On the Edge, page 4
Beyond the lines of the ward stones, the Wood shivered with life. The sky had darkened to deep soothing purple, and the leaves of the upper branches stood out, nearly black against it, rustling gently in the cool whisper of the night breeze. Here and there the white spires of nightneedle bloomed between the trees. Their stems, no more than green shoots during the day, released a cascade of delicate, bell-shaped blossoms with the first touch of darkness, sending a mimosa perfume into the night. Éléonore breathed it in and smiled.
So peaceful . . .
Unease flared at the base of her neck and rolled down her spine in a viscous wintry rush. She felt the press of someone’s gaze pin her, as if she had a bull’s-eye between her shoulder blades. Éléonore turned, scanning the ward line.
There. A dark spot hovered at the outer edge on her left. It stood on all fours, dense and impenetrable, like a hole cut in the fabric of the night to reveal primordial darkness. She could barely see it in the gloom, its silhouette more of a guess than a certainty.
Éléonore’s fingers found the small wooden charm hanging from her neck. She gripped it tight and whispered, “Sight.”
Magic pulsed from her in a flat horizontal fan, pulling the landscape and the creature to her eyes in a rush. She saw darkness and within it a narrow slit of the eye: pale, weakly luminescent gray without an iris or a pupil. She tried to reach past it and glimpsed a hint of a form, churning with unfamiliar violence. Her senses screamed in alarm. The eye jerked out of sight. She released the charm in time to catch a blur of darkness as the creature vanished into the underbrush without a sound.
The Wood was home to many things, but Éléonore had never seen one so disturbingly alien. She glanced to the kids on the lawn. Safe behind the protective stones. It will be fine, she told herself. The wards around Rose’s house were strong and old. The spells had rooted deep into the soil. Besides, Rose would be coming up the road any minute now, and Éléonore pitied any beast that tried to stand between her and the boys.
It was probably just some odd creature the Wood had disgorged. The forest stretched west of East Laporte and all the way into the Weird. Perhaps some Weird beast had crossed the boundary into the Edge. Stranger things had happened. No need to tell Rose about it, Éléonore decided. The poor child was paranoid enough as it was.
ROSE made the final turn and paused at the edge of the lawn. Grandma Éléonore sat on the porch, sipping hot tea from a teacup. Some time ago Grandma had decided she was old enough to cultivate a hedge witch look. Her gray hair was teased into a semblance of a crazy matted mess randomly decorated with feathers, twigs, and charms. Her clothes would’ve given any deconstruction-oriented designer a run for his money: they were artfully ripped and layered, until she resembled a half-plucked chicken with bits and tatters of fabric fluttering about her as she moved.
The authenticity of her costume was slightly ruined by the fact that both her rags and her hair were very clean and smelled faintly of lavender, and by a decidedly unwitchy teacup with a fluffy gray kitten on it.
“Were the boys any trouble?” Rose asked, coming to sit next to her.
Grandma rolled her eyes. “Please. I’m a hundred and seven years old. I think I can handle two hooligans.”
The magic kept most Edge families alive and well long past their Broken peers, and Grandma didn’t look a day older than fifty-five. It wasn’t her age that was the problem, Rose reflected. It was that the moment the boys made their puppy eyes at her, all the rules and discipline flew out the window.
Behind Grandma the boys chased each other on the grass: Jack, nimble and lightning quick, and Georgie, a pale golden-haired shadow. Paler than usual today. One of them was impersonating InuYasha, the half-demon boy from the comic book; the other was probably Lord Sesshomaru, InuYasha’s older and stronger demon half-brother. But which was which, she couldn’t tell from here.
Rose did not regret buying the comics. The boys had latched onto them, and the precious volumes now occupied the treasured spot of honor on the top shelf in their bedroom.
Georgie ran out of breath and sat on the grass, slumping forward. Rose caught a sigh. He looked about to be sick.
Grandma pursed her lips. “What was it this time?”
“A baby bird.” He’d raised it this morning, before she dropped them off at the school bus stop.
