“Holly’s been a while; I’m going to go find her,” Angela said, rising from her stool in one easy, twisting movement. “But hold that thought. I’m working on something about witticisms in your bra, and it’s going to be good.”
Kami waved her off and took another sip of her drink. She looked around, back at Nicola, who was talking to a guy, and then at her own reflection over the bar, in the darkened glass behind the rows of bottles. Her gaze was dreamy, drowning-dark, and strange, like she was avoiding meeting her own eyes. That was what unsettled people about her and Jared, that their eyes were so often looking at something that wasn’t there.
Holly really had been gone a long time.
Kami lifted herself slightly from the barstool, because she was a lot taller from there than she was standing. She could not see Holly or Angela.
Then she heard the scream, and she knew Holly’s voice. The sound cut through the cheerful noise of the bar, dead serious over all the laughter. Kami jumped off her stool and charged through the crowd toward the extension door. She was halfway there, using her elbows like paddles in an uncooperative sea, when the door burst open. Holly stood on the threshold, hair mussed and another scream on her lips, brandishing one of her high heels like a sword.
Angela was there before Kami was, coming from Kami didn’t know where and grabbing Holly. Her arm locked around Holly’s neck and Holly hid her face against Angela’s red silk shoulder.
Kami reached them and asked the question the whole pub was asking. Her voice was clear and made Holly’s head lift: “What happened?”
“I was walking back, along the extension to the bathroom,” Holly said unsteadily. “Then the lights went out. I put my hand against the wall to guide myself back, and I was touching brick, and then—I touched something else, something warm. A person. I jumped back just before whoever it was grabbed at me, so they only caught at my arm instead of getting a real grip on me. And they missed my—” Holly choked for a minute, hand pressed against her neck. “My throat,” she whispered. “I felt the edge. Whoever it was had a knife.”
The whole pub went still around them, as if the word “knife” was a stone thrown in the center of a lake, changing the whole surface of the water, spreading a ring of silence.
“What did you do?” Angela asked. Kami could see Angela’s hands trembling—Angela!—and she clung to Jared in her mind, to his instant support and concern.
“I screamed, ‘Don’t hurt me,’ and I tried to make my voice all shaky, and crouched down, being all—like a scared girl in a horror movie,” Holly said, stumbling over the words. “Maybe it was stupid, but it was the only thing I could think of. And when I was crouching down, I got my shoe off, and I hit out with the heel, and I think I caught whoever it was in the face. I heard a shout like I did. They were taller than me, I could tell that much, but I don’t know if it was a man or a woman. And then I ran.”
Angela stroked Holly’s hair, even though her hands were still trembling. “Think you got them in the eye?”
“No,” Holly admitted.
“Shame,” said Angela. “Next time.”
Kami rested a hand on Holly’s back and said, “I think you were really smart.” She turned to look at t
he others with an authoritative air, because pretending to be in control made her feel more in control and less scared and useless. “Has anyone seen any strangers?” she asked, thinking of Henry Thornton from London.
The front doors of the Bell and Mist swung open, and Kami turned with the rest of the pub’s clientele to see the two Lynburn boys standing framed against the night.
The crowd of people in the bar stood watching Jared, silently accusing.
Your timing is amazing, Kami told him. By which I mean, I am amazed by it.
Jared looked across at her, standing in a ring of space in a throng of people, like a tiny drill sergeant. Relief broke from him and toward her like a wave to shore. She was safe. Then Rusty pushed past him. Jared looked at Angela and Holly, who were hanging on to each other. This was a bad sign, he realized, because Angela was as nurturing as a barracuda. Jared looked to Kami again.
Rusty was doing a fine job of making Jared actually hate him as he went over to Kami and hugged her. Kami’s arms went around Rusty’s wet neck and hung on. A vaguely familiar red-haired girl stepped out of the crowd and up to the door where Jared stood, her jewelry chiming like tiny bells.
“Lynburn,” she said, as if Jared and Ash were a unit, as if she was calling on a totem or a god rather than speaking to a person.
“Yes?” Ash said softly, at Jared’s elbow.
Jared gathered from Kami’s mind that the girl was called Nicola. He saw Kami detach herself from Rusty and head across the floor to him.
“The people in this town are meant to be safe!” Nicola looked right at Jared. Her throat moved as she swallowed. She’d seen something in his eyes she was afraid of, Jared thought. She looked back at Ash. “Isn’t that the bargain? Wasn’t that the promise?”
“What do you mean?” asked Kami, which Jared could tell was partly about being a journalist and partly about insinuating herself between Jared and Nicola. As if she could glare people into not being afraid of him.
Nicola gave Kami a pitying look and shook her head, her red ponytail fluttering in the wind blowing in from the open doors. She retreated into the embrace of her friends, who welcomed her back as if she had just come home from war. Her eyes stayed fixed on Ash, imploring and accusing.
“What did she mean?” Kami asked.
Jared turned to look at Ash. The open door was a square filled with darkness, cut by silver points of rain. Ash was gone.
“I don’t know,” Jared said slowly. “Ash was talking about something that happened—somewhere. In a place. Monkshood.”