Kami tried to smile, even as the skin between her brows pinched. “I hate you guys. And I hate talking about this. It’s so humiliating.”

“No,” Holly protested, reaching out a hand to her.

“Yes, it is,” Kami said fiercely. Embarrassment clutched her by the throat, but she swallowed and surged ahead. “Let’s just talk about the investigation. Unless you guys have any leads on who might be the sorcerous murderer, I was thinking of investigating something Ash let drop. He talked about something happening at Monkshood.”

“That old place?” Holly asked.

“Ever go poking around there when you were a kid?” Kami asked.

Holly was silent.

“Me neither,” Kami said thoughtfully. “Time we did.” She hopped off the sink and started toward the door, but then stopped. “That is,” she said, “if you both still want to be part of the investigation. I understand if this freaks you out too much. I know it’s a lot to deal with.”

“It would be all right if it freaked you out,” Holly said cautiously to Angela, as if hoping for permission to admit she was freaked out herself.

Angela had not grown up with a father hating the Lynburns like Holly had, or a mother keeping the Lynburns’ secrets like Kami had. She had not had Aurimere waiting on the horizon all her life. Kami could understand it if Angela wanted nothing to do with this.

“It doesn’t matter,” Angela said.

“It doesn’t matter?”

“What matters is Kami,” Angela said, avoiding Kami’s eyes. “I do not trust that guy. He looks at her as if she was his heart, made of glass and suspended on a thread that might break. If the thread breaks, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“His mother made me what I am to him,” Kami told them quietly. She did not want to discuss his heart. Whenever he looked at her, he looked away fast. He didn’t look at her the way he must have looked at Holly when they first met.

She felt ashamed for that moment of resentment when she saw Holly’s concerned expression.

“I don’t want Kami hurt,” Holly said.

“I won’t have her hurt,” said Angela. “Or you.”

Holly bowed her head and hugged her knees to her chest, as if she had been hoping that wouldn’t come up, that they would never have to discuss the fact that someone had tried to grab Holly the night Nicola died. Someone had meant it to be her, and they could not go to the police with a tale of magic and blood. They only had each other to solve this, and Kami did not know what she would do if Holly or Angela opted out.

There was a pause, and then Kami heard the click of Angela’s heels on tile, walking across the bathroom floor. Eventually Angela’s shining leather boots were touching Holly’s worn running shoes.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Angela promised her.

“Sure,” Holly said, smiling up at Angela, even if her smile looked strained. “I still have several pairs of deadly high heels.”

They all laughed. None of their laughs sounded particularly convincing.

“So, Angie,” Holly went on, “you’ve never …”

There was a silence neither of them seemed inclined to fill. Then Angela said, “Ah, no.”

“Bit hard to believe,” Holly mumbled, and Kami saw her flush. “Since you’re about the most beautiful person in town.”

Angie’s scarlet-painted mouth tugged up at one corner. “You forget one small detail,” she said. “I kind of hate people.”

A real laugh was surprised out of Kami and Holly both—a laugh that started out a little wild, but ended up making Kami think that only having each other might just work out.

“No, you don’t,” Holly said.

“I really do,” said Angela, and Kami laughed again as Angela continued. “Have you met people? They’re very annoying.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Monkshood Abbey

Monkshood was a good hour’s walk from the town proper. The very narrow lanes meant that occasionally you had to throw yourself in the ditch to avoid a car, and once they had to throw themselves in the ditch to avoid a farmer coming by in a blue cart.

“The Americans have these inventions called sidewalks,” Jared noted.

“We call them pavements,” Kami said. “And we see them as luxuries that you just can’t have with every road.”

“You know what goes faster than us? Or even pretty, pretty ponies?” Jared asked.

“Your head, spinning through the air when detached from your shoulders after a grisly motorcycle crash?” Kami raised her eyebrows and Jared ducked his head, his ripple of amusement going through her anyway. It felt good. Not so good was the fact that Holly and Angela were rambling ahead, obviously uncomfortable about being near her and Jared. Kami could understand it. Just the fact that they could talk to each other silently must be off-putting, in the same way that speaking in a foreign language in front of someone you knew couldn’t speak it was off-putting—but worse, because a foreign language could be learned.

“You were the one who wanted to tell them,” Jared said, voice low as the sound of autumn-red leaves rustling on the trees along the road, whispering hush, hush to the sky.

“My team needs all the information available to conduct their investigation,” said Kami. “And they’re my friends, so I wanted to tell them the truth.”

“Whatever you say,” Jared answered mildly, but Kami could feel his belief that they didn’t need anyone but each other.

She caught sight of Angela and Holly, standing still up ahead. They’d stopped walking and were staring across the fields at Monkshood Abbey.

Why aren’t they moving? Kami thought, panic spreading from her to Jared. She walked past him, and heard him follow her.

“What’s wrong?” Kami asked as she reached the other two. As soon as she drew level with them, she realized what was wrong.

