Magic Bleeds (52 page)

She rolled up her jeans and crouched, calling in a practiced singsong, “Where is Nellie? Where is that good girl? Nellie is the best rolpie ever. Here, Nellie, Nellie, Nellie.”

The surface of the pond lay completely placid. Not a splash.

The rolpie was in there. Cerise was absolutely sure of it. She’d tracked the stubborn animal since three past midnight when Arthur heard Nellie break out of the rolpie enclosure. Cerise had been going from
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stream to stream for the last four hours. The trail—a long smudge in the mud, flanked by swipes from the paws—ended five feet to the left of her.

“Here, Nellie! Here, girl. Who is a good girl? Nellie is. Oh, Nellie is so pretty. Oh, Nellie is so fat. She is the fattest cutest stupidest rolpie ever. Yes, she is.”

No response.

Cerise looked up. Far above, a small chunk of blue sky winked at her through the braid of cypress branches and Mire vines. “Why do you do this to me?”

The sky refused to answer. It usually did, but that didn’t stop her from talking to it.

A chirp echoed overhead and a white globe of bird poop plummeted from the branches. Cerise dodged and growled at the sky. “Not cool. Not cool at all.”

It was time for emergency measures. Cerise leaned her sword against a cypress knee, anchoring the scabbard in the muck, shifted her weight, pulling the backpack off her shoulders, and dug in the bag. She fished out a length of rope with a headcollar, designed to fit on the rolpie’s muzzle and loop behind her ears, and arranged it on the mud for easy access. The can opener was followed by a small can.

She held the can out and knocked on it with the can opener. The sound of metal on metal rolled above the pound. Nothing.

“Oh, what do I have? I have
tuna
!”

A small ripple wrinkled the surface about thirty feet out. Gotcha.

“Mmmm, yummy, yummy tuna. I’ll eat it all by myself.” She arranged the can opener on the can and squeezed, breaking the seal.

A brindled head popped out of the water. The rolpie sampled the air with a black nose framed with long dark whiskers. Large black eyes fixed on the can with maniacal glee.

Cerise squeezed the top of the can, letting some of the fish juice drip into the pond.

The rolpie sped through the water and launched herself out onto the shore. From the bottom up to the neck, she resembled a lean seal armed with a long tail and four wide half-legs framed with flat flippers. At
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the shoulders, the seal body stretched into a graceful long neck, tipped with an otter head. When she was a little girl, Grandpa once told her that rolpies were reptiles and their fur was actually modified feathers, but looking at one, you wouldn’t think it.

Cerise shook the can. “Head.”

Nellie licked her black lips and tried her best to look adorable.

“Head, Nellie.”

The rolpie lowered her head. Cerise slipped the collar over her wet muzzle and tightened it. “You’ll pay for this, you know.”

The black nose nudged her shoulder. Cerise plucked a chunk of tuna from the can and tossed it at the rolpie. Razor-sharp teeth rent the air, snapping up the treat. Cerise swiped her sword off the ground and tugged on the leash. The rolpie lumbered next to her, wiggling and pushing herself across the swamp mud.

“What the hell was that? Breaking out in the middle of the night and taking off for a stroll, are we? Did you get tired of pulling the boats and decided to take your chances with Mire crocs?”

The rolpie squirmed along, watching the can of tuna like it was some holy relic.

“They can bite bone sharks in half. They’ll look at you and see a plump little snack. Brunch, that’s what you’d be.”

Nellie licked her lips.

“Do you think tuna grows in the mud?” Cerise plucked another chunk of fish out of the can and tossed it at Nellie. “In case you didn’t know, we live in the Edge, between two worlds. We have to get our tuna from the Broken. The Broken has no magic. But you know what the Broken does have? Cops. Lots and lots of cops. And alarm systems. Do you have any idea how hard it is to steal tuna from the Broken, Nellie?”

Nellie emitted a small squeal of despair.

“I don’t feel sorry for you. It takes four days to get to the boundary that separates the Edge from the Broken, because it’s three miles off-shore, and crossing the boundary hurts like hell. And we can’t afford to get arrested in the Broken. They don’t know the Edge or the Weird exist. Most of them don’t have
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enough magic to see the damn boundary, let alone cross it. Can you imagine how hard it is to explain why you have no ID to a Broken cop? If you think that you’ll get tuna treats every time you decide to take a stroll in the moonlight, you have another think coming, missy. Besides, I work hard and I have better things to do than drag my butt out of my very comfortable bed and chase you all around the damn Mire.”

The vegetation parted, revealing the dark water of Priest’s Tongue stream. A green Mire viper lay in the mud. It hissed as they approached. Cerise hooked the snake with her sword and tossed it aside.

“Come on.” She threw another bite of tuna to the rolpie and led her into the stream. Cerise wrapped the leash loop tighter around her wrist and slid her arms around Nellie’s narrow neck. “You get the rest when we get home. And no dives into the peat at the bottom either.” Cerise clicked her tongue and the rolpie took off down the stream.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER CERISE SHUT THE GATE on the rolpie enclosure. Someone, probably the younger boys, had made a reasonable attempt to repair the chain-link fence, but it wouldn’t hold if Nellie decided to ram it. In the twisted creeks and rivers of the swamp, rolpies were vital. In some places, the water was completely stagnant and the swamp vegetation blocked the wind. The rolpies pulled the light swamp boats all over the Mire to help save gasoline.

As long as a human was present, Nellie was an excellent rolpie: obedient, sweet, powerful. The moment you took the person out of the equation, the silly beast freaked out and tried to take off.

Maybe she had separation anxiety, Cerise reflected, starting up the hill toward the Rathole. Segregating Nellie in a smaller enclosure would only lead to disaster. Knowing her, she would bray night and day, because she was alone. And reinforcing the fence was too much labor just to secure a single rolpie.

