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

And then there was the problem of the Unktehila’s body. Vampires and werewolves returned to regular human corpses after death, which made body disposal fairly simple. But the Unktehila was something else, an ancient being fused with magic in a way that was intricately tied to its biology. After its death, it had stayed exactly what it was: a fifty-foot snakeoid creature with a diameter of more than six feet. Quinn and I had spent a very messy, very disgusting week sneaking it out of the building in pieces. A
lot
of pieces.

After months of this around-the-clock work, plus the holidays and a two-month stint as interim store manager at the Flatiron Depot while Big Scott had knee surgery, things had
finally
begun to settle down for me. I was really hoping that whatever Maven was bringing me into now would be minor. An errand, maybe. Yeah, an errand would be nice.

C
hapter 3

Magic Beans takes up a funny little building on Pearl Street, right in the heart of busy downtown Boulder. There are plenty of coffee shops in the area, but Magic Beans is notorious for two things: being open all night and its weird layout. Instead of one huge room, it’s made up of many small ones connected together, like a rat maze with doors. This gives the patrons privacy and lets Maven conduct business without being overheard, but it’s a pain in the ass from a security standpoint. Then again, I’d seen Maven in action, and if anyone could handle a security risk, it was her. Vampires don’t spend much time worrying about thieves or vandals.

When I arrived, the building was crowded with intense-looking university students, many of whom wore pajama pants and looked like they had gone without a shower for even longer than usual. Although they were all holding still, they managed to seem frenzied, their faces hidden behind books and laptop screens. Everyone in Boulder has a rough idea of the university’s rhythms, and I remembered that finals started next week.

I followed the arrows spray-painted on the concrete floor, which wound a neon path through the rooms to the front counter. I didn’t recognize the college-aged kid behind the register—Maven must have hired a new guy—but when I asked for Maven he jerked his thumb toward her office without looking up from the open textbook in front of him.

The door to Maven’s tiny office was attached to the largest room, in the back of the building, which had a raised stage for open-mic nights and even small concerts. I gritted my teeth as I marched back there, doing my best to ignore the three ghosts that resided in the auditorium room. I was getting better at pushing the remnants to the back of my mind, but I felt a little guilty about it, like when you compartmentalize all the homeless people asking you for change.

Maven’s door was open a crack, so I stepped inside. “Hey, Lex,” came Quinn’s familiar voice. He was seated in one of the visitor chairs in front of Maven’s desk, which was at the back of the room. Quinn was tall and handsome in a beat-around craggy way, and like most vampires he usually wore an implacable expression. Maven herself was perched on her office chair, which she’d lowered so her legs wouldn’t dangle. She was a small woman who appeared to be eighteen or nineteen, with a shock of awkwardly cut orange hair and perpetually mismatched clothes that she wore in layers and layers, along with additional coatings of costume jewelry and a pair of hideous clear-framed glasses. It was an excellent disguise, but if you looked close, you could see that she was so beautiful it often took my breath away.

Tonight she was wearing her usual homeless-pioneer getup, but her face was harder than I’d seen it in a long time, and she seemed to radiate fury. My heart sank. No, I wasn’t there for an errand.

Impatiently, she motioned for me to close the door, and I dropped into the other visitor chair with a nod at each of them. I was pretty sure Maven knew about my relationship with Quinn, but we kept it professional in her presence.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, but her voice was stony. A thrill of fear ran through me. “We have a situation in Denver that needs your attention. Both of you.” She opened a laptop in front of her and spun it around to face us. The screen was taken up by a number of thumbnail photos. I leaned forward. Headshots, maybe fifty or so. At first glance, I didn’t recognize any of the faces. “Quinn, you remember the Denver vampires.”

Quinn and I exchanged a glance. Our first case together—the investigation of Charlie’s kidnapping—had sent us to Denver. We ended up killing the only vampire I met there.

“Tonight I received a call from Ford, the senior dominus in the city,” she continued. “Apparently several of his villani have been poisoned with belladonna.”