Georgie coughed and bent over on the grass. Jack stopped in midstride. He looked at Georgie for a long moment, his face blank and lost, then trotted over and sat next to him.
“If George keeps this up, it will kill him.” Grandma shook her head.
Rose sighed. When Georgie resurrected something, he sacrificed a bit of his vitality to give it life. The stronger his power grew, the weaker his body became, as if his mind was the flame of a candle that burned too bright, destroying the wax too fast. They tried explaining. They tried talking. They tried threats and punishments and pleading, but nothing helped. Georgie breathed life into things that made him sad with their passing and simply didn’t know how to let them go.
“What a pair.” Grandma sighed. “A cat with a death wish and his brother who’s trying to keep half of the Wood alive.” Her voice broke a bit. “How’s Cletus?” she said, making an obvious effort to sound nonchalant and failing.
“Same,” Rose said.
A shadow clouded Grandma’s eyes. She frowned and poured Rose a cup of tea. “The boys told me about this William. What does he do?”
Traitors. “He’s a floorer.”
“He sells flowers?” Grandma’s eyebrows crept up.
“No. You know how roofers work on roofs? Well, he works on floors.”
“Are you sure he isn’t a child molester? Because that’s what they do, they sidle up to the woman in the family, woo her, and then next thing you know they’ve got their di—”
Rose gave her an indignant stare. “He isn’t a child molester.”
“How do you know?”
Rose spread her arms helplessly. “He has honest eyes?”
“Is he handsome?”
Rose frowned. “He’s a fine figure of a man. Dark hair, dark eyes. Handsome, I suppose.”
“If he looks that good, why didn’t you let him court you?”
“It didn’t feel right,” she said shortly.
Grandma looked at her, her blue eyes vivid on her wrinkled tan face, like two violets on a freshly plowed field. “I see.”
“I saw a wold today,” Rose said to change the subject.
Grandma raised her eyebrows. “Oh? How big?”
Rose lifted her hand to show about four feet.
“My. He was a big one.” A flicker of worry mudded the clear blue of Grandma’s eyes.
Rose nodded. “It chased Kenny Jo up a tree.”
“Kenny Jo deserves it. Did you kill it?”
They shared a small private smile. A couple of weeks after Rose had flashed white, Grandma had made a small wold for her to kill. Practice, she had said. It was more than that— it was a test. Grandma wanted to see how hot she could flash. Rose had blown the wold to pieces in the first ten seconds. Grandma didn’t speak for a full half a day after that. Grandpa had called it a record of some sort and predicted Apocalypse.
Rose nodded. “Who could make a wold?”
Grandma set her cup down with a sigh. “That’s a powerful curse. I can. Lee Stearns. Jeremiah Lovedahl. Adele Moore. Emily Paw. Her aunt, Elsie, could, too, but the poor woman lost her wits, what, two decades ago?”
“I heard she has tea parties.” Rose drank her tea.
Grandma nodded. “I’ve seen her do it. She brings teddy bears to the picnic table and pours them invisible tea out of a plastic tea set. Sometimes the bears even drink it. There was some real power there, but it’s all gone to waste now.”
Rose opened her mouth to tell her about a man who liked to jump on moving trucks and stopped. It was just an isolated incident. Nothing would come of it. Why worry her?
“Whoever has done it, I’ll find out. And I’m sure Jeremiah and Adele will want to give them a piece of their mind.” Grandma rose. “Well, I’d better be going. I’ll make the trip to Adele’s tomorrow and see what she knows. The hooligans finished their homework. Also, Georgie has a note from his teacher, something about stone books.”
“Stone books?” Rose frowned.
“Yes. I think he needs one made of marble.”
“Marble composition book,” Rose guessed.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
Grandma headed for the door and stopped, framed in the doorway. “Maybe you should give this boy a chance. Life doesn’t have to end after the Graduation Fair, you know. It goes on.”
She left. Rose sighed and poured herself more tea.
Give the boy a chance.
Rose mulled it over. Maybe she should have given William a chance. Most people in her position might have. She hadn’t dated in years.
