Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy 1)

Only Kami and Jared knew that there might be magic involved. A wash of light in the air, an impossible creature in the woods, being able to speak to a boy in her mind. They had all seemed like innocent things—magic that did not hurt—that Kami could dismiss even if she could not explain them. Torturing an animal was sick and wrong, but this was terrifying.

“We’re skipping school tomorrow,” Kami said. “We have to go to London and find Henry Thornton.”

Chapter Twenty-One

From Year to Year

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t take the bike,” said Jared.

“I’m sorry,” Kami told him. “I have this irrational fear of fatal road accidents. Anyway, getting here by public transport was perfectly simple.”

It had meant waiting an hour for the rattling bus out of Sorry-in-the-Vale, then switching to another bus, and finally catching a train at Moreton-in-the-Marsh. It would have been fine without some fool grumbling in her brain about the speed of his motorbike.

“Oh yes,” Jared said. “Perfectly simple.”

The redbrick walls and greenhouse ceiling of Waterloo Station gave Kami heart. She was acting at last, doing something to help. She grinned up at Jared, who was standing with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders braced. The feeling of discomfort she’d been getting from him since they got on the second bus (which she had put down to crankiness about his bike) niggled at her. She pushed at his defenses and Jared pushed back, not letting her in. He did smile back at her, though.

“Shall we be on our way?” he asked.

Henry Thornton’s apartment in South Ealing was more accessible by bus than by train, so they had another walk.

“And another bus,” Jared moaned.

“We have to work through your thing about public transport,” Kami said. “Did you ever take a bus on a school trip as a child? Was it a nice safe journey, driving at reasonable speed, being environmentally sound, and leading to an educational experience? I shudder to think.”

They walked over Waterloo Bridge. In the distance on either side bristled metallic buildings, like weapons in the hands of enemy forces. Kami realized whose mind that thought had come from and glanced up at Jared. The wind blew in from the river and ruffled his blond hair; his profile beneath was inscrutable.

“And here you’re supposed to be the glamorous city kid.”

“I just like Sorry-in-the-Vale,” Jared said.

“Sure, it’s nice,” said Kami. “But I like London too.”

Cars ran on either side of the river, every second one a black cab. Big posters stood against the sky, flickering from a picture of a bank to another picture of a woman laughing with parted scarlet lips. People went by, some with their heads down, some with their umbrellas pessimistically up despite the fact that there was no rain. There was an Indian man in a red turban, and two girls walked by talking in a Chinese dialect.

Her dad had attended only one year of college in London before he had to come back and marry her mother. The times she came to London with him were the times when Kami wondered if he regretted it. Here nobody knew who she was, that she talked to imaginary people or that she was the daughter of the son of that Japanese woman, one of theirs and not quite one of theirs. Nobody looked twice at her or Jared. It was just the two of them, passing unnoticed by the whole world.

Kami reached for Jared’s hand. She barely brushed skin with her fingertips, the contact sending a jolt through her, when Jared flinched automatically back. She felt his regret a second later, but by then she had snatched her hand away.

Kami, said Jared.

Kami pointed to a spot along the concrete-lined riverbank, where there were trees starving in little cages. Kami raised her eyebrows when that thought came to her: Jared really did not like London.

“Bus stop’s that way,” she said, and walked ahead of him.

Henry Thornton’s flat was in the middle of a residential area. They had to go past two schools, six corner shops, and innumerable houses squashed together before they found it.

Thirty-Two Cromwell Gardens did not have any gardens around it. It was an uninspiring gray block of flats, all the windows uniformly rectangular. There was a matching gray wall immediately before the building, with the gate standing ajar. Someone had grown climbing roses on the wall, but at this stage in autumn that only meant the stone was covered in dry brown twigs and thorns.

“What do we say when we press the button for Flat 16?” Jared asked, after they had stood looking at the building for a couple of minutes.

Kami looked at the way he was slumped against the wall and realized that she had been right at the train station. The closed-off feeling she’d been getting from him, with something rippling underneath it, wasn’t crankiness or anger. She did not usually look at Jared for long, stealing glances to match up with his thoughts in her mind. The reality of him always made her bite her lip and look away too soon. She studied him now; the shoulders she’d already noticed were braced, and the gleam of sweat at his hairline, darkening that already dark-blond hair.

“You’re sick,” she said, startled.

“I’m fine,” Jared said sharply.

“We can just go. We can go now.”