Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy (5 page)

Only the new boy’s head turned. The sun was still in her eyes, but she thought he grinned at her over his shoulder. His teeth were dark with blood.

“Hell of a first day,” he said.

Then Ash’s cousin—the other Lynburn—and four members of the cricket team were marched off to Ms. Dollard’s office.

Kami ran back up the steps to Holly, pen at the ready. “What happened?”

Holly looked delighted to be asked. “The way I heard it, Matthew Hughes said something and shoved him, and then
the new guy punched him, and, well, you know how the cricket guys stick together—”

“Who won the fight?”

“Some of the team were still carrying their bats,” Holly said. “New boy got his ass kicked. I don’t mean to pry,” she added to Ash. “But does he have issues?”

“Oh, Jared’s nothing but issues,” Ash said bitterly. “And the urge to take them out on other people.” He set off toward the principal’s office

“Wait,” Kami said, and her voice caught on the word. “His name’s Jared?”

Ash gave her an impatient glance. “Yeah, so?”

“Nothing.”

Ash nodded and walked away.

It was nothing, Kami told herself. Plenty of people had that name. She just didn’t like hearing it out loud.

It made her remember being in London for the first time, holding her dad’s hand and enjoying the novel sensation of having nobody know her name or her entire life history, having nobody even notice she was Asian because it was an everyday unremarkable thing there. She’d heard someone shout out “Jared!” and spun around, stood up on the stone parapet of Blackfriars Bridge, and looked for him.

But Kami wasn’t a child anymore, to search for him in every crowd. It was a name like any other. She still found herself feeling possessive. Jared was hers, his name was his, and it annoyed her that it was shared by some delinquent.

“Hey, he’s cute,” Holly said, looking after Ash. “Actually, they’re both cute. The new guys, I mean. Ash is cuter, but crazy Jared might be more fun.”

“Yeah, getting expelled from school and spending your life in a chain gang: such fun.” Kami grabbed Holly’s elbow and steered her back inside. “I need to talk to this guy.”

Holly blinked. “Because he’s cute?”

“Because he’s crazy,” said Kami. “And that’s news. Besides, he’s a Lynburn, and I want to know about them. That Lynburn seems a little busy just at present. But can you snag him and bring him to me tomorrow?”

“You know,” Holly drawled, “I’ve never had a problem snagging them.”

Kami felt Jared reach for her, as if he knew she was thinking about him.
I’m bored
, he said.
What are you doing?

Talking about hot guys
, Kami informed him.

Jared said,
Oh my God
.

You did ask
.

It’s a topic of absorbing interest
, Jared said.
I’m sure. Obviously, as a hot guy myself, I wouldn’t know
.

Kami laughed.

I find your skepticism very hurtful
, Jared said.
I’m extremely hot. Except not so much in the face
.

If you’re saying a lot of people want to buy tickets to your imaginary gun show
, Kami said,
I’m very happy for you
.

His amusement rippled through her, making her smile, as she and Holly reached their classroom. Holly was giving her a strange look, which made Kami realize that she had been communing silently with the empty air for too long and had also just laughed at nothing.

“Well, thanks, Holly, you’re a pal,” Kami said hastily.

Holly hesitated, as if expecting something else, but Kami peeled off and headed for her usual seat beside Amber Green.

Amber gave her a brief smile through the curtain of her fox-red hair and then returned to reading
The Nosy Parker
. Kami beamed at Amber’s bent head.

How do you deal with it?
Kami asked Jared.
The laughing at nothing and occasionally stopping dead in your tracks
.

I have a system where when I stop, I lean casually against something
, Jared told her.
It makes people think I’m a bad boy. Or possibly that I have a bad back
.

Kami laughed again and Amber gave her a familiar look that said she was worried Kami was crazy. Kami’s laughter subsided and she flipped open her notebook to start plotting her interview with the delinquent.

Holly was bringing him to her tomorrow. She had to be prepared.

It was dark by the time Kami got to Angela’s house to discuss their future of unstoppable investigative journalistic teamwork. The Montgomerys had bought their house because they thought Sorry-in-the-Vale was quaint and would be a great place to raise the kids. One year and two extensions on their house later, they both got so bored they seized any excuse to go up to London and leave the kids on their own. Angela never talked about it and never seemed to miss them.

The house had once been pretty but now resembled a sad little donkey with two oversize saddlebags. Light shone from one window, and the gate was hanging open, which was a mercy because Angela always took forever to get up off the sofa and buzz Kami in. Kami pushed the gate open farther and headed for the back door.

It had gotten very dark, very fast. She could only make out the pale side of the house and the stir of leaves that was the yew tree by the wall. Even walking carefully, Kami almost tripped over the hose.

The near miss jolted the breath out of Kami for a second. She heard the soft, almost stealthy sound of someone else breathing—which was when an arm locked around her throat and a male voice whispered in her ear: “Don’t move.”

K
ami’s fingers bit into a pressure point on the arm at her throat. When the hold loosened, she went down low, keeping her grip steady, and used her body to trip the guy and flip him into the wall. “Rusty!” she snapped. “Quit doing that.”

Rusty’s eyes gleamed up at her from his crouch, laughing-bright even in the darkness. “I’m keeping you on your toes, Cambridge,” he said. “Transforming you from a simple English schoolgirl to a lean, mean fighting machine.”

