“Why? Éléonore, what’s wrong?”
“I need you to go down to the Rooneys’. Take the second fork left, then go to the end of the road. Tell Malcolm Rooney there are slavers at our house. There are sixteen of them, and they want Richard. Tell him he owes me, and that he’s got a pretty daughter and he doesn’t want them showing up at his house next. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll get the militia together and run them out of the Edge. Go, Charlotte. Go now.”
The phone beeped, and she thrust it back at Tulip.
“All you have to do is walk down and move one of these ward stones.” The slaver called out. Éléonore looked through the gap. He had pulled a knife out. The large curved blade caught the sunlight. “You know how this goes,” he called out. “I’m a peaceful man. Don’t make me do this.”
* * *
CHARLOTTE took a turn at breakneck speed. Slavers? It made no sense. Slavery had been outlawed in both Adrianglia and the Broken for centuries. But the fear in Éléonore’s voice was vivid and real.
She had to get to the Rooneys’. East Laporte had no police force, but when something threatened the entire town, the Edgers sometimes came together into a militia to meet it.
Trees flashed by her. Come on, she willed. Go faster, truck. Go faster.
* * *
“LISTEN to me.” Éléonore grasped Tulip’s bony shoulders. “They will hurt Daisy now. There’s nothing we can do about it. The ward keeps me from using magic on them, and if we try to shoot them, they’ll kill her.”
“She’s my sister!” Tulip whispered back. “If we give the guy to them—”
“They’ll murder us all. They’re lying, dear heart. They’re lying, bad, awful bastards. We have to wait until help comes.” Éléonore hugged her, wrapping her arms around the girl’s bony shoulders. “No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, you can’t go out there. We have to wait it out.”
“Hold her,” the slaver said.
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.