Jared reached out for Kami so she could hear too, and said, “I broke into Monkshood Abbey today. Guess what I found there?”

Don’t ever become a spy, Lynburn, Kami told him. He could feel her, almost at Aurimere now.

Uncle Rob’s shears did not stop cutting. The sound of branches snapping and the clack of metal meeting echoed through the garden like the noise of a guillotine.

“A lesson, I imagine,” he said without looking up at Jared. His uncle’s broad shoulders were suddenly held more stiffly.

Jared stared at the back of Uncle Rob’s head, noticing that his hair was a shade between Ash’s and his own. “What sort of lesson?”

“In what happens to you if you cross the Lynburns of Aurimere House,” said Uncle Rob.

Jared waited a moment, but Uncle Rob did not offer anything else. The only sound was blackthorn branches falling onto the long grass. “The Lynburn crest was in that house. Why?”

There was a long pause. Jared thought that he wouldn’t get any answer except for the sound of slicing roses.

Not turning around, his voice level and dispassionate, Uncle Rob said, “Because Lynburns used to live there. My parents, and me when I was very young.”

Jared was shocked silent. He’d always thought of all the Lynburns as belonging to Aurimere, but of course Uncle Rob had different parents from Mom and Aunt Lillian. “Why was it abandoned? What happened?”

Uncle Rob tossed the shears down, steel blades gaping open and hungry. Jared took a step back at the look on his face.

“My parents displeased the Lynburns of Aurimere. Our leaders, to be feared and obeyed, our judges and executioners. The Lynburns of the House came to Monkshood and killed them and took me as sorcerer breeding stock for one or the other of their daughters. I think perhaps you can understand why I never went back. And why I never wanted to come back to this town.”

Jared stared into Uncle Rob’s blue eyes. He didn’t know what to feel: he was sorry for Uncle Rob, who had never been anything but kind to him, but he could not suppress the selfish despairing horror at yet another terrible chapter of this book of his ancestors. “They killed your parents,” he said slowly. “And you married Aunt Lillian?”

Uncle Rob told him, “I learned my lesson.”

Kami screamed for Jared in his head. He realized she was alone in Aurimere with his mother.

Kami knocked on the door of Aurimere and hoped, since Jared was getting somewhere with Uncle Rob, that Ash would answer. He was the best of three bad options. She was rehearsing a speech along the lines of “Let’s skip the romantic awkwardness and move to you telling me everything there is to know about your sorcerous lifestyle” when the door opened.

It was Rosalind Lynburn. Her skin was paper white, her pale hair flowing, and her lips parted, like a ghost who had seen a ghost. She said, “Kami Glass.”

Kami nodded. “Me again.”

Rosalind stood there wavering and watching her. Kami knew Jared’s feelings for his mother, the pity and protectiveness and the shame and hate too, but she couldn’t reach them. She felt sorry for Rosalind Lynburn, and felt resentment for her treatment of Jared, but Kami found she could not even feel that very strongly. Feelings slipped away from Rosalind like light passing through glass. She almost seemed transparent, because she never quite seemed real. Kami wondered if that was why Rob had married Lillian in the end.

Rosalind slid the door of Aurimere House wide open and stood aside so Kami could walk in. The stone flags of the floor radiated cold through the soles of her shoes. Rosalind’s hair blew in the wind rushing through the door. The ends touched Kami’s face as she went past, featherlight at the edge of her eye.

Rosalind shut the door, and all the air and light outside was shut away. Kami stood in the center of the great gray hall, surrounded by arches as if each wall was a church door. Rosalind was standing in front of the door. She looked even paler against the slab of age-dark wood, almost glowing, like an angel.

Like an angel forbidding someone to pass.

“I told you not to come back,” Rosalind said as Kami reached for Jared. He showed her Rob telling him what happened when you crossed the Lynburns.

Rosalind’s hair blew away from her face, even though there was no wind. “Do I need to show you why you should obey me?” she whispered.

The narrow windows in the hall gleamed fierce scarlet and bright white, like blood and pearls. The lights danced in Kami’s vision, dazzling and distracting. She took two steps through the sea of swimming diamonds and looked up at Rosalind. “Like you showed my mother?”

Rosalind’s face remained tranquil. “I can do much worse to you,” she said. “I only needed to scare her.”

“And what can you do to me?” Kami asked.

“Anything I have to,” Rosalind answered. “So that you stay away from my son.”

The barrage of crystalline and ruby lights pounded through Kami’s brain, panic pulsing through her. “I won’t do it.”

“I might kill you,” Rosalind breathed.

“You’ll have to,” said Kami. She yelled mentally for Jared.

The hall was suddenly filled with cold air and glass shards as both of the windows exploded inward. The glass shards were like knives, blades the flashing red of traffic lights and blades Kami could hardly see except for where their jagged edges glittered.

They came flying at her from all directions. The air was filled with them: there was no way to duck. There were shards skimming along the flagstones and shards aimed right at Kami’s eyes.

Kami put up a hand to shield herself, fury racing with the fear shivering through her blood. She spun around to face Rosalind.

“Promise me,” said Rosalind, a tranquil smile on her face. “And I’ll make it all stop.”

