Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) (20 page)

C
hapter 36

Ardie fucking Atwood. Just like that, I knew where to find Lysander.

I checked Emil’s pulse more from habit than anything else but he was gone. Carefully, I pulled the leather cord over his head and tugged it free. The knot was big and clumsy, but not terribly difficult to pick apart. I slid off the crystal Emil had indicated, leaving the others with his body for now. I didn’t want to mess around with gravitational magic any more than I had to, especially if I didn’t know what it was supposed to do. I was just hoping whatever stone had worked for my mother would work for me, too.

The crystal that had belonged to Valerya was four inches long and cylindrical, only about as thick as my thumb. It was dark green, with tiny red flecks in it. For a moment I thought Emil’s blood had dripped on it, but no, the spots were too tiny. I had seen this stone when I was thumbing through the little book from the New Age store. It was called bloodstone, precisely because of those red flecks.

It hummed softly in my hand, and I understood that this crystal had more power than the cassiterite I’d bought in Boulder, or even the mahogany obsidian around my neck. Emil had probably taken good care of it. I took off my own long necklace and hastily added the crystal to the cord. I wished I remembered what bloodstone did, but there was no time. I was going to have to trust that it was something good.

I was exhausted, and I still felt like hammered crap, but I had to go after the draugr. He was expecting Emil to cart me back to Nova Scotia for him, so I would have the element of surprise, along with my carload of weapons. This was the best shot I was going to get.

I left Emil’s body on the ground and climbed to my feet, looking around the garden. Five lifeless vampire bodies were crumpled on the ground around me, with Opal sitting in the middle of them, her knees huddled to her chest. For the first time I registered that she wore a bloodstained white cocktail dress.

Making my way around the vampire bodies, I went over and crouched in front of her. “What happened to you?” I asked.

“I . . . I’m not sure,” she confessed, looking miserable. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that vampires hated to be pressed. “The last thing I remember is getting a call to come in and see Maven. I went to Magic Beans, but . . .” She crinkled her face, unable to remember. “I think someone was waiting for me.”

“It’s going to be okay.” I touched her shoulder, awkwardly. “Opal, I need you to wait here for Quinn. I’m going after the person responsible for all of this.”

She gave me an uncomprehending look. “But don’t you want Quinn to go with you? He always goes with you.”

“If he did, Lysander would press him, just like he pressed you,” I told her. “Quinn would never forgive himself if he hurt me. Just tell him . . . tell him I love him, okay?”

She nodded dully. I didn’t know if the message would make it to Quinn or not, but it didn’t really matter. He knew.

I took Emil’s cell phone from her, stood, and ran for Kirsten’s rental car. But when I got there, a familiar Jeep was parking behind it.

Quinn jumped from the seat with vampire grace and rushed over to me, hands touching my face, checking my neck. “Are you okay? What were you thinking?” he said in almost the same breath.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“I was already on my way. That witch, Kirsten, called Hazel to apologize for not going through the proper channels for coming into town. Hazel called Lily. When we realized you were no longer with Kirsten, I knew something must have happened. Or someone took you.” He tilted his head at the rental car. “Rental cars have GPS now.”

I threw my arms around him. He let me hold him for a moment, then pulled back, his hands clutching my upper arms. “I can’t believe you came to meet Emil without me. What happened?”

His nostrils flared, and his pupils contracted. I nodded, realizing he was smelling Emil’s blood. “Emil’s dead. He had Elise, and he said I had to come alone, and I killed him.” I could hear myself babbling, but I couldn’t seem to slow the words. “Can you please press Elise and get her home?” I would feel guilty about brainwashing my cousin later. “I need to go.”

I made it about a third of a step in the direction of the Kia before he stopped me. “
What
? Where?”

I hesitated, trying to think of a lie he’d believe, but the pause gave me away. “You’re going after Lysander, aren’t you?” he demanded. “I’m coming with you.”

I reached up, wrapping my fingers around the back of his neck and pulling him down to meet me. “You can’t, Quinn. Lysander can press vampires.”

He only blanched for a moment. “I’ll wear sunglasses. I won’t look at his face.”

I pressed my forehead against his. “No, baby,” I said softly. “You know that’s not good enough. He’s too strong.”

His face clouded over, and I saw what it cost him to say, “Then at least take Simon. Hell, take him and Lily both.”

“I can’t do that either. Even if I were willing to risk them, which I’m not, the only way this will work is a surprise offensive. You
know
that, Quinn.”

He jerked his head away from me. “If you won’t take Simon, then I’m coming with you,” he said stubbornly.

I sighed. Quinn trusted me to handle so many situations by myself—Ford’s vampires outside the Jeep, for example—but this was too much for him. “Look, you swore an oath of loyalty to Maven.” I gestured over my shoulder. “Maybe Emil’s blood could help her. Take it to her. I’ll be fine.”

