Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(75)

Quinn took one of the spots that had just been vacated, blocking in a red minivan. He came around and opened my car door. I managed to unbuckle my seat belt before he scooped me up again. “I can walk,” I said woozily, but neither of us really believed me.

There were a few voices moving in our direction, chatting and laughing. The voices kept stopping when they got close to us. I ignored all of that and closed my eyes so I didn’t have to try to interpret any more images with my addled brain.

Later—a minute? Ten minutes?—I heard Quinn call out Lily’s name. I lifted my head again. We were in a big, open clearing behind the farmhouse, and there were candles everywhere. I couldn’t understand how the flames were staying lit . . . or why the air above them was so shiny. “Pretty,” I murmured.

“What happened to her?” said Lily, who was right next to my head now. Or at least her voice was.

I jumped in Quinn’s arms. “Hey, Lil,” I said drunkenly. “The lights are super pretty.”

Lily looked at me hard. “Simon!” she shouted, without looking away from me.

Simon moved away from a group of people and jogged over. “You better set her down,” he told Quinn. There was concern in his voice, real concern, and I squinted hard at him.

“You sound sad, Simon,” I told him. There was someone hovering at his shoulder, a pretty Asian woman with jet-black hair cut to frame her face. “Ooh!” I said happily. “Simon’s lady love! Simon says you’re a witch, too.” I giggled. “Heh. ‘Simon says.’”

“She’s getting worse, I think,” Quinn said over my head. “She was coherent when she first woke up, but she’s losing it.”

He started telling them about Charlie, and I tuned out, not wanting to let them kill my buzz. At some point Quinn put my legs down, but his arms were still the only things keeping me upright. Lily began touching me, but that was okay. I’d seen her boobs, so we had real trust.

Then Simon reached a thumb up and lifted my eyelid, shining a penlight in my eye. “Hey!” I complained. “Not cool, Simon!” I tried to karate-chop him away, but my arms weren’t working quite like I wanted. I sighed and endured his examination of my other eye. There was some more discussion, and when I tuned in again Simon was saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” There was a frown in his voice.

“I have,” announced an annoyed, steel-cut voice.

Suddenly Hazel f*cking Pellar was in my line of sight, moving her son aside to peer at my face. She put her hands on my cheeks, probing my skin. I could feel energy pass between us, but I didn’t know if it started from her or me. “She’s magic-drunk,” she said matter-of-factly. “Witches aren’t meant to hold this much magic inside. We’re conductors, not car batteries. She needs to ground it.”

There was an uneasy silence, and I saw Hazel look back and forth between her two children. “What?” she demanded.

“That could be a problem,” Lily said sheepishly. There was a pause; then she added, “We’ve only taught her one spell, and she overdid it.”

At the same time Simon chimed in: “She can’t manage regular spells yet.”

There was a terrible silence. “But you should see her sense out life?” Lily offered in a small voice. I started snickering, which probably didn’t help.

“You two swore to me,” Hazel exploded, “that you were just trying to teach her control! Not teach her everything but control.”

That made me mad. “Hey! That’s not fair,” I said, glaring at Hazel. Or trying to, anyway—her image kept flickering around like one of those jumping spiders. “They’ve been helping me, working their asses off and donating time that I’m sure they’d rather spend doing a million other things instead of—”

“Lex,” Quinn interrupted. I paused. The hair on my arms was standing on end, and there was an electric charge in the air, like when I’d done that spell in the mudroom. Hazel was watching me with narrowed eyes, and I dimly realized that whatever she’d thought of me before today, I’d just made it a lot worse. I whimpered.

“She’s too powerful,” Hazel snapped. “I warned you about this—”

“Please,” I broke in. “I have to save my niece. Please. Whatever’s going on, I have to save her tonight. Please, she’s a null, and this vampire took her—”

Hazel drew in a sharp breath. “Your niece is a null?”

She said something to Simon and Lily for a minute, and they answered, but I barely heard what they said. “Do you guys hear kind of a buzzing?” I wondered aloud.

I got distracted for a while, listening to the buzz, and then Quinn’s voice was whispering in my ear. “Lex, honey,” he said, “There’s too much magic in you. It’s too much for your body.”

I could hear the thread of worry in his voice. I turned to look at him, and for a second I thought I could even see it. I raised my hand to run a finger along it, but instead I touched his face, experimentally running my finger over his lips, tracing a line across his cheek to his ear. “Do you like me?” I asked idly.

Amusement sparked in his eyes. “Much to my chagrin,” he said solemnly. “But I need you to listen. Lily thinks she knows a way to get the magic out, but it’s going to hurt.”