Boundary Crossed

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Yeah, I guess . . . why?”

  “I can smell it in your blood,” he whispered, his face clouding over. “It’s . . . it’s like it’s singing to me.”

  I shrunk back from him. An affinity for vampires. You got that right, Simon. Apparently death magic was coursing through my veins, and that affinity worked both ways. Great.

  Quinn reached into his pocket and pulled out the car keys, holding them out and staring at them. “You should probably drive yourself back to Boulder. I’ll catch a bus or something. Please, Lex, I . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”

  His gaze flicked toward my face for an instant, vulnerable and begging, and I forgot my anger. Quinn’s eyes were full of pain, some sort of raw wound that hadn’t healed, that probably never would.

  He had hurt someone, once.

  Compassion surged inside me. I looked around quickly, but I didn’t have a tissue or anything, and my purse was still locked in the car. Without thinking, I peeled off my long-sleeved shirt and wound it around my hand as tightly as I could. Then I checked Quinn’s face. “Better?”

  He nodded and dropped his arm, his relief evident. “Thank you.”

  “Who did you hurt?” I said abruptly. I’d meant it in a supportive way, like I’m here if you need to talk, but I was out of practice with talking about real things, and it came out all wrong.

  He met my eyes, pain still raw on his face. “My wife,” he said softly. He shuddered. Actually shuddered, although I seriously doubted that vampires needed to react physically to emotional stimuli. It was so . . . human.

  “Quinn . . .” I whispered. “It’s okay. You’re not going to hurt me.” I reached up with my right hand and touched his cheek, leaning into him. He bowed his head, and I touched my forehead to his. Neither of us moved, and I felt something stir in me, something I’d put to sleep a long time ago. Quinn’s hands wrapped around my waist, and he pulled my body forward, which drew my mouth closer to his . . .

  “Hey, dude, you gonna give her your jacket or what?”

  Quinn and I jerked apart. The voice had come from a laughing girl of about twenty-five, who was tottering past us on spiky heels, heading toward the apartment building. She was on the arm of a dumb-looking jock of a guy, all muscles and gold chain necklaces, and he gave my chest a frank stare as they went by. I was suddenly very aware that a) it was all of forty degrees outside, and b) I was wearing a soft jersey camisole Sam had gotten me for Christmas and no bra.

  I shivered, still clutching the shirt around my hand, hugging it in to my chest to cover my erect nipples. It didn’t do much to hide my embarrassment, though. I’d almost just kissed him, for God’s sake. I couldn’t trust myself, couldn’t trust that whatever I was feeling for Quinn wasn’t the result of my swelling connection to magic. I took a deep, shuddering breath.

  Quinn mumbled something and shrugged out of his leather jacket, leaning forward to wrap it around me. “Thatta boy,” the party girl called over her shoulder. “Whoops.” She wobbled on her heels and for a second I thought she was gonna go down, but the jock caught her, sending Quinn a wink. “Have a good night,” he yelled.

  “Take me home,” I muttered to Quinn.

  Quinn insisted that I couldn’t come along to talk to Maven and Itachi. We argued about it for most of the trip back from Denver, but he was adamant. He thought I was too emotional about the whole thing to deal with them directly, but he promised to call me after his conversation and fill me in.

  But he didn’t call me that night. At sunrise, I went to bed, now worried that Maven or Itachi had decided to punish Quinn for what they might have seen as his failure to catch Charlie’s kidnapper. I meant to nap for just a couple of hours, but was awoken by the ringing of my phone a little after seven I’d been asleep for more than twelve hours. I grabbed my cell and saw Quinn’s number in the display.

  “Hello?” I said cautiously.

  “It’s me.” Quinn sounded fine, and I felt a momentary sense of relief before I remembered to be irritated with him. “Sorry I didn’t call last night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hang on a second.” There was a pause, and I heard the sound of a door closing. Then another. Then a third. “I’m at Magic Beans,” he explained. “Just trying to get some privacy.”

