff of breath on a winter day.
Jared came toward her. She ducked back to the ground the instant he reached her side, kneeling to toss him over her shoulder and into a tree. He went flying and hit hard, his head connecting with a loud crack, then slid down the trunk and lay still.
Kami stood up and could not help clapping her hands together.
“Awesome!”
Jared blinked up at her from the forest floor, pine needles in his hair and eyes not focused. “Oh, thanks.”
“No, but seriously,” Kami said. “This is a teaching moment. Did you see how the fire on the branch flickered out when your head hit the tree? We’ve got to break their focus on whatever source they are using. And we can already stop them using any magic on us.”
She looked around, and was disappointed none of the others appeared to be there to share the exciting discovery.
Jared was being totally unsupportive. “So you’re going to be telling Angela to aim for my head?” he asked. “This is terrible news.”
“I’ll tell her not to kill anyone during our training sessions,” Kami told him. “That is a waste of resources. And also personally I would be upset.”
“Thanks,” Jared said, softer this time, as if he meant it. Or possibly as if speaking louder would hurt his head.
Kami walked over to the place where he lay and looked down at him, a little worried. Winter sunlight was spearing in a line of brilliant white through the trees, and lying on the earth with Jared were brown leaves, dry and curled and crackling beneath her boots.
Jared seemed to have no interest in getting up. He lay there, eyes hooded, almost closed, and his fingers loosely curled in among the dead leaves. Kami stood over him, watching the darkness cast by the branches touch his still face, light striking the small bright scimitar curves of his lashes, painting the shadows beneath in long lines over his cheekbones. A slight pressure made her look down and see Jared’s hand had shot out: his fingers were circling her ankle.
“Is this the scene where the dauntless heroine approaches the villain and he grabs her because he’s not quite as hurt as he’s pretending?” he drawled.
Kami stooped and grabbed his wrist in one clean economical movement, using her grip to flip him over onto his stomach and coincidentally very close to a large stone, half-hidden in the dirt. She knelt lightly in the leaves, knees on either side of his body, and let go of his wrist only to grasp the hair at the back of his head.
“No, this is the scene where the dauntless heroine grabs the sucker who didn’t think she was ready for him, and bashes his brains out against a rock.”
She used her grip on his hair to gently mimic that movement, not letting his forehead actually connect with the stone.
“I won’t give a demonstration that is completely true to life.”
“I appreciate that,” Jared told her. “Can I— I’m going to get leaves up my nose.”
Kami didn’t understand what he meant right away, but she got it when he turned over, moving gently so as not to dislodge her. He lay on his back in the leaves again, staring up at her. The winter sunlight poured in cool on his face, shimmered on his gray eyes.
It did not matter what distant iron city had raised him. He had been made by Sorry-in-the-Vale, his bones as much a part of it as the valley and the woods. It was as if she had the whole town spread underneath her. Or the whole world, since right then he was the only part of it that mattered.
His hair, dark gold on bronze, mingled with the scattered gold-brown leaves. There was dirt smudged on the unscarred side of his face, pressed like a gray shadow on the paler hollow of his throat.
She was keenly aware of the warmth of his sides and the lift of his ribs against the inside of her knees, and the fact that she was wearing a dress.
“Hey,” she whispered.
She saw him swallow, saw the pulse point at the base of his throat flicker. “Hey,” he answered, and the audible rasp in his voice made her smile.
Against her tights-sheened skin, she felt tension pull his body taut and hoped it was a good thing as she leaned forward. The pale light in his eyes made them shine like mirrors, and as her shadow fell on his face his eyes went dark, intent and tender. Her hair swung from behind her ears as she leaned in, just long enough to hang a curtain between them and everyone else.
She leaned down slowly, until his breath was touching her lips, and she felt how unevenly it came. He was perfectly, absolutely still beneath her: if he raised himself on his elbows, lifted his body at all, they would be in dangerous territory.
Kami did not care. She propped herself up with a hand on the earth by his head and let her lips touch his, very lightly, catching his shuddering breath in her mouth.
