Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy (12 page)

“Ash isn’t going to turn me against you,” Kami told him. “You can trust me.”

There was a flicker of warmth between them, like a match lit.

“Come on, Glass,” said Jared. “I’ll take you home.”

Kami had told him nothing but the truth. She did believe him. She believed he’d hated his father enough to kill him. And she knew, could feel the wall in his mind, that there was something else he was hiding.

T
hey had to swing by Jared’s locker so he could grab his jacket. “A leather jacket,” Kami said as he shrugged into it. “Aren’t you trying a little too hard to play into certain bad boy clichés?”

“Nah,” said Jared. “You’re thinking of black leather. Black leather’s for bad boys. It’s all in the color. You wouldn’t think I was a bad boy if I was wearing a pink leather jacket.”

“That’s true,” Kami said. “What I would think of you, I do not know. So what does brown leather mean, then?”

“I’m going for manly,” Jared said. “Maybe a little rugged.”

“It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.”

Jared laughed. “Come on, I brought a spare helmet for you,” he said, reaching into his locker again.

As he spoke, she reached for him in her mind, and felt the pleasure he felt in his motorbike. She could taste some of the thrill, the speed and the danger.

“Ahahaha!” said Kami. “No, you didn’t. You brought it for someone else, someone who doesn’t know that you have crashed that bike fifty-eight times!”

“Technically speaking, only fifty-one of those times were my fault.”

“Technically speaking, you drive like a rabid chicken who has hijacked a tractor.”

“Like a bat out of hell,” Jared said. “Nice simile. Sounds sort of dangerous and cool. Consider it.”

“Not a chance. I like my brains the way they are, not lightly scrambled and scattered across a road. And speaking of bad boy clichés, really, a motorcycle?”

“Again, I say: rugged,” Jared told her. “Manly.”

“I often see Holly on hers,” Kami said solemnly. “When she stops for traffic, sometimes she puts on some manly lip gloss. I’m not getting on a bike.”

Jared shrugged. “Okay. So I’ll walk you home.” He shut his locker door, turned, and made his way down the hall.

Kami felt duty bound to point out, “You can’t keep following me around.”

Jared frowned. “You don’t—do you mind?”

“I mean, you can’t,” Kami explained. “You know how Angela moved to town when I was eleven? And you know how girls at that age are joined at the hip and want to do absolutely everything their new best friend in all the world does? Do you remember how long that stage lasted for me and Angela?”

Jared hesitated. “Well—”

“Two and a half hours,” Kami told him. “Then Angela collapsed and started to cry. It was the only time I’ve ever seen Angela cry.”

“Are you implying I won’t be able to keep up with you?”

Kami pushed open the school door, glanced up, and found him smiling. “I’m not implying so much as just outright saying.”

“I think I can manage,” Jared told her.

“You’re welcome to try,” Kami said serenely. “I’m planning to take a shortcut through the woods on our way home.” She sailed down the school steps. He was keeping up with her so far, but then, they had barely started.

“A shortcut through the woods that mysteriously brings us to the scene of a crime?”

“The woods aren’t signposted,” Kami said. “It’s easy to get a little lost, wander about. Who knows what you might stumble upon!”

“Kami,” said Jared. “I can read your mind.”

“Well, that won’t hold up in court,” Kami informed him. “It sounds crazy.”

Kami had not planned her investigative foray into the woods ahead of time, or she would’ve worn dark jeans and boots. But even with the disadvantage of a belted button-down red skirt and kitten heels, she was able to keep ahead of the city boy. When Kami jumped over a stile, he looked at it as if he’d never seen one before.

“I have never seen one before,” Jared said, keeping close to the fence and eyeing the sheep on the other side with suspicion.

A lamb nudged its pink snub nose in Kami’s direction, and she patted its white woolly head. She always meant to stop eating lamb because they were so adorable. But she always succumbed when it landed on the table, because it was so delicious.

One of the lambs fixed its attention on Jared. “Baa,” it flirted.

“Boo,” said Jared.

“Oh my God, Jared. Don’t tough-talk the lambs.”

“It was giving me a funny look,” Jared claimed, boosting himself over the next stile. “I thought the countryside would have more open fields and fewer fences and barbed wire.”

