At this rate they’d reach Broken Neck by nightfall. She had no desire to chance crossing the labyrinth of peat islands and sunken cypresses in the middle of the night, not with the damn eel following them. They’d have to find a secure spot to camp. Maybe they would avoid Broken Neck altogether. Take one of the offshoot streams. It would be safer but slower. And her time was in short supply. More so because of the idiot blueblood.
Cerise glanced at him. Lord
Cerise thought of the eel and William, stuck in the mud, only a knife in his hand. Most people would’ve panicked. He just waited for the fish to charge him. His eyes were predatory back then, too. Calculating, hot amber eyes, full of outrage, as if he was insulted the eel had attacked him.
She’d seen her share of exiles from the Weird. Once in a while, Louisiana would send a blueblood into the Edge. Some of them were powerful, some were desperate, but none were like William. She wanted to pry him open and figure out what he was made of. Why was he here in the Mire? What did he want?
He was only a blueblood, Cerise reminded herself. She would dump him in Sicktree. She had bigger things to worry about. She just liked looking at him, because he happened to have a handsome face and because with the two of them alone in the entire swamp, there wasn’t anything else to look at.
“Looking for the eel?” Cerise asked.
He glanced at her and Cerise almost dropped the pole. His eyes luminesced like the irises of a wild cat hidden in darkness.
Cerise blinked. William’s eyes were back to their normal hazel. She could’ve sworn she’d seen them glow.
What the hell did she get herself into?
“I’m going to kill that damn fish,” William growled.
“That fish is everything that’s wrong with this place.”
“And what, pray tell, is wrong with the Mire?” Cerise could write a book about what was wrong with the Mire, but she’d earned that right by being born and bred here.
He grimaced. “It’s sweltering and damp. It smells of rotting vegetation, and fish, and stagnant water. It shifts constantly. Nothing is what it seems: the solid ground is mud and the fish have legs. It’s not a proper place.”
Cerise smirked. “It’s old. The Mire was ancient before our ancestors were born. It’s a piece of another time, when plants ruled and animals were savage. Respect it, Lord William, or it will kill you.”
His upper lip rose, revealing his teeth. She’d seen this precise look on her dogs just before they snarled. “It’s welcome to try.”
Ready to take the swamp on, was he? Cerise laughed. He glared. She was dying to know what his prissy behind was doing in the Edge, but she’d made the rule about personal questions and she had to stick to it.
“So what’s a proper place?”
“A forest,” William said, his expression distant. “Where the ground is dry soil and stone. Where tall trees grow and centuries of autumn carpet their roots. Where the wind smells of game and wildflowers.”
“Why, that was lovely, Lord Bill. Do you ever write poetry? Something for your blueblood lady?”
“No.”
“She doesn’t like poetry?”
“Leave it.”
Magic prickled her skin. Her hands went ice-cold. A shiver gripped her. Her teeth chattered, her knees shook, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on their ends. Fear washed over her followed by a quick squirm of nausea.
Something bad waited for them around the river bend.
A familiar revulsion clamped William’s throat and squeezed. His stomach lurched. Invisible magic sparked off his skin.
The Hand. Strong magic, coming fast. Ahead the river bent to the left. Someone from Spider’s crew had to be just around the turn. Could be one man or could be fifteen. No way to tell.
Cerise froze at the stern. Her body trembled.
“Hide,” he said. “Now.”
She maneuvered the boat into the clump of reeds, sank the pole into the river’s bottom, and crouched, keeping them put. He pulled a white coin from his pocket, locked his arms around her, and squeezed the metal.
The coin grew hot in his fingers. A faint sheen of magic flowed from his hand, dripping onto Cerise’s arm, over her jacket and jeans, over his arms, swallowing the whole boat.
Cerise tensed. Her hands gripped the pole, until her knuckles went completely white. The pupils in her irises grew into dark pools.
A reaction to the Hand’s magic. At least the hobo queen wasn’t working for Spider.
Cerise shivered. The first exposure was always the hardest. He had built up tolerance, chasing Spider, but she had none. If he didn’t contain her fast, she’d lose it and break the spell.
William pulled her tighter against him, clamping the pole in case she let go, and whispered into her ear. “Don’t move.”
A large boat rounded the river’s bend.
Cerise shuddered. He clenched her to him, willing the spell to hold.
The magic sheen around them swirled with a dozen hues and snapped, matching the green of reeds and gray of the water with a mirror’s precision.
The boat sliced its way against the current, drawn by a single rolpie. Men waited aboard, holding rifles. Not the Hand’s regulars—the gear was too varied. Probably the local talent. He counted the rifles. Seven. Too many to kill easily. Someone in that crowd had to be from Spider’s crew …
A man stood up at the stern. A long gray cloak hung off his shoulders.
The man raised his hand, and the boat drew to a stop. The rolpie’s head poked through the water. The man at the stern pulled off his cloak. He wore baggy pants and no shirt. Too skinny, like someone had wrapped a skeleton in tight muscle and poured a skin of red wax over it.
William ran through Spider’s crew in his head. A couple of male operatives were skeletally thin, but only one had brick red skin. Ruh. Spider’s tracker. According to the Mirror’s intel, he and Spider were joined at the hip. So the sonovabitch was in the swamp after all.
The skin between William’s knuckles itched, wanting to release the claws. One bite on that toothpick neck and Spider would be out a tracker. Seven rifles and fifty yards of water meant he wouldn’t get a chance. Fine, he would get his shot later. Ruh probably tasted vile anyway.
William breathed in deep and even. Hard to kill seven men and the tracker. In cramped quarters on solid ground, maybe. Especially if it was dark. He’d go through them with knife or teeth, and they’d never know what hit them. But out here, if the spell collapsed, they were sitting ducks.
If Ruh saw them, he’d flip the boat in the air, use it as a shield, and make a run for it. The girl would slow him down, but if they got to the cypresses in one piece, he could pick Ruh’s crew off one by one.
Getting to the cypresses would be a bitch.
An older, stocky Edger pulled a line from a wheel bolted to the boat’s bow and caught the rolpie’s long fragile neck in a slip knot. Keeping one hand on the line, he turned the wheel, winding it down. The rolpie jerked, startled, and fought back like a fish on a wire, but the line gripped its neck and dragged it against the side of the boat. With no room to dive and its head trapped above the water, the beast went limp.
Ruh anchored himself on the bow, his bare feet gripping the deck with toes like bird talons. He leaned forward over the water, his body bent to a degree that would’ve pitched a normal human into the river, and stretched his right arm to the water’s surface.
