Untold

“We can’t let him win,” Kami said.

Her mother’s eyes traveled over her. Kami knew her hair was tangled and her mouth was swollen, and she knew that her mother thought she was a fool.

“You don’t get it,” Mum told her. “He’s already won. The other Lynburns will accept that. All that really matters to a Lynburn is another Lynburn. It’s the others who stand against him Rob will crush. And if this boy doesn’t have a use for you anymore, he’ll stand by and let you be crushed.”

Kami laughed. “You have no idea who he is. He doesn’t ever stand by for anything. And he loves me.”

She believed it, believed every word, but she felt herself flush as she said it. She’d always known he loved her, it had been the one certainty above all others that had never changed, but she had never said the words aloud and she had never meant them quite this way before. She had said it to him, and she hardly knew what she had meant. They were terrifying words, words to encompass a world.

Her mother looked at her sadly, her mother who men only had to look at to love. She might know better than Kami did.

But all she said was, “I have to go.” She pulled up her dark hood, covering her shining-gilt hair and shadowing her pale face. Kami shuddered in the cold air that ran through the open door as her mother went out.

Kami went upstairs and had a stinging hot shower to warm herself and wake herself up. She stood under the water and was terribly, newly aware of her own body, of the paths the drops of hot water were following.

Her old boyfriend Claud had touched a lot more of her body than Jared had tonight, but she had not felt made new because of him. Jared knew her, knew almost all the thoughts she had ever had, every dark fear and bright hope. When he touched her, he knew exactly who he was touching. There was a weight to their touches that made her body seem like a newly found land, with discoveries possible she had not dreamt of. Kami closed her eyes and let the drops of water drum on her eyelids.

She didn’t know how much of it was about the link, but he liked her. He loved her: he’d said so, though she would never again be able to know precisely and completely what he meant when he spoke. She just had to trust him, like every other couple in the world.

If they were a couple.

Kami shook her head at herself in the mirror, and the water-black locks of her hair came unstuck from her face and waved around her head.

Kami tried calling Henry Thornton again, but his phone just rang and rang. She chose her outfit more carefully than usual: a royal-blue dress with long sleeves, purple tights, and swinging plastic purple earrings. When she looked in the mirror, she had to shake her head at herself again, bothering about how she looked to a guy at a time like this, but her reflection smiled at her and seemed to regret nothing.

Her father was in the kitchen when she came back downstairs. Coffee was brewing and he was reading The Nosy Parker.

“My daughter, reporter of all the evil magical news of the day,” he said. “The boys told me you’d written an article that explained some things. I have to say, it makes a lot more sense than what I’ve been able to come up with on my own.”

Kami was aware she should have responded to what he was saying with a smile and a joke, but instead she stood stricken.

He looked so completely normal, her dad, his black hair sticking up from a shower, wearing a shirt that said BABY, I’D DESIGN YOUR GRAPHIC. She could not put the sight of him together with the desperate man she’d seen in the graveyard.

“I—I can tell you things,” she offered at last. “Whatever you want to know.”

“Your mum thinks it’d be best to lay low and let these . . . sorcerer types work it out,” Dad said. “She seemed pretty worried about how much you’re involved.”

Kami was glad to hear they’d been talking about anything in what seemed to be a civil fashion, but she didn’t know what to say. “Yes, I am heavily involved with deadly magical danger” did not seem the kind of thing a concerned parent would wish to hear. She looked over at him and saw he was pouring three cups of coffee. “Is Mum still here?” she asked, hoping this meant something good for them, when the doorbell jangled.

“No,” said Dad. “But I am expecting a guest.”

He made to slide off his stool, but then the kitchen door swung wide and Lillian Lynburn walked in. She did not bother to close it.

Dad raised his eyebrows. “The front door wasn’t open.”

“I find things are usually the way I want them to be,” Lillian said. “Because I can do magic.”

“Can you do manners?” Dad inquired. “It’s customary to wait for someone to answer the door.”

Lillian did not look impressed by the customs of ordinary mortals. She did not look impressed by the kitchen of ordinary mortals either. Rob had been in Kami’s kitchen once, and had looked friendly and comfortable enough. Lillian looked as out of place as a character in a fairy tale. Possibly an evil queen, if evil queens had really fancy tweed coats.

“Let me tell you about customs, James,” said Lillian. “I am not accustomed to being summoned to someone else’s home. You’re very fortunate that I came.”

“I am indeed blessed,” Dad told her. “I am also, by the way, called Jon.”

Lillian looked faintly surprised. “Are you?”

“Really?” Dad asked. “Really? I was the only Asian guy who went to our school. I kind of stood out. While you are an identical twin, and I still managed to know your name.”

“I’m afraid I don’t take your point,” Lillian told him. “I am also afraid that you called me down here to waste my time.”

Kami patted Dad on the arm to console him for Lillian

Lynburn’s entire personality.

“All right, Lucinda,” said Dad. “I’ll get right to it. I’ve absorbed that there’s a conflict going on between you and your husband, and that you’re on the side that doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I would not go that far,” Lillian observed. “Shall we say I don’t approve of ritual human sacrifice and leave it there?”

