Boundary Crossed

by Melissa F. Olson

  Quinn shrugged. “Our people only saw the top of a car seat, but presumably.”

  It made me oddly relieved that Charlie was in a car seat. It was kind of stupid, since I knew Kirby could still do any number of horrible things to her, but at least if they got into a fender bender she’d be fine. “Okay.” I paced a few feet away, thinking. My shoes still felt sticky and disgusting, but I could handle that. I paused and turned back to Quinn. “What time does the sun rise?” I asked. “Seven? Quarter after?”

  He nodded. “About that.”

  “Then we’ve got five hours before he tries to leave the state again,” I concluded.

  It was Simon who said, “How do you figure?”

  “Charlie,” Quinn said, understanding dawning on his face.

  I nodded. “Kirby’s got a null with him, so he can go out in the sun. His smartest move is to wait until dawn, when all the vampires guarding the border will have to go to ground. Then he can sashay right out of Colorado.”

  “If they cross the state line,” Quinn said quietly. “Itachi and Maven can’t help. She’ll disappear.”

  I nodded and resumed my pacing. “How do we find them?” I glanced at Simon. “You said something once about using spells to find things?”

  He shook his head. “We’d need something of Kirby’s, preferably hair or fingernails. But even then it’s unlikely the magic would work.”

  “Because he’s also magic?”

  Simon nodded. “That, and because he’s with a null. I’m not sure anyone could find a null.”

  “Shit.” I paced to the edge of the candlelight, then back. It was getting downright cold out here, and I longed to go inside the farmhouse, which was now glowing with light. But I wasn’t ready to face all those people—the ones who’d had to hold me down while I screamed.

  I needed to focus on the problem at hand. I needed a plan. “Back to the plan,” I muttered. What was Victor and Darcy’s original plan for Charlie? They were going to take her to Nolan’s house. Nolan was then going to take her to a middleman—Kirby?—who would take her out of state. Like links in a chain, presumably to avoid accountability. Each person would only have the baby for a few hours, so they wouldn’t appear suspicious.

  I stopped pacing and turned back to the two men, who were watching me. Simon looked a little bemused, which was kind of fair. I probably looked ridiculous, with the ruined dress and my hair and makeup smeared everywhere. Quinn’s expression looked as implacable as ever at first glance, but I was getting better at reading the subtleties. He was watching me intently, looking for an opening to jump in and help.

  “Was Kirby always in on the plan?” I said to him. “We were both so sure he wasn’t involved after we spoke to him at the fraternity.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that. I could be wrong, but I believe Kirby was recruited later, after the attempt with Victor and Darcy failed.”

  “You don’t think he could be the middleman?” I asked. “The ‘merchant’ who was supposed to get Charlie from Nolan?”

  Quinn shook his head, but Simon visibly jumped. “Wait, say that again,” he urged.

  I raised an eyebrow, but said, “Darcy told me that she and Victor were taking Charlie to their senior—Nolan—who was taking her to the merchant. The merchant would place Charlie with new . . . well, she used the word ‘parents,’ but it felt like she meant something more insidious.”

  Simon closed the space between us in three steps and took my arm. “You’re positive she used the word ‘merchant’?” he said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  Simon looked from me to Quinn, then back at me. “Because the Merchant isn’t just a middleman. He’s a witch.”

  Chapter 36

  Quinn made a call to update the vampires. While he did that, Simon and I started toward the house. I was moving okay on my own, but I noticed he was keeping one hand hovering behind my back, ready to catch me in case I toppled. “Who is this guy?” I asked. “The Merchant?”

  “His name is Billy Atwood. He’s a shitkicker witch just east of Gainesville who fancies himself an outlaw,” Simon explained, his voice sour. “He’s the last in the Atwood line of witches, at least around here. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t even have much power, but he thinks he deserves to be a badass. He started calling himself the Merchant when he began dealing.”

  “Drugs?” I asked.

  Simon nodded. “Drugs, guns, stolen valuables. He’s so unbelievably small-time, though, that nobody particularly cares. Atwood’s the only drug lord I’ve ever heard of who has to keep up a day job. He’s a freelance welder.”

