and then he wanted to go to a club in the city “to show them all” that she wasn’t scared. He asked her to go out and start her truck. He’d lost his license for doing ninety in a forty-five zone and then punching a cop, and she had to play the chauffeur.
She never made it to the truck. He came out of the house behind her, brandishing a bat, smiled, and clubbed her over the head.
She vividly remembered his smile. It was a smug grin that said, “I’m so much smarter than you, bitch.”
He didn’t hit her quite hard enough. His plan was to knock her out and deliver her to the Simoen family. The Simoens were always opportunistic, grabbing at every chance to get a bigger piece of the pie. Later she found out that Frank Simoen, the family’s patriarch, promised Brad ten grand to deliver Rose. Ten grand. A fortune for an Edger. They’d wanted to get her hitched to Rob Simoen, Frank’s son, so Rob’s babies would one day flash white as well.
And Brad had tried. But Rose had jerked back at the last moment, and the bat glanced off, breaking the skin on her forehead. She stood there, her skull humming with pain, blood running into her eyes, shell-shocked. When Brad Dillon had swung that bat a second time to finish the job, he found out just how hot her flash could be. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she did. And as he writhed on the ground at her feet, she cried and cried, because in that moment she realized that her life would never be the same.
What followed was six months of hell. The Edge clans went after her with a vengeance, some to get her for themselves, others so they could sell her to the highest bidder. At first she hid, then she fought back. It’s true, she had only one weapon, but against it there was no defense. Sooner or later she was bound to kill someone, and once she had fried a drifter hired to kidnap her, the Edgers realized that she couldn’t be controlled and left her alone. Shortly after that, Grandpa died, and then Dad got the idea for his latest brilliant scheme and departed, running away like a thief during the night. All she had left was a note ranting about treasure and how, when he returned, all of them would be rich.
Four years had passed. All her dreams died a quiet death. She earned her living like most poor Edgers did: by working a job in the Broken for minimum wage, paid under the table. She cleaned offices and made enough to buy food and clothes and a few items to barter when the caravans from the Weird came looking to trade Pepsi, plastic, and clothes for enchanted goods. It was good honest work. It put food on the table. And it killed her a little to do it.
She looked outside where the boys sprawled in the grass looking at the evening sky. At least when her parents had her brothers, they had the presence of mind to have Georgie at a hospital down in town and pay a midwife from the Broken to make sure Jack was legal, too. Both boys had Broken birth certificates and social security numbers. But she had been born in the Edge. Her driver’s license was a fake, and her parents had to fork out a small fortune to the principal of her high school because her social security number belonged to someone else.
At least the boys were legal. And she wouldn’t abandon them the way Dad did. She would starve if she had to, but they would go to a school in the Broken. That was the great thing about the Broken: you could succeed there on brains and drive alone, no magic required. When the boys grew up, they would have more choices than she did.
Still, she wasn’t ready to put her dreams to rest either. One day, she’d find a way to live her life to the fullest. She was sure of it. She just had no idea how she would manage it.
FOUR
THE wind-up clock screamed at ten till six. Rose got up and went about her regular morning ritual: making coffee, fixing lunches, putting on her Clean-n-Bright uniform. She barely had a chance to taste her first cup of coffee when Georgie wandered out of his room, sleepy eyed, his hair tousled. He ambled over to the window and yawned.
“Would you like some Mini-Wheats?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Georgie?”
Georgie stared out of the window. “Lord Sesshomaru.”
The demon brother from their comic book? “I’m sorry?”
“Lord Sesshomaru,” he repeated, pointing through the window.
Rose came to stand behind him and froze. A tall man stood at the edge of the driveway. A cape of gray wolf fur billowed about him, revealing reinforced-leather armor, lacquered gray to match his cape, and a long elegant sword at his waist. His hair was a dark, rich gold, and it framed his face in a glacial cascade that fell over his left shoulder without a trace of a curl. She’d seen that hair before, just before its owner leaped onto her truck.
The pommel of the second, much larger sword, protruded above the man’s back. The man’s gaze fastened on her. His eyes flashed with a white glow, like two stars. Tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck.
“That isn’t Lord Sesshomaru,” Rose whispered. “That’s much, much worse.”
“What?” Sleep fled from Georgie, and he stared at her with wide eyes.
“That’s a blueblood. Get Jack and get the guns. Hurry!”
ROSE walked out on the porch, carrying a crossbow. Behind her, Jack lay at the left window with his rifle and Georgie lay at the right.
The blueblood towered like a spire of gray ice just outside the ring of stones. Tall, with broad shoulders and long legs, he seemed knitted from menace and magic.
She stopped just before the ring of wards and looked at his face. Her heart skipped a beat. His features were carved with breathtaking precision, combining into an overwhelmingly masculine yet refined face. He had a tall forehead and a long straight nose. His mouth was wide, with hard narrow lips, his jaw square and bulky, yet crisply cut. It wasn’t a face whose owner smiled often. His eyes under thick golden eyebrows froze the air in her lungs. Dark grass green, they smoldered with raw power. She suspected that if she stepped over the stones and touched his face, he’d spark.
Rose leaned her crossbow on her hip and took a deep breath. “You’re trespassing, and you aren’t welcome.”
“You’re rude. I find it unattractive in all people, women especially.” His voice sent a light, velvet shiver down her spine. It matched him, deep and resonant. Now that the first impact of his impossible face had worn off, she saw a network of small scars near his left eye. He was real, all right. He bled and scarred just like the rest, and that meant he wouldn’t find bullets in his chest amusing.
“Get off my land and be on your way,” she said. “I have two rifles trained on you as we speak.”
“Two rifles manned by children,” he said.
Damn Georgie. He shouldn’t have let himself be seen. “They won’t hesitate to shoot you,” she assured him.
“I can rip through your wards with one blast. Bullets make no difference to me,” he said. A white sheen rolled over his irises and melted into their green depths.
Ice skittered down her spine on sharp claws. He could, she realized. This wasn’t an idle threat. He wasn’t the first blueblood she’d fended off, but none had talked or looked like him. People said that the true aristocrats, bred for generations deep within magic, were striking. If that was true, he must’ve come from the dead center of the Weird. “What is it you want?”
“What do you think I want?”
She gritted her teeth. “Let me make this completely clear: I won’t sleep with you.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes. Thick eyebrows crept up. “What? Why?”
Rose blinked, lost for words. He actually found it shocking that she didn’t fall over herself to spread her legs.
“I’m waiting for an explanation.”
Rose crossed her arms. “Let me guess. You’re the fourth son of a blueblood family down on its luck: no title