Vampires do not typically gasp, in my experience, but Quinn’s eyes widened nearly as much as they had the first time he was in Charlie’s presence. Maven pointed to several of the photos, and when I squinted I could see little names typed beneath the faces: Louis, Phillip, and Lara.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Don’t they sell belladonna all over the place?”

Two pairs of cold vampire eyes focused on me. “Simon must have told you that magic bonds with certain plants,” Quinn said finally.

“Yeah . . .”

“Belladonna is one of them, and it’s poisonous to vampires,” he explained. “They spent centuries cross-breeding it until it was no longer tied to magic, but every now and then the original strain pops up somewhere. Like a controlled substance.”

I noticed that Quinn still used the word “they” when talking about vampires, where most of the others I knew would have said “we.” “But what does it actually do to them?” I asked.

“The older two have been paralyzed for several weeks now,” Maven said, her words clipped. “Ford hadn’t been checking in with them, so he wasn’t aware of the problem until a third, Louis, died from the poison. Louis had listed him as a reference on an apartment application, and the landlord called when he found the body.” Her eyes looked like they might start shooting sparks at any second. “Louis was young. He couldn’t fight it.”

I winced, but not from the news. As a boundary witch, I have a special attraction to vampires and vice versa. Most of the time this meant that Maven, who was ancient and powerful, sort of pulled at my attention. Today, though, she was so angry that looking at her was like tumbling into a very deep hole. I couldn’t tell if she was upset because Ford had neglected his vampires, or because of the belladonna. Or both.

“The other two, will they survive?” Quinn asked her.

She nodded, the rage subsiding a little. “If they haven’t died by now, they should wake eventually. But it could be weeks, months, even longer, depending on the potency of the strain they received. Meanwhile, they have to be cared for, hidden, and fed.”

Vampires didn’t eat or drink anything other than blood, as far as I could tell. Which raised another question. “How did they ingest the poison in the first place?” I asked.

Quinn answered for me. “There were no injection marks on their bodies, and it’s really difficult to get a vampire to hold still for a shot anyway,” he explained. “Someone must have watched them, learned their favorite donors, and slipped it into the donors’ food. That’s one of the reasons why we’re discouraged from using the same humans over and over,” he said, with a sidelong glance at Maven. I got the impression that this was a Colorado-specific rule.

“Okay, so there’s a person who has it in for the Denver vampires, and they gave a rare, ancient strain of belladonna to the humans that are, um, repeat donors. Obviously it’s someone with Old World knowledge, but is there any way to tell what species?”

Maven’s eyes narrowed. “Historically speaking,” she said, her voice suddenly cold, “belladonna and the other herbs are witch tools.”

Oh, shit.
Tensions between witches and vampires were already high, thanks to Morgan Pellar’s attempted coup. Now Maven wanted me wedged right between them again. I glanced at Quinn, but he was keeping his eyes fixed on Maven, like a hound awaiting a command.

“I want you both in Denver tonight,” she declared. “We know about three of the humans who were likely poisoned. Quinn, you’ll talk to them. Press them, find out if they were willing participants or victims. Lex, I want you to speak to Nellie.”

I suppressed a groan. This night just kept getting better. Nellie was a boundary witch like me, only she was dead. The ghosts of boundary witches are, apparently, quite sentient, and Nellie haunted the Denver brothel where she’d died. The last time I was there she’d given me information on ley lines in exchange for a working television, but I hadn’t had time to visit her during the past six months.

Okay, to be honest, I hadn’t
wanted
to visit her. Boundary magic was intimidating under the best circumstances, and Nellie claimed I was the most powerful boundary witch she’d ever seen. That scared the crap out of me. I was already struggling to adjust to seeing ghosts everywhere I went. The last thing I wanted was to add more to my plate.

“Of course, but, um . . . why?”