“So you thought all the animals wandered onto other people’s land, getting run over by reckless drivers such as yourself?” Kami asked. “We like fences. And we have rolling fields. We have fields that rock and roll.” She waved at the expanse of green, the landscape changing hands from tree to field until finally it all melded with the sky to become blue mist in the distance. She was surprised to find herself feeling defensive.

“Kami,” said Jared. “I like it.”

“You don’t have to like it.”

“I do anyway,” said Jared.

They went over the wooden bridge over the Sorrier River, stands of bright red wolfberries waving at them from the bank.

“The Sorrier River?” Jared asked when he saw the sign by the bridge.

“It’s haunted,” Kami said, with some pride.

“The river is haunted?”

“During the Wars of the Roses—a big fight over who should be the king of England, Richard of York or Henry of Lancaster,” Kami supplied, “Sorry-in-the-Vale stood for Richard. Henry won through vile treachery. Anyway, since Henry was a cruel tyrant, he decided everyone who had fought for Richard—who was king of England at the time!—was a traitor, and started seizing lands and squeezing people for cash.”

“Classic tyranny,” Jared observed. “Not very imaginative.”

“So the people of Sorry-in-the-Vale hid their valuables when the king’s men were going by. You know the tower attached to Aurimere? It used to be a bell tower, but the bell was carved and made of gold. Well, gold leaf, probably, but at this stage everyone says gold. Elinor Lynburn ordered that the bell be sunk in the river. What with one king and another, they didn’t bring the bell up from the river until Elizabeth I was on the throne, and then nobody was able to find it. The legend goes that when Sorry-in-the-Vale is in danger, the bells in the river ring out a warning.” Kami beamed with satisfaction.

Jared glanced over the side of the bridge. It hadn’t rained lately, and it had been a long summer. The Sorrier was a silver trickle. “So the river is haunted by … bells?”

“You do not deserve an ancestral legend,” Kami informed him.

They stepped into the woods under a green arch like a church doorway made of boughs. The woods had the hush of a church too. This was the real woods, and even the quality of the light was different, shadow and sunshine caught together in a net of leaves. Kami had loved the woods all her life, but without loving them any less, she could not forget seeing horror under these trees. She did not let her steps slow. Kami had found it was important not to give people time to say “Wait, is this really a good idea?”

It occurred to Kami an instant later that she was not guarding her thoughts, and with the new blurring of the boundaries between them Jared could see every fear and
doubt she pretended not to have. She sent a glance that flashed resentment at Jared, standing on the gnarled roots of an oak tree.

He met her eyes, face calm. The oak leaves above him were already gilded, autumn coming to the woods like a king in a legend, touching all the trees with brightness. The rays coming through those leaves were gold on gold, firing the cold lights in his gray eyes. “I’m not going to ask if this is a good idea. I said I could keep up with you,” Jared said. “I won’t do that by slowing you down.”

Kami’s smile spread, thoughts curling around his. He didn’t feel uncertain. Actually, he felt happy, the restlessness that had been thrumming through him at school stilled.

“So hurry up, city boy.”

They went over fallen leaves and undergrowth that tried to tug Kami’s shoes off, past a hollow tree stump covered with dead vines that looked like an elephant made of twigs, and reached the hut. It looked ordinary by the light of day, the rough brown walls leaning at an angle, the door slightly ajar.

Kami had envisioned crime scene tape garlanding the trees, but of course the police weren’t going to do that for a murdered fox. They had not even taken the tablecloth off the table. It fluttered in the breeze as Kami cautiously pushed the door open. She stared for a moment at the rusty brown stains on it. She felt Jared’s shoulder behind her own, warm and solid, having her back, and for the first time since the well, his physical presence was a comfort. She leaned against him and he stepped away, maybe an instant before he realized she was leaning, maybe an instant afterward.

Kami stepped forward on her own and walked around the perimeter of the hut. It was tiny, and she had studied the pictures from her camera phone obsessively. There didn’t seem to be anything new here. So whoever it was had not come back, she thought. That was good to know.