“At last some common ground between us, Leslie,” said Dad.

Kami could not quite believe that her father was getting sassy with a sorcerer. She hastily picked up her coffee and hid a smile behind the cup.

“I’ve also gathered that my family has some kind of ability your family might find useful.”

“Your family members are sometimes born sources,” Lillian clarified.

“Sure, whatever,” Dad said. “Lana.”

Lillian rested her hands on the belt of her coat. Its ornate gold buckle was in the shape of a woman’s face, surrounded by snakelike locks of hair. Lillian’s fingers twitched slightly.

“I admit that it has occurred to me that the power a source can lend a sorcerer might prove useful in the battle ahead. Your daughter—”

“We’ll leave my daughter out of it, thanks,” said Dad. He closed a hand over Kami’s when Kami opened her mouth to protest. “But I want to protect my family and my home just as much as you do, Linda. If there is a way that I can help you, I will. How can you tell if you’re one of those . . . sources?” He ended the sentence in a questioning voice, as if unsure if he’d gotten the word right.

Lillian gave a brief nod. “I can tell,” she said. “If I concentrate.” Lillian walked into every room as if she owned it. She walked across this one as if she owned it but was slightly horrified to find herself there, like a queen in a basement. Lillian reached the table that bore their coffee cups and reached over it, framing Jon Glass’s face between two fingertips. Her nails were bloodred. She looked into his eyes for a long moment. Kami’s father did not flinch, but met her gaze steadily, while Kami held on to his hand. Then Lillian stepped back with a dismissive disdainful gesture that said it all before she spoke: “Seems like being useful skipped a generation.”

“So—”

“So you’re not a source, and I’m done here,” Lillian announced.

“Wait a minute,” Dad said. “So I’m not a source, whatever you mean by that. What else can I do? There has to be something.”

Lillian considered. “Keep out of my way.” She headed for the door. Dad abandoned his coffee cup and followed her out, Kami at his heels. “Look. My kids are in trouble, and I want to—”

“Kids?” Lillian repeated. Her ringing tone must have pierced through the walls. As if in answer to a summons, Ten and Tomo were on the stairs, both wearing pajamas and peering down at her.

“Yes, kids, Liz,” Dad said impatiently. “The reason I asked you to come here rather than coming to see you.”

Lillian was studying the boys. Under her cool, impersonal gaze, Kami could see Tomo’s usual eagerness wilting. He backed up a few steps, and shy Ten ranged himself in front of his brother. Kami went to the foot of the stairs so she was in front of both of them.

Lillian’s stare flickered to Kami, then away to her father. “Your reasons do not concern me,” she told Jon. “I will protect you because you are part of my town, but I have neither the time nor the patience to stand around answering your questions and bearing your insolence.”

Anger passed over Dad’s face, but he looked at the stairs and bit his lip. “Okay then, Lulubelle,” Dad said. “You have a great day.”

“That is not my name!” Lillian snapped, finally breaking, and slammed the door behind her.

“Okay, kids, the mannerless sorceress is gone! Go get dressed,” Dad yelled, and Ten and Tomo looked grateful to run off. Dad wandered back to the kitchen table and his coffee.

“You are aware she could set your hair on fire just by thinking about it,” Kami said casually.

Dad shrugged.

“The sorcerers are the ones with the magic,” Kami said. “Nobody knows how to stand against that. When you try . . .”

Kami took a deep breath and walked over to the table. She rolled up both her sleeves and held out her thorn-scarred arms across the table to her father.

Dad looked at them for a moment, then put down his coffee with a bang. He came around the table to take her abruptly in his arms. “Oh, baby girl,” Dad said. “Who did that?”

Kami shook her head mutely, face buried against his T-shirt. She was not letting her father go off and get murdered by a sorcerous policeman, or a sorcerous anything else.

Dad rocked her for a moment, almost rocked her off her feet, and pressed a kiss into her hair. “So do you agree with your mum, then? You think we should stay out of this?”

“I can’t,” Kami said. “I have to do something.”

Her dad sighed. “You know, when you were three years old, you got lost in the woods and we found you with your head in a foxes’ den. Sometimes I think very little has changed. I mean, you might be a bit taller.”

“Short jokes from you, really, Dad?” Kami said into his shirt.

“I don’t know what you mean by that, when I am such an ample manly five foot seven,” Dad returned. “What are we going to do, then?”

“Well, the thing to do is be sneaky about this,” Kami said. “I’ve found out some names of the other sorcerers, so we know what we’re up against. I found a sorcerer in London who might be coming to help the others. And I’m researching something that happened in 1485. An ancestor of ours saved the town, once. And if I can find out how he did it, so can I.”

“In 1485?” Dad asked, and she felt him relax at the thought that his kid was only reading records. “Well, uh, I bow to your keen journalistic instincts. But what can I do? How can I help you?”

Kami thought, You are helping me, and kept her face hidden in his shirt another moment. She knew that answer would not satisfy her father. So she said, “I’ll let you know.”