“We need perspective from a witch who cannot be involved in the poisonings, and since you’re the only person in Colorado who can see her, I think Nellie’s a safe bet,” Maven said curtly. “I also happen to know she’s had experience with belladonna. I want you to ask her if there’s a way to wake up my vampires.”

“She’ll want something in exchange.” Nellie was nothing if not enterprising.

Maven just waved a hand. “As long as it’s just money, give her anything. Quinn has a company credit card.”

I almost chortled. Here we were, talking witch spells and vampire poisoning, and
Quinn had a company credit card
. I managed to swallow the laughter. “Yes, ma’am,” I said instead.

“In the meantime, I’ll get the word out. No vampire in Colorado drinks from a human they’ve used before.” She cut her eyes at Quinn, and then looked back at me. Oh, yeah, she knew we were dating.

Quinn just nodded. I bit my lip. There were going to be a lot of vampires out hunting that night.

C
hapter 4

Nellie’s former brothel had once been a lovely Victorian house in downtown Denver, on the edge of what became the red-light district in the nineteenth century. But after Nellie died and the brothel shut down, every attempt to open a new business there or renovate the building back into a home had failed. There were too many strange noises, creepy sightings, and cold spots, all of which had earned it a prominent spot on all the “Haunted Denver” lists.

Decades had passed since the last failed attempt to transform the building, but the city had developed around the ancient eyesore, and it was now only a couple of blocks away from Coors Field, sandwiched stubbornly between a trendy club and a sports bar.

All of my previous visits had been during the day, when the area was deserted, but this time I had to slip down the alley between the club and the brothel, avoiding stumbling twenty-somethings with high heels and blowout hair. I made an effort not to wrinkle my nose as I squeezed past two girls vomiting against the club building. When I was twenty-four, I was driving Humvees through the desert at night, not puking in stilettos.

I hadn’t bothered to replace the lock I’d broken on the brothel door—with nothing to steal and Nellie’s creepy presence, no one came in here—so I just pushed the door open and fished a camping lantern out of my bag, keeping it away from the boarded-up windows. The strong white light only seemed to make the shadows longer, putting an unnerving emphasis on the grime and spider webs. I swallowed and ordered myself not to get creeped out.

Then, inches from my ear, a female voice exploded. “
Finally
!”

I jumped, whirling around to see Nellie Evans right behind me.

The last time I’d seen her, Nellie had looked bright and vivid, even though it was the middle of the day. But I’d later learned that her strong presence was a side effect of Morgan Pellar’s spell to boost the area ley lines. This time, there was no mistaking Nellie for anything but ghost. She was slightly faded, and there was a wrinkle of concentration on her forehead, as if it took just a little effort to keep herself visible, the same way I’d need a little effort to stand on my tiptoes.

If she hadn’t been a boundary witch in life, Nellie’s ghost would just be a repeating fragment of herself, an afterimage. But Nellie’s connection to death kept her sentient. And her personality was very much intact, for better or worse.

“Where have ye been?” she demanded, pouting at me. “I thought you’d ’a been back
months
ago, and me sitting around waiting every day like a damned fool girl with a beau . . .” Her footsteps made no noise on the hardwood floors as she stomped back and forth, shouting at me. The tantrum was a little funny, given her appearance. Nellie was dressed as I’d seen her last: in short-shorts, a polka-dotted tied-off top, and chunky high heels like a thirties pinup girl. She had obviously been pretty once, but she’d lived hard, and it still showed in death. She appeared to be in her midforties, although she’d probably died younger than that.

I waited until Nellie’s ranting wore itself out. When she devolved to mumbling under her breath, I said, “Hi, Nellie, how have you been? I see your TV’s still working.” I nodded toward the television I’d set up in the main entryway.