She went and stood at the door with Jared, trying to find some pattern of broken twigs or crushed undergrowth to indicate which way whoever had killed that fox had fled. But the police had been here, and she and Jared hadn’t been careful on their way in. There were signs of people everywhere. When Kami saw a gleam, she stooped down to the glint of white plastic automatically and without much interest. It was plastic: she assumed it was rubbish. Then she looked at what was lying in the palm of her hand.

“It’s a room key,” Jared said slowly. “For somewhere called the Surer Guest.”

“That’s a fancy guesthouse a few miles out of town,” Kami said, just as slowly. Relief seeped through the shock. It could be a visitor who was responsible, then. Not anyone she knew: not someone from her town.

“Our first clue,” Jared remarked. “High five.”

They both hesitated, checking themselves at the last moment, and deliberately missed touching hands. The gesture was a bit like waving at each other over a distance that was only in their minds.

Kami bit her lip, then tucked the card into her pocket and headed for home, with Jared walking a careful distance away from her.

“S
omething I don’t understand about this place,” Jared said, after a long awkward pause, “is why the stone around here, including the stone in the big stupid mausoleum I have to live in, is the color of pee.”

“It’s Cotswold stone!” Kami exclaimed. “And it is the color of
honey
. It’s very famous. Most of the houses in Cotswolds towns are built from it. It’s why they are such beauteous tourist attractions.”

“Cotswolds?” Jared asked. “I thought this place was in Oxfordshire. Or Gloucestershire. Someplace ending in ‘shire.’ ”

“The Cotswolds stretches over both,” Kami said. “It’s a range of hills and towns famous for their beauty. Also their sheep, but that’s not the issue here. There’s a quarry on the other side of the woods where the stone used to be mined, and it’s been exhausted for fifty years because everyone likes Cotswold stone.”

“Still looks like pee.”

“Honey!”

“You can sweet-talk me all you want, baby, but I know what it looks like to me.” Jared smirked at her. Kami matched
up his expression to his emotions: she wanted to memorize them so she could get used to him having a face as well as feelings.

So this is the “smug idiot thinks he’s funny” face
, Kami observed.
Not to be confused with other “smug idiot” variants
.

And everyone told me English girls were so sweet
, Jared said, and then:
Oh, hey
.

Kami glowed with pride at the success of her surprise. “I took another detour on my way home. Since you’re new and everything.”

The hush of the woods was changed now into the different calm of still waters, the quiet somehow enveloping rather than disturbed by humming insects or the rustle of trees.

The two lakes were laid out side by side in the clearing, two shimmering glass circles as if the ground was wearing spectacles. Kami had seen the lakes showing different colors, pearl gray under cloudy skies or blue in sunshine, but right now they were green, the green of glass bottles turned liquid and poured over pale sand. A weeping willow dipped a branch into the waters of the farthest pool, some leaves trailing on the surface and the other leaves drowned and dark.

“These are the Crying Pools.”

Kami was dismayed to see a few raindrops hit the pool, breaking the silver surface, but before she could suggest taking shelter she looked up and saw the rain cloud above them melting into wisps against the sky. She looked back down to shimmering-calm water and Jared’s small smile. It wasn’t much, that smile, not compared to Ash’s, but Kami could see the feeling behind it; she could share his pleasure and blend it with hers. It made the smile warm as a touch.

“Sorry-in-the-Vale, Sorriest River, Crying Pools,” said Jared. “Is the quarry called Really Depressed Quarry?”

“Yes,” Kami answered. “Also, I live on the Street of Certain Doom.”

Jared drew closer to the pools. He stood looking down into one, then glanced over his shoulder at Kami.

It struck Kami that he should have looked out of place, the city boy in his battered leather jacket, but he did not. He fit here. The shadow of the trees hung over his hair, and for a moment she thought his eyes caught a green spark. It occurred to her that the Lynburns had lived in Sorry-in-the-Vale a very long time.

“I think I see something in the water,” said Jared.

Curiosity made Kami forget the moment of strangeness and hurry over to peer into the lake by Jared’s side. “I don’t see anything.”

“I thought it was a glint of metal,” Jared said. “Possibly I was hoping for more rich ancestors’ bells.”