  “What did they say?” I said, more insistent this time. “Can we keep looking for the kidnapper?”

  “No,” he said heavily. “I was right. They agreed that three out of the four is good enough for now.”

  I kicked at a pillow in frustration, sending it flying off the bed. Dopey looked up from her spot beside me, bewildered. “Shit.”

  “I know. If it helps, though, your niece is now considered permanently under Itachi’s protection.”

  “What about me?”

  He paused. “I swear, I told them you did a good job.”

  “But?” I prompted.

  “But . . . they want to think about it a little more. They’re vampires, so ‘we need to think about it’ could mean for a night or a month. Meanwhile, no one’s gonna touch Charlie.”

  I flopped back against the remaining pillow. “They can touch her,” I said coldly. It wasn’t enough for Charlie to be safe from every monster but two. I wanted her to grow up safe, period.

  “The kid is what? A year and a half?” Quinn pointed out. “They’ve got no use for the baby until she’s at least talking. You just need to be patient.”

  Be patient. Yeah, right. Maybe if I went and talked to them myself . . .

  But Quinn sensed exactly what I was thinking. “Lex,” he sighed, and I thought I heard actual concern in his voice. “Seriously, this isn’t the time to run over here and make your case. Their whole concern is that you’re too close to this . . . and that you’ll be too emotional and unpredictable while your magic comes in.”

  “You told them about that?” It was stupid to feel betrayed, but I did.

  “I had to,” he said, his voice thick with regret.

  I didn’t trust myself to answer him. Simon had warned me that Quinn’s first loyalty would be to other vampires, and I’d let myself believe he was on my side. What an idiot.

  “Look, just . . . keep up the magic lessons,” he said when I didn’t speak. “Do anything you can think of to make yourself more valuable to them, especially Maven. I think she likes the idea of a boundary witch working for them. She’s just not sure about you personally. Don’t do anything to scare her off.”

  “Fine,” I said shortly. “I can do that.”

  Well, I could try.

  Chapter 25

  I’d missed a call from Simon while I was sleeping on Saturday. I called him back, and we arranged another training session for the following week. That Sunday I went back to work at the Flatiron Depot. Big Scott had scheduled a second manager for my first night back, so I ended up having a nice, quiet shift restocking the shelves and working on inventory. At break time, I ate two pieces of the “Welcome Back” cake Big Scott had bought from the nearest Safeway, and by the time I returned to work Monday night, all the cake was gone and everything was back to normal. I found it surprisingly comforting to be at work, where I always knew what to do and nobody threw around made-up words for mythological happenings. A couple of nights later I even worked with Bettina, who still seemed confused as hell about what had happened the night Charlie was taken. I figured out pretty quickly that it was best not to mention it.

  The following Friday I took care of Charlie like always, and the next night my parents took me out to dinner “just to catch up.” My mother spent most of the time talking about my father’s upcoming sixtieth birthday party, and I pretended that I’d never forgotten about it. The Luthers had a big family dinner every few weeks to celebrate all the birthdays that month—there were too many of us for individual celebrations—but this was going to be different. It was the first major family event since Sam’s de
ath, and my mother was determined that it would be a Big Deal. There’s not much of a Who’s Who in Boulder, but what little “high society” we did have would all be there.

  A little more time passed, and with the exception of spending a few afternoons a week with the Pellars, my life actually started getting back to normal. My extended family slowly toned down their hand-wringing after what they’d perceived as a garden-variety kidnapping attempt, if there is such a thing. I went hiking with my cousin Anna, babysat for my other cousin Brie, and went to the shooting range with Elise. She gave me the good news that the police had decided I was no longer an official suspect.

  “Even Keller?” I asked skeptically.

  She made a face. “Okay, he still thinks it was you, but then he probably thinks you’re behind every bad thing that happens in Boulder.”

