Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) (13 page)

C
hapter 23

Ten minutes later, Simon, Lily, and I were sitting around the little kitchen table. I kept eyeing the empty chair where Quinn should have been sitting. He’d gone to ground for the day, of course, but I hated planning things without him. It felt like riding a bike without one of my arms.

Simon had been examining the small sample of Emil’s blood, but the only thing he’d determined was that we were right about the belladonna. “There wasn’t enough in his system to kill him, but given how far gone Maven is, it would likely have killed her,” he told me grimly.

“How was he able to run if he was half-poisoned?” I asked, keeping my voice just above a whisper. Lily had crushed up four Advil and given them to me to swallow, but talking still hurt like hell. “I know you didn’t see him, but he was fast.”

Simon nodded like he’d expected the question. “I didn’t get a great look at all the crystals he was wearing, but probably one of them was boosting his stamina.”

I wanted to follow up on that, but before I could, Lily placed a hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, Lex,” she said. “We both are.”

Guilt flashed across Simon’s face. “Right, yeah. Sorry about your father being a . . . um . . .”

“Murderer?” I suggested.

“Yeah.” He glanced at Lily. “If anyone knows how rough it is to have evil family, it’s us.”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. “But he’s not my father.”

Their eyebrows rose in the same way, at the same time. “Um, he looks just like you,” Lily ventured.

“He’s my brother.”

The two of them exchanged a worried look—not in an
oh, that explains it
kind of way. More like an
uh-oh, being strangled has degraded poor Lex’s brain
kind of way. “What makes you say that?” Simon asked carefully.

“When I confronted him, he said someone was going to be pissed that he screwed up. I asked who, and he said, ‘our father.’ Then he ran.”

“Leaving you to face . . . whatever the hell those were,” Simon finished for me.

“They were wraiths,” I whispered, shuddering as I remembered the cowboy’s rage and desperation, his vise grip on my throat.

“But that’s impossible,” Lily protested. “Wraiths are tied to where they die, except on Samhain.” She looked uncertainly at her brother. “Right?”

He pushed up his glasses. “Right. And nothing I’ve ever read suggests that they can interact with the world physically.” He gestured to the bruises on my neck. “That’s some serious physical contact, Lex.”

“Trust me,” I said shortly. “They were wraiths. I could feel it. But they’d been trapped or directed somehow. They were being
made
to attack.”

Simon and Lily fell into awed silence. “How is that even possible?” Lily asked in a hushed voice.

“That big crystal,” I croaked. “Did you bring it back?”

He nodded. “And it wasn’t the only one.”

Lily got up and went to the counter, bringing back one of those reusable shopping bags from Trader Joe’s. She upended it on the table, and a bunch of gleaming stones tumbled out. Most of them were a sort of translucent gray, but there were a few chunks of dark green in there as well. They were just as shiny and cared-for as the purple stone I’d found in my backyard. “These were scattered all over the sculpture garden in a sort of circular pattern, similar to many witch spells,” Simon told me. “I wanted to document their placement a little more, but we were worried about you.”

“Do you have the jacket I was wearing?” Someone had pulled it off me while I was unconscious, probably to make me more comfortable. Lily got up and retrieved it from the hall closet.

When she handed it to me, I dug the purple stone out of the side pocket and placed it on the table with the others. “I found this in my yard yesterday. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the dogs reacted to it like they do to magic. Do you recognize it?”

Lily picked it up and examined it, then shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say amethyst, but I really only know about it as a birthstone. I don’t know much about crystals.”

I looked at Simon. “Me neither,” he said.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. I’d sort of assumed that as trades witches, Simon and Lily would know all about using stones in magic. “You don’t?” I asked.

They both shook their heads. “Crystals and stones are gravitational magic,” Simon told me. “We don’t know much more about it than the average citizen of Boulder.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said patiently, “most gravitational magic doesn’t work with witch magic.”

I looked back and forth between them, confused.

