Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(58)

“The kid is what? A year and a half?” Quinn pointed out. “They’ve got no use for the baby until she’s at least talking. You just need to be patient.”

Be patient. Yeah, right. Maybe if I went and talked to them myself . . .

But Quinn sensed exactly what I was thinking. “Lex,” he sighed, and I thought I heard actual concern in his voice. “Seriously, this isn’t the time to run over here and make your case. Their whole concern is that you’re too close to this . . . and that you’ll be too emotional and unpredictable while your magic comes in.”

“You told them about that?” It was stupid to feel betrayed, but I did.

“I had to,” he said, his voice thick with regret.

I didn’t trust myself to answer him. Simon had warned me that Quinn’s first loyalty would be to other vampires, and I’d let myself believe he was on my side. What an idiot.

“Look, just . . . keep up the magic lessons,” he said when I didn’t speak. “Do anything you can think of to make yourself more valuable to them, especially Maven. I think she likes the idea of a boundary witch working for them. She’s just not sure about you personally. Don’t do anything to scare her off.”

“Fine,” I said shortly. “I can do that.”

Well, I could try.





Chapter 25



I’d missed a call from Simon while I was sleeping on Saturday. I called him back, and we arranged another training session for the following week. That Sunday I went back to work at the Flatiron Depot. Big Scott had scheduled a second manager for my first night back, so I ended up having a nice, quiet shift restocking the shelves and working on inventory. At break time, I ate two pieces of the “Welcome Back” cake Big Scott had bought from the nearest Safeway, and by the time I returned to work Monday night, all the cake was gone and everything was back to normal. I found it surprisingly comforting to be at work, where I always knew what to do and nobody threw around made-up words for mythological happenings. A couple of nights later I even worked with Bettina, who still seemed confused as hell about what had happened the night Charlie was taken. I figured out pretty quickly that it was best not to mention it.

The following Friday I took care of Charlie like always, and the next night my parents took me out to dinner “just to catch up.” My mother spent most of the time talking about my father’s upcoming sixtieth birthday party, and I pretended that I’d never forgotten about it. The Luthers had a big family dinner every few weeks to celebrate all the birthdays that month—there were too many of us for individual celebrations—but this was going to be different. It was the first major family event since Sam’s death, and my mother was determined that it would be a Big Deal. There’s not much of a Who’s Who in Boulder, but what little “high society” we did have would all be there.



A little more time passed, and with the exception of spending a few afternoons a week with the Pellars, my life actually started getting back to normal. My extended family slowly toned down their hand-wringing after what they’d perceived as a garden-variety kidnapping attempt, if there is such a thing. I went hiking with my cousin Anna, babysat for my other cousin Brie, and went to the shooting range with Elise. She gave me the good news that the police had decided I was no longer an official suspect.

“Even Keller?” I asked skeptically.

She made a face. “Okay, he still thinks it was you, but then he probably thinks you’re behind every bad thing that happens in Boulder.”

“He’s like the Sheriff Teasle to my John Rambo,” I grumbled, but I couldn’t entirely blame the guy, either.

When I wasn’t spending time with my family or the herd or at work, I kept to myself, which was exactly the way I liked it.

But although days, and then weeks, slipped by with no word from the vampires and nothing remarkable happening in Charlie’s life, there was still a part of me that just couldn’t relax. Mostly it was because I’d started having these dreams. They were tangled, patchy things, wisps of conversation layered under snatches of dread and the occasional bolt of pure panic. I would wake up disoriented and confused, with Sam’s face in my mind and the vague sensation that I needed to be with Charlie right now. There were usually three or four members of the herd staring at me when I woke up, with resigned expressions on their faces that said their mistress had finally lost it.

Now that I was back on my regular work schedule, I was sleeping from midmorning to late afternoon, and the dreams haunted me more often than not. After one terrible week during which I had the dreams every “night,” I started the habit of driving over to John’s house around sunset, when he usually put Charlie to bed. I would park a few houses down and watch the house, like I was on a stakeout in one of those generic cop shows. His neighborhood housed a lot of professors who came and went at odd hours, but if anyone ever noticed me, they didn’t seem troubled by it. I still felt like a creep or, at the very least, an idiot, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

During these vigils, I thought a lot about my dead sister, wondering for the thousandth time what she would think of all this. I thought about John, whom I’d been careful to avoid seeing alone. And, to my surprise, I thought about Quinn, especially the moment when he’d begged me not to let him hurt me.

Each time when I finally left to let the dogs out before my eleven o’clock shift, I would feel the dread and panic start to bleed back into my mood.