Ilona Andrews - On the Edge

It irritated her that she hadn’t woken up in time to stop Declan. Logically, she had nothing to worry about. Declan had sworn not to harm the boys. Jack was a changeling just like Declan’s friend, and the emotion she had glimpsed behind Declan’s blueblood facade felt genuine to her. He had saved Jack once; it made no sense that he would put him into any sort of danger. Besides, the safest place in the Edge now was by Declan’s side.

She kept herself from panicking through logic, but worry ate at her. Jack was gone. They’d probably gone deep into the Wood. Why? They didn’t tell her, and there was nothing she could do about it, not without making some major magic happen.

Inside the store, Max started rearranging things on his desk. “See? He’s getting antsy. Let’s go.”

Rose popped the doors open, and together she and Georgie stepped into the shop.

Max sat behind the glass counter. “What do you got?”

Rose showed him the doubloon. He reached for it, but she shook her head. “You can see it from right here.”

Max squinted. “A hundred bucks,” he said.

She closed her fist over the doubloon and nodded to Georgie. “Let’s go to Peter.”

“That damn pirate won’t give you more,” Max growled.

Rose gave him a withering look. “The coin is exactly one-half ounce of gold. Right now a half-ounce U.S. Gold Eagle is trading for four hundred and fifty-seven dollars and forty-seven cents and a half-ounce Maple Leaf is going for four hundred and sixty-four dollars and ninety-four cents.”

“How did you know that?”

“I went to the library and looked it up on the Internet. Peter charges a flat forty-five percent, so I should get at least two hundred and fifty dollars for each of my coins.”

Max’s beady eyes shone. “Coins?”

“Coins. As in more than one.”

“How many do you have?”

She shrugged. “Three for now. There will be more.”

“Nine hundred and fourteen dollars for the whole thing,” Max offered.

“That’s a third. I don’t think so. I might go as low as twelve hundred.”

“Nine fifty.”

“Eleven seventy-five.”

“You won’t get a better price . . .”

She shrugged. “I can always take it to a jeweler in the city. It’s an hour’s drive.”

Max reached under the counter. By the time he’d pulled out a Glock and put it on the glass, Rose’s gun pointed at his head.

“That’s a .22,” Max sneered. “It will bounce from wet laundry.”

“I can shoot you three times before you squeeze off one shot. You think my bullets will bounce off Max’s face, Georgie?”

George didn’t miss a beat. “If they don’t, we can take him into the Edge and I’ll raise him.”

Max blinked. Rose smiled at him.

“One thousand twenty-eight dollars and twenty-five cents!” Max said.

A twenty-five percent fee. “Done.”

She didn’t put away the gun until they peeled out of the parking lot.

“You did very well,” she told Georgie.

Georgie smiled in the rearview mirror.

Tiny sharp needles prickled Rose’s hands, a belated reaction to the adrenaline rush. It finally sank in—she had a month’s worth of money.

“What would you like to eat?”

“Whatever I want?”

“Whatever you want.”

“French fries,” Georgie said. “And chicken nuggets. And then maybe shrimp.”

Shrimp would have to wait till home, but nuggets and fries she could manage. Rose made a left into the McDon ald’s drive-through.

ROSE took her gaze off the road for a second to steal a glance at the white Wal-Mart bags in the passenger seat. She’d bought beef, and chicken, and shrimp for Georgie. She managed to snag a couple of packs of country-style pork ribs on sale. She’d gotten potatoes. And cheese. And the tomatoes she liked. And apples for Jack. And eggs, and butter, and milk, and cereal . . . The truck was full of bags. She was too paranoid to put them into the truck bed. Who knew what might happen? They could fall out or fly off.

She had enough groceries for a month, and all of her bills were paid. It was a most wonderful feeling. She would go home and spend an hour putting it all up, separating the meat into dinner-sized portions, wrapping it in plastic wrap, and putting it all into her freezer. Rose grinned. No worry about the food. For a month.

“Rose?” Georgie asked.

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you like Declan?”

Now there was a loaded question. She wanted to tell him the truth, without mincing her words, but both he and Jack were smitten with Declan. Looking at him from the boys’ perspective, Declan was the very definition of cool. They were two boys raised by women. Enter Declan, who had swords and magic, who was strong and manly, and who stood up to her, something neither of them could do. It’s little wonder they wanted to be like him.

For the thousandth time, she wished Dad hadn’t run off.

“Do you like Declan?” she asked carefully.

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He’s smart,” Georgie said. “He knows a lot of things, and his magic is as good as yours. He said that his house has its own library, except you don’t have to have a card to check the books out. You can just go and take one whenever you want.”

Rose’s heart clenched a little in her chest. “I see.” She swallowed. Declan was working on the kids, more so than she had realized. He was working on her, too. She couldn’t get him out of her head.

This would have to be phrased very carefully. Anything she said to George would find its way to Jack. She didn’t want to destroy their fragile faith in the only cool guy they knew, and she definitely didn’t want this situation to turn into “Big bad Rose drove the super-cool Declan away.” But she didn’t want to delude them either.

“We’ve had people from the Weird approach us before to get me to go away with them,” she said, choosing her words as if she were walking a tightrope and the wrong one could pitch her to the side. “You probably don’t remember because you were little.”

“Like Declan?”

She doubted there was another Declan. The world wouldn’t be able to stand more than one. “Not quite like him. A couple were retainers of the nobles and one was a lesser blueblood.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the first retainer tried to bribe Dad and Grandpa with presents. And when he figured out he was wasting his time, he set our house on fire. He thought that if we had nothing left, I’d leave with him. That’s why the wards are so far out from the house now and my bedroom has different walls. The second retainer had a lot of people with him, and they tried to blockade the house. Dad shot him in the head, and then they went away.”

“What about the blueblood?”

Rose sighed. “Oh, he was a special kind of worm. He was very sweet and nice. And very handsome. He tried to ‘court’ me. He’d bow down, and recite poetry, and tell me I was beautiful. I almost believed him. And then the caravan from the Weird came into town and one of the traders, Yanice—you remember her, right?”

“She wears a veil,” Georgie said.

“Yes. Yanice recognized him. He was a slaver and a wanted criminal. If I had gone with him, he would’ve auc tioned me off like a cow. I wouldn’t have a choice—I would be forced to go with whatever man bought me.” She wouldn’t have. She’d have fought to the end, and they would’ve had to kill her, but there was no need to frighten George.

“Declan isn’t like that.”

“We don’t really know what Declan is like. All that we have to go on is what Declan tells us and how he acts. I know he seems like a cool guy.” She fell silent, realizing she wanted very much to believe that he was a “cool guy.” He seemed . . . it would be a shame if he turned out to be a scumbag. There was warmth underneath all that arrogance, and more, there was integrity. She sensed it very clearly. Declan had a moral code. She suspected that there were lines he wouldn’t cross, but she didn’t exactly know where those lines lay.