“Crossed signals,” Lily explained. “Sort of like . . . having the bluetooth and the wireless turned on in your laptop. Makes everything slower and clumsier. So we don’t use it.”

It scared me a little that I almost followed that. Simon held up a finger. “There are a
couple
of crystals that are compatible with witch magic,” he cautioned. “For example, pretty much every witch I know has a bracelet or a necklace made from labradorite.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Lily said with a nod. “I have a brooch.”

“But other than that,” Simon continued, “the important thing to know about gravitational magic is that it isn’t limited to the Old World. In theory, anyone can use it.”

So Emil really didn’t have access to boundary magic. He’d just found a work-around. “Like scrying?” I offered.

“What do you know about scrying?”

“That’s how Emil said he found me.” I described the shiny black stone disk he’d shown me when we first met. “I never really gave much thought to how he could do that without active witchblood. I should have.”

“He’s a magician, then,” Lily said, as if that explained everything.

Simon was nodding, but I was still confused. “Like at kids’ parties? Sawing a woman in half and rabbits out of top hats?”

Simon snorted. Lily answered, “No. Magicians are humans who use gravitational magic.”

“There are a few things that any human can do, in theory,” Simon explained. “It’s like an equation: A plus B equals C. It’s usually weaker than our magic, but more stable. If your—if Emil knows how to use crystals, he’s a magician. There aren’t many of them left.”

Lily nodded. “But that still doesn’t explain how he got the wraiths inside them,” she pointed out.

“Sophia,” I said abruptly. Looking at them, I added, “He said his mother is a boundary witch, and apparently she looks younger than him. That means she’s got strong magic, right? She must have figured out a way to harness and trap the wraiths.”

“How do you know he was telling the truth about his mother?” Simon asked. “He lied about being your father.”

“But that picture he gave me was real. And I checked, he really does own a New Age shop in Nova Scotia . . . which probably sells crystals. God, I’m an idiot.”

“No, he just mixed truths in with his lies,” Lily said, rescuing me. “He’s smart.”

“Yeah, but why? What’s the point of all this?” I said, frustrated. My throat hurt, and I felt so far out of my depth it was threatening to choke me all over again.

“He tried to kill Maven,” Simon mused. “Twice.”

“Does he want Colorado?” Lily said.

Simon looked doubtful. “I only met him briefly, but he didn’t seem like the world-domination type. And he’s not even a witch. How would he expect to hold a whole state?”

“No, he’s working for someone,” I concluded.

“Who?”

“Our father. Whoever the hell that is.”

C
hapter 24

It was obvious that we needed to do more research on gravitational magic, but Simon and Lily didn’t have any special resources. Their texts were limited to witch magic.

A few minutes on the internet proved that there was a ton of information out there about crystals, but much of it was contradictory or unsupported.

“We need a library run,” Lily concluded. “Or maybe one of those New Age bookstores. There’s one downtown where I get my sage.”

I started to stand up, but she put a hand on my arm. “Not you,” she ordered. Getting up from the table, she went to the fridge and got a bottle of one of those sports drinks with electrolytes. “You need to drink this and go back to bed.”

“I have to go home to take care of the herd anyway,” I protested. “I might as well go to the library too.”

Lily just cocked an eyebrow. “Have you looked in a mirror yet?”

That brought me up short. “Huh?”

“You look like you . . . um . . . saw a ghost,” Simon said, with a wince of apology. “If anyone sees those bruises, you’re gonna get some attention.”

Right. I’d forgotten. I dragged myself into the little bathroom and took a look in the mirror. My jaw dropped open. I looked . . . well, actually, I looked like one of the wraiths. My skin was deadly pale except for a spectacular purplish bruise on my cheekbone, which was just beginning to lighten to blue around the edges. I tilted my head up to get a good look at the matching ring of bruising around my neck. It was fainter and less defined, but just as purple as my face. Meanwhile, there were dark circles under my eyes, and my hair hung in lifeless clumps around my face.

