“Anytime, day or night,” said Rusty. “Call me.”

“But you don’t have magic,” said Jared. “Once Kami, Ash, and I do the ceremony, we should all have magic again. We should have enough magic to protect you all. This is our responsibility.”

They would have so much power for a little while, until they died. He could not bear to think of it. Even less could he bear to think of living on without them.

“That’s if we can get to the spring equinox,” said Rusty, and his voice was uncharacteristically serious. “They’d be fools to let us. That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it? Because they are going to come after the kids.”

“It’s only one more night,” said Jared. “They might not know about Elinor Lynburn’s Crying Pools ceremony for three.”

“We can’t count on evil to be stupid, which is a sad disappointment to me because I was hoping that Rob Lynburn would helpfully install a big red self-destruct button in Aurimere. They don’t have to know our plan. They only need to know their own. They need a death.”

They needed a death, and they wanted one of Kami’s brothers. Jared remembered feeling Kami’s love for them, had felt it himself in a strange secondhand fashion. He’d sometimes been sorry that he knew what it felt like, having a real family.

“They’re not getting one,” Jared said sharply.

“Kami’s brothers,” Rusty said, his voice slow and unaffected by Jared’s sharpness. “What would you do for them? Would you do anything to save them, if you could?”

Jared would have thought that was obvious. From the way Rusty was looking at him, careful, a little wary, as if he was testing him, he supposed it was not. He figured that it was reasonable enough for Rusty to doubt him.

“Anyone who is Kami’s is mine,” Jared said, trying to explain, trying to convince him. “I felt … a shadow of what she felt, sometimes, but that shadow was the best thing in my life. Everyone she cares about, I care about. It’s not for you, or even for her. It’s because you all gave me a gift, without even knowing you did. She taught me love could be a clean thing, by loving you. I’ll die to protect any one of you.”

“Oh,” Rusty returned. He sounded pensive. Jared did not know if he believed him or not.

“I think I heard something,” said Rusty.

Jared had been listening carefully to all the nighttime sounds. He had heard nothing, but he trusted Rusty. And he believed that if things could get worse, they would.

He looked around the wood, and saw a place where someone might be hiding.

Framed by branches and curling leaves was a roughly built shed. He had come here with Kami, once. Kami had come here before, alone, before he ever met her. She had seen blood and death here, and he had been so afraid for her.

The door to the shed stood open. As they watched, they saw a few leaves stray onto the floor on a sigh of night air.

Rusty pitched his voice very low. “The noise came from inside.”

Jared strained his ears for what Rusty was so sure he was hearing, and moved in front of Rusty, arm outstretched. He might not have magic but he had meant what he said: Rusty was Kami’s. Rusty was Sorry-in-the-Vale’s. And Jared was a Lynburn. Aunt Lillian would say it was his responsibility. Jared would do anything he could to protect him.

He was totally unprepared for the blow that hit square between his shoulder blades, sending him crashing onto his hands and knees on the rough wooden floor. He scrabbled on dirt and leaves, flipped himself over and launched himself at the door, but it was already shut and bolted.

“I thought you might help me,” said Rusty, from outside the door. “But I understand why you won’t. Take care of them, okay, Sulky?”

“What?” Jared demanded. He hated the way his voice sounded, like a distraught abandoned child’s. “What are you talking about? What are you doing?”

Rusty’s voice was so kind. It had always been kind under the put-on disinterest and drawl, Jared thought numbly, but it had never seemed as kind as it did now. “Take care of yourself too, if you can manage it.”

It was only then that Jared understood.

He threw himself at the door, hard enough so his whole side ached, and then he threw his aching side at the door again. He smashed his fists against the door and saw the bloody streaks on the wood before he felt the pain of the skin splitting. There was a window, but it was too small to break out of, even though he smashed the glass with his elbow. That was another shock of pain but he ignored it.

He was trapped—again—and this time he was trapped knowing he hadn’t been able to save anybody. He couldn’t get out, and he knew what Rusty was planning to do.

Chapter Eighteen

Blood of the Innocent

Kami woke to the sound of a door opening. She jerked upright on the sofa. She had not gone to sleep in any of the beds Jared had made up. Instead, she had curled up on the other end of the sofa from a sleeping Angela, taking comfort in the fact that they were close even if Angela was very unconscious.

Her neck hurt, and her tucked-up legs were cramping, and none of it mattered, because Ash was at the door, pulling his jeans on, his T-shirt sleep-rumpled and his hair going in all directions, the light behind him reflecting from his flying locks like a shattered halo.

“Something bad is happening to Jared,” Ash said. His voice was panicked and Kami felt his panic spiking through her. “I don’t know what. It’s not like with you—he can’t tell me anything—but I can feel what he feels and it is horrible. We need to find him. We need to go to him now.”

Kami glanced at Angela. She was already awake, uncurling from under her blanket, blinking sleep from her eyes. She looked vulnerable for a moment, in the brief confusion between waking and sleeping.

Kami did not know which of them should go and which should stay. She wanted to help Jared, but she could not abandon her father and her brothers when her brothers were being hunted, when they were so entirely vulnerable. She was almost certain none of Rob’s men would kill Jared.

