Ilona Andrews: On the Edge

Rose took the comic book off the shelf. Jack’s eyes followed it. “What?” she asked.

“Kitty ears,” he whispered. “He has kitty ears.”

Rose examined the cover and saw furry triangular ears in the mane of the boy’s white hair. She flipped the book. “It says here he is a half-man, half-dog demon. So these aren’t kitty ears.”

Rose could tell by the desperate look on his face that he didn’t care.

She glanced at Peter. “You stock manga now?”

Peter shrugged behind the counter. “Those are used. A fellow brought them in. Selling them as a set, three for ten. If I sell them, I might order some new copies in.”

“Please,” Jack whispered, his eyes huge.

“Absolutely not. You got shoes. Georgie didn’t even get anything.”

“Can I have it then?” Georgie popped out of thin air next to her.

“No.” She could swing three bucks maybe, but not ten, and she could tell by Peter’s face that he wouldn’t be breaking the three volumes up.

“I’ll buy these for them,” William offered.

“No!” She took a step back. They were poor, but they weren’t beggars.

“Look, seriously, I dragged you down here and made you show me the shop. I’m getting the Green Arrow anyway; an extra ten bucks won’t make any difference.” He glanced at Peter. “I’ll pay for those.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, loading her voice with steel.

“Rose, please—” Georgie began in a singsong whine.

She cut him off. “You’re a Drayton. We don’t beg.”

He clamped his mouth shut.

“Figure it out and stop wasting my time,” Peter said.

William looked at him. It was a thousand-yard stare that pinned Peter down like a dagger. It wasn’t even aimed at her, but an urge to back away and leave gripped her. Peter Padrake moved his hand to the drawer where he kept his .45 and stood very still.

She picked up the books and put them on the counter. “Ten, you said?”

“Ten sixty-nine with tax,” Peter said, his gaze fixed on William.

Rose smiled. She had exactly ten seventy-five in her purse. Gas money. Rose pulled out her pocketbook, extracted the soft dollar bills and three quarters, handed them to Peter, got her change, and all with the same smile on her face, she gave the books to the kids and marched out of the store, boys in tow.

“Rose, wait.” William followed her.

Just keep walking . . .

“Rose!”

She turned and looked at him. “Yes?”

He closed the distance between them. “If I hadn’t said something, you wouldn’t have bought the books. Let me make it up to you. Go out to dinner with me tomorrow. My treat.”

She blinked.

“I don’t know anybody,” he said. “I’m sick of eating alone. And I feel bad about the store.”

Rose hesitated.

He leaned a little to look her in the eyes. “I really want to see you again. Say yes.”

It had been forever since she’d been on a date. Any kind of date. Four years.

Tomorrow was Wednesday, the first day of school. The kids would want to see Grandma to tell her all about it. She could swing a dinner. But there was something about William that put her off. He was handsome, and she wanted to like him. She just didn’t. The stare he’d given Peter had been almost predatory. “You’re not my type.”

“How do you know? We haven’t said more than twenty words to each other.”

That was true. She didn’t know anything about him. But it was far more prudent to turn him down and go back behind her ward stones. To hide. And with that thought, something inside Rose reared up, the way it had in the beginning of fifth grade, when Sarah Walton first called her the daughter of a whore. The same Drayton stubbornness that made her grandmother famous reared its head. No, she thought. They wouldn’t make her cower behind the ward stones for the rest of her goddamn life.

But they wouldn’t force her to do something she didn’t want to do either. That would be equally weak.

“You’re a nice guy, William. But I really can’t. Tomorrow is the first day of school, and I need to be home.”

He looked at her for a long moment and raised his arms, palms out. “Okay. Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.” He made it sound like a promise.

“Maybe,” she said.

WEDNESDAY rolled around way too fast.

A white truck sped by her, its horn blaring. Rose didn’t even spare a glance. The needle on her fuel gauge had rolled to the left of the yellow “E.”

“Just make it to the Edge,” she murmured. “That’s all I ask.”

The old Ford rumbled on, creaking. She kept the speed at thirty miles an hour to save the gas. In the distance, the sun set slowly, threatening the sky with red. She was so late.

She had to stay overtime—at the regular seven-bucks-an-hour rate as usual. The T-shirt printer had an emergency. Some disgruntled employee had sprayed the floor with the tacky liquid they used to keep the T-shirts in place while the designs were inked into them. By the time the owners realized what had happened and called Clean-n-Bright, the floor was a horrid mess of every type of dirt imaginable. Only one thing removed the tacky spray—turpentine. She and Latoya had spent the last two hours crawling on their hands and knees drenching the tile in it. Her fingers smelled like turpentine. It was everywhere, on her skin, in her hair, on her shoes . . . Her back ached. She needed to get home and take a shower. True, she was a cleaning lady, but that didn’t mean she had to smell like one.

A small part of her regretted not accepting William’s offer. He wasn’t boyfriend material, but he could’ve been a friend. Someone outside the Edge to talk to. Water under the bridge, she told herself. She said no, and she’d live with it.

Ahead the familiar curve of Potter Road appeared from the greenery. Finally.

The truck sneezed.

“Come on, boy. You can do it.”

The Ford sneezed again. She took her foot off the gas, guiding the old truck into a turn, and let it roll up the road into the trees. They were down to ten miles per hour now. A bit more gas. A bit more . . .

They crossed the boundary, and the magic flared within her, filling her with warmth. The engine died with a soft murmur, and Rose let the truck glide off the road into the tangled brush. The greenery snapped shut behind her. She parked, got out, locking the Ford, and patted the hot hood. “Thanks.”

It was the first day of school, and she was out of gas. At least Grandma had agreed to pick the kids up at the end of the road and watch them until Rose got home from work. Usually they walked by themselves, but today had to be special. They’d be bursting at the seams with earth-shattering revelations about going back to school.

Rose started up the road. Around her the Wood crowded the dirt path: huge trees braided their dark twisted limbs, the ground between their trunks soft with centuries of autumn. Pale blue horsetail vines tinseled the branches. Twilight crouched among the trees. The blanket of kudzu that swallowed trees whole in the Broken stopped at the boundary, and here the Edge moss had taken over, hugging the tree trunks like a velvet sleeve and sending forth tiny flowers on thin stalks that looked like overturned lady shoes: bright purple, mint green, lavender, pink. The scents of a dozen herbs mixed into an earthy, slightly bitter spice in the air.

Sinister noises came from the gloomy depths of the Wood, and occasionally a glowing pair of eyes ignited in the canopy. Rose paid it little mind. The Wood was the Wood; most things around these parts knew who she was and let her be.

Two miles separated her from the turnoff to the house, and Rose fell into a familiar, comfortable stride. It lasted until the third turn of the road. She halted. This was the spot where the man with two swords had leaped onto her truck.