Kami put out a hand and gave him a push on the forehead that tipped him back against the wall. “You’re right, I am feeling meaner.”

Rusty got up and held the back door open for her because he was a gentleman, even if he was also an incredibly annoying person who kept attacking her. Kami called out for Angela, her voice echoing off all the white surfaces in that spotless kitchen, and Rusty leaned against the doorframe as if all the exertion had exhausted him.

At first glance, Rusty was a masculine version of his sister—tall, dark, and incurably lazy. He had the same athletic frame, which he draped on walls and furniture as if simply too weak to support himself. He had the same classic
features and almost the same black hair, though his was shot with the red highlights that gave him his nickname.

In reality, Angela and Rusty were markedly different. They were even lazy in quite different ways. Rusty was sleepily good-natured and thought Angela wasted energy being cranky. Angela refused to cope with being hassled by teachers, so she was brilliant at school, while Rusty had failed out of Kingston University after one term.

Rusty had also been the one to introduce Kami to her one and only boyfriend, Claud of the unfortunate goatee. She didn’t hold it against him: it was hard to hold anything against Rusty.

“Oh, Rusty, why did you let her in?” Angela said. “We could have just lain down on the floor until she went away. We could’ve had a nice floor nap.”

“Have you guys eaten?” Kami asked. “I’m starving.”

“Cooking is so much trouble,” Rusty said mournfully.

“You could order in,” Kami suggested.

“Delivery people are so annoying,” Angela responded.

Kami opened the cupboard doors and began rummaging around for supplies. She found a half-empty packet of pasta and waved it about in triumph. “I’m going to cook something.”

Rusty drifted over to the kitchen island, where he sank onto a stool. “So little and so busy,” he remarked with solemn wonder. “Like a squirrel.”

Kami threw a piece of pasta at him. He caught it and then, as if he only worked in fast-forward and slow-motion, brought it gradually to his mouth and chewed it with great deliberation.

“Rusty attacked me in the garden,” Kami announced.

“Hey, women pay good money to have me attack them,” Rusty mumbled.

“That makes it sound as if you’re running a one-man bordello.”

Rusty leaned his chin in his hand, the effort of keeping his head upright obviously too much for him. “That’ll always be the dream.”

Women really did pay good money to have Rusty attack them. He rented a room above Hanley’s grocery shop and taught self-defense. It was the sole thing in the world Rusty was passionate about, and that meant Angela and Kami had been jumped at regular intervals growing up.

“What do you have now?” Kami inquired, chopping onions. “Six clients?”

“Eight, counting you guys.”

“You can’t count us,” Angela said, strolling into the kitchen. “We don’t come to your stupid classes, and we don’t pay you.”

“My parents give me a roof over my head in return for teaching their only daughter to defend herself from predators,” said Rusty. “And I teach Cambridge because she feeds me and because she’ll need these skills to get out of situations she will inevitably throw herself into. It’s all very equitable. Which reminds me, Angela, I’m a crazed drug dealer, desperate for the change in your jeans pockets. What do you do?”

“No,” Angela commanded. “Don’t!”

Rusty tackled her at the knees and Angela fell backward with a scream of rage. Kami began to fry her onions, whistling over the noise.

“So, I was looking through websites about animal sacrifice on the Internet,” Kami announced to distract herself. “Apparently it’s a feature in Satanic rituals.”

“Wow,” Rusty remarked, his voice slightly muffled. “I sure hope this conversation continues over dinner.”

“Wait,” Angela said, expertly twisting Rusty’s arm. “I thought we were dealing with kids? Are we talking twelve-year-old Satanists?” She paused. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense. I suspect those kids from the cricket club.”

Kami hadn’t really expected Angela and Rusty to take this seriously. They knew what Kami had seen, but they hadn’t seen it themselves: it wasn’t real to them.

She aired a few more thoughts while making their pasta anyway.

“It wasn’t just cruelty. It was either a ritual or staged to look like one. If it was staged, why?” Kami asked. “If it was real, people don’t perform rituals, Satanic or otherwise, for no reason. I’ve done my research. They do it for favor from the gods, for good winds, to tell the future.”

“So the answer is that they are crazy?” Angela inquired. “Shocker.”

“Don’t think about the answer, think about the question,” Kami said. “The question is—what do they want?”

Neither Rusty nor Angela had an answer. Kami didn’t have an answer herself and didn’t come up with one during dinner or her walk home alone. Angela had offered to walk her home, which was so unheard of that it made Kami laugh.

“Just take care of yourself, you hyperactive midget,” Angela had instructed, eyes narrowed like a cross cat, and sent Kami on her way with a shove.

Sorry-in-the-Vale by night was different, the small streets seeming to narrow and twist, the Georgian and Victorian houses becoming specters from horror movies. Above the town Aurimere House stood, windows bright but narrow, making the great black edifice look awake and aware. As if the house was a giant’s head, watching them all with sly eyes, and soon the giant’s hand would rise from the earth and scoop their whole town away.

Kami reached for Jared.
You there?

Always
, he said, and her uneasiness faded. Kami never really walked anywhere alone.

The next day was Friday. Kami felt strongly that Fridays should not be full of disappointments.

The disappointments started when their headmistress, Ms. Dollard, stopped by the newspaper office to say: “Friday also means that the entire school closes promptly, including Room 31B.”