Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(54)

The inside of the building had the same restrained sense of wealth as the outside, like this was a place for people who had plenty of money but no desire to flaunt it. In the lobby, Quinn pushed the button for Nolan’s unit a few times, getting no response. He glanced over his shoulder at me, and I shrugged. This was his show. I was just the on-the-job trainee. Quinn sighed and glanced around, then planted his feet and tugged hard at the handle of the interior door. It cracked open with a terrible metallic crunch.

Nolan’s condo was on the basement level. We found the stairs, which led us past a small gym and a sauna before depositing us in front of the door of unit 12. Quinn knocked, waited for a moment, then knocked again. “Nolan?” he called, his voice authoritative.

“He’s probably just out,” I reasoned. “Getting, um, food.” I still hadn’t completely wrapped my head around the idea of vampires existing on blood they drank from regular people.

“Probably,” Quinn said, but he looked up and down the hall again. When he was sure no one was coming, he got down on his hands and knees and put his face right next to the crack of the door. Then he sniffed in long, deep inhalations that held no embarrassment or self-consciousness.

I tensed. Of the few vampires I’d met, Quinn seemed the most human. But moments like this one reminded me that I wasn’t dealing with an ordinary man. I heard Simon’s voice in my head. Vampires aren’t like us, Lex.

I thought of the horror in Hazel Pellar’s eyes when she looked at me. Then again, I wasn’t much like “us” either, was I?

Finally Quinn straightened up, looking put out. “What?” I asked.

“Blood,” Quinn said shortly. “Too much blood.” He took a closer look at the door, which was far less secure than Victor and Darcy’s door had been. There was a single dead bolt and an ordinary knob lock. “From now on, I’m bringing lock picks everywhere we go,” he grumbled. Before I could respond, he leaned back and kicked the door so fast that I could barely follow the motion of his leg. The door shot open, and I heard the knob crunch into the plaster wall behind it. I raised my eyebrows at Quinn. “What is it with you and doors?” I asked. He gave me a sheepish look and stepped forward, flicking a light switch on his right.

My first thought was that whoever had killed Nolan had made no effort to hide his body. The dead vampire’s skeleton was sitting three feet away from the door, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. The clothes puddled around the skeleton, which was situated on top of a large red stain. I was so busy looking at all that bright red blood that it took me a moment to realize there was no skull attached to the body.

“Lex,” Quinn said impatiently, and I registered that it was at least the second time he’d said my name. “You need to come in and close the door.”

“Right,” I said stupidly, stepping all the way in and shoving the door closed behind me. It didn’t latch, but it stayed more or less shut. “Where’s his head?” My voice came out sounding like a little kid’s, and I swallowed.

“Here.” Quinn had wandered into a small kitchenette on our left, just behind the counter. “It rolled.”

“Right.” I shook off the shock—I’d seen much worse, just not this weird—and moved closer to the body. “Do we think it’s Nolan?” I asked.

Quinn came over to the skeleton, studied it for a second, and then squatted down near the left arm. I tried not to flinch as he gently picked up the skeleton’s hand, which snapped loose in his fingers despite the care he took. There was something shiny on the wrist, which slid off the forearm bone into Quinn’s hand. He studied the fancy-looking watch for a moment and tossed it to me. “It’s him.”

I caught it and, seeing an inscription on the back, read it aloud. “For N, my greatest soldier, a token of my thanks. —I.” I looked up at Quinn. “This could have been planted on the body,” I pointed out. “Nolan might have killed someone else to fake his death.”

Quinn shook his head. “Look around. This wasn’t a fight. Besides the big pool, there are only a few drops of blood on the carpet, and none on the walls. Nolan let someone else come in, someone he trusted enough to turn his back. That’s how he died.” He jumped up and circled the body to stand behind me, gently taking my shoulders and positioning me just inside the door. “You’re Nolan. While your back is turned”—he swung an imaginary dagger—“I take a swing and lop off your head, which isn’t as easy as they make it look in the movies, by the way. You pretty much need vampire strength. Anyway, this happened fast, just inside the door. You wouldn’t stop to put a watch on someone before chopping off their head.”

“It could have been put on the body afterward,” I pointed out, although we both knew I was just playing devil’s advocate.

Quinn was shaking his head before I’d finished the sentence. “That thing is brittle as shit—pardon my language.” He nodded at the watch in my hand. “The clasp on the watch is complicated. No way you could get it on the skeleton without snapping off its hand.”

“Gross,” I said. “But okay, I agree that it’s probably Nolan.” I glanced around. I’d never seen an actual beheading, but I’d seen arterial spray before. Quinn was right. There wasn’t enough blood. “But that doesn’t explain why the blood is in one neat puddle like that. If his head was cut off, shouldn’t it have spurted everywhere?”