Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(87)

Charlie was going to have to sit in my lap, since we didn’t have a car seat. Kirby had used one, but there was no sign of his vehicle at Atwood’s property, and we didn’t want to stick around and look. Quinn told me he had called the cops and told them the truth, more or less: that Atwood was a small-time fence who’d decided to branch out into kidnapping and selling attractive babies to childless couples. It would probably be an issue that there were no actual kidnapped babies on the premises, but Quinn was pretty confident that the cops doing the search would find all sorts of other stolen goods, as well as the baby supplies Atwood had used for Charlie.

Quinn drove carefully back into town, heading straight to John’s house. It was after four when he pulled his car into the driveway and turned off the engine, his eyes trained on me. He looked as tired as I felt, and I realized that he was close enough to Charlie to be human.

He wasn’t the only one she was affecting. I was still tired, but after twenty minutes of holding a null, I no longer felt like I was about to collapse into a puddle of ooze. I found my voice. “Tell me about working for Maven,” I said, shifting Charlie to the crook of my right arm.

Quinn frowned through the windshield for a moment. “She trusts Itachi,” he said after a moment of silence. “She believes he is loyal to her. But she’s also aware of how . . . thirsty he is for power. So just in case, she keeps a handful of vampires who are sworn to her scattered throughout the state. And when I was traded to the two of them, she found out I had a gift for pressing people and a background as a cop”—he shrugged—“so she claimed me for hers.”

“How did you feel about that?” I asked.

“I was glad.” He smiled ruefully. “Well, no, I was bitter and angry and heartbroken, but after I got a little distance from my death, I ended up being grateful that I belonged to her instead of him.”

I nodded. “You could have told me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “Least of all . . .”

“Least of all an unstable boundary witch who’d swear loyalty to anyone who’d protect her niece?” I said archly.

Quinn sighed, a very human sound. He was human, I reminded myself, hugging Charlie close.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “We have to tell her, right?”

“I’ll tell her,” he said, nodding. “She’ll decide what to do with Itachi.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

He looked at me, squinting a little in the light from the car’s dashboard. “I think you should stay with your niece,” he said at last. “It could get . . . confrontational.”

“That’s exactly why I should come,” I argued.

“It’s not that,” he said. “If something happens and Itachi gets away . . . he might decide to make one final run at her before he skips town.”

I considered that for a moment. By “if something happens,” I understood him to mean “if Itachi kills Maven and me.” I didn’t have much hope against Itachi under those circumstances, but as last lines of defense go, I was better than nothing.

“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “But I don’t love the idea of you going in there alone.”

“I’ll be fine.” Quinn hesitated for just a moment, glancing at the house in front of us. “Charlie’s dad, John . . . Are you in love with him?”

I blinked, taken aback by the bluntness of the question. Then I took another moment to really consider my answer. “No,” I said at last. “A long time ago I was, but I was just a kid then.”

Quinn watched me carefully. “At the party, you two seemed . . . complicated.”

I nodded. “John was my first love, yeah, but he was Sam’s last. He’ll always be family, but I don’t want to be with him.” I shook my head. “I just sort of wish he wouldn’t be with anyone else, either. Because that would mean that Sam’s really gone.”

Quinn studied my face for a second, then leaned over the baby’s head and pressed his lips to mine in a warm, gentle kiss, maybe the sweetest I’d ever gotten. I kissed him back, my left fingers rising to twist themselves in his shirt.

It was a little awkward with the baby in my arms, but that was okay. This kiss wasn’t about sex; we weren’t going to go any further right now. It was more like . . . a declaration. He cupped my face in his hands, gently nudging my nose with his own as we pulled apart. We smiled at each other.

Affinity for the dead, indeed.

Quinn said he would call me as soon as it was over, and this time I made him promise. Then I crept to the front door, used the hidden key to open it, and slipped inside with Charlie. I snuck through the silent house and put her in her crib. There were still a few things I would need to explain—why I brought her home early, how I got her here without a car seat, et cetera—but I would figure something out.

Before I got too tired, I dug my phone out of the pocket of the leather jacket and called Lily’s cell to check on Simon. He was in surgery. “They think he’s going to pull through,” she reported. “They just can’t figure out how he managed to lose that much blood and still hang on for so long.”

I smiled without mirth. “I know the feeling.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause from Lily. Then she asked, “Lex . . . what exactly did you do to him? You know he’s going to ask.”