“Sorry,” she said, and squeezed Ash’s hands. “I don’t mean to be flippant. I’m just so surprised. You love me?”

Ash squeezed her hands back, and did not release them. “Yes.”

“Uh,” said Kami. “Since when?”

“Uh,” said Ash, helpless in his turn. “I don’t—it isn’t something I made a note of on my calendar. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you. I didn’t even realize I had until I was already gone.”

“Do you think,” Kami said, and paused. “Do you think it might be about the link? That can create feelings, or intensify them, in this particular way, but that doesn’t mean you truly do feel this way. Once the link is broken, you might feel entirely differently.”

She thought about Rob Lynburn, of all people, telling her, The emotions that come with the connection are not real. Not entirely real. How could they be? A connection like this would make anyone feel close to anyone.

She had a lot of reasons to doubt Rob, but nothing she had ever learned about the link had made her doubt what he had said.

“No!” said Ash. “I don’t think the link is romantic at all. I didn’t feel that way about you when we were first linked. When we were first linked, I thought I’d never be able to feel anything for you romantically, ever again, but, Kami, I was so wrong. I’ve never felt like this about anyone in my whole life. I didn’t know I could feel this way about anyone. I think about you all the time, it doesn’t stop, it’s relentless, it’s like being invaded by the thought of you. It—it hurts. If you could just try to feel the same way about me, I would do anything to please you. I’d do anything to make your feelings for me grow.”

“It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you,” Kami said. “Of course I do. But it’s a bad idea.”

She was shocked by how tempted she was. She’d thought she’d been tempted by Ash before, allured by the way he liked her, how normal and safe and painless a relationship with him might be comparatively. But that had been a bloodless sort of feeling compared to this, to the pounding in his veins that she could feel echoed in hers, to the certainty of being so desired.

“I can read your thoughts,” Ash said eagerly. “I can see that you like me. I can see that you want to—”

She turned her face away. Her own doubts and desires were betraying her, and she was mad at them.

“It’s not fair to bring my thoughts into this,” Kami told him. “It’s not about what I think. It’s about what I choose.”

“I wouldn’t ask for anything that you do not have to give,” said Ash. “The link means that we understand each other. I could be patient, I’d be so happy to wait. I can value you, as nobody else in the world seems to. You don’t know how terrible I feel, all the time: it’s like I have a hungry wolf living inside me, clawing at me. If you could just try, all this restless longing in me could be quiet. I could have some peace. You are the only person in the world who can bring me peace. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You can read my thoughts,” Kami said miserably. “You can see why it wouldn’t work.”

“That’s right, I can read your thoughts. I can see how much you need this. You need it as much as I do.”

Had she done it? Kami wondered suddenly. Had her desperate, pathetic longing to be wanted traveled to Ash through the link, and convinced him that he did want her? She might have. She couldn’t be sure of anything.

She put her face in her hands, and would not look into his beautiful pleading face, into his eyes that offered her almost everything that she wanted.

“Come on, Ash,” Kami said. “Don’t make me say it. Don’t. You know why I can’t. You know.”

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter Sixteen

Nowhere Safe

Kami left the parlor with her party mood even more ruined than when she had entered it. Ash followed her, silent and somber, and she dreaded a painful and awkward scene in the next room.

She was not prepared, however, for what she found.

The lights were dimmed, the party over, the floor scattered with festive debris. Jared was clearing the bar, his golden head bowed in the dim light, and Amber Green was sitting on a bar stool.

“Well,” said Amber, raising her eyebrows. “Pretty clear what you two were up to.”

“So what?” Jared asked abruptly.

He looked up from the bar for a moment, eyes pale in the dark light. His face was shadowed and set, but he didn’t look unhappy.

“Did you know all along?” Ash asked, his voice sharp with indignation. He took a step forward and stopped when Jared turned his shining, strange gaze on him.

“I knew,” Jared said very softly. “So what?”

“That’s right,” Kami snapped, glaring at Amber. “He dumped me. I’m a free agent. And you’re an evil sorceress who participates in murder and torture, so your commentary on my social life is not appreciated or necessary.”

This was awkwardness and pain on a level she had not anticipated. Kami felt like if there was a higher power looking down on her from above, that higher power was sniggering wildly.

“Fine,” said Amber. “If you don’t want my help, I don’t have to give it.”

“I want your help,” said Kami. “Yes, please, thank you, help us. Have I done enough buttering up the informant, will you give us some information now?”

Amber sighed. “I came here to warn you.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “It’s messed up, that’s all. It’s so messed up.”

Kami was alarmed to see that Amber was trembling. She was even more alarmed to see Amber was edging toward the door. She was sure Rusty did better at buttering up informants than this. She wished that either Rusty or Angela was here, but of course they had both gone home early to rest and recover from the exertion of their ten-minute dance.

She should have asked them to stay. Either one of them, or Holly, would have stayed with her all night, if she had only asked.

