“That he’s crazy?” asked Kami.
Holly’s smile spread. “That he might be fun.”
“So he’s not crazy?”
“I didn’t say that,” Holly said. “My current verdict would be: Crazy eyes. Nice ass.”
“I think I want that on my tombstone,” Kami said. “Remember my last wishes, if I get involved in a tragic accident with a fruit cart before I can put it in writing. So, what happened?”
Holly shrugged, bouncing down the steps two at a time and going over to her motorbike, sliding her helmet over her curls. “He slipped through my fingers. We were talking about motorcycles, a friend stopped me, and then I looked around and he was gone. Let me tell you, that usually does not happen. Usually I can’t lose them even if I’m trying.”
“I believe you,” said Kami, and sighed. “Well, never mind. We’ll get him on Monday.” She waved as Holly pulled into the street, then headed on to the library. Guys might disappoint, but she knew journalism would never let her down.
The Sorry-in-the-Vale library was one of the ugliest buildings in town. It was a squat brown-brick building that did an amazing impression of a bungalow from the outside and had three stories inside. The roof tiles were crumbly and a strange apricot shade. Inside, the worst part was the carpets. They were weirdly mottled orange and brown, as if someone had skinned a vast diseased orangutan.
The best part was a computer with an Internet connection that Kami did not have to share with two brothers, one intent on watching every funny cat video the Web had to offer, and the other having a star-crossed love affair with Wikipedia. It was also full of books, though that side of the enterprise proved trickier than Kami had hoped.
“Hi,” Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian, who bought bread at Claire’s every morning and instantly returned Kami’s smile. “Can you tell me where I could find books on Satanism?”
Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami’s parents. When she finally got away from Dorothy and into the nonfiction section on the
top floor, she didn’t find any books called Animal Sacrifice: Why We Do This Completely Disgusting Thing and Who We Sacrificers Are Likely to Be, but she found a few books that she hoped related to the topic. She piled them by her computer and spent time alternately leafing through them and feeding the printer change so it would print her articles as well as truly horrible pictures of people trying to tell the future with goat entrails.
Kami really didn’t think what she’d seen was Satanism. Satanism seemed to involve a lot of specific symbols, and there hadn’t been any of them at the hut. This left Kami with absolutely no idea what was going on, her hair frizzed up in the sticky heat of the stuffy room, and a printer coughing and stealing the last of her money.
It was closing time at the library. Kami gave up her day as totally unproductive. She gathered her giant stack of paper and the few books that seemed helpful, and decided that she would rather risk the creaky lift that was a fire hazard than the dark steps that might break her neck.
This meant, of course, that when she walked out of the nonfiction room, she saw the lift doors closing. “Hold the lift!” Kami yelled, and charged forward.
The guy inside pulled the little trick of punching the air as if it was the button to open the lift.
Kami shoved her stack of paper and books between the closing doors. “I said hold the lift, asshole!”
The doors opened, giving a low whine as they did so. Kami knew just how they felt.
“Oh, is this the lift?” the guy said in a bored voice. “We call them elevators in America.”
Kami curled her lip at him. She couldn’t retreat now. There was the principle of the thing to consider, and also the fact that she had left pages scattered on the lift floor. “Do you know what we call guys like you in England?” she asked. “Wait, I believe I may have already mentioned the word.” She stepped into the lift with Ash’s delinquent cousin.
Chapter Six
The Other Lynburn
Holly had been right. Ash was better-looking.
Kami also saw why Holly had called the delinquent Ash’s brother. They were alike enough to be brothers, but in this case the fairy-tale prince had been cast into shadow and ruin. Jared literally looked like Ash under a shadow: Ash with a tan, darker blond hair, and dark gray eyes with odd, cold lights in them. Crazy eyes, Holly had said. Cutting across his left cheek, from cheekbone to chin, was a long white scar.
“So you’re—” Kami swallowed his name. Even in the cause of getting an interview, she didn’t want to call this guy Jared. “The other Lynburn.”
The boy crossed his arms. He looked even bigger when he did that. “The one and only other Lynburn,” he said, with a bite to his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Friend of Ash’s, I presume? Great.”
Kami stood on the other side of the lift and felt very disinclined to get closer to him. She’d never been comfortable with guys like this, guys with that deliberate angry swagger. He was a shade taller than Ash, a shade broader in the shoulders, which were straining against a battered brown leather jacket. All the shades and shadows of him added up to something that put her teeth on edge. Kami wished she hadn’t taken the lift. But she wasn’t going to abandon her research on the floor because some jerk had crazy eyes. She knelt down and gathered up the papers she had spilled.
The boy didn’t offer to help. He did look down at the picture nearest him: a colorful printout of a squirrel with its head cut off. His eyebrows rose.
Kami met his gaze defiantly.
“I’ve had days like that,” he remarked, his American accent all sharp consonants. His voice was rough.