Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(76)

“What happens if she doesn’t?” I asked, immediately proud of my competence.

“We don’t know,” Quinn told me. “You could die, or you could hurt someone.”

“Do it,” I said. He said something else after that, but I didn’t hear it because the buzzing was back, bigger, like a wave that had chased the smaller wave that came before it. “What?” I yelled.

The second time I half heard him and half read his lips, until finally I understood what he was trying to tell me.

“I’m gonna have to hold you down.”





Chapter 35



I would never remember much of the next few hours, except the pain.

Lily needed me to lie on my stomach with my arms stretched in front of me. I held still as long as I could, but then the pain was too much. I began to struggle and then fight them outright. It was just in my nature.

Eventually, Quinn had to lie down on my back to hold me with his body weight, but even he couldn’t keep all of me from moving, and for a few seconds it looked like I was going to hurt Lily very badly. Then Hazel, of all people, lay down on the ground in front of me and took my hands. She looked straight into my eyes without fear, and I obeyed her order to be still.

Then finally the pain was gone, and it was like gravity had suddenly been restored to the world. Up was up, down was down, and I was me again. For a second the relief was so great I almost blacked out. I think I maybe did lose consciousness briefly, because when I opened my eyes I was lying on my side in the field, not touching anyone. I curled inward, enjoying the feel of the cool grass on my skin. Then I realized that the pain in my shoulder was gone. I wiggled my feet experimentally. They also felt fine.

I sat up without incident and looked down at my dress. The skirt was in tatters and one strap was ripped off, but the upper half was still more or less intact. “Quinn?” I said, squinting against the dim light. The only light in the field emanated from the candles, which I now realized were encased in long vertical tubes of glass, to protect them from the wind.

“I’m here,” came his voice from behind me.

I turned around and saw him sitting in the grass, peering at me over the screen of a cell phone. “Where is everyone?” I asked. “Did I hurt someone?” A new thought occurred to me. “Was it all a dream?”

He smiled briefly. “No and no. Hazel thought it might be best to give you a little space, and Lily needed to rest for a while. It took a lot out of her, but she’ll be fine.”

“What took a lot out of her?” I asked, puzzled.

I saw a strange look come over his face, mostly thanks to the glow from his phone. “You don’t remember what she did?”

“No . . .”

“Look at your arms,” he instructed.

I held out my arms and tried to look. There was some sort of marking covering my forearms, stretching down over my wrists and almost into my palms. “What is it?” I asked.

“Here.” Quinn tapped something on his phone’s screen, then scooted across the grass and held it up to my arms. The light from the phone flared, and for the first time I could make out the swirling black ink that crawled up my arms.

“You guys tattooed me?” I said in amazement. It was a hell of a lot of tattooing. “Why?”

“To pull the power out,” Simon called. I looked up, and when my eyes adjusted to the dimness again, I could see him hurrying across the lawn toward us. A flashlight beam bounced along in front of him.

“Lily’s tattoos,” I remembered. “She said they were a long story.”

Simon nodded. He knelt down in front of me and gently took my hand, flipping it over to inspect the tattoos with his flashlight. “They look good.”

In the better light, I could see they weren’t just swirling patterns—my arms were a mirror image of each other, and together they formed an emblem. “A griffin,” I said, looking up at Simon in wonder. I was wearing the little griffin earring studs at that moment, which seemed like an unbelievable coincidence.

He smiled. “She’s been working on the designs pretty much since we met you, but she wasn’t sure it was a good idea.” He shrugged.

“What do they do?”

Simon answered, “Think of them like . . . a funnel. They’ll let you channel magic through your hands. That should help with the problem you’ve been having.”

“A filter, not a focus,” Quinn reminded me softly.

“Oh,” I said. “Not that I’m not grateful, but why do this now?”

“We had to get the magic out of you,” Simon explained. He gestured at my arms. “The only way to construct something like this on a witch is by using the witch’s own power. Lily’s tattoos took her a couple of years to complete, using a little bit of power each time. Yours drew all the power out at once, more or less.”

“They’re not even bleeding,” I said, examining them.

“True.” He smiled at me. “You should be feeling better in general, because of transferring so much magic. I can explain, but it’d take a while, and I know you’re in a hurry.”

“Charlie,” I said suddenly. I looked at Quinn. “What time is it?”

“Two a.m.,” he said matter-of-factly. Two in the morning wasn’t exactly late for him.