I have to fix this. And I’m certainly not going to turn to Peregrine or Chloe for help. Boniface will know what to do. In a panic, I run across the rotting floorboards of the living room and out the back door, which is hanging from its hinges and swaying in the breeze.
As soon as I’m through the doors, I stop dead in my tracks. My mother’s beautiful rose garden, her pride and joy, is dead and decaying. The few roses that still cling to vines are wilted and gray; the rest of the garden looks like it hasn’t been tended in decades. It’s overgrown with weeds and smeared with mud.
“Boniface?” I cry out. But then I see him, and for a moment, I’m so stunned I can’t move. He’s lying motionless beside one of the rosebushes, a pair of garden shears still in his hand. “Boniface?” I whisper, sure that he’s dead. I run to his side, but when I bend to help him, my breath catches in my throat, and I scramble backward in terror.
Not only has he collapsed, but he looks like a skeleton with graying skin stretched haphazardly over the sharp juts of his bones. He’s gasping for breath, but his skin is so thin and decayed I can see his lungs rising and falling inside his chest. He looks like a rotting corpse. “Eveny . . . ,” he rasps. “Help me.” It sounds like a death rattle.
Boniface’s eyes close and as he goes still, I back away, horrified, sure that I’ve killed him. I’m sobbing with my hands over my mouth when Peregrine and Chloe stroll into the rose garden, looking as glamorous and unperturbed as usual.
“The front door was unlocked—well, more like unhinged— so we let ourselves in,” Peregrine says casually, her stilettos clicking across the stone path as they approach me. “Come to think of it, you’re looking rather unhinged yourself.”
“What did you do to Boniface?” Chloe asks, staring at his collapsed, sunken frame. “We came over because we figured you might do something rash after our talk, but we didn’t think you’d hurt someone.”
“I didn’t mean—I mean, I didn’t want—I didn’t know . . .” I’m still stammering nonsensically, my teeth chattering, when Peregrine holds up a hand to stop me.
“Just tell us what you’ve done,” she says calmly. “Quickly, before Boniface expires.”
I take a deep breath and quickly recap what happened. “I was only trying to get rid of zandara’s influence in my life,” I say. “H-how did I hurt Boniface?”
“Well,” Peregrine says coolly, “it’s probably because in actuality, he’s one hundred seventy-six years old, and zandara is the only thing keeping him alive. Or it was, anyhow, before you cleverly removed it. Nice work.”
My whole body goes cold. “What?”
Chloe interrupts in a gentler tone. “Eveny, Boniface is one of several people in town who rely on the zandara queens to extend their lives. He’s been in his seventies for more than a century now.”
“Same with our groundskeeper, Milo, and Peregrine’s groundskeeper, Samuel,” Chloe explains. “When the town was founded, they made a bargain: They’d help watch over the Queens of Carrefour and continue to keep up our homes without pay, in exchange for lodging and continued life.”
“Like indentured servants?”
“Not really,” Chloe says. “They could leave at any time.”
“But if Boniface leaves, he’d die?”
“Yes, unfortunately he would, when the magic wears out,” Peregrine says nonchalantly. “That’s one thing zandara can’t reverse—death. Once someone has expired, it can’t be undone.”
I gape at them. I have a hundred questions I want to ask. But first: “Please, help me save him,” I whisper.
“Of course we’d be happy to help you,” Peregrine says sweetly.
“But you have to agree to join us,” Chloe adds. “We need you, Eveny. It’s the only way.”
“We know it’s a lot to absorb,” Peregrine says diplomatically. “But we promise you’ll like it, Eveny. And you’ll have a one-third vote in how we handle things from now on.”
“Like, I can tell you I think you’re a real snob, and you treat people outside your sosyete like crap?” I ask coldly.
Peregrine looks surprised, but she laughs. “Eveny, I can’t be wonderful to everyone. I simply don’t have the time.”
I just glare at her until she sighs heavily.
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll try to be more decent to your little friends. Are you happy now?”
I look down at Boniface, whose breathing is growing shallower by the moment. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it. Just help me fix this.”