Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(15)

Quinn shook his head. “Staked him. Simon’s taking care of it. Darcy?”

“I broke her nose, and she ran away,” I reported.

He blinked at me. “You broke her nose?” he said incredulously.

I gave a little shrug. “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t prepared to kill her.”

“That’s not what I—” Quinn started to say, but he stopped and shook his head. “Look, I need to talk to your brother-in-law.”

Automatically, I shifted my weight so I was blocking the doorway. “You’re not going to hurt him.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” he said, his voice firm. “But I may need to press his mind. It won’t hurt him, I swear.”

I examined his face for a long moment. He looked back at me without flinching, his face open. I didn’t want anyone messing around with John’s brain . . . but Quinn had helped John and Charlie. Maybe he’d earned a bit of trust. “Take off your jacket first,” I told him.

Quinn looked down. When he saw the blood, he shucked his suit jacket and casually tossed it behind the bushes near John’s front door. He stepped through the doorway and paused, frowning. “What?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t have been able to just walk in like that.” Quinn answered.

“Lex?” John called from the kitchen. “Who is it?”

“Figure it out later,” I told Quinn. He shrugged and followed me through the house to the kitchen.

John was leaning against the counter, a burp rag tossed over his shoulder. He was cradling a much calmer Charlie in his arms as she slurped down her milk. When we came into the room, she tilted her head to check us out without taking the bottle’s nipple out of her mouth for a second. She grinned at us from around it. It was adorable, and I felt a familiar stab of grief, a sensation I have all the time when I’m with Charlie. Sam is missing this.

“John, this is Quinn,” I said, ushering Quinn into the room beside me. “He’s the one who told me you needed help.”

Quinn didn’t offer to shake hands, which was okay because John’s hands were full. “Mr. Wheaton,” Quinn began, keeping his voice low. “Would you mind if I spoke to you privately for a minute?” John glanced at me, then down at Charlie. “I’m sure Lex can hold the baby,” he added reassuringly.

John looked at me again. If it had been anyone else, I doubt he would have relinquished his hold on his daughter. But John had trusted me since before he could shave. I nodded, and he shrugged and started toward us.

When he was still a few feet away, something happened to Quinn. He let out a startled gasp and bent over, trying to turn it into a cough. John paused, uncertain. “You okay?” I whispered to Quinn.

He nodded. “Just . . . swallowed wrong or something.”

Shrugging, I walked forward and took Charlie from John. She smiled at me around her bottle again and reached up to grab a strand of my hair. I didn’t wear it down very often, especially when I was around my niece, but the scrubs Simon had stolen for me hadn’t come with a hair tie.

“Hey, baby-baby,” I sang down to her. “Let’s go sit on the couch.”

I backtracked into the living room, settling myself into a plush armchair. I wanted to keep an eye on the two men, but after the healing and the fight, I was too wobbly to keep standing. I could hear Quinn’s voice behind me, speaking in low, soothing tones, and John’s familiar voice answering him.

My body may have been exhausted, but my thoughts continued to churn. My mind wouldn’t stop cycling through memories from the day, starting with the discovery that I was even still alive. It felt like a day out of someone else’s life, or from one of those schlocky horror movies Sam had made me sit through when we were in high school. Vampires and witches and werewolves? It was just too much.

And yet . . . I had run out of other ways to explain what I’d seen.

Charlie had fallen asleep, her little hands relaxing around the empty bottle. It dropped to the floor, rolling away into a pile of toys. I ignored it and raised her limp body to my shoulder, patting her back to coax out a sleepy burp. I kissed her head, snuggling her close. Being near Charlie always soothed me, and after a while my thoughts stopped spinning. Before I knew it, my eyes were drifting closed. Tomorrow I would figure out all of this weirdness, including what Darcy wanted with my niece. For now, though, Charlie was safe. And I was grateful.

Suddenly a quiet voice whispered in my ear, so close that I would have been startled if I’d had the energy. “John thinks you made a miraculous recovery, then came over to help him chase a raccoon out of the house,” Quinn said. “I’ll stop by the hospital and take care of your sudden departure, but then I’m done. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from the witches soon. It was nice knowing you, Allison Luther.”

“Don’t call me . . .” I mumbled, but he was gone. I let my eyes fall shut and succumbed to sleep.





Chapter 8



I woke up to a tugging, insistent pain on my scalp. It was on the opposite side of my head from where the baby toy had left a lump, but it still kind of hurt.

I opened my eyes. Charlie gurgled up at me, smiling. She was sitting up, facing me, with all of the fingers on one hand tangled firmly into my hair like an anchor line. She tugged joyously, using her leverage to swing back and forth a little on my stomach. “Charlie,” I reprimanded gently, but she just grinned wider, showing off her little teeth. She babbled some nonsense at me. I squinted at the clock on the far wall. Ten after six. “At least someone in this family’s a morning person,” I told her. Usually I was still at work at six, but my sleep schedule seemed to have adjusted back to normal while I was in the hospital. That was going to be a pain in the ass when I returned to work.