  “He sounds like an asshole. Why the hell would vampires be working with him?” I wondered.

  Simon’s expression turned thoughtful. “He’s hungry, for one thing. Always striving for upward mobility. And he has no scruples. If someone promised him enough money, he’d be happy to kidnap a baby. He’d probably see it as his chance to graduate to a better class of badass.”

  “Plus he’s a fall guy,” I said, remembering the links in the chain. As evidence goes, it was thin, but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that Kirby had gone back to the Merchant’s to hide out until daylight. He would want to stay away from the other vampires—it was too likely that they would tattle to Itachi if he went to them—and since we hadn’t found the Merchant during the first go-round, there was no reason for Kirby to think we’d find him now. No one knew that Darcy had mentioned the word “merchant” to me, and if she hadn’t, we would never have thought to look for a witch.

  Quinn caught up with us, walking on my opposite side. “We’re sanctioned,” he said grimly. “Kirby and this Merchant, if necessary.”

  Simon held up a hand. “Whoa. Atwood is a piece of shit, but he’s a witch piece of shit. Our problem. I’m coming with you, and I’ll take care of him.”

  Quinn opened his mouth to protest, but I held up my hand. “Stop. Simon comes, and we’ll fight about it in the car.” I looked down at the remains of my dress and my blood-soaked shoes. To Simon, I added, “Does Lily keep any clothes here? And maybe some sneakers?”

  Ten minutes later I met the two of them at Quinn’s car, wearing Lily’s black leggings, ribbed white tank top, and black motorcycle jacket, which strained at the arms—I had more muscle than its owner. Lily didn’t have any sneakers at the farmhouse, but Hazel had reluctantly handed over a pair of crimson Keens that were a size too big for me. They didn’t do much for the rest of the outfit, but at that point I was willing to take anything as long as it wasn’t sticky or high-heeled.

  I had longed for a shower, but settled for rinsing the dried blood off my feet in the bathroom sink and splashing water on my face to get rid of the smeared makeup. I slicked back my hair with water to keep it out of my face. My shoes and dress had gone straight into the bathroom garbage. Hopefully none of the borrowed clothes would suffer the same fate. The leather jacket alone probably cost two weeks’ pay at the Depot.

  Lily had looked drawn and exhausted, but she’d promised she would be fine. When I tried to thank her and Hazel, they just waved me on. “Get that null back,” Hazel said, her expression grim. “You’re going to need her.”

  Gainesville was a minuscule town about fifteen miles north of Boulder, near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The population was something like a thousand people, which meant they had a few bars, a single gas station, and not a whole lot else. Gainesville was a town you drove through on the way to a music festival in Lyons, not a place where anyone actually chose to stop.

  And yet here we were, leaving for Gainesville. “Weapons?” I asked Quinn before we got in.

  He nodded. “Everything we need is in the trunk,” he promised.

  Quinn drove while I sat shotgun. Simon and Quinn spent the first third of the drive fighting over which of them had the responsibility to kill Billy Atwood, if it c
ame down to it. I ignored the argument. I didn’t care what happened to Atwood. All I cared about was making Charlie safe.

  They finally agreed to play it by ear, which they frankly should have thought of to begin with, and as the argument wound down I turned to look at Simon in the backseat. “What’s the layout of the property?” I asked. “Where will this guy be keeping her?”

  “Billy lives in what’s left of the Atwood farm,” Simon explained. “It’s not a working farm like ours. It’s basically just a small house and an old barn he uses for welding projects.”

  “Where would he keep Charlie?” I asked. “The house?”

  Simon looked uneasy. “You gotta understand, I’ve only been to check on this guy twice to make sure he wasn’t abusing magic. And both times he was working out in the barn when I got there. I’ve never even been in the house.”

  “Well, you’re all we’ve got,” I said firmly. “So take a guess: house or barn?”

