It occurred to her after she said it that he might ask her to stay. Kami had been stroking his hair; now her hands closed, one on the warmth of his neck and one in the waving ends of his hair, getting a grip on him. Panic and anticipation wound through her, twined. She did not know how to untangle them. The idea was like cupping a burning coal in her hands, shifting it from palm to palm, and yet the brightness of it held her eyes and she could not bear to put it down.

Almost every time he touched her, he hesitated, and she was scared too: she remembered being in the shower thinking about her skin as new territory. She thought about his skin now like a land to be discovered, and her grip on him loosened. Her hands trembled.

“Of course.” Jared stepped away from her and made a gesture toward the door. “You should go.”

Kami nodded and hesitated. She’d already been gone a long time. She really should be getting home. She went toward the door, and looked over her shoulder to where Jared stood leaning against the window, looking after her as she went. She put her hand on the brass hand doorknob. Then she let go of the metal hand and ran back to Jared, so fast that she almost knocked him backward. He caught her by the elbows and she ignored the fact that gravity had just almost defeated them both, and kissed him until she felt his mouth curve against hers, until she could forget for a moment that the world was closing in dark all around them, that the sorcerers were coming for blood tomorrow. She did not know how he felt, but she knew how she did: she was no longer scared to want him, intensely and absolutely, to keep and to the exclusion of all else. She felt like he had taught her how to want: she had never felt even a shadow of anything like this for anyone but him.

“Remember,” she said, “I will not let you die.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kami’s Sacrifice

The sun was setting on the bare branches and frost-touched stones of Sorry-in-the-Vale. It was almost the night of the winter solstice.

Three hours before Rob Lynburn was due to appear in the town square, they were getting into position. Kami had already rung the bell and looked through the windows of the Kenn household and seen that the house was empty. Their garden was up for grabs.

“When you called me and said bring garden shears, I really thought it might be for decapitation purposes,” said Angela. “I truly wish that had been the case.” Despite her words, Angela wielded the shears effectively, able to reach branches of the fir tree that Kami simply could not stretch up to. Across from them, Jared and Ash, and Holly and Rusty, were, respectively, shearing at a holly bush and a yew tree. They were stacking branches up on the low stone wall to make a screen to hide behind.

Kami had noted that Holly had come with Rusty and Angela, on quite a different path from the one that led to where she lived.

“Did Holly stay with you last night?” Kami asked in a low voice.

“Yes.” Angela saw Kami’s look. “No,” she added very firmly, “it’s nothing like that. Things are so bad with her family, and there’s other stuff too. I’m just being a friend.”

“Okay,” Kami said.

Angela’s lip curled. “I don’t want to be anything besides friends,” she stated. “Not anymore.”

When annoyed, Angela was not a mistress of stealth. She spoke a little too loudly. Over Angela’s shoulder, Kami saw Holly register the words. Kami couldn’t quite read Holly’s expression: Holly moved toward Jared, handing him another branch with a smile and removing herself from earshot.

Kami could read Angela’s expression perfectly well: it said that Kami had been silent for much too long. “Whatever you say, Angela,” she said hastily.

Angela narrowed her eyes. “I don’t.”

“I believe you,” Kami said, making her voice even more innocent.

“I’ve been your friend for years with no ulterior motive,” Angela reminded her, scowling.

“I don’t know that,” Kami said. “You could secretly harbor a fevered passion for me. You could have bodaciousasianbeauties.com bookmarked as one of your favorite sites. This could have been your motive for friendship all along.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “I first met you when you were twelve. You were not exactly bodacious at twelve.”

“I had hotential,” Kami said.

Angela pinned her with a despairing look.

“When you see somebody who is too young to be actually hot, but you can tell they’re going to be one day? Hotential. Like potential, but hot.”

Kami set another branch on top of the wall, this one screening her face. When she looked back at Angela, she saw Angela regarding her with an odd expression on her face.

“What?”

“You always make jokes about your looks,” Angela said. “You really shouldn’t. You’re all right. You know, fairly fanciable.”

“I knew it!”

“But not to me,” Angela said. “Not ever. Not because of your looks, because you are half a ton of crazy in a five-pound sack.”

“Ah, but is it a bodacious sack?”

Angela sneered at her. Kami grinned back, and after a minute, Angela’s sneer turned into a smile.

“Holly’s lucky to have you,” Kami said. “So am I.”

“I know, right?” Angela asked. “I have no idea how you got so lucky. Speaking of which.” Her eyes slid over to the holly bush, where Jared and Ash were cheating by using magic not to get cut by the spiky leaves. “What’s going on with Jared?” Angela asked.

“I can’t . . .” Kami didn’t know how to explain it, hope and fear, wanting and shrinking from touch, kissing and talking about love but not talking about anything in normal, casual ways. She didn’t know if she had a boyfriend.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “But I’m—I’m really happy.” It was confusing, but it hurt significantly less than the confusion of him wanting nothing to do with her.

“Well,” Angela said, “that’s good.”

That was when Kami realized that Angela had tricked her into having one of those in-case-we-die moments. She glared over at Angela, who naturally glared back.