Almost certain was not entirely certain.

She sat there, fists clenched and body frozen, and they heard a slamming of fists against the door. Kami jumped at the sound, echoing through the house, and Ash hurtled from the doorway down the hall. Kami and Angela ran into the hall as Ash flung the front door open and Jared burst in. He was bloodstained and wrecked, a shining thread of red leading down from his temple. His shirt was torn and bloody as well, with a large rip in the back, and one of his elbows was as raw as the skin on his knuckles.

“Jared, what happened to—” Kami began, but Jared cut her off.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He didn’t even look at her, and that sent prickles of unease down her spine. She saw his eyes were fixed on Angela, and it was suddenly hard to breathe through the fear. “We have to go now.”

Ash was the only one who looked confused, still worried about Jared. “Why are you—”

“Ash,” Jared interrupted. “What is the one thing that would bring your father the most power?”

Ash went white as he answered: “A willing sacrifice.”

Holly volunteered to stay behind. The Lynburns all had to go, the ones who Rob would not kill, and Kami had to go because she had the most magic. They could not leave the boys unprotected, though. They had to leave a sorcerer to guard them.

Kami saw the look Holly gave Angela, knew how much it cost her not to insist on going too. There was nothing Kami could do about it. There was nothing Kami could do at all, except try to get to Rusty as fast as possible.

There were no glowing foxes in the woods in the early morning. The sky was dark and slowly lightening, like ink being gradually diluted with water. They had run through these woods before, but never so silently, never so desperately.

The trees were whispering wildly, boughs crackling above them, the winds running as fast as the wolves. The woods were in turmoil, and Kami felt the buffeting wind and tumult of leaves as if they were at sea.

A loud clear call sounded once, and then again, like thunder coming from the earth rather than the sky. Except, Kami realized, that the sound was not coming from the earth. It was coming from the river.

From river to sky the peals echoed. It was a toll, warning and despairing. It was the sound of Elinor Lynburn’s bells, sunk beyond finding five hundred years ago.

Then it all stopped.

It was as though the whole world had shifted a degree. The air pressed down heavier, the shadows flattened the landscape, and nothing in all the once-wild woods moved. Light had been streaking across the sky but now it was dull. In no more than a moment, their town had become a still and silent land: no longer really their town at all.

Kami did not stop running. She could not bear to stop running. They all ran up the road to Aurimere and around the bend until they reached the manor house.

The fire was not raging around the manor. It was a soft peaceful day now, clouds muffling the sun. The whole sky was muted.

They had taken the stone slab that Jared had been tortured on when his magic was bound in the crypt of Aurimere, in the very heart of the house. They had brought the slab out and laid it before the golden manor, on the highest part of the hill overlooking their town.

Jared’s blood was still on the stone, mingled with older blood that had sunk in, the stain part of the very stone. There was fresh blood shining on it now, the only bright thing in a gray world.

Rusty’s face was turned toward them. His eyes were shut as if he was just resting quietly, having one of his naps. As if it was an ordinary day. There were marks of pain on his face, but no anger and no fear. He looked a little sad.

She could see the rest of what they had done to him, the evil fools. They had tied his hands, Rusty who could fight better than anyone in town, who had carefully taught her to defend herself from anything. Nobody’s face was marked with bruises, nobody was limping or otherwise hurt. He had let them do it. He had been an irresistible offering, a willing sacrifice. He hadn’t fought them, and they hadn’t needed to tie his hands, but they had done it because they could.

There were other people standing there, Rob’s sorcerers and a handful of townsfolk. Kami looked at their scared, sick faces. Alison Prescott, Holly’s mother, was crying. So was Amber.

Rob Lynburn was standing before the stone slab, with his brown muscular arms bared and the great golden Lynburn knife coated with scarlet in his hands. In this moment, all masks were off. Rusty looked like what he had always been, and Rob looked like what he was too. His face was rapt with evil delight.

“This is the inevitable end of all struggles against a greater power. This comes every turn of the year, every season, if the sorcerer chooses,” Rob said. “Every breath you take is by my mercy, a sign of your lord’s graciousness. I took my death, in recompense for the winter price this sorry town failed to offer me. I was given this death at the year’s awakening, as is my due. Finally, all has been set right.”

Angela threw herself at Rob like a dagger flying for his throat.

The air itself slowed, held Angela like a dragonfly suspended in amber. Rob strolled forward casually and laid his knife against her throat. The blood from the knife smeared on Angela’s skin, as if it was jam on a butter knife.

“Don’t move, little source,” said Rob. “Or she dies with her brother.”

Kami froze.

“Nobody else has to die today,” said Rob. He turned around, arms up, as if he was expecting a cheer to rise from the crowd. The bloody knife was still in his hand. All he received was a great rush of silence. “But you came here to interfere with the sacrifice offered to me. There is a price to be paid for that.”

Kami spoke through stiff lips. There did not seem enough air left in the world to breathe, let alone speak. “What price?”

Rob must know that she had lied before. He would ask her to break the link with Ash, and that would mean the ceremony of the pools would not work. Their last hope would be gone.