I sighed. I could come up with a story for the facial bruise, but my neck couldn’t be mistaken for anything but strangulation. If I bumped into any of my family members looking like this, they’d frog-march me to the police station to file a report on whoever did this.

I went back out to Simon and Lily. “I can’t just let you guys do all the work,” I argued. “This is my case.”

“Lex,” Lily said gently, “you are literally leaning against the doorframe because you’re too weak to stand.”

I straightened up. “No, I’m not.”

It took a bit more negotiating, but I finally agreed to rest for another hour while Lily took care of the herd and stopped at the Lighthouse Bookstore, a New Age store on Pearl that probably had a lot in common with Emil’s store in Nova Scotia. It was likely to have some texts that weren’t exactly science-based. She would also bring back makeup, clothes, and a scarf from my cabin. Meanwhile, Simon would make a trip to Boulder’s main library, where he would bring back everything he could find on crystals. Then we’d reconvene for the actual research.

I fell into Simon’s bed with a blissful relief that only increased my guilt.

And opened my eyes in my old bedroom.

Out of curiosity, I reached up and touched my face. No bruises when I was in the dream-space. Interesting. I looked up and saw Sam, sitting cross-legged on her old bed with her hands raised defensively. “I know, I know,” she said immediately, “I got some splainin’ to do.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “You know what happened with Emil?”

She nodded. “And I’m really sorry. Val and I had no idea he was going to betray you like that.”

I noticed that our birth mother was “Val” now and felt a ridiculous stab of envy. “She must have known he’s not actually our father,” I said.

Sam bit her lip and said nothing. We’d entered into one of those topics she couldn’t talk about. Okay, fine.

“I’m not sure he meant to betray
me
,” I said, thinking it over. “If he wanted to kill Maven, he could have walked into that room and plunged a stake into her heart before anyone could stop him. If I hadn’t seen his necklace, if Simon and Quinn hadn’t noticed the signs of belladonna, he could have poisoned Maven and waltzed right out of there. We would have assumed she just succumbed to the earlier poisoning.”

“I am so proud of you for using the word ‘succumb,’” Sam said seriously.

I ignored her. “My point is, he made himself sick so he could get away with killing Maven on my watch. He wasn’t trying to hurt me—it was more that I got in the way of his objective.”

“He did send those things to kill you,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, after I’d backed him into a corner. I’m not saying Emil’s a good guy, but he didn’t set out to get me. Whoever he’s working with, their goal is to kill Maven, not me.”

She leaned back with her spine against the wall, and I recognized her expression. Sam is—was—always the charming one, the life of the party. It sometimes seemed like that was all there was to her—charm and good humor. But anyone who underestimated my sister learned pretty quickly that she was also smart and shrewd. “You have to find out who he’s working for,” she said at last.

“Well, duh. Can’t you help me with that?”

She shook her head, looking perplexed. “Even if I was allowed to tell you, I don’t know. I can’t see—” she broke off, tilting her head in that listening gesture. I waited. “Emil’s boss isn’t human, I can tell you that much,” she said. I wondered if she’d been about to tell me that her perception of the living was limited to the Old World. Or to humans. Or to magic? Damn, this was frustrating.

“But it’s a he,” I said. “Male. And he’s possibly our father, right?”

Sam scrunched up her face helplessly. She couldn’t talk about that. I gritted my teeth.

“This is ridiculous, Sammy. People could die if I can’t figure out—”

She said it so softly that I almost missed it. “People
have
died.”

I froze—and woke up to Lily shaking my shoulder.

“Sam,” I gasped as my eyes flew open.

“Um, no. Lily.” She held up a paper grocery-style bag. “I have books. And Simon brought food from that place you—” She registered the look on my face and went still. “What is it?”

“People
have
died,” I repeated. I climbed off the bed, only wobbling a little, and staggered into the kitchen. “Si, do you have the newspapers?”

