Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(36)
“You got treatment?” I asked, curious despite myself.
Quinn shrugged. “Nah. Just time. I can still remember those night terrors, though.”
We walked on in a slightly more companionable silence, all the way back to the Toyota. I realized, for the first time, that with vampire speed Quinn could have probably made the whole hike in a quarter of the time it had taken both of us.
The drive back to Boulder was mostly uneventful. I began to doze after forty-five minutes, then started awake when I heard Quinn’s voice float over from the driver’s side. “You’re really serious about working for him, aren’t you?”
“I’m really serious about Charlie,” I said quietly. “And I don’t know of any other way to keep her safe other than to back the horse I think will win.”
Quinn was quiet as he digested this. I got the impression that he had as many questions for me as I did for him, but neither of us were showing any more cards tonight.
Chapter 16
At seven-thirty the next morning, two hours after I’d finally collapsed in my bed, my cell phone began to shriek.
Dopey and Pongo were in bed with me, but neither of them stirred at the angry little machine vibrating on my nightstand. I was tempted to follow their example, but I reluctantly reached over and grabbed the stupid phone, answering without bothering to look at the caller display.
“‘Hate you,” I mumbled, by way of greeting.
“Hey, Lex!” said a familiar cheerful voice. “It’s Lily.” When I didn’t answer right away, she added, “Lily Pellar?”
“Yes.” I managed to pull myself up until I was more or less sitting. Dopey woke up and looked at me with vacant good cheer, part of her tongue sticking out between her teeth. “What’s going on?”
“My mother spoke to Itachi last night. I understand the vampires want you to undergo training after all.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Cool. Simon has classes today, so I’ll be leading your training session.”
I yawned. The conversation wasn’t quite interesting enough to keep my eyes open. “Uh-huh.”
“We can do it at my mother’s farm. It’s kind of Witch Central in Boulder, so you should know where it is, anyway. I’ll text you the address. Just wear something comfortable. Come by in, say, an hour.”
That got my attention. “Wait, what?”
She’d already hung up.
I set an alarm for eight-fifteen and went back to sleep. It wouldn’t leave me enough time to shower, but at eight-thirty in the morning Lily Pellar could deal with however I smelled.
Unfortunately for me, the dogs flipped out at eight, going on a full-out barking spree. Dopey and Pongo launched themselves off the bed, and I peeled my eyes open for just long enough to throw a pillow at the bedroom door, shutting it behind them. If they wanted to bark at rabbits through the living room window, they could damn well stay out there.
A moment later, however, the doorbell rang. “Nooooooo,” I groaned. Had Lily decided to come pick me up? What kind of monster did this sort of thing to a person?
But when I got to the door and waded through the herd of barking dogs and curious cats, it wasn’t Lily on the doorstep. The cops. I’d completely forgotten that I’d agreed to give my statement this morning. Stepping away from the little window in the door, I looked down at myself. I had managed to strip out of my dusty clothes the night before, exchanging them for an oversized army T-shirt and underpants. My auburn hair was alternately plastered to my face and poking up in different directions, and my fingernails were encrusted with dirt. Great.
I opened the door a crack, leaning around the frame to greet my cousin Elise and . . . oh, shit, Detective Keller. “Sorry, guys, I was just getting dressed,” I said apologetically, gesturing helplessly to indicate that I was sans pants. Keller craned his head a little, trying to see what I had going on beneath the T-shirt. Enjoy the gray cotton panties, *. “I’ll be right with you. Elise, give me a second to get to the bedroom, then come on in. You know where the coffee is.”
My cousin opened her mouth to respond, but I had already shut the door and was hightailing it for the bedroom. I turned off the alarm clock and started yanking open dresser drawers, snatching the first pair of jeans and T-shirt I saw. “Son of a bitch,” I swore to myself. Of course it was Keller.
Boulder isn’t big enough to have a designated homicide-robbery division. Instead, there are about twenty detectives who investigate anything from sexual assault to bank robbery to kidnapped pets. With so few spots, it’s difficult for regular patrol cops to get promoted—Elise had been trying for years—and Detective Neal Keller was the kind of guy who loved to lord his power over the cops he outranked. I’d lived in Boulder my whole life, and I knew that most of the city’s police were good people doing tough jobs. Keller, though, was a first-class dick.
Unfortunately, thanks to a combination of bad luck and worse timing, he was also the cop who had arrested me both times I’d gotten in trouble. Had they sent Keller today to try to rattle me? No, that was too paranoid for Boulder PD. He had probably just been the only detective available at the moment.
Still.
As soon as I was dressed, I texted Lily to warn her that I’d be late. Then I ran a brush through my hair, scrubbed my fingernails in the master bathroom, and went to face the cops.