PART I

LORDS OF THE MANOR

Chapter One

The First Story

THE RETURN OF THE LYNBURNS

by Kami Glass

Every town in England has a story. One day I am going to find out Sorry-in-the-Vale’s.

The closest this reporter has come to getting our town’s scoop is when I asked Mr. Roger Stearn (age seventy-six but young at heart) to tell me a secret about our town. He confided that he believed the secret to Sorry-in-the-Vale’s high yield of wool was in the sheep feed. I think I may have betrayed some slight disappointment, because he stared at me for a while, said, “Respect the sheep, young lady,” and ended the interview. Which leaves us with a town in the Cotswolds that has a lot of wool and no secrets. Which is plainly ridiculous. Sorry-in-the-Vale’s records date back to the 1400s. Six hundred years do not go by without someone doing something nefarious.

The Lynburns are the town’s founding family, and we all know what the lords of the manor get up to. Ravishing the peasants, burning their humble cottages. Fox hunting. The list goes on and on.

The Lynburns have “dark secret” written all over them. There is even a skipping song about them. Skipping songs may not seem dark to you, but consider “Ring Around the Rosy,” a happy children’s rhyme about the plague. In Sorry-in-the-Vale they sing this song:

Forest deep, silent bells

There’s a secret no one tells

Valley quiet, water still

Lynburns watching on the hill

Apples red, corn gold

Almost everyone grows old.

The song even talks about secrets.

During this dauntless reporter’s lifetime, however, the only Lynburn in Aurimere House was Marigold Lynburn (now deceased). Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but it cannot be denied that Mrs. Lynburn was a ferociously private person. To the point of ferociously throwing her walker at certain innocently curious children.

Today, after seventeen years in America, Marigold Lynburn’s daughters have returned to Sorry-in-the-Vale. If the family does have any dark secrets, dear readers, you can have faith that I will uncover them.

Kami stopped typing and glared at the screen. She wasn’t sure about the tone of her article. A serious journalist should probably not make so many jokes, but whenever Kami sat down to the computer it was as if the jokes were already there, hiding behind the keys, waiting to spring out at her.

Kami knew there was a story in the Lynburns. They had gone away before she was born, but all her life she had heard people wishing that someone sick would recover, or a storm would bypass the valley, and in the same breath say, “but the Lynburns are gone.” She had spent the summer since she heard of their return asking questions all over town, and had people instantly hush her as if the Lynburns might be listening. Kami’s own mother cut her off every time, her voice equal parts severe and scared about her dangerously disrespectful daughter.

Kami looked back at the screen. She couldn’t think of a title besides “The Lynburns Return.” She blamed the Lynburns, because their surname rhymed with “return.” She also blamed the kids who were messing around in the woods beyond her garden: tonight they were making a sound that was almost howling. It went on and on, a noise that struck her ears hard and set her temples throbbing.

Kami jumped up from her chair and ran out of her bedroom. She thumped down the narrow creaking stairs and out the back door into the silver-touched square that was her garden at night. The dark curve of the woods held the glittering lights of Sorry-in-the-Vale like a handful of stars in a shadowy palm. On the other end of the woods, high above the town, was Aurimere House, its bell tower a skeletal finger pointing at the sky. Aurimere House, which the Lynburns had built when they founded the town, and where they had lived for generations, the masters of all they surveyed. There was no place in Sorry-in-the-Vale where you could not see the mansion, its windows like watching eyes. Kami always found herself watching it in return.

For the first time Kami could remember, every window was lit from within, shining gold.

The Lynburns were home at last.

The howling reached a pitch that raked up Kami’s spine and sent her running to the garden gate, where she stood with her eyes full of darkness. Then the sound died abruptly. Suddenly there was nothing but the night wind, shushing Kami as if she’d had a bad dream and running cold fingers through her hair. Kami reached out past the boundaries of her own mind and called for comfort.

What’s wrong? the voice in Kami’s head asked at once, his concern wrapping around her. She felt warmer instantly, despite the wind.

Nothing’s wrong, Kami answered.

She felt Jared’s presence slip away from her as she stood in the moonlit garden for another moment, listening to the silence of the woods. Then she went back inside to finish her article. She still hadn’t told Angela about the paper.

Kami had been hearing a voice in her head all her life. When she was eight, people had thought it was cute that she had an imaginary friend. It was very different now that she was seventeen. Kami was accustomed to people thinking she was crazy.

“You’re crazy,” said her best friend, Angela, as the bell rang to signal five minutes before the first class on the first day back at school.

Angela had moved from London to Sorry-in-the-Vale when Kami was twelve. The timing had been perfect because Kami’s first best friend, Nicola Prendergast, had just dropped her for being too weird.

“They said that about all the great visionaries,” Kami informed her, hurrying down the hall to match Angela’s long-legged stride.

“You know who else they said it about?” Angela demanded. “All the actual crazy people.” She gave Kami a look that said she wished Kami would stop bothering her.