Cerise chugged up the hill to the Mar family house. Water dripped from her clothes and squished between her toes inside her boots. She wanted a hot shower and a nice meal, preferably with some meat in it. Things being what they were, she’d settle for fish or bacon. She’d have to oil her sword, too, but that was part of living in the swamp. Water and steel didn’t mix very well.

The Rathole sat on top of a low hill, a sprawling two-story monster of a house. Fifty yards of cleared ground separated the house from the nearest vegetation. The kill zone. Fifty yards was a lot of ground for enemies to cover, when they had rifles and crossbones trained on them.

The ground floor had no entrance or windows. The only way in lay up the stairway to the second-floor verandah. As she approached the stairs, a small shape slipped from behind the verandah’s colonnades and sat on the stairs. Sophie. Lark, Cerise corrected herself. She wanted to be called Lark now.

Her sister gave her a weary look from under dark tousled hair. Her skinny legs stuck out of her capris like matchsticks. Mud smudged her calves. Scratches and bruises covered her arms. She hid her hands, but Cerise was willing to bet that her nails were dirty or bitten off, probably both. Lark used to be a bit of
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a neat freak, as much as an eleven-year-old girl brought up in the swamp could be. All gone now.

Worry pinched at Cerise. She kept her face calm. Show nothing. Don’t make Lark self-conscious.

She came up the stairs, sat next to Lark, and pulled off her left boot, emptying the water out.

“Adrian and Derril are riding the Doom Buggy through the Snake Tracks,” Lark murmured.

The dune buggy was a hell mobile made of pure fun. In fact, Cerise had snuck away with it before and had so much fun, she’d flipped it over. But touching the dune buggy without adult supervision was strictly forbidden. Stealing it and wasting expensive gasoline were punishable by three weeks of extra chores.

Of course, both fifteen-year-old Adrian and his fourteen-year-old sidekick, Derril, knew this and could handle the consequences. The most pressing issue was that Lark had just tattled. Lark never tattled.

Cerise forced herself to calmly pull the other boot off. The very core of her sister’s personality was changing and she could only watch, helpless.

“The boys didn’t take you with them?”

The answer was so quiet, she barely heard it. “No.”

Six months ago, they would have. Both of them knew it. The urge to reach out and hug Lark’s bony shoulders gripped Cerise, but she kept still. She’d tried that before. Her sister would stiffen, slide away, and take off into the woods.

At least Lark was talking to her. That was a rare thing. Normally, Mom was the only person who could get through to her and even she had a hard time drawing Lark out lately. The kid was slipping away into her own world and nobody knew how to pull her out.

“Did you tell Mom?” Cerise asked.

“Mom isn’t here.”

Odd. “Dad?”

“They left. Together.”

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Cerise frowned. The family had been feuding with another clan for the last eighty years. Sometimes the hostility between them burned bright and sometimes, like right now, it smoldered, but the feud could burst into warfare at any moment. The last time the feud had flared, she lost two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin.

The standing rule was: you go out, you let someone know where you’re going and when you’re planning on coming back. Even Father, who was the head of the family, never strayed from this rule. “When and why did they leave?”

“At sunrise, and they left because Cobbler got his butt bit.”

Cobbler, an old wino, bummed about the swamp doing odd jobs in exchange for moonshine. Cerise never cared for the man. He was mean to kids when he thought their parents weren’t looking and he’d stab anyone in the back just out of spite. “Go on . . .”

“He came over and told Dad wild dogs got into Grandpa’s house. They chased him and one bit him on the butt. His pants had holes.”

The Sene Manor had been boarded up for years, ever since their grandparents had died there of red fever twelve years ago. Cerise remembered it as a sunny house, painted bright yellow, a spot of color in the swamp. It was an abandoned wreck now. Nobody went near it. Cobbler had no business going there either. Probably was looking for something to steal.

“What happened next?”

Lark shrugged. “Cobbler kept talking until Dad gave him some wine and then he went away. And then Dad said he had to go and take care of Grandpa’s house, because it was still our land. Mom said she would go with him. They rode out.”

Getting to Sene Manor by truck was impossible. They would’ve gone on horseback.

“And you haven’t seen them since?”

“No.”

Sene Manor was half an hour away by horse. They should’ve been back by now.

“Do you think Mom and Dad are dead?” Lark asked in a flat voice.

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Oh, Gods. “No. Dad’s death with a sword and Mom can shoot a Mire croc in the eye from a hundred feet. Something must’ve held them up.”

A muted roar rolled through the trees—the dune buggy’s engine getting a workout. Dimwits. Didn’t even have the patience to turn the engine off and roll the buggy back up to the house. Cerise rose.

“Let me deal with this, and if Mom and Dad aren’t back by the end of the hour, I’ll go and check it out.”

An old dune buggy burst out from between the pines, splashing through the mud on its way to the house.

Cerise raised her hand. Two mud-splattered faces stared at her from the front seat with abject horror.

Cerise drew in a deep breath and barked. “Cramp!”

Magic pulsed from her hand. The curse clutched at the two boys, twisting the muscles in their arms.

Adrian doubled over, the wheel spun left, the dune buggy careened, and the whole thing toppled onto its side in a huge splash, sliding through the sludge. The hell mobile turned, vomiting the two daredevils into the mud, spun for the last time, and stopped.

“Feel free to go over there and kick them while they’re down. When you’re done, tell them to clean everything up and head straight to the stables. Aunt Karen will be overjoyed to have two slaves for the next three weeks.”

Cerise took her boots and headed into the house. She’d have to take at least two people with her.