“Pleeease.” Georgie’s eyes would’ve done any puppy proud. Behind him Jack nodded earnestly.
“All right.” She gave in before her heart melted. Rose would be none too pleased if she found out, but what Rose didn’t know, she couldn’t fuss about. “I don’t trust the two of you. I’m coming out on the porch.”
They were out the door before she got up off her chair.
Éléonore took her teacup to the porch. The old rocking chair creaked under her weight. The boys dashed into the yard.
Beyond the lines of the ward stones, the Wood shivered with life. The sky had darkened to deep soothing purple, and the leaves of the upper branches stood out, nearly black against it, rustling gently in the cool whisper of the night breeze. Here and there the white spires of nightneedle bloomed between the trees. Their stems, no more than green shoots during the day, released a cascade of delicate, bell-shaped blossoms with the first touch of darkness, sending a mimosa perfume into the night. Éléonore breathed it in and smiled.
So peaceful . . .
Unease flared at the base of her neck and rolled down her spine in a viscous wintry rush. She felt the press of someone’s gaze pin her, as if she had a bull’s-eye between her shoulder blades. Éléonore turned, scanning the ward line.
There. A dark spot hovered at the outer edge on her left. It stood on all fours, dense and impenetrable, like a hole cut in the fabric of the night to reveal primordial darkness. She could barely see it in the gloom, its silhouette more of a guess than a certainty.
Éléonore’s fingers found the small wooden charm hanging from her neck. She gripped it tight and whispered, “Sight.”
Magic pulsed from her in a flat horizontal fan, pulling the landscape and the creature to her eyes in a rush. She saw darkness and within it a narrow slit of the eye: pale, weakly luminescent gray without an iris or a pupil. She tried to reach past it and glimpsed a hint of a form, churning with unfamiliar violence. Her senses screamed in alarm. The eye jerked out of sight. She released the charm in time to catch a blur of darkness as the creature vanished into the underbrush without a sound.
The Wood was home to many things, but Éléonore had never seen one so disturbingly alien. She glanced to the kids on the lawn. Safe behind the protective stones. It will be fine, she told herself. The wards around Rose’s house were strong and old. The spells had rooted deep into the soil. Besides, Rose would be coming up the road any minute now, and Éléonore pitied any beast that tried to stand between her and the boys.
It was probably just some odd creature the Wood had disgorged. The forest stretched west of East Laporte and all the way into the Weird. Perhaps some Weird beast had crossed the boundary into the Edge. Stranger things had happened. No need to tell Rose about it, Éléonore decided. The poor child was paranoid enough as it was.
ROSE made the final turn and paused at the edge of the lawn. Grandma Éléonore sat on the porch, sipping hot tea from a teacup. Some time ago Grandma had decided she was old enough to cultivate a hedge witch look. Her gray hair was teased into a semblance of a crazy matted mess randomly decorated with feathers, twigs, and charms. Her clothes would’ve given any deconstruction-oriented designer a run for his money: they were artfully ripped and layered, until she resembled a half-plucked chicken with bits and tatters of fabric fluttering about her as she moved.
The authenticity of her costume was slightly ruined by the fact that both her rags and her hair were very clean and smelled faintly of lavender, and by a decidedly unwitchy teacup with a fluffy gray kitten on it.
“Were the boys any trouble?” Rose asked, coming to sit next to her.
Grandma rolled her eyes. “Please. I’m a hundred and seven years old. I think I can handle two hooligans.”
The magic kept most Edge families alive and well long past their Broken peers, and Grandma didn’t look a day older than fifty-five. It wasn’t her age that was the problem, Rose reflected. It was that the moment the boys made their puppy eyes at her, all the rules and discipline flew out the window.
Behind Grandma the boys chased each other on the grass: Jack, nimble and lightning quick, and Georgie, a pale golden-haired shadow. Paler than usual today. One of them was impersonating InuYasha, the half-demon boy from the comic book; the other was probably Lord Sesshomaru, InuYasha’s older and stronger demon half-brother. But which was which, she couldn’t tell from here.
Rose did not regret buying the comics. The boys had latched onto them, and the precious volumes now occupied the treasured spot of honor on the top shelf in their bedroom.
Georgie ran out of breath and sat on the grass, slumping forward. Rose caught a sigh. He looked about to be sick.
Grandma pursed her lips. “What was it this time?”
“A baby bird.” He’d raised it this morning, before she dropped them off at the school bus stop.
Georgie coughed and bent over on the grass. Jack stopped in midstride. He looked at Georgie for a long moment, his face blank and lost, then trotted over and sat next to him.
“If George keeps this up, it will kill him.” Grandma shook her head.
Rose sighed. When Georgie resurrected something, he sacrificed a bit of his vitality to give it life. The stronger his power grew, the weaker his body became, as if his mind was the flame of a candle that burned too bright, destroying the wax too fast. They tried explaining. They tried talking. They tried threats and punishments and pleading, but nothing helped. Georgie breathed life into things that made him sad with their passing and simply didn’t know how to let them go.
“What a pair.” Grandma sighed. “A cat with a death wish and his brother who’s trying to keep half of the Wood alive.” Her voice broke a bit. “How’s Cletus?” she said, making an obvious effort to sound nonchalant and failing.
“Same,” Rose said.
A shadow clouded Grandma’s eyes. She frowned and poured Rose a cup of tea. “The boys told me about this William. What does he do?”
Traitors. “He’s a floorer.”
“He sells flowers?” Grandma’s eyebrows crept up.
“No. You know how roofers work on roofs? Well, he works on floors.”
“Are you sure he isn’t a child molester? Because that’s what they do, they sidle up to the woman in the family, woo her, and then next thing you know they’ve got their di—”
Rose gave her an indignant stare. “He isn’t a child molester.”
“How do you know?”
Rose spread her arms helplessly. “He has honest eyes?”
“Is he handsome?”
Rose frowned. “He’s a fine figure of a man. Dark hair, dark eyes. Handsome, I suppose.”
“If he looks that good, why didn’t you let him court you?”
“It didn’t feel right,” she said shortly.
Grandma looked at her, her blue eyes vivid on her wrinkled tan face, like two violets on a freshly plowed field. “I see.”
“I saw a wold today,” Rose said to change the subject.
Grandma raised her eyebrows. “Oh? How big?”
Rose lifted her hand to show about four feet.
“My. He was a big one.” A flicker of worry mudded the clear blue of Grandma’s eyes.
Rose nodded. “It chased Kenny Jo up a tree.”
“Kenny Jo deserves it. Did you kill it?”
They shared a small private smile. A couple of weeks after Rose had flashed white, Grandma had made a small wold for her to kill. Practice, she had said. It was more than that— it was a test. Grandma wanted to see how hot she could flash. Rose had blown the wold to pieces in the first ten seconds. Grandma didn’t speak for a full half a day after that. Grandpa had called it a record of some sort and predicted Apocalypse.
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.