Normally this would not have worried Kami. Angela always looked at people with that expression, and Kami could usually talk her into doing what Kami wanted anyway. But Kami had never wanted something as much as this.

“Last summer, when we volunteered as assistants at cricket camp—”

“When you volunteered us without asking me, yes,” said Angela.

Kami ignored this trifle. “Remember how I encouraged the kids to keep diaries, which turned into an exposé about the seamy underbelly of cricket camp?”

“I have found it impossible to forget,” Angela told her.

“And remember last year when I started the petition to get Miss Mackenzie fired, and she chased me around the pitch waving a hockey stick, and we had to speak before the school board?”

“Again, unforgettable,” said Angela.

“My point is, here we have an opportunity to champion truth that doesn’t involve sports,” Kami persisted. “It’s a step toward me becoming the greatest journalist of our time. You have to help, Angela, because Ms. Dollard has this notion that I’m a troublemaker and she’s only—finally—letting me set up a school paper because I told her you were on board.”

Angela rounded on Kami, her dark eyes blazing. “You did what?”

“I knew that once I explained the situation, you would understand,” Kami said, holding her ground despite Angela’s looming over her, alarming and overly tall. She continued swiftly in case Angela was considering beating her to death with her schoolbag. “I was hoping you would agree out of real enthusiasm for the project and because you are a true friend, but if you insist on being without vision—”

“I do,” Angela said firmly. “Oh, I do.”

“There is one other factor,” Kami said. “The office we’re being given to run the school paper has a sofa in it.” She paused for effect. “And we’re allowed to go to the office during free periods to tirelessly pursue truth and justice. Or, say—”

“Nap,” Angela finished, in the reverent tones of a knight who has finally spotted the Holy Grail. She stood lost in thought, her fingers tapping against the strap of her schoolbag. Then her perfect mouth curved ever so slightly. “I guess I do have a few ideas for articles.”

They walked into class in full accord, Kami beaming with victory. “I have more than a few. I’ve already started an article.”

Angela slipped into a chair one over from the window, and Kami took the place beside her. “About what?”

Kami leaned across the desk, keeping her voice low. “Yesterday I was at the sweetshop talking to Mrs. Thompson about the Lynburns coming back.” She glanced out the window of the classroom. Fields stretched to the south in a green blanket. To the north rose a hill steep enough to look like a cliff. On the edge of that rise stood Aurimere House, and below it were the woods, like a regiment of dark soldiers with a bright general.

She looked back at her friend in time to see Angela’s raised eyebrows. “So you were basically interrogating poor Mrs. Thompson, who is probably a hundred and twenty years old?”

“I was acquiring information,” Kami said calmly. “Also licorice.”

“You are shameless,” Angela said. “I hope you feel good about your life choices.”

Kami looked out at the valley again. There were stories to be found here, and she was going to discover them all.

“You know,” she said, “I really do.”

They were interrupted by the entrance of Miss Mackenzie, which forced both of them, Kami smiling and Angela shaking her head, to turn to their books.

It wasn’t until the end of the day that Kami and Angela had time to make their way up the stairs to the second floor and check out their newspaper office. The Sorry-in-the-Vale school building—the town was so small that there was no need to have more than one—was over a hundred years old. It accommodated all Vale kids from age five to eighteen, and there were still quite a few rooms in the school that weren’t used. Kami couldn’t wait to use this one.

“So tell me about the articles you have in mind,” Kami said to Angela on the first step.

“I was thinking I could write tips for people who are too busy to exercise but want to stay in shape,” Angela said. “People like me.”

Kami nodded. “You’re always busy trying to find a napping spot.”

“Exactly,” Angela told her. “I can’t be distracted from my search by having to do Pilates or whatever. Here’s one of my tips: always take steps two at a time.”

She demonstrated.

“I thought you did that just to mock my stumpy legs.”

“That too,” Angela conceded. “But the main thing is that taking steps two at a time is like a StairMaster workout. The result? Buns of steel.” Angela casually slapped the buns she referred to, proving her point.

Angela had a perfect body. She had a perfect face too, but at least she put some effort into that, her makeup always flawless and her abilities with eyeliner unnatural. Kami focused more on clothes than on makeup. She was always forgetting to put on lip gloss as she rushed out the door, but she felt the likelihood of forgetting her clothes was not high.

Kami slapped her own ass experimentally and made a face. “Buns of corrugated tin,” she said. “On a good day.”

What’s going on with you? Jared asked out of the blue. Kami felt his mind turn toward hers, away from his own life. It was like being in the middle of a conversation in a crowded room and having someone in an entirely different conversation among an entirely different group of people catch your eye. Multiplied by a thousand because, instead of eyes meeting, it was minds.

Beginning a new era of journalistic history, Kami told him, sending her cheer through their connection. Also, to be perfectly honest, Angela and I were slapping our asses.

As one does, said Jared.

And you?

There was a feeling like a shadow touching her, letting slip that Jared was unhappy, but he answered: Just reading. Beginning a new era of being a useless layabout. He absorbed her cheerfulness gratefully, and she could tell he was pleased for her.