  “He’s like the Sheriff Teasle to my John Rambo,” I grumbled, but I couldn’t entirely blame the guy, either.

  When I wasn’t spending time with my family or the herd or at work, I kept to myself, which was exactly the way I liked it.

  But although days, and then weeks, slipped by with no word from the vampires and nothing remarkable happening in Charlie’s life, there was still a part of me that just couldn’t relax. Mostly it was because I’d started having these dreams. They were tangled, patchy things, wisps of conversation layered under snatches of dread and the occasional bolt of pure panic. I would wake up disoriented and confused, with Sam’s face in my mind and the vague sensation that I needed to be with Charlie right now. There were usually three or four members of the herd staring at me when I woke up, with resigned expressions on their faces that said their mistress had finally lost it.

  Now that I was back on my regular work schedule, I was sleeping from midmorning to late afternoon, and the dreams haunted me more often than not. After one terrible week during which I had the dreams every “night,” I started the habit of driving over to John’s house around sunset, when he usually put Charlie to bed. I would park a few houses down and watch the house, like I was on a stakeout in one of those generic cop shows. His neighborhood housed a lot of professors who came and went at odd hours, but if anyone ever noticed me, they didn’t seem troubled by it. I still felt like a creep or, at the very least, an idiot, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

  During these vigils, I thought a lot about my dead sister, wondering for the thousandth time what she would think of all this. I thought about John, whom I’d been careful to avoid seeing alone. And, to my surprise, I thought about Quinn, especially the moment when he’d begged me not to let him hurt me.

  Each time when I finally left to let the dogs out before my eleven o’clock shift, I would feel the dread and panic start to bleed back into my mood.

  One Thursday night in mid-October, I was sitting in my car outside John’s, munching on a bag of barbecue chips and waiting for him to get home with the baby so I could get my hit of Charlie-is-safe relief. It was nearly eight, so I figured he’d probably gone to my parents’ or his mom’s house for dinner and would be back any minute.

  There was a sudden knock on the passenger window. I jumped in my seat, and looked over to see Quinn waving at me with a little smirk on his face. We hadn’t spoken since the night he’d called to tell me the vampires weren’t sure about me. Part of me still hadn’t forgiven him for dropping the case . . . or for telling Itachi and Maven that I was unstable.

  Even if it was true.

  I sighed and unlocked the door, watching as he climbed into the car. To my horror, I realized that I was actually kind of glad to see him. Between the way he’d tattled on me and Simon’s warning about vampires’ motives, I wanted to loathe his undead guts. But there was also a part of me that found him very . . . comfortable to be around.

  “Is it absolutely necessary for you to scare the shit out of me every time we meet?” I demanded.

  “Hey, Lex,” he said, ignoring the question. “How’s tricks?” He glanced around the car. I keep it fairly neat, but there were a few empty containers from fountain sodas and chips that I hadn’t gotten to yet. “I see you’ve developed an exciting new interest in stalking.”

  “Is there news from Itachi?” I asked fervently. “Did they make a decision about me?”

  He shook his head. “No, sorry. The coffee shop gets really busy this time of year—midterms—and there’s been a bit of trouble with one of the Colorado Springs vampires. I think they’ve put the whole situation with your niece on the back burner. Charlie’s still protected,” he added hastily. “Just not a priority right now.”

  I didn’t bother saying that Charlie was always a priority to me. Quinn already knew. “Then why are you here?” I asked coolly.

  He gave a little shrug. “Just checking in. I hear you’ve been keeping up with the magic lessons. How did you get Mama Pellar’s permission?”

  I smiled wryly. Three afternoons a week, Simon or Lily came over to the cabin to teach me magic. Whenever I asked about Hazel’s thoughts on my training, though, they inevitably changed the subject. “I don’t actually know,” I admitted. “I’m not one hundred percent sure she even knows.” I got the sense that Simon and Lily had told Hazel that it was better to have me on their side than for me to be an unknown quantity, but they were too polite to tell me that.

