On the Edge te-1 Read online

  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.

  Four years had passed. All her dreams died a quiet death. She earned her living like most poor Edgers did: by working a job in the Broken for minimum wage, paid under the table. She cleaned offices and made enough to buy food and clothes and a few items to barter when the caravans from the Weird came looking to trade Pepsi, plastic, and clothes for enchanted goods. It was good honest work. It put food on the table. And it killed her a little to do it.

  She looked outside where the boys sprawled in the grass looking at the evening sky. At least when her parents had her brothers, they had the presence of mind to have Georgie at a hospital down in town and pay a midwife from the Broken to make sure Jack was legal, too. Both boys had Broken birth certificates and social security numbers. But she had been born in the Edge. Her driver’s license was a fake, and her parents had to fork out a small fortune to the principal of her high school because her social security number belonged to someone else.

  At least the boys were legal. And she wouldn’t abandon them the way Dad did. She would starve if she had to, but they would go to a school in the Broken. That was the great thing about the Broken: you could succeed there on brains and drive alone, no magic required. When the boys grew up, they would have more choices than she did.

  Still, she wasn’t ready to put her dreams to rest either. One day, she’d find a way to live her life to the fullest. She was sure of it. She just had no idea how she would manage it.

  FOUR

  THE wind-up clock screamed at ten till six. Rose got up and went about her regular morning ritual: making coffee, fixing lunches, putting on her Clean-n-Bright uniform. She barely had a chance to taste her first cup of coffee when Georgie wandered out of his room, sleepy eyed, his hair tousled. He ambled over to the window and yawned.

  “Would you like some Mini-Wheats?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Georgie?”

  Georgie stared out of the window. “Lord Sesshomaru.”

  The demon brother from their comic book? “I’m sorry?”

  “Lord Sesshomaru,” he repeated, pointing through the window.

  Rose came to stand behind him and froze. A tall man stood at the edge of the driveway. A cape of gray wolf fur billowed about him, revealing reinforced-leather armor, lacquered gray to match his cape, and a long elegant sword at his waist. His hair was a dark, rich gold, and it framed his face in a glacial cascade that fell over his left shoulder without a trace of a curl. She’d seen that hair before, just before its owner leaped onto her truck.

  The pommel of the second, much larger sword, protruded above the man’s back. The man’s gaze fastened on her. His eyes flashed with a white glow, like two stars. Tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  “That isn’t Lord Sesshomaru,” Rose whispered. “That’s much, much worse.”

  “What?” Sleep fled from Georgie, and he stared at her with wide eyes.

  “That’s a blueblood. Get Jack and get the guns. Hurry!”

  * * *

  ROSE walked out on the porch, carrying a crossbow. Behind her, Jack lay at the left window with his rifle and Georgie lay at the right.

  The blueblood towered like a spire of gray ice just outside the ring of stones. Tall, with broad shoulders and long legs, he seemed knitted from menace and magic. It’s the wolf cape, Rose told herself. Made him look bigger and scarier than he was.

  She stopped just before the ring of wards and looked at his face. Her heart skipped a beat. His features were carved with breathtaking precision, combining into an overwhelmingly masculine yet refined face. He had a tall forehead and a long straight nose. His mouth was wide, with hard narrow lips, his jaw square and bulky, yet crisply cut. It wasn’t a face whose owner smiled often. His eyes under thick golden eyebrows froze the air in her lungs. Dark grass green, they smoldered with raw power. She suspected that if she stepped over the stones and touched his face, he’d spark.

  Rose leaned her crossbow on her hip and took a deep breath. “You’re trespassing, and you aren’t welcome.”

  “You’re rude. I find it unattractive in all people, women especially.” His voice sent a light, velvet shiver down her spine. It matched him, deep and resonant. Now that the first impact of his impossible face had worn off, she saw a network of small scars near his left eye. He was real, all right. He bled and scarred just like the rest, and that meant he wouldn’t find bullets in his chest amusing.

  “Get off my land and be on your way,” she said. “I have two rifles trained on you as we speak.”

  “Two rifles manned by children,” he said.

  Damn Georgie. He shouldn’t have let himself be seen. “They won’t hesitate to shoot you,” she assured him.

  “I can rip through your wards with one blast. Bullets make no difference to me,” he said. A white sheen rolled over his irises and melted into their green depths.

  Ice skittered down her spine on sharp claws. He could, she realized. This wasn’t an idle threat. He wasn’t the first blueblood she’d fended off, but none had talked or looked like him. People said that the true aristocrats, bred for generations deep within magic, were striking. If that was true, he mus
t’ve come from the dead center of the Weird. “What is it you want?”

  “What do you think I want?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Let me make this completely clear: I won’t sleep with you.”

  Surprise flickered in his eyes. Thick eyebrows crept up. “What? Why?”

  Rose blinked, lost for words. He actually found it shocking that she didn’t fall over herself to spread her legs.

  “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

  Rose crossed her arms. “Let me guess. You’re the fourth son of a blueblood family down on its luck: no title to tempt an heiress and no inheritance money to purchase a noble bride. You’ve heard about the mongrel Edger girl who flashes white and decided that since you can’t have an heiress or a title, you can at least sire a brood of powerful babies, so you came to shop for a bride in the Edge. I have no time for people like you.”

  “Trust me, you’ve never met anyone like me.” He made it sound like a threat.

  “You mean an arrogant snob who’d force a woman into his bed without any regard for her feelings? Actually, I’ve met plenty. Been there, done that, bought a T-shirt.”

  He frowned. “What do shirts have to do with anything?”

  “There’s nothing for you here. Go away, or I’ll make you gone.”

  He grimaced. “You’re rude, vulgar, and you speak in an atrocious fashion. You’ll take so much work before you can be presentable. And you actually feel that you’re a suitable spouse for me?”

  That hurt. “That’s right. I’m rude and vulgar. A mongrel. That’s why you should leave me in peace. Run along to your fancy ladies. I’m sure one of them will gladly fall on her back for you and be overjoyed to pop out a litter of bluebloods. I won’t marry you, and I won’t be your mistress. Leave us be.”