Boundary Crossed

by Melissa F. Olson

  I lightly kicked the back of his knee as he walked, making him topple forward. He managed to right himself without falling on his face. “I may have been slightly deserving of that,” he said loftily. Then his face turned serious. “Listen, Lex, I’ll call you tomorrow after I talk to Lily, and we’ll work out a schedule for lessons. But there’s one other thing you need to know today.” He gave me a complicated look, part sadness and part awe. “Now that you’ve used your magic a couple of times, it’s going to grow.”

  “So . . . ?” I prompted.

  “So, you should know that until you learn to channel it properly”—I thought of the flashlight beam of awareness I’d directed at the mouse, and how damned hard it had been to keep it going—“you’re not going to have control of it. Magic is tied to emotions,” he explained, “You know how you can channel your feelings into doing something constructive or destructive? The same is true of magic.”

  I wasn’t particularly good at channeling my emotions, but I didn’t say that. “Got it.”

  Simon hesitated. “In the meantime . . . you’ll feel things really hard.”

  I shrugged. What else was new?

  “And,” he added with some urgency, “I wouldn’t try to press any vampires.”

  But that was, like, the coolest thing I could do. “Why not?”

  He shook his head. “You’re gonna be a little unstable for a few weeks while your magic settles in. Which makes it a lot more likely that you’ll slip up, giving a vampire a chance to gain control of you instead. And if they figure out you tried to press them . . .” He shook his head. “They really wouldn’t like that.”

  Chapter 21

  On the way back into Boulder, I grabbed a veggie sub from a chain place, driving with one hand so I could inhale it in the car. I was back at my cabin by mid-afternoon. My whole body was exhausted from the night of body disposal and the day of magic lessons, but I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. I was in terrible need of a reality check—and so were the animals. Shelter pets tend to thrive on routines, and I’d been doing nothing but breaking ours for the last week.

  So instead of a nap I went straight to the backyard and threw a tennis ball for a while, enjoying the fall sunshine and the infectious excitement of the dogs. Only Cody and Chip, both retriever mixes, actually fetched the ball, mind you—Pongo found toys uninteresting but enjoyed snuffling along the edges of the fence, and Dopey was simply too stupid to grasp the concept of bringing something back. Once in a while she would follow Cody and Chip for the first ten feet as they chased the ball, then scamper back to me, expecting praise for her accomplishments. I just laughed and complied.

  After about an hour I went inside and took a long, hot shower, taking the time to shave my legs and pluck my eyebrows. Then I pulled on my nicest jeans and paired them with a camisole—I still wasn’t supposed to wear a bra—covered by a nice long-sleeved knit top. I brushed my hair out in the mirror and nodded to myself. This was another Sam strategy—she always insisted that the key to feeling better inside was looking better on the outside. It had always sounded stupid and vaguely sexist to me—especially since I’d spent so many years trying not to look attractive—but I still appreciated the sentiment.

  I realized that I suddenly, desperately missed my sister. She was the only one I could talk to about . . . well, I wouldn’t say “stuff like this,” because finding out that I had a magical connection to the forces of death isn’t the kind of thing that happens every day. But Sam was always the one person who accepted me in every way. Besides, she was my twin. She would’ve had the same witchblood.

  I wondered, not for the first time, if that could have saved her life. Would she still have died if her magic had been active, too? Probably not. But then again, in order for her magic to have become active, she would have had to die when we were teenagers. This was all too messed up to contemplate.

  At four-thirty I left the house for my regular Friday date. Okay, well, “date” might have been pushing it, but it was probably the closest I got these days.

  After Sam died and John came back to Boulder to work at Luther Shoes, my parents worried about him constantly. A twenty-nine-year-old widower who spent every moment either working for his father-in-law or taking care of his baby daughter? They decided he was in desperate need of some fun, and since they were still worried about me, too, they concocted a brilliant plan: all of a sudden, John’s whole division started going to happy hour at one of the Boulder bars every Friday after work. There was some sort of trivia game on Fridays, and John was involuntarily drafted into the Luther Shoes employee team. And since Friday was my regular day off, and I didn’t tend to socialize with any bipeds, I was recruited to babysit Charlie every Friday evening.

