Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) (13 page)

“What?” she asked flatly.

“Uh,” said Holly. “It's really nice of you—and Rusty, of course; I like Rusty, who doesn't like Rusty, he's so likable—to let Henry stay with you. And to let me stay with you. I really appreciate it. And so does Henry. I'm sure.”

“Okay,” Angela said.

“I mean, it's not just staying with you, of course. This is a tough time, and—and I bet Henry is grateful for the support. And of course Henry really enjoys your company.”

Angela made a slight face. Holly couldn't interpret it, other than knowing it meant things were not going well. It was possible that Angie hated appreciation, Henry, the very sound of Holly's voice, or all of the above.

“Okay,” Angela repeated.

She got back to turning the pages of her book. Holly felt more and more like a creeper, the kind of guy who didn't say suggestive stuff but did insist on having a conversation, who hassled beautiful girls who obviously wanted to be left alone.

She only knew one way to do things. She didn't know how girls were supposed to go after other girls.

And yet Angie had fancied Holly once before, and Holly hadn't even meant to do that. Maybe the problem was that Holly was being too subtle.

“You look tired,” was Holly's next venture.

She knew that was not the smoothest possible thing to say, but she had a plan.

“Almost constantly,” Angela replied, staring at her book and resting her fingers against her temples. “I am tired of asshole sorcerers, I am tired of having my life threatened, and I am tired in the sense that I want a nap. Yes. And your point would be?”

The temptation to say “Never mind,” and also hide behind the sofa because Angie was terrifying, was almost irresistible.

But Holly wanted to be brave, and she wanted to have this. Guys were often really persistent, and it worked: she didn't want Angela to think Holly wasn't trying hard enough because she didn't like her enough.

Holly braced herself and jumped to her feet.

“Oh, I was just thinking,” she said with forced and perhaps slightly manic brightness. “You must be super tense! How about a massage?”

Before she finished speaking, she had her hands on Angela's shoulders, so much narrower than a boy's shoulders and almost fragile-feeling, even though she knew Angie was strong. She felt for an instant a sense of accomplishment.

Angela's shoulders moved under her hands in a shudder of indignant recoil, like a scandalized maiden snake whose Victorian sensibilities had been deeply offended.

The movement was enough: Holly had her hands off Angela and up in surrender, but Angela spun around in her chair and wheeled on her anyway.

“What,” said Angela, and the ice in her voice chilled Holly, “do you think you are
doing
?”

“Sorry,” Holly muttered. “I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.”

“It was right out of order, Holly,” Angela said.

She was not even standing up, but she was a tower of outrage. Angie might go around traumatizing people, but she always knew exactly what she was doing.

Holly didn't know how to behave, had never quite known how to be friends, let alone anything more. She was the fluffy idiot her parents had always believed, the girl the other girls didn't want to be around, not someone who knew the magic trick of being taken seriously. She was so, so stupid.

Holly knew she was blushing and was afraid she was going to cry, which would be even more humiliating.

“I was just trying to—” she got out.

“What?” Angela demanded. “What were you trying to do?”

“Never mind,” said Holly. She turned her face away and looked at the door, just before it burst open to reveal Ash Lynburn, in a T-shirt and shoes but also blue pajama bottoms.

“Come quickly,” he said. “It's Kami.”

That was when it occurred to Holly, horribly and for the first time, that now that Ash and Jared had no magic she was one of only three sorcerers left on their side.

“I can help,” she told Ash. “I can do magic.”

Holly pushed past him. She did not want to see the hope lighting his face. She had to act, since there was nobody else to do it, but she was so scared. If she messed up, people she loved could die. And the one thing Holly was sure of about herself was that she would mess up.

Kami had gone to sleep warm and happy, Tomo sharing her pillow because she wanted to be sure he wouldn't disturb their parents. She woke up with a combination of shouting in her head and the sound of glass breaking.

She sat up, bewildered and sick, still warm but coughing now. Her nose stung with smoke. Her vision swam and coalesced into the sight of Ash crouched on her bedroom floor, glass shards around his feet and glinting in his hair.

Kami opened her mouth to ask what was going on, and burst into another fit of painful coughing.

What's going on?
she asked, her hands moving almost of their own volition until they found Tomo's silky hair and narrow back. Her palm flattened against the worn, much-washed material of his favorite pajamas, the one with the pattern of trains on them. Someone had broken through her bedroom window, and her little brother hadn't even stirred.

