Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(73)

The wave of stolen magic hit me, and I lost consciousness.





Chapter 33



I opened my eyes to darkness. For a moment I wondered dully if I’d blinded myself with the magic. It didn’t matter, really. I’d lost Charlie, and I’d killed a couple dozen people with my f*cking mind. I’d stolen their life force—and for what? I’d been so sure that everything would be fine if I could just catch Kirby . . . and then I’d lost him. By morning Charlie was going to be in another state.

I had failed to save her, just like I’d failed to save her mother.

Very slowly, the room around me came into focus, and I realized with a dim sense of relief that I wasn’t blind—I was dreaming. I was sitting on the edge of my twin bed in the bedroom Sam and I had shared at our parent’s house, the one we had insisted on sharing even though the new house had plenty of space. I looked around the room fondly. There was Sam’s mussed bed, looking like she’d just jumped out of it. There was the stuffed bear she’d slept with since we were three, and I recognized the stack of novels on my nightstand as being from my AP English class.

Then I frowned. Something felt off. I dreamed about my sister all the time, but this felt different. I wasn’t usually so conscious of being asleep, for one thing, and everything was too . . . detailed. My dreams were usually fuzzy and content-oriented—I would dream about this or that event, real or imaginary, and that’s all I would remember later.

But this time I saw all the minutiae—what I was wearing (jeans and a plain Luther Shoes T-shirt), the names on the posters on our walls, the piles of clothes, clean and dirty, on Sam’s side of the room. It even smelled like the obnoxious floral air fresheners my mom had liked to use throughout the house when we were kids. Had I ever had a dream with smells before? This was too weird.

“Finally, Allie,” said a voice from in front of me. “It took you long enough.”

I looked up. There was Sam, sitting cross-legged on her own twin bed across from me, though it had been empty just a second ago. She was wearing the same outfit I’d last seen her in: black leggings, ballet flats, and a drapey turquoise top that hid her postpartum baby pooch. My sister had been small-framed, with a brunette pixie cut and big blue eyes that were identical to mine. People had rarely guessed we were twins, and sisters, but if you looked closely, our eyes gave it away.

“Sammy?” I said in a small voice. I began to stand up, but she shook her head, motioning for me to stay where I was.

“Sorry, babe, but you can’t hug me. It doesn’t work like that.”

I looked around for a moment and then sat back on my bed, folding my legs to mirror her. This was how we’d had a thousand conversations in high school, back when Sam and I were making plans to room together at college. Before 9/11, before I’d decided that being a soldier was my destiny.

“Usually when I dream about you, we get to hug,” I pointed out.

“You’re not dreaming, Allie,” she told me seriously.

I snorted. “Of course I am. I’m talking to my dead sister.”

Sam just raised one eyebrow at me, waiting for me to put it together.

“I’m talking to my dead sister,” I repeated. “Are you saying that this is real? You’re real?”

She nodded. “I’m me, or what’s left of me.” Then she put on a low, dramatic voice. “I am the soul of Samantha Wheaton!” A goofy grin broke out on her face.

I stared back, not believing. This was just another dream—more vivid and heartbreaking than usual, maybe, but still a dream. Wasn’t it?

Sam arched a single eyebrow at me, a trick she’d always been much better at than I was. “Allie, you know for a fact now that vampires are real, and you’ve personally died and come back several times. How is this any weirder than that?”

“Because I want it to be true,” I whispered.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll prove it. I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know. You can’t dream about things you don’t know.” Her eyes searched the air above my head for a moment; then she brightened. “Dad’s fifty-fifth birthday, when you were in Iraq,” she said to me. “Brie and I got drunk on champagne and threw up in the bushes behind Mom and Dad’s house. You can check the story with her.”

“That’s . . .” I shook my head. I believed her. “If it’s true, how did we . . . do this?”

She shrugged. “You tell me, Allie. You called. I just picked up the phone.”

“I miss you so much,” I said, my voice quavering. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when he killed you.”

Sam rolled her eyes again. “You’ve gotta get over that, babe.”

“Get over what? Your death?”

Her face softened. “Get over the idea that you could have done something. Why do you think I sent you the dream of that time in the park? You could only do so much to keep me safe, Allie. At some point I was gonna be the person I was gonna be.” I must have looked unconvinced, because she huffed out a sigh. “Look, I chose to live in LA. I chose to go out that night. Even if you’d been with me, you probably couldn’t have prevented it.”

“You’ve been sending me dreams?” I said stupidly. “You can do that?” Sam nodded. I thought of all the dreams I’d been having since Quinn had officially dropped the case. “What does that mean?”