On the Edge (The Edge #1)(5)
Author: Ilona Andrews

Rose nodded. The area was booming. Every time she drove by, construction crews had cleared more of the forest to make room for new subdivisions and shopping centers. A floor installer could make some serious money here. No wonder he could afford four boxes of toys.

PARALLEL Universe sat sandwiched between a coffeehouse and a UPS shipping store. It was remarkably clean and organized as comic shops went. In his previous life, Peter Padrake was Commodore Peter Padrake, the scourge of the Blood Sea and loyal privateer of Adrianglia, a country in the Weird. A decade ago he had crossed from the Weird into the Broken to retire, somehow managed to transform his life savings into good old U.S. currency, and opened Parallel Universe. Peter ran his comic shop the way he must’ve run his ship: the place was pristine, the comics categorized by publisher and title, each in a clear plastic sleeve, each clearly labeled with a price sticker. The price was final. Peter detested haggling.

He greeted her with a sour look. Rose knew it wasn’t personal. She was trouble, and Peter detested trouble even more than haggling.

"It’s here." Georgie tugged on William’s sleeve. "Over there."

William followed Georgie and Jack to the back of the store.

She smiled at Peter. He did his best to impersonate a stone idol from Easter Island. She drifted away from his stare to the back of the store, looking at the graphic novels on the wall as she passed. She loved comics. She loved books, too. They were her window into the Broken, and they let her dream.

Girl Genius . . . She often wished she could have been like Agatha, building superweapons out of a rusty fork, old bubble gum, and a piece of string. Rose picked up a graphic novel sealed in plastic. Twenty bucks . . . Not in this lifetime. She looked up and saw William listen while Georgie read out the description of the action figure from the back of the box. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, she reflected. Patient, too. Most men would’ve shrugged Georgie off by now. Maybe he was a child molester, after all.

Now there was a messed-up thought. Why would every man who paid a bit of attention to two boys obviously starved for male company automatically be some sort of criminal?

William smiled at her. Rose carefully smiled back at him. Something wasn’t quite right about William. She couldn’t put her finger on it. It was time to collect her brothers and go.

Rose skirted a small display and ran into Jack. He stood in the aisle completely still, knees slightly bent, barely breathing, his eyes focused on a rack of books, looking just like a cat fixated on its prey. She glanced in the direction of his stare and saw a brightly colored comic book. Not a regular American one but a fatter, smaller manga volume. The cover showed a teenage girl in a sailor outfit and a boy with white hair wearing a red kimono. Red letters slashed across the page: InuYasha.

Rose took the comic book off the shelf. Jack’s eyes followed it. "What?" she asked.

"Kitty ears," he whispered. "He has kitty ears."

Rose examined the cover and saw furry triangular ears in the mane of the boy’s white hair. She flipped the book. "It says here he is a half-man, half-dog demon. So these aren’t kitty ears."

Rose could tell by the desperate look on his face that he didn’t care.

She glanced at Peter. "You stock manga now?"

Peter shrugged behind the counter. "Those are used. A fellow brought them in. Selling them as a set, three for ten. If I sell them, I might order some new copies in."

"Please," Jack whispered, his eyes huge.

"Absolutely not. You got shoes. Georgie didn’t even get anything."

"Can I have it then?" Georgie popped out of thin air next to her.

"No." She could swing three bucks maybe, but not ten, and she could tell by Peter’s face that he wouldn’t be breaking the three volumes up.

"I’ll buy these for them," William offered.

"No!" She took a step back. They were poor, but they weren’t beggars.

"Look, seriously, I dragged you down here and made you show me the shop. I’m getting the Green Arrow anyway; an extra ten bucks won’t make any difference." He glanced at Peter. "I’ll pay for those."

"Absolutely not," she said, loading her voice with steel.

"Rose, please – " Georgie began in a singsong whine.

She cut him off. "You’re a Drayton. We don’t beg."

He clamped his mouth shut.

"Figure it out and stop wasting my time," Peter said.

William looked at him. It was a thousand-yard stare that pinned Peter down like a dagger. It wasn’t even aimed at her, but an urge to back away and leave gripped her. Peter Padrake moved his hand to the drawer where he kept his .45 and stood very still.

She picked up the books and put them on the counter. "Ten, you said?"

"Ten sixty-nine with tax," Peter said, his gaze fixed on William.

Rose smiled. She had exactly ten seventy-five in her purse. Gas money. Rose pulled out her pocketbook, extracted the soft dollar bills and three quarters, handed them to Peter, got her change, and all with the same smile on her face, she gave the books to the kids and marched out of the store, boys in tow.

"Rose, wait." William followed her.

Just keep walking . . .

"Rose!"

She turned and looked at him. "Yes?"

He closed the distance between them. "If I hadn’t said something, you wouldn’t have bought the books. Let me make it up to you. Go out to dinner with me tomorrow. My treat."

She blinked.

"I don’t know anybody," he said. "I’m sick of eating alone. And I feel bad about the store."

Rose hesitated.

He leaned a little to look her in the eyes. "I really want to see you again. Say yes."

It had been forever since she’d been on a date. Any kind of date. Four years.

Tomorrow was Wednesday, the first day of school. The kids would want to see Grandma to tell her all about it. She could swing a dinner. But there was something about William that put her off. He was handsome, and she wanted to like him. She just didn’t. The stare he’d given Peter had been almost predatory. "You’re not my type."

"How do you know? We haven’t said more than twenty words to each other."

That was true. She didn’t know anything about him. But it was far more prudent to turn him down and go back behind her ward stones. To hide. And with that thought, something inside Rose reared up, the way it had in the beginning of fifth grade, when Sarah Walton first called her the daughter of a whore. The same Drayton stubbornness that made her grandmother famous reared its head. No, she thought. They wouldn’t make her cower behind the ward stones for the rest of her goddamn life.