Boundary Lines (8 page)

“He’s facing south.” I stopped mimicking Tobias and turned back to my partner. “Toward Colorado.”

Chapter 12

“Moon lines.”

Maven’s voice was thoughtful, like she was sampling the way the words tasted in her mouth. Tonight she was wearing purple leggings and an orange corduroy jumper that didn’t
quite
match her orange hair. I was pretty sure she’d purchased the whole ensemble in 1995. “That phrase sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. What else did he say?”

We were crammed into her tiny office, having driven straight to Magic Beans from Wyoming. I didn’t love being in a space this small, but I sat near the door and kept an eye on the little window that looked out on the large event room. “Not much, really,” Quinn replied. “He kept saying ‘we’ didn’t want to, and then he’d run at the fence. Toward the south.”

“I think he was trying to say they didn’t
want
to invade Colorado, but they didn’t have a choice,” I added. “Something is forcing them. Witches can’t use magic on werewolves, so maybe it’s their alpha?” I thought of the demented wannabe alpha who’d killed my sister. What was forcing one werewolf to run into a fence, compared to
that
?

“If it were just one pack, just one attack, that might be it,” Maven mused. “But I still can’t see the Wyoming werewolves and the eastern Utah pack working together. It goes against their basic territorial instinct.”

“I don’t know, then,” Quinn said, and if I hadn’t been looking, I would have missed the frustration on his face.

“Neither do I.” Maven’s voice was contemplative. Her eyes unfocused for a moment as she dug through her memory, but then shook her head, not catching it. I wondered what it was like, trying to remember things that had happened tens or even hundreds of years ago. I barely remembered high school.

There was a knock on Maven’s office door, and a heavyset young man poked his head in, pushing trendy thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “Hey, Maven. Oh hi, Lex, Quinn.” I lifted one hand in a wave, and Quinn gave the kid a stony nod. We’d both met Maven’s most recent hire, a twenty-five-year-old human named Ryan. He was the daytime manager of the coffee shop, and Maven’s all-around errand boy, who had to give the occasional unwitting blood donation. That was my suspicion, anyway—the kid was always pale—but he seemed content enough, and it was none of my business.

“Maven, I’m gonna take off now, if that’s all right,” he said. “I think the rush is pretty much over. Adrian can handle it from here.”

“Awesome, thanks, Ryan,” she chirped, using her teenage hippie accent. It sounded so strange coming from the same voice that had often frightened the crap out of me. They exchanged a couple of words about the next day’s schedule, and as soon as the door closed behind Ryan, Maven’s eyes came to rest on me. “I’ll need to get out there in a moment, so let’s move on, for now. Lex, tell me more about this hairball business.”

I went through the whole story about the phone call from Elise and driving Simon to the police station, and told her his theory about the creature that’d left the gastric pellet. Maven didn’t jump up and say “Ah ha, I know exactly what that is,” like I’d kind of been hoping, but when I was done, she leaned forward and pointed at me. “I want you to stay on that. Keep in touch with Simon, assist him however you can, and let me know everything he learns about the pellet.”

A rock formed in my stomach, tumbling around unhappily. I had known in theory that I would need to report on the witches to Maven, but that didn’t mean I liked it. Then again, as long as they didn’t know about werewolves in Colorado, the witches technically worked for Maven too. So I could probably at least be upfront with Simon about the fact that I would report back to Maven. I just couldn’t be upfront with him about the werewolf attack.

I resisted the urge to thunk my head into Maven’s desk, but just barely.

“Do you think they’re connected?” I asked her instead. “The werewolf attack and the pellet?”

“I think we need to proceed as if they are,” she said somberly. “As if they’re two parts of a threat to Colorado.”

“What do you want to do about the werewolves?” Quinn asked.

“We need more information. Specifically about the history of magic in this state.” Maven stood up and began to pace the short width of her cramped office. I’d never seen her do that before. Quinn and I sat in silence as five long minutes ticked by on the wall clock. Finally, Maven turned back to us. “When I came to this state twelve years ago, to break up the war,” she said at last, “it wasn’t my first trip to Colorado.”

Quinn and I exchanged a look, and he gave me a little shrug. Neither of us had been expecting a lesson in Maven’s personal history. “I was here in 1892, newly arrived from Europe to explore the burgeoning businesses of mining and prostitution. Both professions were particularly lucrative for vampires, for different reasons.” I felt a little flutter of fear, just based on her tone. “At any rate, I spent some time with one of Colorado’s madams in Denver, Nellie Evans, who just happened to be a witch. She was very close to the native peoples, and became something of an expert on the natural magic in this lovely state. I could swear she used the phrase ‘moon lines’ before. ”

I was hoping Maven would say something like “And she taught me everything she knew,” but instead she paused and studied her fingernails. It was a surprisingly human gesture. “Unfortunately, Nellie and I experienced something of a falling out, over money. She killed me . . . or at least she thought she did.” Her smile was cold and barbaric. “As I am a vampire, and
not
a helpless soiled dove, I killed her right back.”

