“Where are you?” Holes filled with children slumped in the muddy water. He checked each one, sprinting back and forth in panic. A corpse. Another corpse. She was here, somewhere. He had to find her.
The world turned black. He ripped through the darkness by sheer will and saw the edge of a dirt road running through the woods, little more than two tire tracks with a strip of grass growing between them. He wasn’t sure if it was real or a remnant of some memory.
The blackness smothered him.
Richard clenched his teeth and crawled toward the road. This was not the end. He wouldn’t be dying now. He had things to do.
The rain-drenched clearing with its cypresses swam into his view.
“Help me!” Sophie called.
He stumbled over the bodies of slavers, tracking her voice.
“Help me!”
I’m trying, he wanted to tell her. I’m trying, sweetheart. Hold on. Wait for me.
The darkness stomped on the back of his head. The world vanished.
*
CHARLOTTE surveyed the groceries laid out on the island of her kitchen. Almost done. Only the big log of ground beef was left. She sliced it with a knife into five equal portions—each one would be enough for a dinner for one with leftovers for lunch—and began wrapping them in plastic.
The first time she’d hired an Edger to bring her groceries from the Broken, the woman had delivered a big pack of ground beef. Charlotte had frozen the whole thing as it was, in the wrapper. Unfortunately, it turned out that once you defrosted the beef in the microwave, it wasn’t safe to refreeze it again. She ended up throwing half of the meat out. Lesson learned.
Cooking was just one of the things she had to learn in the Edge. At Ganer College, staff prepared her meals, and at her estate, she had employed a cook. Charlotte sighed at the memory. She’d never truly appreciated Colin until she had to fend for herself in the kitchen. éléonore had given her a cookbook, and if Charlotte followed the recipes exactly, the result was passable, occasionally even tasty. Decades spent learning to mix medicines ensured that she had good technique and paid attention, but if she didn’t have the exact ingredients on hand, trying to substitute things ended in complete disaster. A few weeks ago she watched éléonore make banana bread. It was all “a handful of flour” and “a dash of cinnamon” and “add mashed bananas until it looks right.” Charlotte had dutifully written everything down, and when she’d tried to re-create the recipe, she ended up with a salty loaf-shaped rock.
She’d learned other lessons as well. Being humble. Living a simpler life. The dark magic inside her had long fallen dormant, and that was just the way she liked it.
Bright sunlight spilled through the open window, drawing warm rectangles on the kitchen floor. The day was beautiful. The air smelled of spring and honeysuckle. When she finished, she would go outside and read on her porch swing. And have a nice glass of iced tea. Mmm, tea would hit the spot.
“Charlotte? Are you in there?” A familiar voice called from the front porch. éléonore.
“Maybe.” Charlotte smiled, wrapping the last chunk of ground beef in plastic.
éléonore swept into the kitchen. She looked to be around sixty, but she’d let it slip last year that a 112th birthday wasn’t such a bad thing for a woman to endure. Her clothes were an artful mess of tattered and shredded layers, all perfectly clean and smelling faintly of lavender. Her hair was teased into a fluffy gray mess and liberally decorated with charms, twigs, and dry herbs. In the middle of her hair nest sat a small cuckoo clock.
éléonore worried her. In the three years Charlotte had known her, the older woman’s physical condition had steadily slid downhill. Her bones were getting thinner, and she was losing muscle. She’d slipped on an iced-over path four months ago and broken her hip. Charlotte healed it, but her talent had its limits. She could only heal up to the existing potential of the body. In children, that potential was high, and she could even regenerate severed digits. But éléonore’s body was tired. Her bones were brittle, and coaxing them into regrowth proved difficult.
Old age was the one disease for which there was no cure. In the Edge, as in the Weird, people fueled their life spans with magic, but eventually even magic gave out.
The cuckoo clock sagged.
“It’s about to fall,” Charlotte said.
éléonore sighed and pulled the clock out of her hair. “It just doesn’t want to stay in there, does it?”
“Have you tried pins?”
“I’ve tried everything.” éléonore surveyed the island filled with meat and vegetables, all in perfectly sized portions, wrapped in plastic or placed into the Ziploc bags. “You obsess, my dear.”
Charlotte laughed. “I like having an organized freezer.”
éléonore opened the freezer and blinked.
“What?” Charlotte leaned back, trying to figure out what the hedge witch was looking at. Her freezer wasn’t really gapeworthy. It had four wire shelves, each with a neat label written in permanent marker on a piece of white tape: beef, pork and chicken, seafood, and vegetables.
éléonore tapped the nearest label with her finger. “There is no hope for you.” She sank and landed on a stool. “Charlotte, do you ever make a mess just for the fun of it?”
Charlotte shook her head, hiding a smile. “I like structure. It keeps me grounded.”
“If you were any more grounded, you’d sprout roots.”
Charlotte laughed. It was true.
“You and Rose would get along,” éléonore said. “She was the same way. Everything had to be just so.”
Rose was a constant presence in most of their conversations. Charlotte hid a smile. Being a substitute Rose didn’t bother her at all. She long ago realized that for éléonore there was no higher praise, and she took it as a compliment.
“I’ve come for a favor,” éléonore announced. “Because I’m selfish that way.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “What may I do for you, your witchiness?”