  John and I put up a token protest, of course—it’s grating, having your parents manipulate your social life at thirty—but we both had to admit the plan was a good one. I loved spending time with my niece, and having a regular date to see her gave me something to look forward to each week. And John, whether or not he was willing to admit it, could use the distraction of a weekly evening out with someone who was able to say more than six words.

  John had texted that morning and offered to stay home from trivia night this week, since he thought I was still recuperating, but I’d insisted he go out with his friends. I wanted the time with my niece. I missed her—and besides, until Quinn and I figured out who had sent Darcy and Victor after Charlie, I’d feel better with her in my sight.

  So at five o’clock sharp, I pulled up to my parents’ great big house in Mapleton to collect my niece.

  I opened the door just a crack at first, since Charlie had a habit of playing right on the other side of the door. When I was sure it was safe, I pushed the door all the way open. My mother was sitting on the steps leading to the second floor, keeping an eye on Charlie as she practiced climbing the stairs. When she saw me, Charlie squealed and her whole face broke open in a grin. “Hey, Mom,” I said. “Hi, Charlie!”

  My niece waved and looked down to study her feet, uncertain how to get herself down to me. “Oh, no, you don’t,” my mother said, scooping Charlie into her arms. “Gramma will take you.” She carried Charlie down the steps, and when I held out my hands, the toddler dove for them. I laughed and cuddled her to my chest, planting kisses on her cheeks. “You’re sure you’re up for this?” my mother said anxiously, watching my movements. “What did the doctor say about your back? Are you supposed to lift things?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, smiling at my niece, who was now patting both of my cheeks enthusiastically, “I got a clean bill of health.”

  “Really?” my mother said, brightening a little. She was wearing khaki pants and a flowery blouse. She had to forgo jewelry and scarves while she babysat, but she was in full makeup, and her short hair was coiffed perfectly. Charlie, on the other hand, was wearing simple baby jeans and a long-sleeved onesie that was splattered with dried applesauce. “But it seemed so serious the other night! Did you consult with your surgeon?”

  “No, Ma,” I said, still making faces at my niece. “I’ve got a new friend, she’s a doctor. She took my stitches out and said everything looks great.” Okay, that was a slight revision of the actual events, not to mention a plumping of Lily’s credentials, but if it made my mother feel better . . .

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” she gushed, beaming. “I’m so glad you’re spending time with friends. And you just look so much better,” she added as an afterthought.

  That was my mom: she was happier to hear I had a friend than she was about my good health. “Diaper bag?” I asked.

  Bag and niece in hand, I said good-bye. I drove Charlie over to John’s house, let myself in with my key, and got us set up in the kitchen with some sliced lunch meat, sliced strawberries, and sliced mozzarella cheese. You have to do a lot of slicing with a toddler, I’d discovered. In the back of my mind I’d been a little worried that Charli
e would have some kind of lasting trauma from her kidnapping, but to my relief she seemed like her normal baby self: a graham cracker addict who waved at strangers and clapped every time someone said, “Yay!”

  After I fed Charlie, we read some board books and I sang her “Little Bunny Foo Foo” about three times, and then it was time for her to go to bed. “Goodnight, Charlie-bug,” I said softly as I put her in her crib. “Love you.”

  Back in the living room, I felt exhausted all of a sudden, and sort of depressed, like someone had turned off the sunshine. I sat down in John’s recliner and, for the second time in the past three days, drifted off to sleep there.

  I dreamed of my sister.