There was a pause, as both Quinn and I struggled for something to say.

“That’s . . . quite a falling out,” I remarked finally.

Maven nodded, unperturbed. “At any rate, after her death, Nellie’s spirit did not move on to the next plane. Her remnants are still right where I left them. But although she and I are both old and strong enough to see each other, we are not exactly on speaking terms. So Lex,” she said, nodding at me, “will go to see Nellie tonight, and question her about Tobias Leine’s story.”

Quinn was already nodding obediently in the chair beside me, but I hesitated. “One problem,” I said. “I can’t actually see ghosts.” Maven’s eyebrows shot up. “I figured I was just sort of missing that part of the boundary witch thing,” I added lamely.

“That’s not how it works,
”
she informed me, looking puzzled. “I have been dead long enough to make out the strongest remnants, but as a boundary witch you should be able to see them each night, wherever they are. Besides,” she added, “you saw the
gjenganger
.”

“True, but assuming those aren’t the only ghosts in all of Boulder, they seem to be the exception,” I admitted. “I haven’t seen a ghost, before or since.”

“Hmm.” Maven stared at me some more, making me squirm in my seat. I was really starting to wish she’d fidget like everyone else. “Then you will go to Clan Pellar tonight,” she declared. “Find out if Hazel can help repair or restore that part of your magic. As soon as you are able to see remnants, go visit Nellie.”

“Pardon me,” Quinn interjected, “I thought remnants were only bits and pieces of a person’s memory. Like playing a little bit of a home movie over and over. Will Lex even be able to communicate with the spirit?”

Maven gave him an indulgent smile. “There are as many kinds of remnants as there are kinds of witches, Quinn. Their degree of coherency depends a lot on how they died, under what conditions, and whether or not they had any access to magic while alive.”

“The remnants of witches are more sentient?” I said in confusion.

Maven’s sudden smile was the most human expression I’d seen from her: sly and a little wicked. “Indeed. In fact, this remnant should be particularly sentient. In life, Nellie was a boundary witch.”

Chapter 13

There was silence as my head spun with the new information. A boundary witch left a functioning and aware ghost. If I died, that could happen to me. I
really
didn’t want to become like those things at the cemetery.

Then my brain caught up to the meaning behind her words. Boundary witches could die.
I
could die. For some reason, this came as a great relief.

Maven must have read my thoughts on my face, because she nodded. “Yes, boundary witches can be killed. It’s easy for your magic to close wounds or briefly ignore internal damage to keep your body from crossing the line. But there are things you can’t come back from.”

“Like what?” I said in a small voice, aware that I was talking to a woman who had killed one of my kind. “How did Nellie die?”

Maven’s eyes seemed to puncture me, leaving me empty and cold. “I cut off her head.”

There wasn’t a lot to say after “I cut off her head.” Maven told me to check in with her at Magic Beans the next afternoon at sunset, and waved a hand to dismiss me. Still a little unnerved, I got out of there as fast as I could.

My car was parked at the Randolph Center, and parking at CU is a bitch, so I began walking toward the CU campus, where I was pretty sure Simon would still be working. I had every intention of obeying Maven’s order to talk to Clan Pellar. But why take the problem straight to Hazel when her children were much more welcoming? Besides, Maven
had
told me to check in with Simon about the pellet-leaving creature. I was really just killing two birds.

I called Simon on the way, and he confessed that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. We arranged to meet at a calzone shop just off campus. I texted Lily to join us too, both because I wanted her opinion on this remnant business, and because I wanted another pair of eyes on Simon. I didn’t mean to fuss over him, but I had been a little worried about him
before
he’d spent an entire day working without food.

The calzone shop was located in a tiny building on Broadway, part of a row of fast-food and delivery places that catered to the students. It was a nice enough location, decorated in bold shades of red and black, but it was obvious that their main business was delivery. The four employees behind the counter were bustling back and forth, calling out to each other, but aside from Simon, there was only one occupied table in the whole place: two college girls with textbooks spread under their calzone boxes. I ordered a veggie calzone at the counter and went to sit by Simon, who was so entranced by something on his laptop that he hadn’t even seen me coming. He looked genuinely surprised when I sat down.