  “Hopefully the house,” he said. “He usually keeps the stuff he fences in the barn, but the place is like something out of a horror movie: the whole building is packed wall to wall with welding gear and junk, all of it with sharp edges and covered in rust. It’s a tetanus outbreak waiting to happen.”

  “That seems idiotic,” I said. “What if a neighbor kid wanders in?”

  Simon shrugged. “It’s dangerous, yeah, but it acts as its own security system. Nobody wants to look through that death trap to find the valuables he hides in there. It’s crammed so full of metal edges that it’s impossible to move from one wall to the other unless you know the place. I don’t think Atwood even bothers closing the barn door at night.”

  “That is literally the worst environment I can imagine for an eighteen-month-old,” I said. Panic clawed up my rib cage as I involuntarily pictured Charlie toddling around in a room like that. “He wouldn’t keep her in there, would he?”

  “Probably not,” Simon said. “But like I said, I don’t know the layout of the house at all.”

  “Then we go in and search blind,” Quinn said. “Tell us anything you do know about the house or the layout of the farm. Anything at all.”

  Simon considered that for a moment. “There’s a driveway that runs north-south. The barn is on the west side of the driveway, and the house is on the east side. It’s small, maybe three bedrooms or so, two stories. Probably built early in the twentieth century.” His brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, the barn’s tall enough for a second story, too, although I don’t remember seeing a hayloft.” He shrugged. “I was too busy trying not to slice off my elbows, frankly.”

  We were going in without much intel, but we didn’t have a choice. All that mattered was stopping Kirby before he could get Charlie out of the state.

  But would that actually make my niece safe?

  “Quinn,” I said, “Something else to consider . . . If you’re right, and Kirby was brought into this thing later . . .”

  Understanding flashed in his eyes. “Then there’s still someone else pulling the strings,” he finished with a frown. “That’s not good. He or she might decide to oversee this thing in person.”

  Shit. Quinn had guns and shredders in the car, but what if they weren’t enough? What if we were up against someone who’d be prepared for those things? I turned to look at Simon again. “How stable am I?” I asked. When he just blinked at me, I rolled my hand in the air. “You told me last month not to press any vampires because my magic was too unstable. Kind of a lot has happened since then.” Simon chortled at the understatement.

  Before he could answer, Quinn broke in. “What did you just say?” He looked at Simon in his rearview mirror. “Did she just say she can press vampires?”

  It was kind of funny, hearing so much shock in his voice, but I kept my focus on Simon.

  “In theory,” he said hesitantly, “the tattoos should stabilize you.”

  “But?” I prompted.

  He shrugged. “You know the deal. Boundary witches are unpredictable. And you’ve got more access to raw magic than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  I tilted my head, thinking it over. “I’m gonna take that as a ‘stable enough,’” I decided.

  Quinn was still looking back and forth between me and his mirror. “You can press vampires?” he repeated. “Why didn’t you tell me? Have you ever pressed me?” There was an edge of anger in his voice. “Seriously, Lex, did you?”

  “See?” Simon pointed out. “They really don’t like that you can do that.”

  I eventually persuaded Quinn that I hadn’t pressed him, and we kept going straight north on Highway 36. Then Simon had Quinn go left on Ute Highway instead of heading straight into the town of Gainesville. We were in a very rural part of the county, with darkness unbroken except for the occasional single spotlight above a barn or house. The ground was all scrubby brush out here, which made it seem more like ranch country than farm country, but what the hell did I know about that?

  Finally, Simon told Quinn to pull over and cut the lights. He complied, and we were suddenly sitting in near-total darkness, the brushwood around us lit only by the stars. “The Atwood place is a little less than a mile down this road,” Simon said in a low voice. “I think we should leave the car here and hike up. We may actually have a shot at the element of surprise if Kirby stays close enough to Charlie.”

  Quinn popped the back latch, and we all got out of the car and walked around toward the tepid glow of the trunk light. I’d seen the top two layers of Quinn’s stash—camping gear covering up power tools and shredders—but now he shoved all of that aside and grasped the little hook to open the spare tire well.