It was a flimsy excuse—only last night, Emil’s blood had been full of belladonna—and we both knew it. Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you
dare
try to make this about me choosing her over you. You want to go alone because you’re afraid to risk me.” His eyes widened. “Or is it that you’re planning to let him have you?”

I tried to keep my face neutral, but he was right. If I couldn’t beat Lysander, I would have no choice but to go with him. Emil was right: he would keep coming at me, and more people would get hurt. I would be the new keeper, the new surrogate, whatever, if it meant he would leave my town and my friends alone.

“He took Elise, Quinn,” I pleaded, my voice cracking. “He’s not going to stop until I go with him or one of us is dead. And we can’t die.” Tears filled my eyes. “I have so much to lose. Charlie—”

“Don’t make this about Charlie,” he said angrily. “Your whole life is about Charlie. Everything you do is to protect that little girl.”

That brought me up short for a moment, and I felt my temper rising. “So goddamned what? That sounds like a pretty great plan to me.”

“But you’re more than just a bulletproof vest,” he contended. “Charlie might be your mission, soldier, but she’s not your life.”

“You’re one to talk,” I snapped. “When’s the last time you did anything that Maven didn’t explicitly order?”

He just looked at me. “When I fell in love with you.”

My eyes filled. I tilted my head up to kiss him, but he recognized it as goodbye and pulled away from me. “No. Don’t let him do this to you. To us.”

The tears began to fall. Closing the small distance between us, I reached up to touch his face with both hands. I made sure the tips of my griffin tattoos touched his jawline.

Then I opened the connection between us.

I felt his mind fight it for one instant, felt the hurt and betrayal like a physical blow to my stomach. But I kept going anyway, and I had the connection locked into place before he could jerk away from me. His face went slack.

“Take charge of this scene,” I instructed, hoping that the press would work in spite of my wobbly voice. “Take care of the vampires and the body, and make sure Elise gets home safely and doesn’t remember what happened tonight. Forget that you saw me here. Do not worry about me until the next time you see me.”

It worked. Quinn gave me an empty nod and shambled off to follow my orders. I took one quick, sobbing breath and fled for the car.

C
hapter 37

I cried most of the way to Denver. I had violated Quinn’s trust. Even if I survived this, I would have to live with that. And if I didn’t survive, or if I was taken away to be a surrogate, he would have to live with the knowledge that he had failed to stop me. And that I’d betrayed him.

I cried for Quinn, for me, but a little bit for Emil, too. The look on his face when he wanted me to let him die . . . I wouldn’t forget that anytime soon. He had been working against me, planning several moves ahead to keep me on the defensive. In fact, I’d been on the defensive since the moment that gray fox broke through my window. But looking at it now, I knew Emil wasn’t evil. He’d been backed into a corner, surrounded by terrible decisions.

Only an hour earlier, I’d had a brother. And then I’d killed him.

The tears finally stopped, and a feeling of resolution crept over me. I was doing the right thing. Well, no, but I was doing the only thing I could.

I hadn’t planned to talk to anyone else before confronting Lysander, but as I went over my plan of attack, I realized I’d overlooked something. Luckily, I knew Lily’s number by heart. I punched it into the disposable phone.

“Hello?” Her voice was cautious and worried, expecting bad news.

“It’s me.”

“Lex! Oh my God, where are you?”

“Lily, listen to me,” I said clearly. “Emil confessed that he got the belladonna from Ardie Atwood. She’s in on this whole thing.” As quickly as I could, I explained what I’d learned. Ardie had told Quinn and me about Billy’s out-of-state network of magical degenerates, which she must have inherited after his death. Emil had bought belladonna from her and used it on the Denver vampires, knowing that it would draw Quinn and me out to investigate. He must have planned to capture me and then go after Maven, but Quinn and I had bested Ford and his associates. Emil then had no choice but to move ahead with his Plan B—attack Maven, forcing me into a position in which I needed his help. Lily listened quietly through the whole thing, uncharacteristically never interrupting.

“I don’t know how much Ardie knew about Emil’s intentions,” I concluded, “But she was definitely the seller, and she lied to us about it. You can’t ever trust her again, okay?”

There was a long pause, so long that I checked the phone screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.

“Okay,” she said finally, and then repeated it to herself. “Okay. I’m glad you told me.” Another brief pause. “Wait, why are you telling me on the phone? Where are you?”

The tears choked in my still-sore throat. “I love you, Lily.”

“No!” she shouted, surprising me. “Whatever stupid, suicidal plan you’ve got, don’t do it.”

“Lily . . . I have to.”

I was about to hang up, but she blurted, “Then you have to promise me something.”

I paused. “What?”