She glared at me. “Aye, yes, the television. It does work, but it’s been stuck on the same damned channel since you plugged it in! Have you heard of these things,
re
-runs?” She pronounced it carefully, like she was trying to speak Chinese. “They show the same programs over and over! And the
children’s
shows, argh!” She stomped a silent foot and began to pace again, then slowed and tilted her head to reconsider. “Although that red childish monster, he gives me a good laugh,” she allowed. “And the wee monkey who’s always creating messes, he reminds me of one of my trollops; she was so clumsy—”

And she was off again. I’d forgotten about Nellie’s loopy speech patterns: when she was excited, her diction and vocabulary ran up and down the socioeconomic spectrum and switched back and forth between now and a hundred and fifty years ago. Although I suspected she was always excited. It was like she’d been carefully hoarding decades of conversation for the first person who could see her. “Nellie,” I interrupted. “I need your help again.”

She’d been at the far end of her pacing, but she whirled back around. “Well, of course you do,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t-a come back to visit me otherwise, would you?
Would
you?”

I winced. “I was working up to it.”

She glared at me, but made a little impatient gesture for me to continue.

“What do you know about belladonna?” I asked.

That brought her up short. For a moment her face was blank. “Why are ye asking
me
?” she said suspiciously. “Dinna your people explain all this?”

I sighed. Sam and I had been adopted by the Luthers when we were babies, so we had grown up firmly outside the Old World, but Nellie seemed to have forgotten. “No, Nellie. I don’t know my people, remember?” I didn’t mention that I was also trying not to involve the local witch clan this time around. The less Nellie knew about current Old World politics, the less she could use them to manipulate me.

“Ah, yes. Sorry, Lex-girl.” Her face relaxed, but in just a second the distrustful look was back. “Did Pale Jennie send you then?”

Pale Jennie was actually Maven, and she had killed Nellie back in the nineteenth century—but in all fairness, only after Nellie had “killed” her first. That’s what happens when you try to backstab a friend who’s secretly a vampire. “Yes. She asked me to come here and beg for your advice.” That wasn’t exactly accurate, but Nellie had responded well to flattery before. “She thought you’d know all about belladonna and the other herbs.”

Nellie puffed up a little with pride. “I bet she did. Those herbs were one thing I always played close to my chest, even with Jennie. The grist a’ magic, my Ma used to call them.”

“Is that how you learned how to use them? From your mother?”

“Aye. She grew them in her own garden. That was how Ma was able to feed and clothe my brother and me, selling the seeds to anyone with a grudge against something magical.” She scowled. “Colorado weren’t so regulated then. We had no vampire tyrant telling us what we could or could not grow on our own property.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, parsing that for useful information. “So can you tell me if belladonna poisoning has a cure?”

“Aye, I could tell you,” Nellie replied, her eyes glinting with greed. “But I’d need something in return, of course.”

“What do you want?” Nellie couldn’t interact with the physical world, other than creeping people out when she “walked” through them, so there wasn’t a lot she could require in terms of material goods.

“I want you to come by here every day and change the channel to something new,” she said promptly.

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. Of course. “Once a month, for a year. And it won’t always be me. Sometimes it’ll be a . . . helper.” I didn’t want to say
vampire
and set her off on another tirade, but I figured Maven could send one of the Denver vampires to do this, at least sometimes.

“Once a week,” she negotiated. “For the year, and at least once a month it’ll be you.”

“Fine,” I said, managing not to sound begrudging about it. “But I’m not leaving my watch as collateral for that long. This time you’ll have to trust me.”

She pursed her lips, but nodded. “All right.”

“What’s the cure?”

“Ain’t no cure,” she said, looking infinitely satisfied with herself. “Belladonna is powerful; you have to wait for it to flush through the system. Best you can do is speed that up a little.”

“How?”

Her smirk grew even bigger. “Easiest way is to cut the creature’s vein, drain out some of the toxic blood, and feed ’em untainted blood. Then wait a day or so and do the same thing all over. A’ course, the older they are, the faster they’ll heal.”

I gave her a skeptical look. That sounded suspiciously like Nellie trying to get me to bleed unconscious vampires to death, and I said so.