Ash did not answer her, in her head or out loud. He staggered forward, through the broken glass and the general debris of Kami's room, made for her bedroom door and flung it open, saying, “Ja—”

A roar answered him. An inferno waited beyond. What had been Kami's familiar old corridor, the floorboard that squeaked, the wall that bore a terrible painting of Kami's that her mother had framed and hung up against her father's wishes—because, he said, he loved her but it was truly terrible—the corridor where Tomo had kicked off his shoes today and which she had called good nights and good mornings down all her life, had become the dark hole for a glowing, growling monster. All Kami could see was shadows and consuming flames—the fire seemed to leap at Ash, and he slammed the door again.

Kami was coughing with her eyes smarting because of the smoke. She shook Tomo frantically, ignoring his groggy protests, and looked at the door. She could see the fire now, see the burning orange light around the edges of the frame, smell the smoke as it hit the door.

She had been so stupid to count on the sorcerers not recovering quickly, to believe that they would not strike back right away.

This was what came of standing against Rob: this was the retribution of the Aurimere sorcerers.

Her house was on fire, with her family inside it.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go

—Theodore Roethke

“O
kay, Tomo, don't panic, don't panic, you're fine,” said Kami, patting him frantically.

Tomo peered at her, eyes still sleepy. “You seem like you're panicking,” he said in a small, smoke-cracked voice.

“Well, that's all you know, because I'm not!” Kami exclaimed.

She climbed out of bed, and tried to pull Tomo with her, but he resisted, fighting her, his whole small body locked in a panicked spasm: he clearly did not want to get any closer to the surge and hiss of the fire.

Ash walked over to where Kami stood, then sat on the bed.

“Come here,” he said, his voice still clear, and always charming. He held out a hand to Tomo, eyes on him. He had a compelling gaze, Ash, blue and sweet and shamelessly utilized. “I'll keep you safe,” he promised.

Tomo obviously found his argument persuasive.

“Okay,” he said, tumbling promptly into Ash's arms.

Kami was the one who would have to save him. She had magic, and Ash did not. Ash was as vulnerable as Tomo. She would have to save them both.

She ran over to the closed door. The floorboards already felt hot under her bare feet, almost scorching her, on the point of kindling.

Throwing open the door again, she threw her magic at the fire, willing it down with all her might. It only surged at her again with a sound that was almost furious, erupting into her room and making her jump back.

She could not only see and hear and taste the fire raging into her room, choking their air away: she could feel what had created the fire, the spell that was pushing her magic back. This fire was Rob's devouring fury, his rage and pain channeled into nature and intent on destruction.

Ash stood up, still holding Tomo, who was clinging around his neck. He was looking to Kami anxiously.

“Ash, how did you get in here?” she demanded.

“My mom floated me up,” Ash said. “You can make the air light around someone, but—I don't know how to do it, and Mom went to get your father.”

“I can't put out the fire,” Kami shouted, above the crackle and thunder of fire bringing down her home. “I can't even hold it back, there's so much magic behind it. We have to find some other way out.”

She stopped and shoved her feet into black backless mules with silver and black sequins, shoes she'd planned to wear when summer finally came, before she ran over the shards of glass to her broken window.

It was not so very far down, but it was far enough. Ash joined her at the window, moving toward the cool air and away from the fire.

“You could try to float me down!” he yelled.

“I'd take that risk with you,” she said, “but not with my baby brother.”

Oh well,
Ash said.
Thanks very much.

She felt a hint of amusement from him, as well as panic, and it was reassuring in the same way that having Tomo laugh had been. It calmed her too.

Her room was a burning trap. Kami looked out of her bedroom window at her familiar view. Her little garden and the wild woods beyond, the woods that made magic stronger. She tried to block out the hiss of the fire and listen for the whisper of the woods.

She gripped the windowsill tight, grains of glass prickling into her palms as if she had grasped thorns, and saw the silver-tipped tops of the trees in the woods all sway and incline toward her like a crowd of courtiers at the sight of a queen.

In the moonlit square of grass that was her garden, the laburnum tree that stood against the fence stirred, shook leaves suddenly bursting with vivid yellow splashes of color, and woke to life.

