Shards and Ashes

Her hysteria over her missing son was so clear that it physically hurt Frankie. She knew what it was to love something beyond yourself like that, to risk anything for their safety. “You take Cathy, and I’ll stay,” she said, pushing her sister toward Charles.

The boat was growing full, only a few stragglers left. One of them had to physically force Mistress Oglethorpe to board, his hand cupped over her mouth to keep her from screaming and giving away their position. In the distance a cannon roared, and Frankie heard shouting.

Suddenly a bright light swept across the wharf, eliciting a few muffled cries of alarm from the boat. Two men dipped oars into the water, ready to push back for the ship waiting farther out in the bay. Not too far away whistles began to blow, a siren amping up to roar.

Any minute the wharf would teem with enforcers and beaked doctors and anyone else tasked with maintaining the quarantine.

“Go,” Frankie urged Charles, but he pushed her and her sister closer to the boat.

“If the enforcers catch either of you here, you’ll go straight to the bowels of the hospital. Trust me,” he said. Charles pried Frankie’s fingers open until he’d pulled free one of the two coins. He thrust it at Cathy and shoved her hard enough that she teetered on the edge of the dock before tumbling toward the boat. Her arms pinwheeled, and she would have hit the water if one of the oarsmen hadn’t risen to catch her and eased her on board.

“Then what about you?” Frankie asked. “You’ll get in just as much trouble.”

“I’m only a beaked doctor trying to keep the peace.” He grabbed her shoulders. “I was attacked trying to keep you from escaping. There’s nothing they can do to me.”

Frankie’s throat was tight, her eyes raw. Charles tugged off one of his gloves and held his soft hand to cup her cheek. Frankie reached up, tentatively, and began to pull the mask from his face.

At first she felt him stiffen, resist, but then he allowed her to free him and trail her fingers along the raw bruises where the straps had bitten into his skin.

Lights began to blaze in the warehouses, and the oarsmen started to pull the boat away from the pier. But Mistress Oglethorpe must have seen that it was her son standing there because she cried out for him and lunged toward the dock, holding the boat in place.

Men tried to break her grip, but she kicked them away. “Charles!” she cried out. “Jump! Come on, Charles!”

Frankie felt his hands tense on her shoulders and knew that in one heartbeat or two he would shove her toward the boat just as he did with Cathy. “What will happen to you?” Her voice was a broken little noise in the dark night.

He touched his lips to hers, just barely grazing her mouth. “The plague will pass, and you’ll come back and you’ll walk up to the house on the hill, and I’ll be in the garden waiting for you.” He pressed the kiss deeper, as though he could breathe hope into her, and then broke free. She tried to hold on to him as he pushed, but he was too strong.

“I promise,” he added as she fell backward toward her sister’s waiting arms.

Men wrestled Mistress Oglethorpe toward the center of the boat as she screamed for her son. Oars lit against the water, no longer caring about stealth or not creating a wake. All along the sides of the craft, people dug their arms against the surface, adding any momentum they could to escape the rush of enforcers crowding their way onto the wharf.

The ship with black sails was already under way when the little boat with the last of her cargo caught up at the mouth of the harbor. The escapees climbed rope ladders and huddled on the deck, where they stared into the dark unknown, some of their faces gleaming with tears at all they were leaving behind.

Frankie stood with her sister at the back of the ship, the wake from the rudder dissipating back toward the fading lights of Portlay. The night air felt fresh and full, and Frankie inhaled it deeply, letting it seep into her lungs and clear out any lingering miasma from the swamp.

She could hear that Cathy’s breathing came easier as well, her cheeks flushed not with fever but with the crispness of clean air. She didn’t know if the sickness would ever fully leave Cathy, but for now they were safe.

Frankie looked down at where she clutched the rose petals Charles had tucked in her palm as a promise. Already the color was fading, the scent only a lingering memory. She imagined Charles going back into the town with the ranks of the beaked doctors and saving those few people he could, either by finding a way to smuggle them free or giving them another day with their families before being dragged away. She wondered if he’d spend his afternoons surrounded by the flowers, thinking of her.

She closed her eyes and pictured the gardens covered in snow, ice clinging to the bare vines and dripping in frozen daggers from trees. Her feet would leave a trail as she made her way up the hill to the Oglethorpe house, everything around her silent and still. The house would be empty—any servants who survived the plague would be allowed home to care for the families that remained.

Frankie would push open the trellis gate and maybe it would creak on its hinges from disuse. And there he’d be, sitting on the bench, waiting for her. She’d bring him a fresh hothouse flower from wherever Cathy and she settled after escaping, and she’d let him trail it over her lips and down along her neck.

He’d plant her a garden in her room and another in Cathy’s room, and from then on they’d live out their lives surrounded by blooms and beauty.

As the last glow of Portlay faded on the horizon, Frankie breathed in the fresh smell of the sea and clutched the rose petals tight in her hand. Her sister was safe, they were both free, and for a moment Frankie allowed herself to believe in dreams once more.

About the Author

KELLEY ARMSTRONG (“Branded”) has been telling stories since before she could write. Her earliest written efforts were disastrous. If asked for a story about girls and dolls, hers would invariably feature undead girls and evil dolls, much to her teachers’ dismay. Today, she continues to spin tales of ghosts and demons and werewolves, while safely locked away in her basement writing dungeon. She’s the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Darkest Powers/Darkness Rising young adult series as well as the Otherworld and Nadia Stafford adult series. Kelley lives in Ontario, Canada, with her family. You can visit her online at www.kelleyarmstrong.com.

RACHEL CAINE (“Dogsbody”) is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires young adult series as well as the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series in urban fantasy. She has published more than thirty novels and has been translated into more than twenty languages around the world. You can visit her online at www.rachelcaine.com and on Facebook and Twitter @rachelcaine.

KAMI GARCIA (“Burn 3”) is the New York Times and internationally bestselling coauthor (with Margaret Stohl) of the Beautiful Creatures novels. Beautiful Creatures, published in forty-four countries and translated in thirty-three languages, is currently in preproduction as a motion picture with Alcon Entertainment. She is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book in her solo series, The Legion (Little, Brown 2013), which is currently being developed as a major motion picture by producer Mark Morgan (of the Twilight Saga) and Black Forest Film Group. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found watching disaster movies or drinking Diet Coke. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their dogs, Spike and Oz (named after characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer). You can visit her online at www.kamigarcia.com.

NANCY HOLDER (“Pale Rider”) is the New York Times bestselling and multiple award–winning author of the Wicked, Crusade, and Wolf Springs Chronicles series. She’s written tie-in projects for “universes” including Teen Wolf, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Hellboy, and Saving