The forest swayed around him, the trees sliding to the side. Richard stumbled forward. Cold slid along his skin. His leg muscles trembled, struggling to support his weight. Cotton clogged his ears, fol owed by a deep, overpowering nausea. He crashed, half-blind, through the brush.
The swamp clearing stretched before him. The slavers lay dead, delivered by his blade to the afterlife. He dashed from hole to hole. Dead children looked back at him with opaque eyes.
“Sophie! Sophie!”
“Here!” His niece’s voice sounded so weak.
“Where are you?” Holes filled with children slumped in the muddy water. He checked each one, sprinting back and forth in panic. A corpse.
Another corpse.
She was here, somewhere. He had to find her.
The world turned black. He ripped through the darkness by sheer wil and saw the edge of a dirt road running through the woods, little more than two tire tracks with a strip of grass growing between them. He wasn’t sure if it was real or a remnant of some memory.
The blackness smothered him.
Richard clenched his teeth and
crawled toward the road. This was not the end. He wouldn’t be dying now. He had things to do.
The rain-drenched clearing with its cypresses swam into his view.
“Help me!” Sophie called.
He stumbled over the bodies of slavers, tracking her voice.
“Help me!”
I’m trying, he wanted to tell her. I’m trying, sweetheart. Hold on. Wait for me.
The darkness stomped on the back of his head. The world vanished.
* * *
CHARLOTTE surveyed the groceries laid out on the island of her kitchen. Almost done. Only the big log of ground beef was left.
She sliced it with a knife into five equal portions—each one would be enough for a dinner for one with leftovers for lunch—
and began wrapping them in plastic.
The first time she’d hired an Edger to bring her groceries from the Broken, the woman had delivered a big pack of ground beef. Charlotte had frozen the whole thing as it was, in the wrapper.
Unfortunately, it turned out that once you defrosted the beef in the microwave, it wasn’t safe to refreeze it again. She ended up throwing half of the meat out. Lesson learned.
Cooking was just one of the things she had to learn in the Edge. At Ganer Col ege, staff prepared her meals, and at her estate, she had employed a cook.
Charlotte sighed at the memory. She’d never truly appreciated Colin until she had to fend for herself in the kitchen. Éléonore had given her a cookbook, and if Charlotte fol owed the recipes exactly, the result was passable, occasional y even tasty.
Decades spent learning to mix medicines ensured that she had good technique and paid attention, but if she didn’t have the exact ingredients on hand, trying to substitute things ended in complete disaster. A few weeks ago she watched Éléonore make banana bread. It was al “a handful of flour” and “a dash of cinnamon” and “add mashed bananas until it looks right.” Charlotte had dutiful y written everything down, and when she’d tried to re-create the recipe, she ended up with a salty loaf-shaped rock.
She’d learned other lessons as wel .
Being humble. Living a simpler life. The dark magic inside her had long fal en dormant, and that was just the way she liked it.
Bright sunlight spil ed through the open window, drawing warm rectangles on the kitchen floor. The day was beautiful. The air smel ed of spring and honeysuckle. When she finished, she would go outside and read on her porch swing. And have a nice glass of iced tea.
Mmm, tea would hit the spot.
“Charlotte? Are you in there?” A familiar voice cal ed from the front porch.
Éléonore.
“Maybe.” Charlotte smiled, wrapping the last chunk of ground beef in plastic.
Éléonore swept into the kitchen. She looked to be around sixty, but she’d let it slip last year that a 112th birthday wasn’t such a bad thing for a woman to endure.
Her clothes were an artful mess of tattered and shredded layers, al perfectly clean and smel ing faintly of lavender. Her hair was teased into a fluffy gray mess and liberal y decorated with charms, twigs, and dry herbs. In the middle of her hair nest sat a smal cuckoo clock.
Éléonore worried her. In the three years Charlotte had known her, the older woman’s physical condition had steadily slid downhil . Her bones were getting thinner, and she was losing muscle. She’d slipped on an iced-over path four months ago and broken her hip. Charlotte healed it, but her talent had its limits. She could only heal up to the existing potential of the body. In children, that potential was high, and she could even regenerate severed digits. But Éléonore’s body was tired. Her bones were brittle, and coaxing them into regrowth proved difficult.