  No big surprise, really—I had just spent the last two hours with her daughter, after all. In the dream, Sam and I were about ten, and our parents had taken us to the Bobolink trailhead for the day. At first, I didn’t know if it was an actual memory or just a composite, a piecing together of dozens of similar days. Either way, John was there, too—by the time we were seven, he spent more time at our house than his own.

  My dad had taken John on a bird-watching trail, since he was the only one of us kids with the patience for staring at tiny animals as they flew around. My mom was getting lunch ready at a picnic table, and Sam and I were climbing on an outcropping of rocks, trying to make our way down what seemed like a long line of them without falling off. I went first, out of habit and necessity. From the time we were born, I was Sam’s guardian. I was bigger and more sure-footed, not to mention more cautious than clumsy, impish Sam. So our hands were linked, and I would place one Luther hiking boot on the next boulder—they seemed like boulders to us, anyway—before putting my weight on it. Then I would move aside and let Sam hop on.

  In the dream, she followed me along the path until we ran out of rocks. “I’ll lead the way back,” she said mischievously, and dropped my hand. Then she abruptly took off skipping, heading back the way we had come at a speed that scared me. “Slow down!” I yelled after her, but Sam either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to stop. Even at ten, she would do anything for me or John, so long as it wasn’t taking care of herself.

  I followed her as fast as I could, my eyes on the rocks in front of me, but Sam was faster, and I lost sight of her quickly. Soon I reached the end of the rocky outcropping, but I still didn’t see my sister anywhere. I ran through the short tangle of trees and across the clearing to the picnic table where my mother was setting out plastic silverware. “Where’s Sam?” I asked her, panting.

  My mother looked up in surprise. “I thought she was with you?”

  My dad and John returned from the bird-watching trail, and they hadn’t seen Sam, either. She was just gone. We began to search, our calls for Sam growing more and more frantic by the moment. I felt the desperate, crushing panic of knowing that I had failed my sister.

  “Allie. Allie!” There was something warm on my hand. I opened my eyes and saw John kneeling in front of me, his fingers resting on mine. He was wearing a black button-down, untucked, over a white T-shirt, and his usual denim jacket. He’d just walked in the door. “You were calling for Sam.” His dark eyes were concerned.

  I took a deep breath to tell him I was fine, it was just a dream—but I realized if I opened my mouth I was going to burst into tears. I clenched my jaw and shook my head a little, trying for a rueful smile, but John knew me too well. He gave my hands a sharp tug, pulling me forward and into his arms. It surprised me, but after a moment I threw my arms around his neck and held on for dear life, letting myself have the hug. He smelled like detergent and his house, that particular scent that places get through the unique combination of their contents. Sam had smelled the exact same way. When Charlie was born, it had just added to the scent a little, giving it a note of baby wipes and diaper ointment.

  “I dreamed about that time in the park,” I whispered, when I was sure of my voice. “We lost her, remember?”

  “She’d just gone back to the car to get her book,” John reminded me, his lips in my hair. He relaxed his grip, expecting me to pull away, but I wasn’t ready to look him in the eyes yet, so I hung on. He let me. “She was fine, Allie.”

  “Don’t call me Allie,” I mumbled.

  John released me and leaned back on his heels, and I suddenly realized that I had slid off the chair and was kneeling beside him. He pushed the hair out of my eyes with one hand, hooking it behind my ear. “Why not?” he asked.

  I blinked in surprise. My family had asked me the same question a hundred times when I’d come home from Iraq. I’d just said I was used to Lex now, and I preferred it. This was the first time John had questioned the name. “Sam always thought it was to punish yourself, because you lived and your friends died,” he said quietly.

  “She was wrong.” Maybe it was the dream, or maybe I was still partly asleep, but I told him the truth. “It’s because Allie died, too.”

  John just nodded, his eyes probing mine. Twenty-five years stretched between us in that look, two and a half decades of love and grief and missed chances. I focused on the clock behind his head. Five to eight. “Oh, shit!” I cried, jumping up. “I have to be somewhere.”