They were gone. It was up to Kami.

“What’s messed up?” Kami asked, and tried to keep her voice gentle.

“Just look out for them,” Amber said, and made a grab for the door handle. “He’s coming.”

She was out the door before any of them could stop her. Kami looked wildly around at Jared and Ash, and then dashed headlong out the door and into the street after Amber.

“Are you kidding, did you really just give me a cryptic warning?” Kami demanded. “I hate cryptic warnings! You know where they lead, it’s nothing but confusion until the disaster the cryptic warning was about comes to pass and then you think, ‘Oh, so that was what the cryptic warning meant, well gee, I wish it had been more clear.’ Stop right now and explain yourself!”

Amber turned and said, “I’m sorry,” even as she disappeared, becoming transparent so that the twinkling lights of the town and the darkness of the night bled through her body, turning her into a shadow and a sigh.

“Amber said that Rob Lynburn is after us?” was Angela’s verdict. “I hope she also wowed you with some radical statements about water being wet and oranges being orange-colored.”

They had all got together in the parlor the day after the party to discuss Amber’s warning. Kami was thinking of rechristening the parlor as “the council room” or possibly as “the chamber of justice.”

“It’s clear what the girl meant,” said Lillian. “She meant a specific ‘them.’ She meant my boys. Of course Rob wants to lure my boys onto his side. They have to be protected—they can’t do magic and are utterly helpless and vulnerable.”

“That’s so true,” said Jared, folding his arms so the sleeves of his T-shirt strained and fluttering his eyelashes. “Please save me, Aunt Lillian.”

“I realize you are making another effort to be humorous,” said Lillian, patting his arm, “and I wish you would stop. But of course I will save you.”

“It’s probably me and Angela,” said Rusty, sounding distinctly worried for Angela but managing to grin. “Since Amber likes me. I’m not sure why. It’s either my sterling worth of character or the fact I am super handsome, but which?”

Kami didn’t know what she thought, but she knew how she felt: cold, as if the shadow of the coming disaster had already fallen on her. She looked over at the sound of the door opening and saw Ten slipping out with a book tucked under his skinny arm.

She started to get up, but Henry Thornton touched her shoulder lightly. Kami looked up into his thin, kind face.

“You should stay. I’ll go after him. I never have much to say at these talks, and I wouldn’t mind a quiet read somewhere.”

“It’s not like I have much to say at this talk,” Kami murmured.

“I did notice that,” said Henry. “It’s very unlike you. Are you sure you feel quite all right?”

She saw the twinkle in his eyes behind his glasses and beamed at him in a sudden surge of fondness. He smiled back and left the room unnoticed by everyone else as Rusty was talking.

“Not that I’m not all torn up inside with worry about Sulky and Blondie,” said Rusty, “but isn’t it all the same thing in the end? If Rob Lynburn comes after them, he comes after us. If he comes after us, he comes after them. If he takes a break from evil to catch up on his TV shows, we’ll all be relieved but nobody is expecting it. The plan is still to lay low, be ready for him to act, and wait until the spring equinox.”

Tomo ambled off upstairs, heading either for an escape from the tedium of adult conversation or for a bathroom. Kami found herself not wanting to let both her brothers out of her sight, and went up the stairs after him. “Hey, kiddo. Stick around.”

“Will you play a game with me?” asked Tomo, who was a shrewd bargainer. He rattled the contents of his pocket. Kami realized the brat had come prepared with one of those little magnetic travel-sized board games, which Kami personally believed were of the devil.

“Fine.”

She was about to sit down on the floor and submit to another round of Tomo’s vicious Monopoly playing or his Scrabble playing full of wanton lies and made-up words, when Lillian Lynburn’s voice made her turn her head.

Lillian was climbing the staircase. “I wished to have a word with you.”

Kami turned to Tomo. “Set the game up,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

Lillian reached the top of the stairs and stood there looking mildly uncomfortable. “We are the two women in this town with the greatest power,” Lillian said, formally but with a nod to her, and Kami realized this was Lillian trying to be nice. “That means it is our duty to stand ready and to protect the others. I want to give you something.”

She took Kami’s wrist and turned it so that her hand lay palm up. In it she placed a curved shell. Kami felt the ridges of the shell’s surface against her skin and glimpsed the pearlescent curling cave within.

“You can hear the sound of the sea in these shells,” said Lillian. “So you can hear the sound of a sorcerer’s voice. If I need you, I can call to you through the shell. If you need me, do the same.”

“Okay,” Kami said slowly. “Thanks very much for this artifact of wondrous magic. I have a small suggestion, though. I’d like you to give me what my people call a ‘phone number.’ And I will give you mine in exchange. You can also have my dad’s and Angela’s and Rusty’s.”

“I do not want anybody’s phone number,” said Lillian, flushing slightly.

She turned and went back downstairs, toward the sound of Dad’s and Martha Wright’s voices. Kami slipped the shell in her pocket.