Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy 1)

They were going down the shadowed stairway when, as if given courage by the dark, Ash spoke again. “He’s not a good guy,” he said. “Kami, he’s my cousin, and I don’t want to say this. But I want you to be careful around him.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Kami had been holding on to the stair rail; when she let it go, her hand was cold. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice expressionless.

“His dad wasn’t a good guy either,” Ash said. “And he’s dead. Someone pushed him. Just like someone pushed you.”

Kami realized there was something worse than Ash not believing her: Ash believing her. Ash taking her seriously and having a suspect.

“I don’t care,” Kami whispered.

She spoke so softly Ash didn’t hear. He bent toward her, blue eyes wide and innocent. Kami hated him for a moment.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” Kami said louder. “Jared didn’t kill him.”

Ash tensed as if he was being attacked. But when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “You weren’t there.”

“Neither were you!”

“You can’t know what happened,” Ash said.

Kami didn’t know what had happened, but she knew how Jared had felt. He’d hated his father. Kami had been glad his father was gone. Now Jared was real and his father had been real and was really dead.

“You don’t know what happened either,” she said. She could feel Jared’s rage running through her as it had in the lift. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Ash was all blue eyes and gold, a bewildered knight-errant whose rescue mission had gone off course. When he spoke, his voice was infuriatingly gentle, as if he felt sorry for her. “You can’t be sure.”

“I am sure,” Kami lied, the words bitter between her lips because she could not quite believe them. “I am.”

“You heard her,” Jared said. “She’s sure. So stop trying to turn her against me.”

Kami’s head snapped around. Jared’s eyes met hers and then swung to Ash. His look created a chilly silence around them in the midst of the noisy corridor full of people preparing to go home.

Kami stepped in between Ash and Jared, facing Jared.

“Go on,” Ash told him. “Prove my poin

t. If she stayed away from you, she’d be safe.”

Jared made a sharp abrupt movement, something that would have been a lunge if Kami had moved away like she wanted to. She didn’t. She held her hands up and took a step toward him, and Jared fell back.

“I am safe,” Kami said, and cast a look over her shoulder at Ash. She felt fury wash through her: he could tell anyone in town what he had tried to tell Kami. “And I am sure.”

She wasn’t sure but she was angry, though she could not tell if the anger was hers or Jared’s, and that scared her more than the way Jared had come at Ash. She looked away from Ash and back at Jared. She took another step forward and another, using his desire not to touch her to herd him down that busy corridor.

“Jared Lynburn?” said a voice. Someone touched his elbow, and they both jumped.

Nicola Prendergast, Kami’s childhood best friend, stood beside Jared and smiled up at him. He didn’t move away from her. “Just wanted to say welcome to Sorry-in-the-Vale,” Nicola said. She nodded at Kami, giving the awkward ex-best-friend nod, and then gave Jared an expectant look.

Jared stared at her. He had a very distressing sort of stare.

Nicola bore it for less than a minute, then clearly remembered she had to be somewhere else with someone not so creepy, and darted off.

Jared looked to Kami. “Everyone either wants to welcome me with open arms or punch me in the face.”

“That probably says something very worrying about your personality,” said Kami. “But what?” She turned in toward him, and he almost stumbled back into an empty classroom. Kami followed him inside. The room was filled with desks and chairs knocked awry, and late-afternoon light streamed through the windows. Jared stood there still looking a little wild and completely out of place in her life. She wanted to reach out to him in her mind and get comfort in this impossible situation.

“Ash is right,” she said. She watched him flinch and felt the pang travel through her as well, horrible and senseless: she couldn’t stop feeling what he was feeling. “I don’t know what happened, and I have to know. Jared—Jared, I’m on your side. You believe that.” Jared’s burning-pale eyes were fixed on her. For a moment, she did not know how he would respond.

Yes, he said in her mind.