“Oh, hey,” he said, closing his laptop and setting it on the bench seat next to him, where his cane was propped. I winced as I got a good look at his sunken features and pale skin. He looked worse than he had early that morning . . . Good God, had it been just this morning that we’d seen the gastric pellet?

“Hey. Did you order something to eat too?” I asked, pointing at the fountain soda near his elbow. “Otherwise I can go up for you.”

“No, I ordered. They’re just a little slow tonight.” He took off his wire-framed glasses to rub his face. “You want an update on the pellet for Maven.” It wasn’t really a question.

“Yes, but first I need to talk about another problem.” Before I could continue, Lily came breezing through the front door. She grabbed the chair next to me and flipped it around so she could straddle it backward. She was wearing black leather pants and a buttoned jean jacket that should have looked ridiculous together, but somehow it worked perfectly.

“Hey, Lex. What’s up, big brother?” she said casually, reaching over to steal a swig from Simon’s soda.

“Dammit, Lily, get your own,” Simon complained, but without any heat to it.

Ignoring him, Lily looked at me. “What’s up, Lex? Why have you assembled the Scooby gang?”

I missed most of Lily’s pop-culture references, but I had seen
Scooby-Doo
, so I shot her a quick smile. Before I could answer her, Simon contended, “Technically, a complete Scooby gang meeting would have to include Quinn.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Your boyfriend doesn’t get to be in our Scooby gang,” she told her brother. Lily and Quinn couldn’t stand each other, although I’d never found out why. It made me a little uneasy. “We’re not accepting douche-nozzles.”

“Then how are
you
here?” Simon countered.

“Guys!” I interrupted. “Can we?”

They both looked appropriately shamed, so I started explaining how Maven wanted me to get in touch with the remnant of Nellie Evans, who had also been a boundary witch. I left out everything about the werewolves. As I spoke, I realized that it made sense that I’d want to talk to Nellie anyway—not only was she someone like me, but she might know something about whatever strange creature had coughed up that gastric pellet.

While I was talking, both Simon’s calzone order and mine were called, and Lily got up to fetch them. When she sat back down she pulled a plastic baggie of mini carrots out of her jacket pocket and began crunching on them. “Paleo,” she said by way of explanation.

Simon rolled his eyes, beginning to cut up the cheesy calzone with his plastic silverware. “
Anyway
, Lex, I understand that Maven wants you to communicate with this person, but if you can’t see her, you can’t see her. I’m not sure what we can do to help.”

“Maven said it doesn’t work like that. All boundary witches can see ghosts, period.” I bit my lip. “Also . . . I saw some last night.”

“
What
?” Lily was shocked. She blurted, “Why didn’t you say anything?” at the exact same moment Simon exclaimed, “You were with me
all morning
and you never mentioned this?”

I held up my hands defensively. That had been right before Quinn and I had taken on the missing vampire case. “Honestly, I kind of just forgot.” I told them about the
gjenganger,
only stumbling a little when I used the word. I’d be damned if I could spell it, though.

“Yeah, Mom calls them wraiths,” Lily said, nodding her understanding. “They died particularly horrifying deaths, and they have to return to their bones on Samhain. But why would you be able to see
those
remnants, but not everyday remnants? Makes no sense.”

Simon was staring at me, showing no sign that he’d heard his sister’s question. He’d stopped eating his calzone, and his right hand hovered over the cardboard box as if it had gotten lost on the way to his food.

“
What
?” I finally asked.

“You said you had nightmares,” he began, “right after you drowned. When you activated your witchblood.”

I stared blankly at him for a moment as I tried to switch gears back to our conversation about nightmares. “Yeah, so? Lots of people have bad dreams.” I said, pointedly not reminding him that he was having them too.

“But you said you dreamed about dead people,” Simon persisted. “What did you mean?”

I shrugged. “You know, dead people. I dreamed that they were everywhere—in my parents’ house, at the grocery store, library, whatever. But lots of people have night terrors,” I said again, a little more desperately. “My parents had me talk to a shrink, and Sam slept with me for a while. Eventually they went away.” It had been a big deal to me at the time, but it was the same way everything is a big deal to you when you’re a kid: a softball game, a snubbing in the cafeteria, losing your favorite backpack. Honestly, once I was past the night terrors, I’d nearly forgotten about them.

“What if they weren’t dreams at all?” Simon said quietly.

Now it was my turn to stare at him. “You . . . you think I was seeing ghosts? That makes no sense.” I spread my hands out in front of me. “If I saw ghosts when I was thirteen, where the hell did they go?”