Kami pushed magic into the tree with such determined force that she could almost feel her magic, as if it was blood coursing into new limbs. As if she was bearing the heavy weight of leaves, stretching her tall trunk, pulling her long roots out of the clinging earth.

“Mum says I'm not allowed to climb,” Tomo remarked, watching the slow progress of the tree across the garden.

“That's okay, buddy, I'm old enough,” said Ash.

“Anyway, you never listen to Mum,” said Kami, who knew her brother and did not believe in coddling children like Ash was doing.

They could all feel the fire, hot at their backs. It was easier to breathe at the window, but the whole house felt like it was being split apart into splinters by a fiery giant. Kami refused to let the knot of panic in her throat rise. She stared out at the tree, and it came closer and closer, creeping across the ground leaving broken twigs and fallen leaves in its path, until its branches hit the windowsill outside.

“Ash,” said Kami, “take Tomo and go.”

Ash hesitated.
You'll come right after us, won't you?

Kami hesitated in turn, and Ash read her anxious love as clearly as she had been able to read his fear.

He reached out with his free hand and touched her face.

We came for your whole family,
he said.
I promise they'll all be safe. Come out right after us. There's nothing you can do, and I can't bear the idea of something happening to you.

“Get my brother out of here,” Kami said. “Now.”

Ash gave her one desperate look, and then he was climbing out of the window, the knee of his pajamas tearing on the glass still scattered on the sill. He caught the top of the window frame in his free hand for balance, then leaned and grabbed one of the branches hanging up above where she could see, and swung himself and Tomo into the tree.

Kami let herself look back over her shoulder.

Her room was a ruin. Fire had swallowed her bed, the ruffled pillows and bedspread embroidered with flowers and bees replaced by a living blanket of flame. Her wicker bookcase was lying on the floor, burning. Her piles of books and her notebooks were ash. Her wardrobe door stood open, and where there had been rows of colorful dresses there was greedily licking flame. In the smoke-tarnished mirror, she saw herself, small and disheveled, wearing black pajamas with glittery red hearts, and almost lost in flame.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how she could even make her way into that enveloping fire. She was scared and already hurting as sparks hit her bare arms, as the tears ran down her face but her cheeks were scorched dry. But she was the one who could do magic. Her family was helpless and she was responsible.

I promise,
Ash thought at her, and she could feel the strain of his worry as well as the strain of physical exertion he was feeling, carrying Tomo's weight and his own.
I promise they're all safe.

Kami looked down from her window to the laburnum tree leaning against it, and the top of Ash's head glinting in the moonlight. She looked just in time to see the branch Ash was holding break. There was only air to catch them, and then, because Kami wanted it, the air did.

Ash and Tomo were safely deposited a foot down, on the soft grass. Kami saw a shower of sparks hit the grass at the same time they did; she looked at the branches resting against the sill and saw how fire was turning the brown bark, the tender emerald of new leaves, and the yellow bloom of new flowers all black and dead.

Ash had said her family was safe. Her room and home were both gone, and this tree would not last long.

When Kami scrambled out onto the stone of the outer sill, she cut her hands on the broken glass. She reached out into the dark and grabbed at a branch that was not burning. Pulling herself out of her room, she felt another blast of fire hot against her back.

She swung from the furious heat and the shriek of flame and thunder of falling beams into the calm darkness of the tree. She gripped one branch and then another with her bleeding hands, cautiously at first, then as she smelled smoke and burning sap, climbing down faster and faster.

Kami felt a rain of sparks landing on her head, the tiny points of pain shooting through her scalp and the smell of her own burning hair. Her pajama pants got tangled in the branches and she wriggled to get them free, and was still wriggling when pain blazed at her back.

She lost her grip and plummeted into the grass, landing on the ground so hard she was jarred all over. Before she could recover, she felt Ash's hands on her, urgent and ungentle, rolling her back and forth on the grass until her nose was as full of the smell of wet grass as of smoke.

She sat up spluttering.

“I'm so sorry, you were on fire,” Ash blurted.

“Obviously, I didn't think you were rolling me around on the grass for fun,” said Kami. “Um. Or something that sounds less saucy than that, sorry.”

She leaned her face in her hands, damp from the grass, and concentrated on healing herself, the burns on her back that she could feel but not see. She looked up after an instant, pain not spelled away but forgotten, to see Tomo hovering anxiously by Ash's side. He was holding Ash's hand.