She was lucky, Kami thought. Her friends had all followed her lead: she’d said they should hide so they could surprise Rob and his people, try to help Lillian and her sorcerers. They could have done what Lillian had wanted, could have run away.

They’d trusted Kami, even though she didn’t know what she was doing. She couldn’t let them down: she couldn’t let any of them die.

* * *

Both of the adult sides followed the rules. They came when the last light of the sun had died, Lillian’s people sweeping down from Aurimere and Rob’s coming from Monkshood in the west. They had to take Shadowchurch Lane to get to the square, and that was a bad moment: Kami and her friends crouched in a huddled row behind makeshift screens of foliage sheared from their enemy’s garden, which seemed all at once utterly fragile and foolish.

She saw Rob’s profile through a framework of leaves as he passed, his pale blond hair and his carved Lynburn features. In some ways the Lynburns all looked like variations on a theme, different expressions of personality set in the same ivory and gold.

Rob looked like the nice one. His face as he went by was set in pleasant, determined lines, like a good man set on a worthy task. It made Kami’s very bones feel cold, as if they had been turned to iron inside her skin.

Rosalind followed Rob, hair floating, eyes fixed on Rob’s back. After her came the stolid profile of Sergeant Kenn, the ice-and-copper face of Ruth, the sorcerer living at the Kenns’, the fox-colored haze of Amber Green’s hair, the dark head of her boyfriend, Ross, following behind. One sorcerer after another after another, moving in single file.

There were so many of them. Kami had known the number of sorcerers, but now, seeing them—there were so many.

They stood together in the town square. And Lillian came walking down the High Street, fair hair shining like a helm, not standing at a man’s back but striding in front of her followers. Kami had never actually liked Lillian, but she admired her for a moment with all her heart, and then her heart sank.

She looked so gallant, so much the leader of a forlorn hope. Even with Henry added to Lillian’s army, Rob had so many more people, it made Lillian look pathetic. They were ranged on either side of the town square, a stretch of gold cobblestones their battlefield, and Rob lifted a hand to the single streetlight.

It made a popping, splintering sound and blinked out. Darkness descended. The stars, clear in the sky, pulsed white and strong. There was a line of faint luminescent green along the horizon, and it illuminated the square enough so that Kami was able to see the glimmer of Lillian’s and Rosalind’s hair, separated by a wide stretch of blackness.

She was able to see the glint of teeth as Rob smiled.

“Lillian,” he said, “where is my sacrifice?”

“This town does not live by the old laws anymore,” Lillian said. “It lives under my laws. Because it is my town. If you want it, you have to take it from me.”

Kami jumped as she heard the crackle in the night, the hungry sudden hiss.

A flame leaped from the broken streetlight, brighter than the bulb had been, a red pillar on top of what looked like a metal spike. The flame rose high and dangerous, the curling scarlet tongue at its tip painting the sky with its own colors. Leering faces in orange and blue surfaced and sank in its heart.

Everyone could see Rob’s smile now. He said, gently, “Then I will.”

Both sides moved, inevitable as two opposing tides. Ruth Sherman of the crimson hair and fierce face was the one who joined battle first. She was almost close enough to touch Ms. Dollard, but not quite, when she passed a hand through the air, pale in the fire-tinted darkness. Somehow that gesture turned the air twisted and sharp, made a slice of night into a knife.

It cut Ms. Dollard’s throat.

The blood was nothing but a slender black line across her neck for an instant. It didn’t look deep, didn’t look serious, and then there was a dark gush over her white blouse. There was a spray of blood, ebony in the night, an obscene splash of darkness against the golden cobblestones.

Ms. Dollard toppled, and Lillian lunged forward. She raised her hand and Ruth staggered back as if she had been slapped.

Mrs. Thompson stepped forward, a small bag Kami recognized clasped in her hand, and when Mr. Prescott raised his hand against her a wind rose and then died as she spoke. Mr. Prescott looked stunned.

Lillian looked stunned too, but she caught on fast. She stooped to where Ms. Dollard had fallen, picked the bag out of her hand and held it fast. She spoke the words of a spell, lost in the howl of wind and the hiss of flames, and magic died all through Rob’s ranks. Lillian and her sorcerers began cutting through them: Kami saw one of Rob’s sorcerers fall, then another. Her plan was working, small successes won at every turn.

Unfortunately, Rob was quick on the uptake as well.

“Burn those,” he ordered, and the bag in Lillian’s hands burst into flame. Then he lifted a hand and Lillian stumbled. When she looked up, her lip was split and her teeth were stained with blood.

All at once the square was a maelstrom, people throwing themselves at each other, people standing or cringing back, people falling. The square was filled with dark figures and chaos and blood, all of it lit with the writhing red flame of Rob Lynburn’s torch.

There were so many more of Rob’s sorcerers, and their magic was powered by blood. It was like seeing people try to fight against knives bare-handed. It was so much worse than Lillian must have thought, so much worse than Kami had feared. This wasn’t going to be a brave last stand, wasn’t going to be something that would decimate the enemy even if it led to defeat.

This was going to be a slaughter.

Kami pressed her hand to her lips so hard she felt her teeth cut the inside of her mouth. It did not look like joining in the fight would make any difference at all.