Nellie spread her hands, looking innocent. “Believe me or don’t. I said I’d tell you whether there was a cure, and I did.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I turned on my heel and started for the door.

“Wait!” Nellie appeared right in front of me again, forcing me to stop or walk through her. I’d walked through ghosts before; it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed. Her eyes were calculating. “But I’ll tell you something else, Miss Lex, and this one’s on me. Jennie, she always had a bee in her bonnet about belladonna. Hated it, worse than Christian missionaries hated opium. Only time I ever seen Jennie get truly furious about something, it involved the grist.”

I thought that over for a moment. Could the attacks in Denver be geared toward Maven personally? Like some kind of distraction? That seemed kind of far-fetched. Distracted, I started forward again, but Nellie cried, “Wait! The channel!”

“You didn’t negotiate when the year starts,” I said sweetly, and left her cursing behind me.

I had every intention of coming back in a week to turn the station; I just wanted to mess with Nellie a little first. So I went outside and called Quinn, figuring he could pick me up in between his interviews. As it turned out, though, he had already finished his last interview and was already on his way to pick me up. I was surprised—he’d had to drive to three separate places and speak to three separate people—but then again, when you were pressing minds, I suppose you didn’t have to bother with introductions or small talk. That would save time.

“Did you learn anything?” I asked after climbing into the car.

Quinn shook his head. “As far as they know, none of them were involved.”

“What does that mean, as far as they know?”

He gave a little shrug. “One of the women seemed sort of confused, like she’d been pressed before. But that might be the result of Louis pressing her to forget a routine feeding. I can’t be sure.”

His lips were tight, and I realized he was frustrated. Or was it something else? “Are you okay?”

“I’m just . . .” He shook his head. “Talking to the regulars got to me a little bit.”

“How come?”

He was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. I waited him out. We were on Highway 36, about seven miles from Boulder. You could already see the city lights glittering in the distance. Since I was a little kid, this view always felt like home. “Maven doesn’t like us to use the term ‘human servant,’ but that’s what these people are,” he said finally. “The vampires—
we
—screw up their heads, pressing them into keeping our secrets, never talking about their lives. Some of us even go so far as to make the humans think they’re in love. They give up everything on the off chance that—” He cut himself off abruptly, fuming.

“Is that why you won’t drink from me?” I asked softly.

Quinn stomped on the brake, driving the seat belt hard into my shoulder. He wrenched the wheel sideways to pull over onto the Davidson Mesa scenic overlook, letting out a sound that was shockingly snarl-like.

Whoa.
I stared at him, openmouthed. Quinn was actually
upset
. I so rarely saw him experience visible emotional reactions; I kind of didn’t know what to do with it.

“Do you
want
me to drink from you?” he snapped. “See you as food?”

“No, but—”

“You don’t get it, Lex! Some of these assholes are using those people like—like drug dealers use junkies for sex.” Quinn bunched up his fists in his lap. “It’s so twisted, and the vampires feel
nothing
for them, and I would
never
—”

“Slow down,” I interrupted. “No, I don’t want you to feed from me. Not because I think you don’t care about me, or because I think it would make me a whore. Because it’s icky.” He let out a choked laugh. “But it does sometimes seem like you . . . want to.” I blushed despite myself.

He sat quietly for a few minutes, digesting that. “I’m afraid,” he said at last, “if I ever start drinking your blood, I won’t be able to stop.”

“Oh.” I could have reminded him that this eventuality had already happened. Months earlier I’d cut open my scalp on a chunk of concrete. Quinn had licked away a few drops of blood, but I’d managed to snap him out of it.

But I knew his fear wasn’t rational or intellectual. It was like my nightmares about seeing Charlie killed or kidnapped right in front of me. It didn’t matter that I’d won in the past. All that mattered was that I could lose the next time.

I decided to let it drop for now. “So what do we—”

But before I could finish, there was a great, shuddering impact as the pickup truck slammed into the back of the Jeep.