Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy 1)

“We did a spell,” her mother repeated, her voice clearer, almost normal but with an edge.

“So, people can do spells,” said Kami.

“No,” said her mother. “The Lynburns aren’t people. I’ve told you how things were back then. The whole town was terrified of the Lynburns. We don’t talk about what they are. We all knew that they weren’t supposed to hurt us. But we also knew that they could. We knew what they could do to you. Nobody ever crossed a Lynburn.” Mum bit her lip and plunged on. “The last person who tried was your grandfather, Stephen Glass. The family who live in the house at the edge of the woods, they’re meant to have a special relationship with the Lynburns.”

“The family who live in the house at the edge of the woods,” Kami repeated. “Us.” She slid a look back at Jared but could only see the faint outline of his face in the shadowy backseat, turned away from her. “What kind of special relationship?”

“Being their servants,” Mum said bitterly.

“Well, that’s not happening,” Kami said.

Mum did not even seem to hear her. “Doing their bidding, being their—their front guard against the world. Stephen Glass said no, struck out the word ‘Guard’ on our house, and left Sorry-in-the-Vale. He came back years later, thinking it was all ridiculous and that he was a man of the world who didn’t believe in fairy tales. He came back to his childhood home with his new wife by his side, thinking nothing could possibly happen to him. He was dead by morning. Nobody crosses the Lynburns.”

“But you weren’t even born then,” Kami stammered out. “How do you know he didn’t just die? How could they kill him? Sobo would’ve told me if he was murdered!”

“She never believed in any of it. They can kill you without touching you,” Mum whispered. “They can make rain fall from an empty sky. They can make the woods come alive. That’s what people whisper about them. I didn’t know anything, not for sure. Not until the night Rosalind Lynburn left Sorry-in-the-Vale.”

The whisper came involuntarily from Kami’s dry throat: “What happened?”

Shadow was falling across Sorry-in-the-Vale, evening drawing over the town like a veil. Her mother stared at the horizon, the dying sunlight reflected in her eyes.

“I was on my way home from the restaurant,” she said. “I was walking down our High Street. And—I have never told anybody this, I know it sounds crazy—all along our High Street the shadows came alive.”

“What?” Kami whispered. Her mother did not even seem to hear.

“Shadows unfurled from around flags and weather van

es like they had wings. They curled around gates like cats and they slithered toward me like snakes. The shadows came apart from the night and came alive and came toward me. Then Rosalind Lynburn came walking out of the darkness, pale as a ghost. She meant it as a display, you see? She meant to scare me.” Claire laughed a short laugh. “She succeeded.”

Rosalind Lynburn. Jared’s mother, deliberately terrorizing Kami’s. But she couldn’t have any unearthly powers. She would have done something about Jared’s father if she did.

“Rosalind came to me and she said that she thought it was time Jon showed the Lynburns some allegiance. She said he didn’t want to end up like his father. Jon had just come back from London, had just given up college to marry me because—” Mum gave Kami a quick, scared look.

“It’s okay, Mum,” said Kami. “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t your fault. I get it. Go on.”

“I wanted him to marry me and come back to Sorry-in-the-Vale,” Mum said in a thin voice. “I loved this town. I wanted my dream here, my restaurant, and I wanted him as well. I was getting everything, but I was terrified that he’d be sorry later. And I was simply terrified for him. Nobody ever told him or his mother about the Lynburns; they were left alone because there wasn’t anything they could do for the Lynburns. It was one of the things that I loved about him, that fear never touched him. Rosalind wasn’t going to touch him. I said I was a Glass now too, and then she smiled. It was just what she’d wanted me to say.”

“What did she want from you?” Kami asked.

“The only thing she ever wanted,” Mum said. “Rob Lynburn. She knew he came to see me every day. He was marrying her twin sister, and we all knew Lillian was going to have a baby. Rosalind wanted to get as far away from her sister’s victory as she could, and she chose some American tourist to carry her away, but she still wanted Rob. She said she’d do a spell so she could see him through my eyes. She said all debts would be paid off between our family and hers then.”

Kami remembered that the Lynburns owned their house. Her mother had been the same age Rusty was now, and alone in the face of magic.

Mum closed her eyes. “I said I would do it. She took me into the woods, and she used a golden knife on a bird, and had me taste the blood. She cut off a piece of my hair and took it away with her. Later I told myself that she was crazy, that I’d been humoring a madwoman, but sometimes in the year after she left, just in that year—sometimes I thought I felt her. Using my soul as a keyhole to look through. Coming at me again through the darkness with the shadows in her hair.” She shuddered, turning away from the car window.

“You think a Lynburn killed Nicola.”

Kami reached out and touched her arm, and her mother turned to her. “I don’t know. But I know any one of them might have. I know the Lynburns think our blood is their right. And so you are not going near the Lynburns again!” Mum hissed. “I won’t let them touch you.”

As she hadn’t let them touch Dad, Kami thought. The lights of Sorry-in-the-Vale below her turned to diamonds underwater as she tried not to cry.

Mum covered Kami’s hand with hers. “Do you hear me, Kami? Are you listening to me? It doesn’t matter how in love you think you are.”

“Oh, right,” Kami said, and tears were running down her face again, beyond her power to control. She could taste them, and they were bitter. “In love. That’s how it sounds, doesn’t it? His heart is my heart, nobody can ever take him away from me, I keep him in here!” She thumped her breastbone so hard it hurt. “People say stuff like that but they don’t mean it: they mean they’re in love. All except me. I mean it. Rosalind and you made me mean it. When you did that spell, linked each other’s minds. You were going to have a baby. And so was she.”

She’d known there had to be an explanation for this.

Mum’s hand closed convulsively on Kami’s.