“
Be a witch
,” she said fiercely. “Not just Lex, the ex-soldier, not just Maven’s employee or Charlie’s bodyguard. Simon and I, we’ve been trying to teach you that you’re a witch first, and I don’t think we’ve succeeded.”

“I hear you.”

“Boundary magic isn’t a tool in your toolbox, Lex. You’re it, and it’s you. You’re the channel. Don’t ever forget it. And
please
be safe,” she begged.

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see it. “Lily, it’s been an honor.”

Then I hung up the phone.

As soon as Emil had said that Ardie was involved and Lysander was surrounded by the dead, I knew where he’d be.

I’d been to the Botanic Gardens in Denver as a child, and two years ago I’d chaperoned a field trip for my cousin Brie’s son, Peter, when Brie came down with the flu. The volunteer working the ticket booth that day had mentioned an upcoming “haunted tour” event at the Gardens, and my face must have shown my skepticism. Lowering her voice so the children wouldn’t hear, she’d informed me that the ground we were standing on had once been part of Denver’s first cemetery. Although the cemetery had been moved, not all the bodies were successfully reburied.

“To this day,” she’d said dramatically, “they’ll sometimes dig for a new exhibit and hit
bones
.”

At the time, I assumed the story was garbage, the type of crap that was cooked up every Halloween to milk the ever-growing haunted house industry. But it was just so
weird
that I looked it up later.

And it turned out I owed the ticket seller an apology. Sure enough, the land containing both the Botanic Gardens and the neighboring Cheesman Park, where Sam and I had gone to outdoor concerts as teenagers, had been designated as Mount Prospect Cemetery in 1859. It had eventually been divided into different sections for Catholic, Masonic, and Jewish burials, plus additional sections for paupers and Civil War veterans. Mount Prospect was badly organized, unattractive, and riddled with stories of corruption and controversy. Soon the grounds became less of an official cemetery and more of a sewer for the unwanted dead.

When a better site opened in 1876, the number of burials at Mount Prospect—now known as City Cemetery—began to decline. By 1893 the city got fed up and decided to turn the area into a public park instead. They gave notice to the relatives of those buried at City Cemetery that they had ninety days to move their loved ones.

Unfortunately, not everyone bothered.

Which left the town with a big problem. There were never complete records of who was buried at City Cemetery or where the graves were located, so the city had no way of knowing how many people were left after the relatives’ ninety days were up. In an effort to clear up the whole mess, the city hired an undertaker named McGovern to dig for all the remaining bodies and move them to a new cemetery.

But McGovern, as it turned out, was the world’s least ethical coroner. Since he was paid by the body, the undertaker would often split the remains of one person into two or even three coffins to collect more fees. Eventually the city leaders figured out what was happening and fired him, but they never got around to replacing him—or to figuring out exactly how many people he had really transferred. Thousands of bodies stayed buried beneath the grass. And every year, the night security guards at the Botanic Gardens reported strange noises, objects moving around by themselves, and all the other classic signs of hauntings.

When I’d first read the story, I’d been shocked that the city knew about thousands of unclaimed human bodies, and no one had done
anything
about it. The situation was disgraceful. I had said as much to Sam, who’d been the pragmatic one for a change. She pointed out that none of the deceased could have living family members left, and at least the bones were buried beneath a park and a garden. There were worse places to have your final resting place. She had a point, and I dropped the subject—but it had never sat well with me, especially given the way I’d seen bodies treated when I was overseas.

As I got off the highway in Denver and made my way south on York Street, I decided that the most unnerving part of the whole situation was that no one could say for certain how many bodies were still buried beneath the two tourist attractions. Some said four thousand; others estimated more like eight. All anyone could say for sure was that there were unclaimed dead beneath the public spaces. And this, I was certain, was where Lysander was holed up. Surrounded by bodies, at least some of which had to be remnants.

I shivered, and for the first time I wished I’d made an effort to understand ghosts better. I’d spent so many months trying to avoid seeing them that I had a very limited understanding of how they worked. What kind of ghosts would inhabit a former cemetery? What could they do to me?

Just stick to the plan, I told myself. Use modern weapons to blow Lysander to bits, scatter his remains before sunrise.

What could go wrong?

The Gardens were closed, of course, but there were several spotlights highlighting the big scrolled sign of the entrance building. When I finally arrived, I drove slowly past the Botanic Gardens, craning my head to look for . . . I don’t know, a strobe light of the damned or something. But nothing looked disturbed, and there was no neon sign saying, “This way to the draugr.”

So where was Lysander?

I drove straight past the property and turned right onto East Eighth Avenue, home of a number of stunning, unbelievably ritzy mansions, which bordered the south side of the Gardens. I parked illegally on one of the side streets, said a silent apology to Kirsten because the rental would probably be towed, and climbed out of the car to get ready.

