The leading truck sped up. So did the next two. She frowned.
In the truck bed in front of her people were looking up and to the right. Charlotte bent forward, trying to get a better view through the windshield.
A column of black greasy smoke rose above the treetops.
Oh no.
She laid on her horn.
The trucks hurried up the road.
Charlotte clenched the wheel. Come on.
Come on!
The trees parted.
A torrent of fire devoured the house.
Orange-and-red flames bil owed out of the roof, blackened support beams thrusting out like bones of a skeleton. Fire fil ed the doorway, boiling within the house, winding about the porch posts, and belching smoke. The orange flames surged through the windows, licking the siding.
Charlotte jerked the truck into park, shoved the door open, and ran across the lawn. The heat slammed into her, pushing her back, and she jerked her hand up, trying to shield her eyes from the worst of it. Ash swirled around her.
Corpses sprawled on the grass, four armed men, their bodies contorted, their faces grotesque masks. Her skin crawled.
Suddenly, she was both hot and cold.
A high-pitched mewling sound made her turn. At the edge of the lawn, Daisy’s body lay on her stomach. A wet red hole gaped in her head. Tulip slumped by the body.
Charlotte’s magic burst out of her, sliding over the girls, checking . . . Tulip was unhurt. Minor bruising on the face but no major injuries. Daisy was dead.
Irreparably, irreversibly dead. Not a hint of life remained.
Cold shot through her. She wasn’t fast enough. They cal ed her for help, and she wasn’t fast enough.
Tulip sat on the grass next to her sister, her hands bloody, her face smeared with tears and dirt, and wailed. Her pain stabbed at Charlotte, hot and acute, overwhelming. There was nothing she could do to help it. Al her magic and al her power was useless.
Helen Rooney dropped on the ground by Tulip, trying to hug her, but Tulip pushed free and kept crying. The black-and-gray ash rained on her face.
She wailed and wailed, as if she was trying to expel her heart and al of the ache in it out of her body with her voice.
“Where is Éléonore, sweetie?” Helen asked.
Tulip pointed at the fire.
Charlotte turned to the house. A charred figure lay on the porch, little more than a scorched husk.
Charlotte’s world screeched to a halt.
She couldn’t bring herself to move.
She just stared at the broken, burned body.
Éléonore . . . Éléonore was dead. How could this be? Her mind refused to accept it. Éléonore was alive and vibrant less than an hour ago. She was alive, she was talking and walking, and now she was dead, and Daisy was dead with her.
Éléonore would never smile again.
She would never catch the cuckoo clock as it fel out of her hair. No more stories about Rose and the boys. No more of anything.
“What about the man?” Helen asked.
“They took him,” Tulip sobbed.
Helen leaned toward her, murmuring something. Malcolm bent over them.
I need to move, flashed in Charlotte’s head. She needed to do something, say something, but she just couldn’t. She just stood there, locked into a painful haze.
Malcolm Rooney walked across the lawn to her. She saw his lips move, but no sound came.
The roof beams crashed down with a loud crack and tumbled in an explosion of sparks. Charlotte jerked. Her hearing returned, and she heard Malcolm’s deep voice: “. . . slavers.” He shook several pairs of shackles at her. “Found this on the bodies. Haven’t seen their kind in ten years.
Must’ve hit quick. Looks like they popped Daisy in the head, shot Éléonore, took your fel ow, and set the house on fire.
Tulip hid in the woods and watched the whole thing, poor kid. The house was gone in minutes. It’s an old building. Went up like kindling. They’re on horses, looks like a dozen, maybe more, besides those.”
Malcolm nodded at the bodies. “That’s Éléonore’s work. They cal it the Broken Stick curse, because it locks them into weird shapes like that. The old lady had a lot of power in her.”
Her mouth final y managed to make a word. “Why?”
“That’s what slavers do. They raid towns like ours, steal kids and pretty women, and take them off to the Weird to sel as slaves there. This Richard fel ow must’ve pissed them off somehow.”
Richard . . . The slavers had taken him. Her mind started up slowly, as if rusted. She was too late for Éléonore and Daisy, but there was stil a life they could save. “We have to go after them.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Slavers are a nasty lot. They got what they wanted, and they’re gone. This Richard, he’s no kin to me. Hel , he didn’t even grow up around here. He stirred them slavers up like a hornets’ nest, and they chased him here, but now they’re gone, and this thing’s done with.