“Don't worry, kiddo,” Kami said. “I'm all right.”

“You're bad at climbing trees,” Tomo whispered.

“I'm bad at climbing trees when I'm on fire, yes,” Kami said. “Not my sport.”

Ash made a choked sound, and knelt on the grass where Kami sat. “You're all right.”

His feelings seemed terribly close to her suddenly, close as the fire that had set her clothes alight. Kami felt almost scared by their warm intensity, and yet she could not help catching alight, just the same.

She reached out, touched his free hand, and met his eyes.

“Thanks to you,” she said, and looked at him for an instant longer, an instant too long, when she saw her father over his shoulder.

Kami scrambled to her feet and dashed to her father. Jon was wearing his Star Wars T-shirt and sweatpants and fighting Lillian Lynburn's grip on his arm. Ten was standing by their father but warily away from Lillian, a sooty black mark covering his cheek and one of the lenses of his glasses, and Kami had to stop and touch his face and his frail squared shoulders, feel him safe and whole under her hands.

“Ten, you all right?”

Ten shook his head mutely.

“Dad—” Kami began, and looked around the dark garden. “Dad—where's Mum?”

“That's what I want to know!” Dad snapped. He tried to lunge forward again, but Lillian's thin pale fingers were tight and magic-strong around his bicep. “I was sleeping in the office and then this one broke in and dragged me outside and she wouldn't let me back in!”

“You were on the sofa in your office?” Kami asked. “Why?”

“Because sometimes adult relationships are complicated,” Dad said. “And sometimes adults don't want to talk about that when their houses are burning down!”

Kami had never been unaware of their house burning, but seeing her father and her brother's face had pushed the knowledge to the back of her mind for a moment. Now she looked back at the collapsing shape of what had been a house, the thatched roof that was a seething mass of flame, and the orange shimmer against the black sky. The night was painted glowing colors by the destruction of her home.

“She's still in there,” Kami whispered.

“Jared came for me,” Ten offered unexpectedly. “Like he did before. He went back to get her.”

They were both in there, and both of them were helpless.

The roof fell in then, with a groan and a crash and long streaks of orange light stretched across the night sky, like the marks left by a burning witch's fingers.

Kami let go of Ten. Jon lunged for the house. Lillian held him firm.

“Let me go!”

“I will not,” said Lillian, with furious calm. “What good will it do for you to die too, for your children to be orphans? Do you think this is how I want things to be? Do you think I value the life of this wretched woman over the life of my boy?”

“Do you even know her name?” Jon demanded.

“Do I care?” Lillian demanded in return. “Possibly I would have learned it if she had not been so busy making profiteroles for the traitors in Aurimere!”

Kami heard their arguing, but did not pay attention. She was walking toward the burning house, concentrating on wrapping the deep dark of the night, the bite of the air, the dew of the grass, and her own determination around her as some sort of shield. She could not stop the fire, and she did not know if she could protect herself, but she was going to try.

The door of her house was standing open. It didn't even look like her house anymore, not her door with the little watering can hanging beside it. It was just a burning wreck that she had to walk into even though she was hurt and scared. It was an ugly trap with people she loved inside it.

She crossed the burning threshold, into her burning kitchen. There was a flaming beam in the chaos of shadows and heat and twisting fire, in her way as if someone had set it there as a barrier to forbid her entry.

Fire was a fiercely burning veil over her eyes and her face, settling in a hot weight over her hair. She reached out and took hold of the beam, thought of Lillian holding back her father when she shouldn't have been able to, and told herself that she was strong, that she would neither burn nor yield, that she was marble.

She could magic herself, but not the fire. The fire was still there, and still so terribly hot. Kami was keenly aware of that: she could feel the heat even though she was not burned. It was as if her magic was material covering her, and she knew that only the thinnest layer of magic in the world separated her from agony.

She threw the beam into a burning wall and stumbled through the curling smoke and the raging fire, almost putting her feet through the collapsing floor, not even sure of where to go, when she saw movement in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.

Kami ran toward the sight of her mother and Jared, their arms around each other's hunched shoulders. The fire cast their faces in white, red, and shadow in quick succession—it was like seeing people she loved in hell.

Neither of them ran to her. Neither of them could run, that much was obvious. She got hold of her mother's hand, soft and clinging, the only thing in this house Kami could touch and feel safe, and began to usher them out.