Daisy whimpered.
Éléonore clamped Tulip to her. “Don’t listen. Cover your ears.”
“Last chance. Move the stone, and everyone walks away from this.”
Éléonore held her breath.
“Fine,” the slaver said.
Daisy shrieked, a high-pitched sound suffused with pain.
Éléonore chanced a look at the window. The blond slaver was holding something pale and bloody between his index finger and his thumb. Daisy writhed in the hands of two other men.
“That was an ear,” the slaver announced. “Next we’ll do fingers.”
“WE have to go.” Charlotte stared at Malcolm Rooney, towering over her by eight inches.
Around them, the Rooney house was a flurry of activity: short, plump Helen Rooney dialed one number after the other on her cell, going down the list of contacts, while their two teenage sons stockpiled weapons on the porch. As soon as she’d arrived, their oldest son and daughter had left to carry the message down to the neighbors, and now armed men milled about at the house.
“Now you listen to me,” the big man leaned closer. “They’re safe behind the wards, and Éléonore is a tough old lady. She can handle herself. Sixteen men is a lot of firepower. We sure as hell aren’t going to ride out there unprepared, or we might as well just slit our own throats and be done with it.”
“They’re alone in the house!” She saw a dozen men ready to go.
“It will be fine,” Malcolm said.
She looked into his eyes and knew arguing was useless. He would do this at his own pace or not at all.
“Another hour, and we’ll be good to go.”
“An hour?” He was out of his mind. You could get the entire town up and moving in thirty minutes.
“It will be fine,” Helen Rooney said, the phone still to her ear. “It just takes time to get everyone together, that’s all. Everything will be okay.”
The sickening, nagging feeling in the pit of Charlotte’s stomach said otherwise.
Malcolm pulled a shotgun off the wall. “You’re lucky East Laporte is a different place now than it was six years ago. Back then, you would’ve gotten no help, but now people will come together.”
He turned his massive back to her. She realized what was happening: the Edgers were delaying on purpose. Nobody wanted to confront sixteen armed men, so they were dragging their feet, hoping things would resolve themselves.
Charlotte took a deep breath and let go of her persona as an unassuming Edge healer. She raised her head, sinking the icy, unmistakable tone of command into her words. “Mr. Rooney.”
He turned, surprise stamped on his face. He had expected the Charlotte who lived down the road. Instead, he got Baroness Charlotte de Ney, the Healer of Ganer. She stood before him, the full power of her magic in her eyes, her power radiating from her. The house was suddenly silent.
“Your wife is developing osteoporosis, you have an enlarged prostate, and your youngest son doesn’t have ADHD, as your wife told me; he has hyperthyroidism. If you want any of these problems to be treated in the future, you will stop patting my shoulder and telling me not to worry my pretty little head about it. You will get this mob together now and follow me out there, or so help me gods, I will make your life hell. You think those aches and pains you feel now are bad. After I get through with you, you will be a broken man. Move.”
TULIP went rigid in her arms. “Don’t look,” Éléonore whispered.
Daisy flailed, throwing all of her weight. “No! No, no, no . . .”
The slavers dragged her to the ground and pinned her hand to the edge of the sidewalk.
Knife flashed. Daisy screamed, a wordless, sharp shriek of pain.
“Left pinkie,” the slaver announced. “You planning on getting married? Because I’m about to take the ring finger.”
Tulip jerked, trying to get out of Éléonore’s arms.
“Stop!” Éléonore tried to hold on, but the girl bucked like a wild beast, suddenly too strong to hold. Éléonore gripped her, holding on, Tulip’s panicked kicking pushing them against a window.
A shot rang out. Glass shattered and something bit Éléonore in the shoulder, right into the bone. Her fingers slipped, suddenly weak. Tulip shoved her back and scrambled toward the door.
“No!” Éléonore screamed.
Tulip burst out of the door and onto the lawn.
Éléonore jerked the door open. “Stop, Tulip!”
A hot, piercing pain struck Éléonore in the chest, pitching her back. She lost her balance and fell onto the porch, half-hidden by the wooden rail. Suddenly it was so hard to breathe. The air turned bitter. They had shot her, she realized. She began pulling power to herself. The magic came slow, like cold molasses.
At the ward stones, Tulip turned and was looking at her with wide, panicked eyes.
“Tulip, is it?” the scarred slaver said. “Don’t look at her. Look here. Is this your friend? Sister maybe, no? Sister, then.”
“You open the ward, and they will kill you,” Éléonore called.
“I give you my word,” the slaver said. “Nobody will kill you.”
The magic kept winding around her. Not enough. Not nearly enough. She was too old, she realized. Too old and too weak. She’d outlived her power. “Don’t do it!”
“Do you want to go home, Tulip?” the slaver asked.
Éléonore tried to rise, but her legs wouldn’t hold her.
“Move the ward stone, and it will be all over,” the slaver said. “You and your sister can go home. I’ll even give you her parts back. See?” He held out a bloody stump of a finger.
Tulip cringed.
“Don’t!” Éléonore called out. Her voice was going hoarse. Blood stained the porch boards, and she realized it was hers.
“I said to shoot her,” the slaver said. “Do I have to finish her myself?”
Bullets whistled around Éléonore, biting into the wooden rail around the porch.
“Stop!” Tulip cried out.
The blond slaver raised his hand. The shots died.
“See? I’ll stop for you. I can be reasonable. You don’t listen to her,” the slaver said. “She’s old and selfish. You have to do what is good for you and your sister. Move the stone, we’ll get our guy, and we go our separate ways. Otherwise, I’ll have to cut off something else. Maybe your sister’s lips or her nose. She’d be disfigured for life.”
Tulip stood, frozen.
“Hold her down,” the slaver said.
They flipped Daisy over on her back. He leaned over her the knife in his hand.
“Don’t!” Éléonore cried out.
Tulip grabbed the ward stone and jerked it aside. The circle of protective magic broke.
Oh, you foolish child. You foolish, foolish child . . .
The large thug next to the scarred man stepped over the useless stone and backhanded Tulip out of the way. She fell on the grass.
A gun barked twice. Éléonore jerked and saw the scarred slaver raise a smoking gun. The back of Daisy’s head was a bloody mess. She wasn’t moving.
Tulip screamed, a high-pitched desperate shriek.
She had to save her. Éléonore gritted her teeth. She was old, but she was still a hedge witch.
The larger slaver moved on to Tulip.
Éléonore hurried, pulling magic to her in a desperate rush.
“Leave it,” the leader said.
I’m so sorry, Rose. I’m so sorry. I just wish we could’ve visited one last time.
“It’s free merchandise.”
“Have you seen her face? You’ve got to think before you act, Kosom. Who’s gonna buy her with that face? You can fuck her once, if you put a sheet over her head, but nobody’s going to purchase that. The buyers don’t want ugly women. You have got to develop some business sense. Go kill the old lady on the porch and drag the Hunter out of this damned house.”
Tulip sat up, her eyes wide.