Fate’s Edge (The Edge #3)(63)
Author: Ilona Andrews

Yonker kept talking. Jack yawned and closed his eyes. If only he could curl up in his chair . . .

A finger jabbed him in the ribs. His eyes snapped open. Next to him, Audrey was listening to Ed. Her lips barely moved. "Stay awake."

Jack sighed and stared at Yonker walking around onstage. For a while, he imagined what would happen if he turned into a lynx. People would run around, and he would growl and scare them. Then he wondered what Yonker would look like with a mustache.

Finally, people came through the aisles, passing some sort of platter around. Kaldar dropped a folded stack of bills held together with a small clip on it, and Jack gave it to some older lady standing in the aisle. The old lady made big eyes at the clip and took the platter away.

Then there was more annoying preaching: blah-blah-blah, we are so good, blah-blah-blah, God wants us to have money, then Yonker went offstage to the back while the choir sang some more, and Paul came to get them. Audrey hugged Jack and told him to be a really good boy and that she would see him soon.

Paul took them to the back of the church, all the way to the service entrance. A van waited for them. Paul opened the van door. Two other kids sat in the backseat, a dark-headed girl and a tall, lanky-looking kid with freckles and red hair.

"Get in," Paul said.

George pondered the van.

"We’re going to camp," Paul said patiently. "That’s all we’re doing."

"Climb in already." Jack pushed George a little.

"Don’t shove me."

"Move so I don’t have to."

They climbed into the van and bickered for the next fifteen minutes, until Paul told them that he would turn the van around and that, so help him God, making Ed happy wasn’t worth this. They both decided that would be a good time to shut up and rode the rest of the way in silence. The van crept up a narrow road, angling away from the main streets.

"Now this is going to feel a little weird," Paul said. "There is nothing to be scared of. Just the pressure in the air here is different."

"Why?" George asked.

"Subterranean gas," Paul said. "It comes out through the cracks in the road. Take a deep breath and try to relax, okay?"

The van came to a stop. Paul stepped out and opened the side door. "Melanie and Robert, out. And you, too."

Jack climbed out of the van. Melanie took his hand. "Don’t worry; it feels funny the first time."

Jack rolled his eyes. George and the red-haired kid were trying to come up with some sort of arrangement that didn’t involve their holding hands. Finally, the tall kid put his hand on George’s forearm.

"Let’s go." Melanie stepped into the boundary. "If you feel bad, you tell me, and we’ll go slowly."

Jack took a step.

The pressure of the boundary ground on him. Magic ripped through Jack, thudding in his blood, saturating his muscles. Scents flooded his nose. He felt strong again.

Slowly, step by step, Melanie led him through the boundary to the Edge on the other side. Behind them, the city still teemed with life and the noise of cars, but before them wilderness stretched. Scraggly woods sheathed hills, growing denser in the distance. A lonely road led over them into the distance, where a mountain range jutted out of the hills. He hadn’t seen those kinds of mountains when Kaldar drove them around the city. Hills, sure. Mountains, no.

Melanie smiled at him. "You made it."

George yanked his arm out of the red-haired kid’s grip.

"You okay?" Paul asked.

That’s right, I’m not supposed to know what just happened, Jack recalled. "Yeah," he said. "Where is the city?"

"It’s complicated. Come on, boys, get into the van. The camp’s straight ahead up that mountain. That’s where you’ll be staying tonight."

The road took them over the hills, all the way up the spine of a mountain bristling with pines. They climbed and climbed, the van creaking, until finally they conquered the apex and rolled to a wooden arch marking the entrance. Beyond the arch, wooden buildings waited, all simple rectangles sitting side by side in two rows, and at the end of the row a large structure rose. Jack had expected a church, like an old Edge church they had seen a thousand times in their small Edge town of East Laporte. This church looked more like a barn, complete with heavy double doors. A man with a rifle stood at the entrance.

Paul steered the van to the arch, stopped to talk to some girl sitting on the side, and drove on, to one of the smaller buildings.

"This is your place for the night," Paul said. "Lillian will make sure that you guys get sheets and toothbrushes and all that issued to you. Okay? It’s just you two in the room, since you guys are all jumpy, so you can lock the door at night."

"Why do they get a separate room?" the tall kid from the back asked.

"Because I said so," Paul said. "Anyway, go on, you two."

Paul wasn’t a bad guy, Jack decided, once the van pulled away. He just had a lousy boss. The way Jack looked at it, you should know who you were working for. They worked for Kaldar, who was a cheat, a thief, and a gambler, but he was honest with them about it. George swung the door open, and they went inside. The room was small, barely any room between two beds. About fifteen minutes later, a young girl with freckles on her nose brought their sheets, toothbrushes, some towels, and two paper bags. She told them that food was served in the cafeteria, but they’d missed dinner, so they’d have to get dry rations. She smiled at George a lot.

Jack’s paper bag contained another turkey sandwich, some bars made out of grain and seeds, and an apple. Jack ate the sandwich and left the bar alone. He wasn’t a bird, and he wouldn’t be eating any seeds.

They locked the door and settled in their beds to wait for sunset.

Two hours later, the sun finally rolled past the horizon. George sat up in his bunk and pulled a plastic bag out of the pocket of his hoodie. Inside, a small furry body lay still.

"Should’ve gone with the squirrel," Jack said quietly.

"Rat is better. They can get into tighter spaces."

"Yeah, but people see a rat, they try to kill it. They see a squirrel and go, ‘Oh, how cute, look at its fluffy tail!’"

"It’s dark. Nobody will see it." George closed his eyes.

"George?"

"Mmm?"

"What’s the point of this church?"

"That’s how Yonker makes money." George shrugged.

"Yes, I get that part. But what do people who go to his church get out of it?"

George furrowed his eyebrows. "People are scared to die. Most religions say that there is life after death, that only your body dies, but your essence, your soul, keeps living. Yonker tells them that if they give him money, their soul will go to a good place."