Home > Steel's Edge (The Edge #4)(7)

Steel's Edge (The Edge #4)(7)
Author: Ilona Andrews

It is inevitable, she reassured herself. Children leave the nest. Everything is as it should be.

A truck rumbled past the yard, Sandra Wicks at the wheel, her bleached-blond hair a teased mess.

“Hussy,” Melanie said under her breath.

“Yep.”

Sandra waved at them through the window. Both witches smiled and waved back.

“So did you hear about her ‘friend’ near Macon?” Éléonore asked.

“Mhm. The moment her husband leaves, she hightails it through the boundary into the Broken. It’s a wonder her magic still works, as much time as she spends there. Someone ought to clue Michael in.”

“Stay out of it,” Éléonore told her. “It’s none of your business.”

Melanie grimaced. “When I was her age . . .”

“When you were her age, they thought wearing a camisole instead of a corset was risqué.”

Melanie pursed her lips. “I’ll have you know, I wore a slip.”

“Well, aren’t you a rebel.”

“It was made of rayon, too.”

A woman stumbled around the bend of the road. She walked unsteadily, swaying as she put one foot in front of the other, her blond hair rolled up on her head, her face smudged with dirt.

“Who the hell is that?” Melanie set her glass down.

Between the two of them, they knew the entire population of East Laporte, and Éléonore was dead sure she’d never seen this woman before. Woolen clothes, Weird cut. Anybody from the Broken would be in jeans or khakis, shoes with heels or sneakers. She wore boots, and she was walking funny.

The woman swayed and fell down on the side of road.

Éléonore rose.

“Don’t,” Melanie hissed. “You don’t know what she is.”

“Half-dead, that’s what she is.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You have a bad feeling about everything.”

Éléonore stepped off her porch and hurried down the road.

“You’ll be the death of me,” Melanie muttered, and followed her. The woman slowly turned and sat up. She was tall, but thin, not naturally either. Starved, Éléonore realized. Not a teenager, a woman, around thirty or so. Still a girl by Éléonore’s standards.

“Are you all right, dear?” Éléonore called.

The woman looked at her. Yes, definitely from the Weird and from means, too: the face was pretty and unlined, no doubt well taken care of at some point, but now haggard, sharpened by the lack of food, and stained with dirt.

“I’ve been shot,” she said, her voice quiet.

Mon Dieu. “Where?”

“Right thigh. It’s a flesh wound. Please.” The woman looked at her, and Éléonore read desperation in her gray eyes. “I just want some water.”

“Éléonore, don’t you dare take her into your house.”

Rose was many miles away, and this girl in the dirt didn’t look anything like her, but somehow there were shadows of her granddaughter in the stranger’s face. Éléonore grasped the girl’s hands. “Try to get up.”

“This will end in tears,” Melanie grabbed the girl’s other arm. “Come on. Lean on me.”

The woman pushed herself upright and gasped, a small, painful sound. For a tall girl, she weighed near nothing. They got her up the steps, one tiny step at a time, inside, and onto the spare bed. Éléonore pulled her woolen trousers aside. A small red bullet wound gaped in her thigh.

“Melanie, get the first-aid kit.”

“I am, I am.” The witch went into the kitchen

“Is the bullet out?” Éléonore asked.

The girl nodded.

“How did you get shot?”

“There was a boy . . .” Her voice was weak. “With a broken arm. I tried to heal the break, and his father shot me.” Surprise and outrage vibrated in her voice.

Healing magic was really rare, almost unheard of. Éléonore frowned. What in the world was she doing here in the Edge?

Melanie popped in the doorway with a first-aid kit. “If you can heal, why don’t you fix the hole in your leg?”

“Can’t heal myself,” the girl told her.

“I think you’re lying,” Melanie said, passing the kit over.

The girl raised her hand. Her fingers brushed Melanie’s age-stained arm. A faint stream of golden sparks flared from her fingers, sinking into Melanie’s skin. The dark liver spots melted.

Éléonore gasped. Melanie stood frozen.

The girl smiled, a sad, sagging curving of lips. “Can I please have some water?”

Her leg was still bleeding.

“Get her some water, Melanie.”

“What am I, a servant?” Melanie went into the kitchen.

Éléonore unscrewed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, poured some on the gauze from the kit, and pressed it to the wound. The girl jerked.

“You’re from the Weird, aren’t you? What are you doing here in the Edge?”

“I had to leave,” the girl said. “I had a horse and money. Somebody stole it. I tried to earn more, but nobody will let me heal them. I tried to help this man’s child, and he shot me. He shot me! What kind of insane place is this?”

“That’s the Edge for you.” Éléonore squeezed some Neosporin from a tube onto the wound. “We don’t take kindly to outsiders.”

   
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