They sounded like terrified children, and strangers who hated each other. Kami could not tell who was the most afraid.
The doors of the lift opened again with a cheerful little ping. The fluorescent lights of the library spilled in over their tense tableau. Kami could see Dorothy at the checkout desk in her fuzzy pink cardigan, squinting over in their direction. She saw a ripple pass through Jared’s body, like the tremor that moved through wild animals just before they ran. For an instant she thought that he would simply bolt.
She was wrong.
First he took one step and closed the distance between them. She was trapped between the wall and his body, looking up into the strange light of his eyes.
“Stay away from me,” he hissed in her ear. Then he exited the lift with so much force that it rocked.
Kami came out a moment later, blinking in the light. She was not walking steadily.
“Are you all right?” Dorothy asked, leading Kami around behind the desk and sitting her in Dorothy’s own chair. “Was that Lynburn boy bothering you? He came in with a letter from Nancy Dollard saying that he needed a pile of books to get up to scratch in school and to rush his library membership through. I knew I shouldn’t have let a Lynburn in. I wish they’d never come back. They don’t change, and I don’t believe in their laws, or their lies.”
“Their laws?” Kami asked, dazed. She was aware she should be coaxing this information out of Dorothy, but her brain felt like a shattered mirror, all sharp fragments and no use left in it.
“That boy’s grandparents made a law that nobody would hurt the people of the Vale.”
“Isn’t that good?” Kami wondered if she was hallucinating this conversation in her state of shock.
“Doesn’t it make you wonder who was hurting them before?” Dorothy patted Kami’s back with a heavy, concerned hand. “Tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” Kami said numbly.
She instantly proved herself a liar by putting her head down on the cool plastic of the desk, in the cradle of her arms.
She had two choices. Either have a nervous breakdown in front of a librarian or pull herself together. After a moment with her head in her arms, she sat up and told Dorothy that she really was fine, she’d just been startled, and she was okay to walk home alone. She left the library with a weak wave.
It occurred to Kami that she might have left Dorothy with the impression that Jared had exposed himself to her in the lift. If so, it served Jared right. She crossed her arms to protect herself from the hungry bite of the night wind. She was determined to think practically about the situation, because if she didn’t she was going to lose it completely.
She still found herself stumbling through the night as she cut across the Hope family’s fields, colder than she should have been, lost in a familiar place. Her mind was enemy territory now. There was a stranger in it. She felt invaded and abandoned at once. She had stopped wishing for this and dreaming of it years ago. She’d had to.
It wasn’t fair that he was real now. She was so angry, she felt like she wanted to kill him. She felt like he’d killed the Jared she knew, crazy as that was. She had to stop it, stop being crazy: she had to go home and put her thoughts in some sort of order, get herself under some sort of control. She kept visualizing those walls, to protect herself from him and keep him away.
She would handle this in the morning. She was going to sort everything out.
The wind rose up with a sudden shriek, the trees raking clawed fingers against the night sky. Across the fields Aurimere House glowed like a ghost in the darkness. Kami made out a black shape standing in her path. Her heart beat a frantic tattoo against her ribs until she realized that it was just the Hope Well.
She was staring straight ahead, the wind howling in her ears. It must have been some sixth sense instilled by years of Rusty jumping her from behind. She had no other explanation for why she suddenly dodged, but whatever made her do it, it saved her life.
The blow hit the side of her head rather than the back. Kami staggered, blackness shimmering before her eyes, but she was still conscious when she was shoved between her shoulder blades. Panic cleared her head for a moment as she was airborne, the sick feeling of falling turning her stomach. Then she hit the water at the bottom of the well.
Kami! Jared shouted in her head.
Kami went under, up, and under again. She reached out and dug her fingers into the crevices between the stones. The spaces were tiny and the stones were slick, but she clung anyway. The bursts of heat at her fingertips told her that she was rasping the skin right off her hands, but the pain helped her stay aware.
Her head was a throbbing ache, but she couldn’t lose consciousness. She felt her grip on the stones slipping and did not know if it was the slickness of the stones or her own grip slackening. Kami was low in the water without even being aware she’d slid down until icy water touched her lips and filled her mouth with bitterness.
Kami clawed for a higher handhold, but her palms found nothing but wet stone. She did not know if she could have grasped a handhold if she had found one. She was losing hold of everything, it was all being wiped out, panic and fury and Jared. She knew nothing but the coldness of the well water and the heaviness of her own limbs dragging her down as blackness flooded her mind and she sank.
Kami. Kami.
“Kami!”
Kami coughed well water down Jared’s back, spluttering, the taste of stale water and bile thick in her mouth, her lungs filled with searing pain.
“Oh, thank God,” Jared said. “I couldn’t work out how to hit you and hold on to you at the same time.”
“Hit me?” Kami croaked. “I’ve had enough of this abusive behavior. And we’ve only just met! You’re making a terrible first impression.”