“Kami!” Holly’s voice had never been so entirely unwelcome. “Kami, we think we may have killed Ash.”
Kami jerked away at the sound of her name, and by the time Holly’s cry was done ringing through the trees she was sitting on the ground a very respectable distance from Jared, knees drawn up to her chest and dress covering the tops of her boots. She felt a little light-headed: she could not quite believe what she had been doing.
“They better have killed someone,” Jared said, sitting up and scowling. “Or I will.”
She looked over at him and all the dark glowering he was doing, and found herself smiling.
“Come on,” she said.
They both scrambled up off the ground and began to make their way through the trees in the direction Holly’s voice had come from. The thought did cross Kami’s mind that Jared might possibly take her hand or put his arm around her shoulders, do one of the things that said “Yes, together” to everyone who saw you, and to the person you were with, as well.
He did not. When they broke through the trees to reach the bank of the Sorrier River, Kami forgot about that because Ash was bleeding from the ear.
It seemed her friends had figured out about going for the sorcerer’s head and disrupting their focus.
“I may have gone ever so slightly too far,” Angela admitted grudgingly.
She was standing with her arms crossed, leaning against a tree. In her vivid scarlet-and-cobalt-striped silk top, she looked like an exotic bird that had gotten lost in an English wood and was feeling grouchy about it. Holly was standing by her, being supportive of Angela’s assault-related decisions. Which meant it was left to Rusty to administer womanly sympathy. He was kneeling on the riverbank beside Ash, who was sitting with his legs dangling over the water and looking a little forlorn.
“Blondie looks totally fine,” Rusty said in his slow pleasant voice. “Aside from the bleeding, that is.”
Kami felt Ash could do with a little more sympathy than that. She rushed over and knelt at Ash’s other side, Jared following her.
“How are you doing?” she asked Ash, touching the side of his face lightly with her fingertips. There was a trail of blood coming from his ear, but other than that he seemed okay.
“I’m all right,” Ash said, sounding rueful. “I don’t know why it’s always me.”
Kami put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it comfortingly.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Jared asked. She looked and saw him holding up three.
“Three,” Ash said.
Jared frowned. “Oh dear. That’s not right. Buddy, I think you need a hospital.”
Kami dropped the hand that had been rubbing Ash’s shoulder to punch Jared in the shin. “I’m sorry, Ash, he’s a jerk,” she said. “He’s a jerk who is holding up three fingers.”
Jared made a relenting sound, half grumble and half sigh, and reached over to help Ash up. “All right, let’s get you home,” he said, and Kami realized he meant Aurimere.
They were all talking as they left the woods, Angela and Kami about how they could apply this new knowledge to fighting sorcerers, Kami planning what they would tell Lillian, with Jared contributing that they could possibly bypass Lillian and tell the sorcerers she was training, and Holly volunteering to speak to Mrs. Thompson because she was her great-aunt. Rusty was plaintively talking about dinnertime.
Ash had color back in his face by the time they were out of the woods and walking up to Aurimere, but Kami drew level with him so she could check on him anyway.
“How are you holding up? I’m sorry about Jared,” she added, loudly enough so that Jared could hear, and he tossed a grin at her over his shoulder. “He is incorrigible,” Kami said. “He cannot be corriged. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“He doesn’t bother me,” said Ash, easily enough so she thought it might almost be true. “Give me a little time and I’ll be fine.”
Ash looked sorry as soon as he had said it, and the rest of them went quiet. They had so little time left.
In the silence, Kami looked up the curving path to Aurimere and saw someone coming down it. The sky was darkening and the sun was in her eyes, so at first all her vision was able to resolve was a dark shape. Then the details coalesced: the springy mass of brown curls, the thin serious face, the beaky nose and the glasses perched on top of it.
Henry Thornton.
Kami left Ash’s side and ran up the path, not stopping until she was standing just a foot away from him. She saw Henry look at her, going through the same process she had: confusion followed by recognition based on a single encounter, matching her up with the voice on the phone that had begged him to please help, to please try.