Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy Read Free Page A

said. He still had hold of her hand.
    Kami shook hands firmly, then pulled her hand away and walked over to her desk: she needed it to take notes. “I’m Kami Glass,” she said once she had a pen and a notepad. Shewaved at Angela. “This one-woman welcoming committee is Angela Montgomery. Congratulations! You’re part of the team. Your first assignment is to go out to the stairs and take some pictures of Angela standing on them slapping her ass.”
    Angela said, “I’m going back to the cupboard.”
    They all ended up at the stairs, Kami coming in order to drag Angela and staying in order to interview Ash. Ash ran from the top to the bottom of the stairs a few times, trying to get the best shot of Angela (though there was no way to get a bad shot of Angela, all swishing hair, snapping eyes, and perennial annoyance), and answered all Kami’s questions pleasantly, if cagily: Where had the Lynburns been? Oh, all around. Where had he liked living most? Oh, here.
    “So, now that you’re back, do you think you’ll be staying?” Kami looked down at Ash, pen poised over her notepad.
    Ash lowered his camera and looked up at her. Light flooded down the corridor, lending his hair a sheen of hazy brightness. “Sorry-in-the-Vale is where we belong,” he answered, and for the first time he did not sound calm and lighthearted. He sounded as if he was making a promise, one he intended to keep. “We’re going to stay here forever.”

    Kami woke that night from a dream of being someone else, to the sound of screaming in the woods. She reached for Jared.
    He answered, awake too, comforting and curious at once.
Are we going to go see what’s happening?
    As soon as the silent voice in her mind asked that, the sound stopped.
    Kami told herself to get a grip: she was only allowed tobe a certain degree of crazy. There were always kids messing around in the woods. These noises were perfectly normal.
    Through her connection to Jared she could feel again the chill she’d felt earlier today, the knowledge that he was unhappy.
I’ll be intrepid another time
, she told him.
I was just dreaming about you. How are you doing?
    Kami had to reach for him across the boundaries they had built up so they could both have their own lives and not look entirely insane. She only got bits and pieces of what Jared was thinking, especially since the summer before last. She thought of it as their decision: Kami had found it was easier to act like he was real, and they’d both made the rules.
    She leaned against the boundaries between them now, venturing into his space a little, and tried to make out his feelings. His weariness dragged at her senses, like holding hands with someone who was walking slowly.
    Does it matter?
he asked.
    Of course it matters
, Kami said, and pushed at him, bullying a little.
Tell me
.
    My mother asked me if I still talked to you
, said Jared.
I said yes
.
    Neither of them really talked about the other: hearing a voice in your head made you act weirdly enough without discussing the voices. Back when they were kids, when Kami had been young enough to send an English penny to an address she’d made up somewhere in America, their mothers had both been worried. Kami’s mother had been really scared, obviously convinced that Kami might actually be going crazy. Kami had been the only child for years before her brothers arrived. She’d been brought up by young, franticparents and her grandmother, knowing they all had to work together to make their family work at all. She was supposed to be self-sufficient. She was not supposed to be a problem child who terrified her mother by inventing an entire fantasy life for her imaginary friend.
    Her mother’s fear had made Kami scared as well, but not scared enough to give Jared up. She stopped asking Jared questions about his life, though, and she stopped talking about Jared to other people. He was her secret, and that meant she could keep him.
    Kami did not feel comfortable talking about