Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(45)

“Simon?” I said uncertainly. “What . . .”

He straightened up then, the hand with the glove holding one of the little white field mice by the tail. “What are you doing?” I said warily.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Simon reassured me. He sat down on the hay bale across from me, still holding the mouse. I glowered at him, suddenly afraid he was going to drop it in my hair like an eighth grader. But he settled into his seat, holding up one palm in the universal gesture of “I’m not going to hurt you,” and finally I relaxed.

But I shouldn’t have.

“I just want you to focus on its spark of life, please,” Simon coaxed, and I closed my eyes and obeyed. Now that I understood how to extend my senses, I found the mouse’s spark right away.

“Focus on it,” Simon said softly. I did, concentrating on the tiny blue glow. It was so little, I marveled. And Simon’s glow was so much bigger, but it was brighter, too. Maybe humans had more of a soul than mice? That would—

Abruptly, I heard a tiny snap, and the blue spark of life I’d been focusing on flickered out. No, wait, it was still there . . . but the bright blue glow had been replaced by a sickly, yellowish-brown, gaseous mass.

And then the gas started to drift toward me, like an airborne toxin.





Chapter 20



My focus broke.

My eyes flew open, and I bolted off the hay bale, scrambling backward until my shoulder blades hit a wall. There was no toxin in the air, not that I could see, anyway. Just Simon sitting there with a guilty look on his face and a dead mouse in his hand.

“No!” I shouted. In an instant I dove forward, tackling him to the ground. That was the plan, anyway, but when I was within a hairsbreadth of touching Simon, he calmly held up his free hand, his lips moving inaudibly—and I glanced off him.

Wait, what?

I stood up and swung a left roundhouse at his cheekbone, the fury pushing my limbs long before I had the chance to think. Again, he held up a hand, muttering, and I seemed to slide right off into the air near it.

“Sergeant Luther, calm down!” Simon barked, and I froze, a decade of instincts stirring back to life in my nerve endings. I managed a slow step backward, my hands still bunched into fists. I could feel the tension forming a U from the ends of my left-hand fingers across my shoulders and down to my other fist, but I couldn’t seem to let go of it. I could hear my breathing, heavy in the quiet hayloft. “Why?” I demanded.

“First of all, let’s keep in mind that it’s a mouse,” Simon pointed out, his voice a little heated now. “There are three cats and four kittens on this farm, so this little guy’s days were numbered no matter what.”

I didn’t move. “Second,” he continued. “Stop and assess how you feel right now.”

That took me aback for a second, and I obeyed him without thinking. How did I feel? I felt . . . exhilarated. Fulfilled. The darkness that surrounded me had been channeled into something for a moment there, and it was like I had a purpose again, for the first time since I’d been kicked out of the army. I felt . . . powerful.

“I want to do it again,” I whispered in answer. All the fight went out of me, and I hunched back to my bale of hay. “What’s happening to me?”

“It’s okay,” Simon reassured me, but I didn’t feel very reassured. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Go for a walk.”

I nodded numbly, and he flipped open the trapdoor.



We didn’t speak on the way out of the barn, or as we walked down the driveway. At some point, Simon must have gotten rid of the dead mouse, but I didn’t see what he did with it and I didn’t care. The only thing I could really think about was how close I was to my car.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to send gravel flying in the air as I flew out of that driveway and never looked back. I wanted to grab John and Charlie and evacuate them out of the state, forget that I had ever heard the words “boundary witch” or “magic” or “null.” Just start over somewhere else and live a normal life, leaving all my darkness behind.

It would never work, though. I’d given Maven and Itachi my word, and they would never let me grab Charlie and waltz out of there. They’d force me back, if only to make a point about not defying them. And besides, I had roots in Boulder, deep ones. If we ran, Charlie and John might be safe, but I had a couple dozen more family members in this town that the vampires could go after. I’d seen the file they had on me. There was no way it didn’t include all my aunts and uncles and cousins, not to mention my parents. Hell, my dad was the president of Luther Shoes. They could walk right into his office.

No, I had to stay. I had to get control of this. I would just need to be stronger, that was all.

That was all.

We were a few hundred feet down the road when Simon finally spoke again. “These are potatoes, which you probably know,” he said casually, nodding at the field on our left. “Onions on the other side of the road, and we have a lot of tomatoes, too. All in all, we’ve got about four hundred acres. That’s small for Colorado, but it would be pretty big in the smaller states.”

“A farm boy, huh?” I said lightly, grateful for the change in subject. “And a witch. And a college professor.”

“Associate professor,” he corrected, grinning.