  Quinn nodded impassively. “How are the lessons going?”

  I automatically opened my mouth to answer but caught myself just in time, turning in my seat to fully face Quinn. John’s street was well lit, and the vampire was looking at me with calm curiosity. “Who’s asking?” I said bluntly.

  A flicker of surprise crossed his features, either because he didn’t expect me to see through him, or because I’d hurt his feelings. If I hadn’t seen the look on his face when my palm had started bleeding, I wouldn’t even know whether he had feelings. “Just me, Lex,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

  “The lessons have been fine,” I said. Then I sighed, relenting. “Okay, not that fine. I’m learning more about what I can do—Simon geeks out about it on a regular basis—and it turns out I’ve got plenty of juice. But so far I’m a filter, not a focus.”

  Quinn nodded again. “You can pull the magic through you,” he translated, “but you can’t push it where you want it to go?”

  “Something like that.” I gave him a brief rundown of my training. For most of the sessions, we would go out behind my small backyard and stand near the fence that formed a border with the forest just beyond my cabin. Whichever Pellar was helping me would have me sense out the life in the forest. I had gotten good at visualizing myself putting on night-vision goggles and then filtering my vision until I caught the glowing sparks of mice, squirrels, and rabbits. I started to understand the sizes and shapes, although that wasn’t precisely the right word, of the different creatures.

  When Lily was my teacher, the practice would be laid-back and exploratory: she was big on improvisation, letting the lessons go wherever they took us. Eventually she started working with me on tethering down my emotions so my magic wouldn’t flare up and overwhelm me anymore. Simon, on the other hand, was much more organized and regimented. He actually brought a clipboard out to the backyard with us, using it to take notes on my capabilities. I’d made him swear he wouldn’t kill anything just for my education again, so his big thing was to have me practice turning on my magical plane mindset over and over again until it became second nature. When I got good at switching it on and off quickly, we started working on concentration, making sure I could hold the thermal-imaging mindset without getting easily distracted. Which usually meant trying to do it while Simon tossed pinecones at my face.

  One day, during a Simon practice, I had a breakthrough. We were working on expanding and contracting the beam of my scrutiny, so I would concentrate on a space about twelve feet by twelve feet, and then narrow my focus down to a single small nest of field mice within that square before repeating the process. T
hat afternoon practice had run long, and the sky had started to darken while we were still working. As I was concentrating on the mice, there was a sudden rustle of feathers and air, and I felt the larger spark of an owl swoop down onto my mice, snatching one of them up.

  As the mouse died, its spark didn’t just fade out—it changed into that same sickly, yellowish-brown, concentrated mist that had drifted toward me from the dead mouse in the hayloft. And I had a realization.

  “As it turns out,” I told Quinn now, “I’ve been feeling these sort of sparks of life, but they’re more than just little blips on my radar. They’re containers for the death-essence. Or at least that’s how my brain interprets it.”

  Quinn considered that for a long moment, then asked, “What happened to the essence when the mouse died?”

  I shivered. “It drifted toward me. It was . . . attracted to me.”

  “Wow,” Quinn said, impressed. “You really do have death in your blood.”

  After that epiphany, if I really concentrated during my practices, I could actually feel the death-essence within each blue buzz of life. After all, the potential for death is in all living things. I didn’t say that to the undead vampire beside me, though.

  “Can you do the same stuff that the other witches do?” Quinn said idly. “Protection spells and healing and whatnot?”

  “No,” I admitted. Simon had tried to teach me a very simple charm to clean something. I’d seen him use it on an old grill behind the cabin, forcing the dust and grime off it in one small, potent burst of magic. Then he’d reached down and picked up a fistful of dry dirt, depositing it on top of the grill. I hadn’t been able to clean off a speck. “Apparently, if it doesn’t have to do with death, I can’t access it.”

  “What about your niece?” he pressed. “Did you ever ask Simon about a connection between nulls and boundary witches?”