First I buckled the quick-draw holster around my hips, abandoning the fanny pack in the backseat. Then I strapped on all of my weapons—the combat knife, the revolver, the Ithaca on its sling, extra ammunition. If the car was going to get towed, I didn’t want to leave them inside. I also wanted all the firepower I could get.

When I was done, I actually felt relieved, like I’d put on appropriate-for-the-weather clothes and would now be prepared for rain. I tossed the long jacket on over everything, took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer to Sam or God or anyone else who might be listening. Then I took off for the Gardens.

I didn’t know a lot about breaking and entering, but I wouldn’t need to: the entrance to the Botanic Gardens was a brick building bracketed by fencing on either side. Presumably any valuables were locked up in the building, but nobody uses razor wire or electrified fencing to protect some plants. The fence itself was nothing but an eight-foot-high wall. I snapped the little leather strap that would secure the Smith & Wesson in my holster, took a running start, and grabbed the top of it. I did a pull-up, got my upper body onto the upper surface, and then it was a simple matter of swinging my legs over and dropping to the ground in a crouch. Something like cedar chips crunched under my feet as I landed and went still, looking around me.

Denver had more clouds than I’d seen during my walk with Kirsten, and I was immediately struck by the darkness, much more than I’d expected in the middle of a big city. Up ahead I could see tiny lights in a line, like little lanterns, but I was too far away for them to do me any good. I crept forward as quietly as possible, moving my feet whenever they bumped into plant life. The smell of mulch and pollen was heavy on the thin air, but the Gardens were nearly silent. No birds, no squirrels or rabbits rustling through the trees. Was that normal?

After several hesitant steps, I could make out the cobblestone path just ahead. There were small, solar-powered torches stuck into the ground every few feet along all the walkways, each one giving out just enough light to illuminate the space a few feet around it. I could see fairly well inside a fifteen-foot bubble around me, but everything outside it was completely opaque. Like walking into a heavy fog.

It also didn’t help that there were wisps of actual fog scattered around the grounds, moving along the sidewalks. No, wait. I squinted, my eyes trying to pick out the details of what I was seeing. The wisps of fog were tall and defined and . . . people-shaped.

They were remnants.

Once I recognized them, it hit me that they were
everywhere
. Mostly they stuck to the paths, floating along between the lights, but every now and then I saw a wisp of light wandering around in the darkness like it was trying to find its friends. I realized that if I really focused on one of them I could make out more details: clothes, hair length, that kind of thing. Most of them were wretched-looking: visibly sick, frozen in fear, or obviously injured. A few even had nooses dangling from their necks. Some of them just seemed confused and lost, like they didn’t realize they were dead, and that was even sadder than the others.

But why were they all here? If they were the remnants of the people who were buried beneath my feet, why were they here instead of where they’d actually died?

The draugr. I had the sudden feeling that Lysander was the answer to both questions. Hugh Mark, the first remnant I’d met at the Boulderado, had been drawn to me. As an active boundary witch, I represented the connection between life and death; how could he
not
want to talk to me? Wraiths, like the ones I’d encountered in the sculpture park, were stronger and meaner, which was why Lysander had needed Sophia to trap them in crystals. But remnants were just weak psychic imprints, and these fluttering, bewildered moths had finally found a flame.

I was a little relieved—without Emil and his crystals, I doubted Lysander would have any wraiths along tonight. But the number of remnants floating around the Gardens was still completely unnerving. I swallowed hard. I would just have to ignore them.

Stepping onto the path, I focused on choosing a direction to search. Where would Lysander be? My original plan had been to locate him by calling him from Emil’s phone, which would have the added benefit of distracting him—hopefully enough for me to hit him with the shotgun. But now that I was standing here, threading my way through hundred-and-fifty-year-old ghosts, I understood just how big the property was. There were any number of buildings with their own basements and hidey-holes, not to mention twenty-some acres of foliage. The task of finding one person on such a huge property seemed ridiculous. I would only get one shot at calling him on Emil’s phone before he got suspicious. I needed to narrow down the search area somehow. With no better ideas, I pulled the Smith & Wesson, picked a direction, and began inching along the path with the weapon at my side.

I tried to give the drifting remnants a wide berth, but as much as I tried to maneuver around them, it was like being stuck in a pool of jellyfish. You would avoid bumping into one, only to careen into two more. Each time one passed through me, I had a brief flash of an image: the blast of gunfire, hospital sheets, a crowd looking up at me from below. Then the remnant would reach the other side of me, and I’d be left feeling desolate, cold, and hollowed-out. Each time this happened I felt as if it were taking a piece away from me. Soon I was fighting against a rising panic at the thought of so many of them. How much more could I take before I curled up in a ball and gave up?