Holly was the only plausible hiker of the bunch, in a padded coat with her sunny hair in pigtails. Angela in her fitted jacket and silk looked as if her sports car had broken down and she would never venture out into nature again. Both of them looked disgusted. Kami took another deep breath and wished she hadn’t.

The house stood at the top of a gravel driveway, with a green field sloping up toward it and the dip of a moat enclosing that field. On the green rise, the building squatted like a glowering gnome. Emanating from the direction of the house was a thick, terrible scent of rot.

“What is that smell?” Holly asked at last.

“Could be anything,” Kami said. “Might be something, you know, totally normal. The moat could be full of cat food tins.”

“Yes,” said Angela. “That would be extremely normal.”

Kami had a strong feeling that something was waiting for them there. She expected to see a dark figure walk out, or a car drive toward them from around the back.

Kami shook herself out of her reverie with a shiver. “I know it’s super creepy,” she said. “But I’m not even going to pretend I’m not going in there. You two can wait outside if you like.” She didn’t even think about it until she saw Angela’s sidelong look, then she realized that she’d said “you two.” She couldn’t think of a way to take it back. She could feel the same thrill coursing through both of them. She couldn’t pretend to be anything but sure that, no matter what, Jared was coming with her.

They all went up the driveway together, and then circled around to the back of the house. They went no farther.

“So they kind of lock up abandoned houses,” Kami said thoughtfully. “I did not know that. But it makes sense.”

Both the front and back doors were barred with planks nailed in place over the entrance. The nails were rusted and buried in the age- and water-darkened wood. All efforts to pry them off would obviously be useless, as would hopeful jiggling of the windows, which were warped shut, with thick green moss growing along every windowsill.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of delinquent criminal?” Angela asked Jared.

“I do have aspirations that way,” Jared answered. “Yes.”

“Could you jimmy the lock or something?”

Jared looked at the back door, covered with its many planks.

“Or something,” said Angela, her voice sharp. “Get the glass out of its frame, or scale the gutters and break in through the attic.”

“Well,” said Jared, “I suppose I could do something.” He stepped up to the nearest window, eyes narrowing. He set his leather-clad elbow against the glass.

Kami said, “Jared, no!” She spoke an instant too late.

The glass broke with a crunch and a tinkling sound as the shards fell inward.

“Sorry if it wasn’t what you had in mind,” Jared told Angela. “I’m not that subtle.”

“Well, now we have to redeem this act of vandalism by using it as a terrible means to the excellent end of pursuing truth and justice,” Kami said. “Someone give me a boost through this broken window.” She already had the mossy sill in her grasp, and even though she said “someone,” she was braced for it to be Jared. She looked straight ahead into the darkness of that house as he grasped her waist, hands light but firm. Despite her attempt to help herself through by grabbing at the window frame, he just lifted her and put her through, so she was past the jagged points of glass and standing in the dust-gray gloom.

Holly and Angela followed her, Angela slapping Jared’s hands away when he tried to help her. Jared got in last. A shard of glass clinging to the top of the frame caught at his sleeve when he pulled himself through, and secondhand pain shot through Kami as they all looked at the bright blood beading on his wrist in the strange light.

“I’m fine,” said Jared, pulling down his sleeve.

They were standing in a very large room. The floorboards stretched in a pale expanse at their feet. There was so much dust on the floor that it had a pearly sheen.

“Even you could not nap on this floor,” Kami told Angela.

“I don’t know, a dust mattress might be very comfortable,” said Angela. “Also possibly orthopedic.”

They were all walking softly and close together, as if afraid to disturb the dust. There was no apparent danger: just dust, silence, and gray light. The bad smell had no source, it just drifted around them in a hideous miasma. Nothing changed even when they reached the threshold of a huge desert of a room and saw a hall with shadows along the walls and the stair banister. Kami could see nothing but darkness waiting at the top of the steps. One step was broken clear in two.

“I can get up there,” said Jared. Kami caught at his arm, and when he turned to her she saw the gleam in his eye, reflecting the spark she felt kindling in him.

“No,” Kami told him. “Those stairs don’t look safe.”

Jared grinned at her, teeth a pale flash in the murk. “Ah, but I can do magic now.”

“You don’t know what that means yet,” said Kami, but she didn’t grab him. She regretted that when he made a break for the stairs.

Kami had her foot on the first step when Angela lunged forward and caught her by both shoulders, staring down at Kami with her dark eyes narrowed.

“No,” Angela said firmly. “You do not risk your life for that idiot.”

“It’s holding up all right,” protested Jared, laughing and breathless, halfway up the stairs. He leaped lightly over the broken step.

The staircase collapsed.

There was a crash, dust rising in an explosive rush. Kami was blind for an instant. Her eyes burned with dust, and her throat burned with a scream.

Then her vision cleared. The dust was no longer moving but held suspended, glittering in the air like a curtain made of tiny beads. The stairs kept falling, but in slow motion. The disappearance of the stairs was less a crash and tumble than an escalator that went nowhere, each step waiting to take its turn to fall.