Simon, who was sitting at the table, raised his eyebrows. “In the recycling. Why?”

I went to the cupboard underneath the sink and dragged out the recycling bin. I pulled out the stack of newspapers and picked through them until I had the front section from the last three days. The rest of the stack I let fall to the floor. Simon had been right: there were very few murders in Boulder every year, which meant they would undoubtedly make the front page.

Simon and Lily had spread books about crystals all over the table, but I laid out the newspaper sections right over them. There was nothing interesting on the front pages for Tuesday or Wednesday, but the headline for yesterday’s paper screamed POLICE ON ALERT AS BODY FOUND IN DUMPSTER. I scanned the first few lines, enough to confirm that the story was about the engineer from Fort Collins that Elise had mentioned on the phone.

I mumbled to myself, “Plural, she said people,
plural
.” Then I glanced up at Simon. He and Lily were both giving me bewildered expressions. “Humor me a minute. Where’s today’s paper?”

Simon went to his messenger bag and pulled out a folded newspaper. “The paper boy leaves it outside the building. I haven’t even looked at it yet,” he said, handing it over.

I practically tore it open. The headline above the fold read SECOND BODY FOUND.

I scanned the opening paragraphs. The second corpse was a college student from Oregon, no obvious connection to the first victim, although the article spent some time speculating on possibilities. Her body had snagged on a fallen tree in Boulder Creek and been spotted early this morning by hikers in Open Space and Mountain Parks. The police had no idea where the body was originally dumped, but the victim was wearing a fitness tracker that had stopped transmitting at 9:05 p.m., which must have been when she’d gone into the water. I automatically glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was after eleven. I rounded on Lily and Simon. “You let me sleep for over three hours?”

Neither of them looked the least bit contrite. “Your body needed it, Lex,” Lily said.

“What are you thinking?” Simon asked, reading over my shoulder. “The bodies really are connected to the Old World? Why?”

“Because Sam said they are.”

I didn’t bother to watch Simon and Lily react to that. I didn’t care if they believed me about Sam. There were too many pieces here, and it was driving me crazy that none of them seemed to fit together.

Ordinarily this is where I would have really wanted to pace, but I was too tired to move. I sat down and closed my eyes, trying to reason through it. “Two and a half weeks ago, the Denver vampires were poisoned. It took two weeks for the news to get to Maven, who sent Quinn and me to Denver to investigate. Ford tried to kill us, and when we killed him, we thought we’d put the belladonna attacks to rest. But Maven was poisoned the next night.”

“And the next day, Emil tried to finish her off right in front of us,” Simon prompted. “Where are you going with this?”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Ford wouldn’t work for Emil. Vampires don’t do that, especially not a dominus dickhead like Ford supposedly was. So let’s say Emil was working for Ford, as unlikely and coincidental as that seems. I could see Ford sending Emil on a sneak attack to kill Maven.”

“Then Ford could swoop in afterwards and claim the state, without actually needing to face Maven himself,” Simon offered.

I pointed at him. “Exactly. I can buy that plan. But then why would Emil still try to kill Maven after Ford was already dead? And where does our father fit into all this?”

“Maybe Emil didn’t know Ford had been killed,” Lily suggested. “Maybe they’d already set the wheels in motion before the attack.”

I turned that over in my mind, and shook my head. “Emil seems too smooth for that kind of mistake. When I met him for coffee he was incredibly convincing. Besides, Emil didn’t kill the college student last night.”

“How do you know?” Simon asked.

I jabbed a finger on that morning’s headline. “Because he was with us at 9:05 last night, and that was long after Ford died. Neither of them could have killed this student.”

“Emil could have set traps in crystals, like he did with you,” Lily ventured.

“I don’t think so. Setting traps would have required stalking the victims and predicting their behavior. These attacks were random; these people were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Simon studied my face. In some ways, he knew me better than Lily did. “You have a theory,” he said.

I nodded. “I think my father killed them with boundary magic.”