The truck slid to a stop. Rose gulped the air. Her heart fluttered in her chest. Her fingertips tingled, and she tasted bitterness on her tongue.

She stabbed the seat belt release button, threw the door open, and jumped out onto the road. “Are you hurt?”

The Wood lay quiet.

“Hello?”

No answer. The man was gone.

“Rose, who was that?” Georgie’s eyes were the size of small saucers.

“I don’t know.” Relief flooded her. She hadn’t hit him. She got scared out of her wits, but she hadn’t hit him. Everybody was fine. Nobody was hurt. Everybody was fine . . .

“Did you see the swords?” Jack asked.

“What swords?” All she’d seen were the blond hair, green eyes, and some kind of cloak. She couldn’t even recall his face—just a pale smudge.

“He had a sword,” Georgie said. “On his back.”

“Two swords,” Jack corrected. “One on the back and one on his belt.”

Some of the older locals liked to play with swords, but none of them had long blond hair. And none of them had eyes like that. Most people facing a truck head-on would be scared. He stared her down as if she had insulted him by nearly running him over. Like he was some sort of king of the road.

Strangers were never good in the Edge. It wasn’t wise to linger.

Jack sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose the way he did when he looked for a scent trail. “Let’s find him.”

“Let’s not.”

“Rose . . .”

“You’re on thin ice already.” She climbed into the truck and shut the door. “We’re not chasing after some knucklehead who thinks he’s too important to walk on the shoulder.” She snorted, trying to get her heart rate under control.

Georgie opened his mouth.

“Not another word.”

A couple of minutes later, they reached the boundary, the point where the Edge ended and the Broken began. Rose always recognized the precise moment when she passed into the Broken. First, anxiety stabbed right through her chest, followed by an instant of intense vertigo, and then pain. It was as if the shiver of magic, the warm spark that existed somewhere inside her, died during the crossing. The pain lasted only a blink, but she always dreaded it. It left her feeling incomplete. Broken. That’s how the name for the magic-less dimension had come about.

There was an identical boundary on the opposite end of the Edge, the one that guarded the passage to the Weird. She never tried to cross it. She wasn’t sure her magic would be strong enough for her to survive.

They entered the Broken without any trouble. The Wood ended with the Edge. Mundane Georgia oaks and pines replaced the ancient dark trees. The dirt became pavement.