Rose felt heat rise to her cheeks. “On second thought, I’m not sure that my house is big enough to contain you and your ego. Few places are. Promise or sleep outside.”
“If you insist.”
“I would prefer to hear the words.”
He sighed. “I promise not to molest you, no matter how tempting.”
“Or the children.”
The smile vanished from his face. His eyebrows came together, and his eyes grew dark. “I’m a noble of the house Camarine. I don’t molest children. I won’t be insulted—”
“I don’t care,” she interrupted. “You can beat your chest with your fist in righteous indignation, or you can swear and sleep inside. Your choice.”
“You’re the most infuriating woman I have ever met. I swear not to molest the boys,” he ground out.
Rose held out her hand, and he dropped a gold coin into her palm. A Weird doubloon. Even with the draconian fee Max Taylor charged for converting gold into dollars, the little coin was food for a month.
“I don’t have change. Do you have something smaller?”
“Keep it,” he growled.
“Suit yourself.”
She opened the door with a mock bow and a big smile. “Please, Your Highness.”
“My Lord Camarine will do.”
“Whatever.”
She ushered him inside. The boys had polished off the food and were washing their plates.
“Georgie, fetch his plate and drink from the porch, please. He will be staying in Dad’s bedroom tonight—he paid for it. You’re sleeping in my room on the floor.”
The blueblood growled low in his throat.
In thirty seconds Rose and the blueblood sat at the table across from each other. Rose tried the pancakes. They were predictably cold, but still delicious, and she was ravenous. “God, these are good.”
“Slowly.”
Rose raised her gaze from her plate.
He sat very straight at the table, cutting the pancake with surgical precision.
“Eat slowly,” the blueblood said. “Don’t cut your food with the fork. Cut it with the knife, and make the pieces small enough so you can answer a question without having to swallow first.”
Her sarcasm whistled right over his head. “Yes. Look at me and not at your plate. If you have to look at your plate, glance at it occasionally.”
Rose put down her fork. “Lord Submarine . . .”
“Camarine.”
“Whatever.”
“You can call me Declan.” He said it as if granting her knighthood. The nerve.
“Declan, then. How did you spend your day?”
He frowned.
“It’s a simple question: How did you spend your day? What did you do prior to the fight and pancake making?”
“I rested from my journey,” he said with a sudden regal air.
“You took a nap.”
“Possibly.”
“I spent my day scrubbing, vacuuming, and dusting ten offices in the Broken. I got there at seven thirty in the morning and left at six. My back hurts, I can still smell bleach on my fingers, and my feet feel as flat as these pancakes. Tomorrow, I have to go back to work, and I want to eat my food in peace and quiet. I have good table manners. They may not be good enough for you, but they’re definitely good enough for the Edge, and they are the height of social graces for this house. So please keep your critique to yourself.”
The look on his face was worth having him under her roof. As if he had gotten slapped.
She smiled at him. “Oh, and thank you for the pancakes. They are delicious.”
SIX
ROSE awoke early. She had slept badly, in short bursts, waking up every hour or so to check on the kids. Twice she thought she heard something outside, and she went out onto the porch to investigate. She found nothing. Just the night, which, so mundane a day before, suddenly seemed sinister and full of danger.
When she did fall asleep, she dreamt of monsters, children screaming, and sliding out of control on wet mud that seemed never to end. By five, she gave up on sleeping and dragged herself upright to make coffee.
She passed by her father’s bedroom. The door was closed. Last night she had given “Declan” a brief tour of the house, starting with the bathroom. He seemed to have matters well in hand. Rose wasn’t surprised. The existence of the Broken wasn’t exactly public knowledge in the Weird, but some nobility were aware of it, just like a few select Broken residents were aware of the existence of the Weird. He was probably high enough on the social ladder to be privy to secret information.
Tour finished, Rose gave Declan a spare toothbrush—his doubloon had paid for it and more—and a fresh towel, and made up Dad’s bed with clean sheets and blankets. The kids told him good night, and he disappeared behind the door. She hadn’t seen him in her midnight wanderings. Whatever phantom noises had troubled her failed to bother him.
Rose briefly considered knocking on the door but decided against it. She didn’t have to leave, not yet, and she could use a calm moment with a cup of coffee before the kids rose.
She opened the windows to let fresh air in, boiled coffee in a small metal ewer her father called an
The creatures disturbed her. She’d never sensed anything so . . . so alien. All magic had a natural connection, even the vilest kind, but the beasts were disconnected from everything. They weren’t undead; they weren’t conjured, animated, or transmuted. To do any of those things, one had to start with a natural element: rock, metal, living tissue, and that base left an imprint on the final creation. The beasts’ magic had no ties to anything.
As much as it pained her to admit, she was deeply grateful that Declan happened to come along to save Jack. That, far more than the doubloon, had earned him a stay in her house. Her memory served up Declan, bursting with power, his eyes iced over with radiant white . . . He was something else. She’d thought of him several times last night, during her relay of catnaps and paranoid wakefulness. She still wanted to touch his face just to reassure herself that he was indeed flesh and bone.
Rose dragged her mind back to the problem of the boys. Without her truck, she had no way of getting the kids safely to and from the bus stop. Letting them walk by themselves was out of the question, not with those creatures around. She had to be at work by seven thirty and would likely stay there until five, if she was lucky, or six. The kids were released at three thirty in the afternoon, and the bus dropped them off at three forty-five. They couldn’t walk up to the house by themselves, not with those beasts around, and she didn’t feel comfortable making them wait that long by the main road. Grandma was likely still at Adele’s. The old woman lived deep in the Wood, and whenever Grandma visited her, she usually lingered overnight.
The boys couldn’t wait for two hours by the bus stop. The Broken had its predators as well. They would have to skip a day.
A movement on the path made her stretch her neck to get a better look. Declan emerged from the shadowy trail, running. She jerked upright, expecting pursuit. He ran to the lawn, leaned forward for a moment, shaking his