And that was exactly the problem. She hadn’t dated in years, and her judgment wasn’t sound. A part of her wanted to be pretty and carefree. In her rare moments of desperation, she wanted a man to look at her like she meant the world to him, and failing that, she would settle for someone who thought she was beautiful and told her so. William would probably fit that bill. Part of her pointed out that something was better than nothing. But if she ended up with the wrong something, she’d regret it for the rest of her life. Once bitten, twice shy. Living in your dreams meant bitter disappointment when you woke up. She’d learned that lesson well.
The incident with William unsettled her. He’d unwittingly pulled all of her old wants and hopes out of the recesses of herself where she’d carefully stuffed them, and dragged the entire mess into bright light. Now she had to deal with it, and she resented him for it. Come to think of it, any handsome man who asked her out would’ve set off the same chain reaction. She didn’t want to go out with William just because he was in the right place at the right time. And she hated feeling desperate.
Rose got up, gathered the cups and the kettle onto a platter, and carried them off to the kitchen. It wasn’t always this way, she reflected. No, she was never the most popular girl in school, but she had her share of guys knocking on her door. Back then she dated the kind of boys even a Drayton girl didn’t feel right bringing home. Like Brad Dillon. Brad had black hair, hot brown eyes, and carved biceps. And the best ass in the county. But that was before the Graduation Fair.
East Laporte was too small to have its own high school, and most kids went to school in the Broken. There was a tiny church school for people who didn’t have the papers or the money to bribe the principal of the Broken high school, but aside from that, you were out of luck. For those who did attend the school in the Broken, high school meant four years of pretending to be a normal Broken person. Four years of having your nose rubbed in how poor you were and in all the things you could never do: college, traveling, having a nice house . . .
That’s why the Graduation Fair was a huge deal. It happened on the thirtieth of May, once the Broken schools let the kids out for the summer. It was the time for graduating seniors to celebrate their freedom. Everyone attended. Even the bluebloods from the lands neighboring the Edge came once in a while, cloaked in the powerful magics of the Weird. Food stalls sprang up along the field’s edge, caravans from the Weird arrived to exchange their goods for the trinkets from the Broken, and bouncy gyms and inflatable water slides were set up for the little kids. Once everyone ate and traded, people gathered at Crow’s field to watch the seniors show off their flash. There was nothing simpler and more complicated than a flash: a burst of magic, pure and direct. Like lightning. It showed a person’s power. The brighter and more defined was the flash, the stronger was the magic user.
The Edger kids kept to themselves even in the schools of the Broken, and once you hit high school, that’s all anyone would talk about between classes and during lunch: who flashed what color the previous year. The best Edgers flashed pastel blue or green. You just hoped you didn’t come out there and puffed out dark red, the weakest color, to the jeers of the audience. Only the bluebloods, the aristocrats of the Weird, flashed white, and even among them, not everyone could deliver a controlled whip of power.
Rose rinsed out the cups and put them back into the cabinet. Middle school had been hell for her. Leanne and Sarah, the two queen bitches, picked on her the entire time, because her mom had slept with Sarah’s dad, lured him away from Sarah’s mother, and then dumped him. Sarah’s parents split, and Rose paid the price. She was the daughter of a whore, and a beggar whore at that, a girl who was ugly, poor, and good at nothing.
She began practicing her flash in sixth grade. She worked at it with a fanatical devotion. She practiced for hours, in private, determined to show them all. When her mom died her junior year of high school, it only spurred Rose on. Flashing became an obsession. She practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until magic flowed from her, pliant and obedient.
When Rose walked onto that field at the Graduation Fair, her head held high, she knew she was ready. She had years of practice behind her. She would finally shove it in their faces. She opened her hands wide and flashed an arch of purest white, as defined as any of the best bluebloods could hope to offer.
In her childish triumphant dreams, Rose had imagined people cheering, pictured herself being hired by a blueblood house, receiving training, going off to adventure in the depths of the Weird. She had done something truly remarkable. Not even a burst of energy, but an arch, crisp and sharp like a blade of a scimitar that played in her hands like a willing pet. Top that, you assholes.
