flower beds, metal junk, and four old rusted cars, none of which had run in the last five or six years. The closer they came to the house, the faster Leanne moved. Rose clenched the lantern to her chest to keep it steady.
“What’s the purpose of the lantern?” Declan asked. He had no trouble keeping up with them, not with those long legs.
“It’s a see-lantern,” she said.
“I realize it’s a sea lantern.”
“S-e-e, not s-e-a. Sight. It shows magic things to people who don’t have enough magic to see them on their own.” Neither she nor the boys ever had to use it, but her father had needed it once or twice and swore it worked. It would let Leanne see the danger, if there was any.
Declan frowned. “Everyone can see magic.”
“Not in the Edge. Some of the people here have more of the Broken in them than of the Weird.”
They ran up the steps. Leanne swung the door open. Rose paused and gently breathed into the triangular holes cut in the lantern’s top. The pale green spark grew wider and spread, coloring the lamp glass pale emerald.
Declan snapped his fingers. “I see. It uses an Augustus spiral. The natural exhalation carries residual traces of personal magic, and the coil inside absorbs and amplifies them by cycling them through the loops and then emits the resulting Augustus wave as green light.”
Envy bit at Rose. She had understood about two words of what he said, and she would’ve liked to know more. She lifted the lantern and peered inside.
The living room lay empty. Directly opposite her, across the living room floor, was a bedroom. The door stood wide open, and through the doorway Rose saw Kenny Jo standing alone, in a ripped T-shirt. The scratches on his chest looked shallow. To the right of Kenny, Elsie Moore waited, still tied to the rocker, just as Leanne had described. Amy sat between them on the bedroom floor, hugging her knees. All three of her children huddled around her, silent. The floorboards on which they sat were covered with arcane glyphs, written in black permanent marker.
A creature stuck its head out from behind the couch and peered at Rose with four slanted eyes filled with glowing gray smog. She knew what to expect from the ghostly image Declan had conjured, but seeing it in the flesh nearly made her vomit.
“Oh God!” Leanne gasped.
Amy cried out and immediately clamped her mouth shut, pulling the kids closer to her.
The beast was at least four feet tall. Its skin was dark purple mottled with sickly yellow and pale green, like an old bruise. The creature’s mouth gaped open, exposing a forest of narrow deepwater teeth, scarlet red. A hound, Declan called it. The name fit.
A movement to the left made Rose turn. Another beast stared at her from behind the love seat. A third darted in the kitchen. She looked up, raising the lantern higher.
The ceiling teemed with hounds. They shifted along the boards like nightmarish dogs with horse faces and mouths full of dragon teeth.
God, there must be thirty of them in there. Rose gripped the lantern to keep her hand from shaking.
Most of the creatures clung to the wall above the door to the bedroom hiding the children, Amy, and Elsie. Their magic dripped down in a thick repulsive wave, over the wall, over the door, and down on the floor below. Rose couldn’t see it, but she felt it, and it felt hungry.
Only now she noticed that the outer line of glyphs stopped six inches past the door, cut off abruptly as if erased. The flesh on her arms broke out in goose pimples.
“The hounds’ magic is eating the glyphs. We have to get them out.”
In the room, Amy clamped her hand across her mouth and sobbed. The children clutched onto her, all except Kenny Jo, who stood by himself, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I told you,” he said with quiet triumph. “I told you.”
“Okay,” Rose murmured, thinking feverishly. “Okay. We go around back and we try a window.” She knew it was a mistake as soon as she said it. Outside the hounds would mob them. There were simply too many.
“Won’t work,” Leanne whispered. “The window’s only a foot wide.”
On the ceiling, a scuffle ensued as the beasts realigned to face them.
“They see us.” Leanne’s voice snapped like a dry twig.
“It will be fine,” Rose said firmly. Her mind was spinning a mile a minute, cycling through the possibilities, none of which were plausible.
The hound by the couch lowered its head and started toward her, four eyes fixed on her with predatory intensity.
“It wants you.” Leanne backed away onto the porch. “It wants your magic.”
Another beast dropped from the ceiling, flipping in the air and landing on all fours.
The magic at the door shaved another two inches off the lines of glyphs.
“Okay.” Rose sucked in a breath. “We’ll use me as bait. I’ll draw them off, and you go and get the kids . . .”
The first beast was only ten feet away.
A hard hand gripped her shoulder and thrust her back behind Declan. In the instant of their touch, she glimpsed a tremendous power buckle and surge within him. His eyes blazed white.
“No, Declan!”
A phantom wind raised his hair. His eyes shone like two stars.
The creature leaped.
A half sphere of blinding white exploded from Declan, roaring like a tornado. Rose’s breath caught in her throat.
The first hound perished in midair, swallowed by the light. The blast ripped through the furniture, hit the roof, and swept it away with a crunch of shattered wood. Declan snarled, straining. The white glow flared brighter, burned for a long breath, and vanished.
The roof and the far wall were gone. Rose stared at the sky.
Above them black dots peppered the clear blue, growing bigger and bigger . . . A shower of broken boards and charred beast carcasses rained on the floor with loud thuds. She blinked, and the next moment Declan’s face blotted out the sky. “Are you hurt?”
His eyes showed sincere concern. She stepped back, stunned. “No.”
“Good.” Declan strode through the rain of refuse, unconcerned, crossed the floor to the room, and offered Amy his hand.
She stared at him in shock and slowly put her hand into his. He helped her to her feet. “You’re safe now.”
“Who are you . . . ?” Amy blinked.
“I am Lord Camarine.”
Rose shook her head. All he was missing was the shiny white armor and unearthly light streaming down on him.
“Amy,” Elsie Moore said in her crackling voice, her gaze fixed on Declan. “I want you to get me a new bear. A blond one.”
EIGHT
BY the time they had calmed down the children and managed to pry Elsie from her chair and force her into the shower, it was well past seven. Rose realized that she wouldn’t be making it to work anytime soon. Her uniform stank of greasy, burned flesh, and she had missed her ride with Latoya. She borrowed Amy’s cell phone and called it in.
“You better get your ass in here.” Latoya’s voice gained a shrill quality. “Emerson’s being a total dick today. He says either you get in now or he’ll shred your check.”
“What does he mean, shred my check?”