The doors aren’t opening! Jared shouted.

Jared’s terror cut through Kami, wild as her own, and past all their shared fear Kami found a cold place in the center of her chest. Her town had been twisted into a place she hardly recognized, and now Rosalind Lynburn thought she had a right to give her orders.

“No,” she said out loud.

Like a flock of birds all changing their flight pattern, the shards realigned and began to close in on Rosalind Lynburn. Rosalind’s eyes met Kami’s, but before Kami could decipher the expression in them, Rosalind looked over Kami’s shoulder. Her face filled with terror.

The door by one of the empty windows stood open. Jared stood framed in it. Rob Lynburn was holding him back.

Rosalind retreated from Rob, leaving the door and going to the stairs. She walked through the glass shards, flying at nobody now but still suspended in the air. They caught and tumbled through her long hair like pebbles in a wave.

Rosalind sat on the bottom step of the wide dark flight of stairs and put her face in her hands. “I never wanted you to know,” she said, sounding almost forlorn.

“Know what?” Lillian Lynburn demanded from the top of the stairs.

Ash was beside his mother. He looked at his aunt, at Kami, at the hall with its empty windows that the wind was whistling through, and at his father. Ash’s eyes went wider and wider: he looked scared.

Kami was surrounded by broken glass and Lynburns, terrified and exhilarated and never alone, the fierce beat of Jared’s focus on her like a second heart that echoed the first.

Rob’s grasp must have slackened. Jared was able to wrench away and run into the hall. The glass in the air between him and Kami fell to the stone and shattered, glittering points of star white and sunset red scattered over the gray floor.

Are you all right? Jared asked.

For a moment, she thought he might grab her, as she’d tried to grab him at Monkshood, but he simply hovered close. She looked up into his tense face and his pale blazing eyes. I’m all right.

“I don’t understand,” Lillian said furiously.

“Look what they’re doing,” Rob told his wife. His voice was rough. “Look! Can’t you see what’s going on?” He looked at Kami as if he hated her.

Jared aligned himself with Kami, pushing his shoulder in front of hers, and glared back at his uncle.

Kami was the focus of all Lynburn attention: Rob’s burning look, Lillian’s icily baffled stare, Ash’s scared eyes, and Rosalind’s distress. Jared on her side but not knowing, any more than she did, what was happening.

When Rob Lynburn spoke, his voice was grim and accompanied by the sound of Rosalind sobbing. “This girl is a source,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A Heart in Your Hand

The Lynburns escorted Kami into the parlor, as if because she was a source—whatever that might be—they were willing to use company manners. Lillian placed herself on one of the canopied sofas at the back of the room, like a queen receiving her subjects. She sat in the center of the sofa, so Rob was stuck sitting to one side, like a royal afterthought. Rosalind was on the other sofa, still weeping. Ash was standing at the door as if he was uncertain of his welcome, or uncertain that he wanted to be there, or both.

Kami sat on the window seat, a dull gold curtain obscuring part of her view of the room. Jared was on the floor at her feet, close but not touching her as usual. He had one leg drawn up to his chest and was acting so much like a guard dog Kami thought he might snarl if any of his family drew near.

“So, you’re all sorcerers,” said Kami. “And I’m a source. What does that mean?”

“We use natural things as sources for our power,” Lillian told her. “The woods. Animals. Whoever killed that girl was using her death to fuel his power.”

“But I’m not dead,” said Kami.

“Indeed,” Lillian returned. “Sorcerers get one burst of power from death, but a continuous flow of power from life. We get power from this town, from the woods, and especially from the lakes. We can use someone’s hair or someone’s blood to focus a spell. And in special cases, with a particular kind of person, a sorcerer can form a link that will magnify their power tenfold. But people born capable of being sources are very rare, and we do not use them.”

“Because the power is not worth the cost,” Rob broke in. “A sorcerer is bound to their source and can never break away. It is a disgustingly imbalanced form of magic. If the source dies, the sorcerer dies. If the sorcerer dies, it makes no difference to the source.”

The weight of their combined accusing stares pressed down on her. “It would make a difference to me,” said Kami.

“Be that as it may,” said Lillian, “two things are known among our kind. One is that a sorcerer with a source has great power. Power to wake the woods,” she continued, eyeing Jared. “Power to change the world.”

“And the other is that in the end, the source controls the power,” said Rob. “The sorcerer’s power might be magnified, but now it all pours out through the source. The source could decide to cut the sorcerer off from their own magic at any time and leave them with nothing. The magic does not even really belong to the sorcerer anymore. What use is it to have world-changing power, just to put it in someone else’s hands?”

Kami thought of being hidden at the pool, seeing things in the woods, turning the glass against Rosalind. Had she caused all of that herself? Had she taken power Jared was born with and used it, used him, without ever intending to? She touched Jared’s mind. He didn’t feel angry with her, only surprised, his mind turned to hers naturally, like brushing the back of someone’s hand and having him link your fingers together.

Lillian looked at Kami speculatively. “Some might say it was worth it, having a partner in order to be able to change the world. They write stories about sources and sorcerers. They become legend. They say King Arthur was a source.”

“So I’m Merlin?” Jared asked, sounding incredulous.