Morbid silence greeted her. Fear stabbed her chest, and she realized suddenly that she might have made a mistake. And then Dad was there at her side, and he pointed his gun at the audience, and he and Grandfather took her off the field quicker than she could think, packed her into Dad’s Jeep, and drove to the house like wolves were snapping at their heels. That night Grandma didn’t sleep—she walked the grounds, reinforcing the ward stones with her blood.
In the morning, four messengers waited by those ward stones. Three had come from the Edger families, and one from a blueblood noble house. Only the blueblood man was allowed to enter. He sat in their kitchen, an older grizzled warrior with a sword on his waist, and laid it all out. Only bluebloods flashed white. That was an unshakable fact. In two hundred years, no Edger had delivered such a focused and bright flash. Coupled with her mother’s reputation, that could mean only one thing: Rose wasn’t her father’s daughter.
At that conclusion, Grandpa had to be taken out of the kitchen to keep from skewering their “guest” with his rapier.
Rose denied it. It simply wasn’t true: not only did she look like a Drayton, but she was born exactly nine months following her parents’ honeymoon. Her mother had lost her virginity on her wedding night. The sleeping around didn’t start until Rose was in her teens—it was the death of her mother’s parents that had triggered it.
The man shook his head. It didn’t matter, he explained. Even if she was legitimate, no one would believe her. Those of blue blood possessed the potential for great powers. Nobody in their right mind could ignore the possibility that Rose could be a descendant of a noble family, a descendant who could in turn pass that precious blood to her children.
Finally she understood. She had hoped to wow everyone. Instead she had marked herself to be used as a broodmare.
The blueblood outlined his terms: a large stipend to her family, a comfortable life for her. They weren’t offering marriage, like the other three messengers from the Edge. After all, they were an aristocratic house, and having a mongrel in their bloodline would be beneath them. They simply expected her to produce a horde of bastards to be used as retainers for their house.
Her father told him to get out.
It’s amazing how stupid you can be when you’re young, Rose reflected. Two days later, she had snuck away to see Brad Dillon. He told her, “Don’t worry, babe. It’s us against them. We can take them all on.” They made out, and then he wanted to go to a club in the city “to show them all” that she wasn’t scared. He asked her to go out and start her truck. He’d lost his license for doing ninety in a forty-five zone and then punching a cop, and she had to play the chauffeur.
She never made it to the truck. He came out of the house behind her, brandishing a bat, smiled, and clubbed her over the head.
She vividly remembered his smile. It was a smug grin that said, “I’m so much smarter than you, bitch.”
He didn’t hit her quite hard enough. His plan was to knock her out and deliver her to the Simoen family. The Simoens were always opportunistic, grabbing at every chance to get a bigger piece of the pie. Later she found out that Frank Simoen, the family’s patriarch, promised Brad ten grand to deliver Rose. Ten grand. A fortune for an Edger. They’d wanted to get her hitched to Rob Simoen, Frank’s son, so Rob’s babies would one day flash white as well.
And Brad had tried. But Rose had jerked back at the last moment, and the bat glanced off, breaking the skin on her forehead. She stood there, her skull humming with pain, blood running into her eyes, shell-shocked. When Brad Dillon had swung that bat a second time to finish the job, he found out just how hot her flash could be. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she did. And as he writhed on the ground at her feet, she cried and cried, because in that moment she realized that her life would never be the same.
What followed was six months of hell. The Edge clans went after her with a vengeance, some to get her for themselves, others so they could sell her to the highest bidder. At first she hid, then she fought back. It’s true, she had only one weapon, but against it there was no defense. Sooner or later she was bound to kill someone, and once she had fried a drifter hired to kidnap her, the Edgers realized that she couldn’t be controlled and left her alone. Shortly after that, Grandpa died, and then Dad got the idea for his latest brilliant scheme and departed, running away like a thief during the night. All she had left was a note ranting about treasure and how, when he returned, all of them would be rich.
