Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(29)

“Yeah, well, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” he said frankly. “Most witches are told all about magic by the time they hit puberty. If you’re going to tag along with me while I go after Darcy, you’re gonna have to pick up a lot of information fast.”

I looked up at him. “I’ve got no love for Darcy,” I remarked, “but are you really okay with just killing her? You were a cop.”

With exaggerated patience, Quinn took my elbow and propelled me forward, his grip like a concrete cuff on my bicep. When we had passed through two rooms, he leaned over and whispered, “They could still hear you, you know.”

“Oh.” Oops.

“To answer your question, I don’t feel great about it, no. But I don’t have a choice,” he said, his tone bitter. “Not everyone volunteered for a deal with Maven and Itachi.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, a little hotly. “Do you think I woke up this morning hoping I’d get to feed my blood to a vampire?”

Quinn hesitated. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean you . . . My situation is different, that’s all.”

“Different how?” I said.

He looked away. “I was sold to them.”

My eyes widened. “You were—”

“Come on,” he said brusquely, giving me a gentle push. “Let’s get you home for some sleep. You have magic lessons tomorrow.”

“Oh screw that,” I shot back. “You’re starting now, right?”

He hesitated. “Well, yeah . . .”

“Then I’m coming with you. What do we do first?”

Quinn sighed, his cool demeanor momentarily ruffled. “You’re going to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” I told him, and I felt a smile spread across my face. Not a nice smile. “But not nearly as big as I’m about to be in Darcy’s.”





Chapter 13



One of the many things I’d never bothered to consider in my thirty-one years of life were the logistical problems that came with the care and keeping of vampires.

As I followed Quinn out to his car, a gray Toyota sedan that had probably been purchased for its anonymity, he gave me a rundown of how vampires lived, starting with the fact that they were pretty much dead while the sun was up. “Unfortunately, that leaves us vulnerable,” he said, “so vampires keep really great hidey-holes, often underground. Victor and Darcy have a basement apartment not far from campus. We’ll go there first, see if we can find any clues about where she might have gone.”

A basement apartment? It seemed so . . . ordinary. But then, I guess vampires wouldn’t get much access to their food supply by hiding out in Transylvanian castles. Speaking of food supply . . . “How does, um, feeding work?” I asked Quinn. “Is there a way to find her through . . .” I made a helpless gesture, not wanting to say “who she eats.”

He shook his head. “Vampires don’t need blood every night, and we don’t often feed from the same person twice,” he informed me. “That’s exactly why you find vampires in so many college towns, because of the transient population.”

“You just go to the middle of campus and grab somebody?” I asked, incredulous.

Quinn shot me a glare. “We’re predators,” he stated. “A lion doesn’t wade into the middle of a pack of wildebeests and start slashing with its claws. You pick off the edge of the herd, isolate, and feed. Once we learn control, we can exist on very little. The . . . source . . . doesn’t even remember it happening.”

I decided I didn’t need to know more about that right now, and looked out the window. To my surprise, Quinn was driving us into a familiar student neighborhood in South Boulder. I’d spent a little time in that area of SoBo, which was where Sam and John’s first apartment had been. When he said “close to campus,” he really meant it.

“We’re not actually expecting her to be there, are we?” I asked.

Quinn shook his head. “Darcy’s not that stupid. But I’m hoping we’ll find something to point us in the right direction.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then we’ll talk to the vampire they’re pledged to,” he said, as if that was a perfectly logical thing to say.

“Pledged?”

“Vampires still have a more or less feudal system of government,” he explained. Because it took years for new vamps to learn how to manage finances, create new identities, and control their bloodlust, they always served older vampires for a period of time before striking out on their own. “Most of the time, a new vamp serves his progenitor, the vampire who created him,” Quinn said flatly.

“Most of the time?” I asked carefully. I wanted to know more about that “I was sold” comment.

Quinn ignored the question. “When they’re done with their service, they pledge a troth,” he continued. “Aside from the physiological changes, it’s the only bit of magic we really have. A troth is like a formal binding of loyalty. We can’t break it.” He shook his head a little. “Everyone belongs to someone.”

“Like ranks,” I said. “A hierarchy of power.”