  “We should talk—” John began, but I grabbed my hoodie off the couch and skirted around him.

  “Gotta run.”

  Chapter 22

  On the way back to my cabin I took several deep breaths, trying to clear the scent of John’s house from my mind.

  John had been my first crush, from the moment he gave me CPR on a little beach along the Arkansas River, saving my life—or so I’d thought at the time, anyway. I’d carried that stupid, hormone-fueled torch for years. Then the towers at the World Trade Center fell, and the course of my life changed.

  Sam supported my decision to join the army, but the rest of my family was disappointed and worried. My father, who’d spent much of his young adulthood protesting the Vietnam War, begged me to stay home, but eventually even he became resigned to my enlistment. It was John, of all people, who couldn’t stop fighting my decision. He couldn’t understand why I would want to leave Boulder for the army, why I thought it was my duty to help protect our country. We argued all throughout the summer after senior year, about the war, about politics, about patriotism. He said I was too smart for the army, I said that was a bullshit elitist attitude, and after circling around and around the issue for three months, he’d finally declared his feelings for me.

  We spent one night together, at my parent’s cabin, which was now my home. And then we said good-bye, neither of us able to accept the other’s position.

  John and Sam both matriculated at CU that fall, and I was deployed shortly thereafter. By the time I came home between my two tours, we had all moved on. John and Sam were dating, and I had a couple of relationships with fellow soldiers under my belt. More importantly, I was a different person. Harder, and sadder, and more determined than ever to be a soldier. I’d spent my whole childhood protecting Sam; as an adult I’d finally found a way to protect something bigger than one person, bigger than a million people. Okay, Sam and John’s relationship stung a little, but for the most part my thoughts were on the other side of the world, with my fellow soldiers. I had a different life.

  Sam and I drifted apart, though that had more to do with me being on the other side of the planet than it did with her dating my high school crush. When I eventually came home from the hospital in Germany, Sam re-emerged as a crucial part of my life, and John went where Sam went. Simple enough. I was so damaged then, the black cloud ever-present in my thoughts, that I barely felt any connection to the teenaged Allie who had loved John. I didn’t know that girl anymore, and I was genuinely glad that Sam and John had found happiness together.

  But now Sam was gone, and John and I were both alone, both without her. I saw him all the time, of course, especially once I started babysitting on Fridays. But I’d kept a distance between us, mostly out of fear. There w
as just something very seductive about the last person in the world who knows you to the core . . . and cares for you anyway.

  As I pulled into my driveway I shook my head, pushing the old hurt away. It had been well over a decade since John and I had spent our one night together. Everything was different now. I was some kind of witch, apparently, and Charlie was a null, and . . . wait. I frowned.

  Headlights flashed in my rearview mirror. It was eight o’clock exactly, and Quinn had arrived to pick me up. I got out of my car, and climbed straight into his sedan. “It can’t be a coincidence,” I said after I’d flung myself into the passenger seat.

  “And hello to you, too,” Quinn said evenly. He was wearing jeans and his leather jacket, with a white button-down shirt underneath. “What can’t be a coincidence?”

  “Charlie being a null, and me being a witch,” I told him. “You said boundary witches were rare, and nulls even rarer. So how is it possible that the two of us are related, and we both have these . . . identities?”

  Quinn frowned as he put the car in reverse and began backing out of the driveway. “I don’t know much about probability,” he allowed, “but it does seem unlikely.”

  “There has to be a connection.”

  He shrugged. “You should talk to Simon about it.”

  “Why Simon?”

  Quinn looked over at me. “He’s an evolutionary biologist. He studies this kind of thing.”

  “Oh. Right.” I had forgotten all about Simon’s day job in my quest to understand his other work. “I don’t think he knows about Charlie being a null,” I admitted. “I’m not sure I should tell him.”

  I glanced at Quinn, but his face gave away nothing. When it became obvious that I was waiting for a response, he sighed and said, “You might be right. The more people who know about your niece—”