Charlotte’s world screeched to a halt.
She couldn’t bring herself to move. She just stared at the broken, burned body. éléonore . . . éléonore was dead. How could this be? Her mind refused to accept it. éléonore was alive and vibrant less than an hour ago. She was alive, she was talking and walking, and now she was dead, and Daisy was dead with her.
éléonore would never smile again. She would never catch the cuckoo clock as it fell out of her hair. No more stories about Rose and the boys. No more of anything.
“What about the man?” Helen asked.
“They took him,” Tulip sobbed.
Helen leaned toward her, murmuring something. Malcolm bent over them.
I need to move, flashed in Charlotte’s head. She needed to do something, say something, but she just couldn’t. She just stood there, locked into a painful haze.
Malcolm Rooney walked across the lawn to her. She saw his lips move, but no sound came.
The roof beams crashed down with a loud crack and tumbled in an explosion of sparks. Charlotte jerked. Her hearing returned, and she heard Malcolm’s deep voice: “. . . slavers.” He shook several pairs of shackles at her. “Found this on the bodies. Haven’t seen their kind in ten years. Must’ve hit quick. Looks like they popped Daisy in the head, shot éléonore, took your fellow, and set the house on fire. Tulip hid in the woods and watched the whole thing, poor kid. The house was gone in minutes. It’s an old building. Went up like kindling. They’re on horses, looks like a dozen, maybe more, besides those.” Malcolm nodded at the bodies. “That’s éléonore’s work. They call it the Broken Stick curse, because it locks them into weird shapes like that. The old lady had a lot of power in her.”
Her mouth finally managed to make a word. “Why?”
“That’s what slavers do. They raid towns like ours, steal kids and pretty women, and take them off to the Weird to sell as slaves there. This Richard fellow must’ve pissed them off somehow.”
Richard . . . The slavers had taken him. Her mind started up slowly, as if rusted. She was too late for éléonore and Daisy, but there was still a life they could save. “We have to go after them.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Slavers are a nasty lot. They got what they wanted, and they’re gone. This Richard, he’s no kin to me. Hell, he didn’t even grow up around here. He stirred them slavers up like a hornets’ nest, and they chased him here, but now they’re gone, and this thing’s done with. Take a long, hard look at what he brought down on you. I say good riddance.”
She stared at him, shocked. He would not do anything. He had already made up his mind—she saw the decision in his eyes. Malcolm Rooney, the big, strong bull of a man, was afraid. He would walk away.
“Those bastards shattered four lives. éléonore took me in. She made me welcome, she gave me a second chance at life, and they murdered her and burned her body and her house.” Her voice rose. “They killed Daisy, who was barely twenty, and her fifteen-year-old sister watched her die. And you’re just going to let it go?”
Malcolm clamped his mouth shut.
Charlotte looked past him at the Edgers. Guilt and sadness stamped their faces. Not a single one would meet her eyes.
Dear gods. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on their ends. They agreed with Malcolm. They would all just walk away and pretend that this horror never happened. She had known that in the Edge every man was out for himself, but this? This seemed inhuman.
“éléonore lived here all her life.” She pointed to the charred corpse. “Her body is still smoldering over there. Don’t you understand? If we don’t stop them, they’ll do this again. Look at Tulip. Look at her!”
People looked at their feet, at the grass, anywhere but at her or the child crying her heart out.
“Chasing them will only get more people killed, and none of us have children or relatives to spare,” Malcolm said quietly. “We’ll find a place for Tulip. Hell, looks like Helen won’t let go of her, so I guess she’ll be coming home with us. You ought to come on down, too.”
Charlotte looked at him because looking at Daisy’s and éléonore’s bodies hurt. Grief filled her to the brim, bitter and overwhelming. She was choking on it. Oh gods, Rose and the boys would eventually need to know. What would she even tell them? I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time? I’m sorry I went on with my life as if it didn’t matter and let those bastards spread their misery?
“We can fix a bedroom for you,” Malcolm said gently. “The more the merrier, they say. It will be okay, Charlotte. It will all work out. You’ve done helped many people here. We’ll find you a new place to live, don’t you worry about that. What do you say?”
The pain, sadness, shock, and guilt churned inside her. She couldn’t contain it. She had to do something.
The slavers thought they could stomp out people, and they would keep going, killing, burning, and hurting children. They would crush other lives just as they had crushed her little comfortable world. Even now they rode away, unpunished, carrying off the man she had healed, and she didn’t even know why any of this had happened. They would hurt him, torture him, and likely kill him.
Somebody had to make a stand. If none of the Edgers would step up, she would have to be that somebody. There was nobody else.
Charlotte reached deep inside herself, into the darkness, carefully hidden and locked away, and found a single crimson spark. She forged a tentative connection. Need flooded her, the magic so hungry, so desperate to break out, and feed, and kill. Fear shot through her. She almost recoiled. If she let it loose, there would be no turning back. She’d worked so hard to bind this part of herself. She had almost succeeded.
Charlotte looked at Tulip’s face, at the wet streaks of tears stained with ash.
“Tulip!”