On the Edge (The Edge #1)(45)
Author: Ilona Andrews

She pictured herself living in the Broken, with a regular guy, just like a regular family, going to a regular job . . . Dear God. She would slit her own throat out of boredom.

"I don’t know what I want," she mumbled.

Five minutes later, she drove up to Grandma’s, parked, and eyed the house. Grandma had to be dying to give her a piece of her mind regarding Declan. This morning Rose got away without a conversation by making excuses about Georgie needing to eat. Maybe if she got lucky, she could get away with her hide intact again.

"Come on, Georgie." He climbed out of the truck, and together they made their way up the steps and into the kitchen, which smelled like vanilla and cinnamon.

"Smells like cookies," Georgie said.

Grandma ElEonore smiled and handed him a plate of cookies. "There you go. Why don’t you go to the porch, Georgie, and let me and Rose talk a bit."

Rose bit her lip. She knew what was coming and tried to beat a hasty retreat, just like this morning. "I brought back your four dollars," she announced, putting the money on the table. "I really can’t stay. I have groceries in the truck and they might spoil . . ."

"Sit!" Grandma pointed to a chair.

Rose sat.

"Where is Jack?"

"With Declan."

"And you trust Declan enough to leave a child with him?"

Rose grimaced. "They snuck out this morning. By the time I woke up, they had gone beyond the scrying spell. Jack worships the ground Declan walks on, and he probably wanted to show off in the Wood. I’m not happy about it, and I’ll chew him out when they get home, but I don’t think Declan would hurt him or let him be harmed. He saved Jack once, and I don’t believe he has it in him to injure a child."

"And what makes you think so?"

Rose shrugged. "It’s a feeling I get from him."

"A feeling?" Grandma fixed her with an intense blue gaze. "I’ll hear about the blueblood. All of it."

All of it took almost a half hour. The more Rose talked, the more the corners of Grandma’s mouth sagged.

"Do you like him?" she asked when Rose fell silent.

"Why would you even ask me that? I – "

"Rose! Do you like him?"

"A little," Rose said. "Just a little."

Grandma sighed.

"Most of the time, I want to strangle him," Rose added to ease her fears.

For some odd reason, her attempt to reassure Grandma actually made things worse. ElEonore’s face paled. "Que Dieu nous aide."

God help us . . . "What did I say? I don’t like him enough to go away with him. He’s arrogant and overbearing and – "

Grandma raised her hand, and Rose fell silent. ElEonore opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. "Anything I say will only make things worse," she murmured.

"What do you mean?"

Grandma sighed. "You have a flaw, Rose. You’re daring. Just like my Cletus, just like your father. It’s a Drayton trait, and it has brought us nothing but misery. You see a challenge, and you must go after it."

Rose blinked. She didn’t chase challenges, at least not intentionally. At least she never thought she did.

"And this Declan, he’s a terrible challenge," Grandma ElEonore continued. "Proud and powerful. And he looks . . . You know yourself how he looks. I know you’ll turn yourself inside out, trying to win. Declan is the same way: he saw you out the window on the phone and went out the back door like he was about to storm a castle. He has decided you’re his."

"I’ll undecide it for him." Rose snorted. "He thinks he’s already won. Well, I have a surprise or two coming."

"That’s what I’m afraid of," Grandma murmured. "You must understand, he’s a dangerous man. Very dangerous. I cursed him."

"You what?"

"I cursed him," Grandma repeated. "That evening when William called, he came through the door asking for you, and I didn’t know who he was, so I cursed him."

Oh God. "What did you cast?"

"Rubber legs."

The Edgers had many talents. The ability to curse wasn’t the rarest talent, but it was one of the strongest. The older you were, the stronger was your cursing. The elder Edgers had the cursing monopoly, and they didn’t warm up to new-comers until they were past middle age, which for some Edger families hit around seventy or so.

For most curses, there was no cure. They had to be broken by the target or left to run their course. If the target did manage to break your curse, the magic lashed out back at you. While you tried to deal with the consequences, a very put-out cursee might arrive with his trusty shotgun, intending to use you for target practice. And if the curse did succeed, often the family of the afflicted would petition one of the older cursers for help to bring you down to size. Then you really had problems. An Edger had to be well along in years and have a good deal of respect before she could get away with cursing someone, or the retribution would be swift and brutal.

Rose had learned cursing when she was only six, by accident, just like everyone else. The family was out at a barbeque, and a girl named Tina Watty had stolen her doll and thrown it on the grill. Rose wished Tina’s hair would fall out. As soon as she said it, her magic gushed, and then they had to go home. The next time she saw Tina, her long blond hair was gone, and short stubble covered her head.

Everyone was allowed one curse, their first one, because that’s how you learned you had the power. But after that, you learned to control yourself or there would be hell to pay. Luckily for her, Grandma was a curser as well, one of the best in East Laporte, and Rose got more education in the art of cursing than she would ever need. The only proper way to learn curses responsibly was to suffer through most of them. Grandmother knew a lot of curses, and Rose had wanted to learn badly. She’d tried rubber legs on for size when she was twelve.

Rubber legs was an excruciatingly painful curse. The victim felt her legs torn apart like string cheese. If she tried to take a step, she would inevitably plummet to the ground. The curse left no harmful effect and vanished after a half hour or so, but meanwhile a person could lose her mind.

And Grandma had cast it on Declan. It was a wonder he didn’t slaughter the lot of them.

"Why would you curse him?"

Grandma shrugged. "He surprised me."

"What happened?"

"Your blueblood grunted a bit and shrugged it off. Just muscled on right through it. And that’s when I hit him with the bottle of olive oil and missed. He dodged, took the bottle out of my hands, and told me in perfect French that while he appreciated my vigor when defending my family, if I attempted to hit him again, I would sorely regret it."