Cooking was just one of the things she had to learn in the Edge. At Ganer College, staff prepared her meals, and at her estate, she had employed a cook. Charlotte sighed at the memory. She’d never truly appreciated Colin until she had to fend for herself in the kitchen. Éléonore had given her a cookbook, and if Charlotte followed the recipes exactly, the result was passable, occasionally even tasty. Decades spent learning to mix medicines ensured that she had good technique and paid attention, but if she didn’t have the exact ingredients on hand, trying to substitute things ended in complete disaster. A few weeks ago she watched Éléonore make banana bread. It was all “a handful of flour” and “a dash of cinnamon” and “add mashed bananas until it looks right.” Charlotte had dutifully written everything down, and when she’d tried to re-create the recipe, she ended up with a salty loaf-shaped rock.
She’d learned other lessons as well. Being humble. Living a simpler life. The dark magic inside her had long fallen dormant, and that was just the way she liked it.
Bright sunlight spilled through the open window, drawing warm rectangles on the kitchen floor. The day was beautiful. The air smelled of spring and honeysuckle. When she finished, she would go outside and read on her porch swing. And have a nice glass of iced tea. Mmm, tea would hit the spot.
“Charlotte? Are you in there?” A familiar voice called from the front porch. Éléonore.
“Maybe.” Charlotte smiled, wrapping the last chunk of ground beef in plastic.
Éléonore swept into the kitchen. She looked to be around sixty, but she’d let it slip last year that a 112th birthday wasn’t such a bad thing for a woman to endure. Her clothes were an artful mess of tattered and shredded layers, all perfectly clean and smelling faintly of lavender. Her hair was teased into a fluffy gray mess and liberally decorated with charms, twigs, and dry herbs. In the middle of her hair nest sat a small cuckoo clock.
Éléonore worried her. In the three years Charlotte had known her, the older woman’s physical condition had steadily slid downhill. Her bones were getting thinner, and she was losing muscle. She’d slipped on an iced-over path four months ago and broken her hip. Charlotte healed it, but her talent had its limits. She could only heal up to the existing potential of the body. In children, that potential was high, and she could even regenerate severed digits. But Éléonore’s body was tired. Her bones were brittle, and coaxing them into regrowth proved difficult.
Old age was the one disease for which there was no cure. In the Edge, as in the Weird, people fueled their life spans with magic, but eventually even magic gave out.
The cuckoo clock sagged.
“It’s about to fall,” Charlotte said.
Éléonore sighed and pulled the clock out of her hair. “It just doesn’t want to stay in there, does it?”
“Have you tried pins?”
“I’ve tried everything.” Éléonore surveyed the island filled with meat and vegetables, all in perfectly sized portions, wrapped in plastic or placed into the Ziploc bags. “You obsess, my dear.”
Charlotte laughed. “I like having an organized freezer.”
Éléonore opened the freezer and blinked.
“What?” Charlotte leaned back, trying to figure out what the hedge witch was looking at. Her freezer wasn’t really gapeworthy. It had four wire shelves, each with a neat label written in permanent marker on a piece of white tape: beef, pork and chicken, seafood, and vegetables.
Éléonore tapped the nearest label with her finger. “There is no hope for you.” She sank and landed on a stool. “Charlotte, do you ever make a mess just for the fun of it?”
Charlotte shook her head, hiding a smile. “I like structure. It keeps me grounded.”
“If you were any more grounded, you’d sprout roots.”
Charlotte laughed. It was true.
“You and Rose would get along,” Éléonore said. “She was the same way. Everything had to be just so.”
Rose was a constant presence in most of their conversations. Charlotte hid a smile. Being a substitute Rose didn’t bother her at all. She long ago realized that for Éléonore there was no higher praise, and she took it as a compliment.
“I’ve come for a favor,” Éléonore announced. “Because I’m selfish that way.”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “What may I do for you, your witchiness?”
“How are you with handling teenage acne?” Éléonore asked.
“Acne is a side effect of the body’s normal processes.” Charlotte began stacking her bags into the freezer in neat little towers. “I can treat it, and it will disappear for a while, but eventually it will come back.”
“How long is a while?”
Charlotte skewed her mouth. “Six to eight weeks, give or take.”
Éléonore raised her hand. “Sold. A friend of mine, Sunny Rooney, has two granddaughters. Nice girls. Daisy is twenty-three and Tulip is sixteen. The parents have been out of the picture for a while—their mother died a while back, and their dad passed away six months ago. Daisy has a decent job in the Broken, so Tulip lives with her. She’ll be starting a new school in the Broken this fall, except her face is all messed up, and Daisy says it’s causing her a lot of stress. They tried creams and washes, but it won’t go away. They’re in the front yard now, hoping you might take a look. I’ll take care of their bill. I know you just worked on Glen’s stomach problems two days ago, and I do hate to ask, but you’re their last hope.”
She’d heard that one before. Charlotte sat the last bag into the freezer, washed her hands, and wiped them on the towel. “Let’s see what we have.”
* * *
THE two girls stood at the edge of the lawn. Short and about sixty pounds overweight, Daisy had a round face, big brown eyes, and a nervous smile. Tulip was her polar opposite. Thin almost to the point of being underdeveloped for her age, she stood half-hiding behind her sister. Her skinny jeans sagged on her. Her tank top, designed to be formfitting, shifted with the wind. She had caked makeup on her face, and the thick pale paste made her skin appear bloodless. If not for the same chocolate hair and big eyes, Charlotte would’ve never guessed they were related.
Neither of the young women made any effort to approach. A ring of small plain stones, each sitting a few feet apart from each other, circled the house, and both Daisy and Tulip kept well away from it. The stones didn’t affect Éléonore—she had put them there in the first place.