  There was no spare tire. Instead, the space had been slightly enlarged and packed with a small but excellent assortment of firearms. “Help yourself,” Quinn said casually, as though he was sharing a bag of M&Ms. I recognized an 8-gauge shotgun, which couldn’t have been legal, and a TAR-21 assault rifle, which was gorgeous but which I couldn’t shoot lefthanded. I admired a Desert Eagle handgun, but it was way too big for my hand. Then I realized I was standing around playing Goldilocks and the three guns, and told myself to stop geeking out.

  “Yessss,” I hissed as I spotted a semiautomatic Beretta M9, exactly like the one I’d used in the service. I grabbed the Beretta, two spare magazines, and a Mossberg 590 pump shotgun on a strap, slinging it over my head in a move as familiar as brushing my teeth. Then I reached for a handful of shredders. As I did, Simon frowned at them.

  “You should know that if you take those stakes close to your niece, they might not work afterwards.”

  “Why not?” I asked doubtfully, examining the point of one of the stakes.

  “Oh, they’ll still go into a vampire’s heart,” Simon promised, giving Quinn a little sidelong glance. “But I’m not sure how the spell on them will react to being near a null. It might short out, which will make it almost impossible to actually kill a vampire with one—unless, of course, you can get him to hold really still.”

  I remembered Quinn explaining that you had to either remove or practically mince a vampire’s heart in order to kill it. “Okay, but they’re still safer to use around a baby than one of the guns,” I pointed out grimly. “Remember when you guys are shooting that any ricochets could go into my niece. Don’t fire unless you’re positive you’ll hit your target.”

  They both nodded, sobered.

  I helped myself to a simple fast-draw holster that had already been conveniently attached to a belt. The belt was so long that it ended up hanging low on my hips like I was an Old West gunslinger, but as long as it didn’t pull my pants down, I couldn’t care less. I was getting into that state of mind I remembered from the army: quiet, alert, and still . . . until I needed to snap into movement.

  Quinn took only a bunch of shredders and a handgun I didn’t recognize. Simon looked grimly at the weapons cache for a long moment, but then just grabbe
d some shredders, tucking them into the breast pocket of his army-style jacket. I wondered if I’d freaked him out by bringing up the idea that a ricochet could accidentally hit Charlie, but I shrugged off the concern. If he was really worried about controlling his shots, he shouldn’t have a gun.

  All three of us took penlights from the top stash of supplies, and then Quinn closed the trunk. We left the Toyota and headed for the farm as quietly as possible. Simon had suggested that we curve around the driveway and approach from the east, so that we would come up on the back of the farmhouse. Quinn, who had vampire reflexes and night sight, took the lead, and Simon and I followed as closely as possible, walking blind through the countryside.

  Quinn moved silently through the undergrowth, and I wasn’t much louder, having spent a good deal of time sneaking around with guns. Simon, however, was a disaster in the stealth department: his shoes kept catching on weeds, and the stakes clanked around in his jacket. He tried clutching one hand to his chest to keep them still, but that threw off his balance just enough to make him stumble more. I fought not to snap at him, reminding myself that he wasn’t a soldier or a vampire. His work with the clan probably didn’t require too much experience with covert operations. After a quarter mile or so I switched places with him so he could follow Quinn more closely, and that helped a little.

  Finally Quinn slowed to a stop, and ahead of us I could see a small farmhouse with a couple of lights on, including one outdoor security light above the back screen door. Back in the car, we’d decided on a strategy. The house would likely have two entrances, a front door and a back one, and some windows on the second story that a vampire could get in and out of easily. As we drew closer to the house, I made eye contact with the men, touched my watch, and nodded. In my head, I began to silently count as we split off: Simon to the back door, me around to the front. Quinn would wait until we were in position and then take a running leap onto the lower part of the roof, so he could duck in through a second-story window. It was a risk—if Charlie happened to be close to wherever he landed, there was a possibility that he’d fall back down, maybe find himself with a broken leg or two. But Quinn had assured us that if that did happen, he’d heal fast enough to be back in the fight within a few minutes.