Lily was looking back and forth between her brother and me as though she were watching a particularly interesting game of Ping-Pong. Simon studied me, and I knew from his expression that he was examining me in the magical spectrum. Again. “I think . . . I think maybe you
made
them go away.”

I just stared at him. “When your magic first comes in,” he explained, “it’s a little bit . . . malleable.”

“Sort of like how a newborn’s head is all soft and squishy,” Lily interjected, munching on another carrot stick.

Simon rolled his eyes at his sister. “I was gonna go with parents who take the pen away from their left-handed kid and make him write with the other hand, but okay. Squishy newborn head.” Lily stuck her tongue out at him. “Anyway, your specialization develops in that malleable time, if you have one. But I think you did more than develop a specialty. I think you blocked part of it off.”

Lily gave him a skeptical look. “I’ve never heard of that.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t either, but we don’t know much about boundary magic. And we don’t know many witches with bloodlines as strong as Lex’s.”

“Hang on,” I objected. “If I blocked out my ability to see ghosts, how come I saw the remnants last night?”

Simon’s brow furrowed, and I could practically see him fitting pieces against each other in his mind, trying to get them to fall into place. “Wraiths happen when someone’s death leaves a
serious
imprint on the magical spectrum, like a psychic scar. Halloween is when that echo is the strongest,” he said. “It’s so strong, in fact, that a lot of foundings who have just a hint of witchblood, but have never activated their powers, can see the wraiths on Halloween.”

“That’s where all the stories come from,” Lily supplied. She was still
noshing on carrot sticks, as though we were discussing a favorite sit
com instead of freaking
ghosts
. “Why humans fear graveyards at night.”

I tried to process all of that. “So you’re suggesting that because wraiths are stronger than ordinary ghosts, they were able to penetrate the magical . . .
fence
, or whatever, that I built in my mind when I was thirteen. Does that pretty much sum things up?” Simon nodded, and Lily rolled her eyes toward her brother, shrugging as if to say
It’s his theory, not mine
.

“No offense, Simon,” I said, “but that sounds goddamned ridiculous.”

His face clouded over with annoyance. “More ridiculous than chatting with your dead sister?” he asked, his voice rising. “Or sucking the life out of all the fish in a lake? How about bringing the dead back to life?”

I flinched, and Lily elbowed her brother hard. “Ow,” he protested.
I glanced at the young restaurant staff, but they were all preoccupied
with their headsets. “What was that for?” Simon complained.

“That was not tactful.”

He gave her a wide-eyed look. “
You’re
lecturing
me
on tact?”

“No, he’s right,” I murmured. Much as I didn’t like to think about it, I
had
done those things, and the idea that I’d built my own psychic wall wasn’t any less likely.

There was an awkward pause. Simon got up laboriously to refill his soda, and Lily went to fill her own plastic Nalgene bottle. Either one of them could have gotten both drinks, but I understood that they were giving me a moment to process Simon’s theory.

And I needed it. Every time I thought I had a handle on what I could do, the rules seemed to change. It was driving me nuts. I couldn’t get a grip on
what
I was, much less who that made me.

Charlie
, I told myself firmly. The most important thing in my life was protecting Charlie, which meant doing whatever Maven wanted. And right now, she wanted me to tear down a wall I’d built in my mind. That wasn’t so bad, right?

When Simon and Lily sat back down, I glanced around the restaurant. The two students had departed, so we were alone except for a pack of busy, distracted employees. “Okay,” I said quietly, “if you’re right, and I built a mental wall when I was a kid, how do I take it down now?”

“I don’t think it’s a wall,” Simon contended. “I think it’s more like scar tissue. You were a kid; you thought remnants were scary, so you . . . well,
deadened
part of your boundary powers, no pun intended, so you wouldn’t see them anymore. I don’t mean you did it consciously or intentionally—more like your mind did it to protect you.”

I considered that for a moment. I’d had to see a VA shrink after my return from Iraq, and he’d used more or less the same words to explain why I couldn’t remember my last couple of days in Iraq. My brain had built a barrier to protect me. “Okay,” I said, accepting the idea, “assuming you’re right, how do I get rid of the scar tissue?”

Simon and Lily looked at each other thoughtfully, and I could practically see them doing sibling telepathy. Whenever they did that, I felt a new pang of grief for my sister.

“Check with Mom?” Lily suggested.

Simon nodded and pulled out his phone. I worked on my calzone as he ran the situation past Hazel. There was some nodding and a few uh-huhs before he finally hung up. “She has one idea, but it’s kind of a long shot.”

Something on his face must have tipped off his sister, because Lily said doubtfully, “She didn’t suggest Sybil’s friend?”

“Sybil doesn’t have
friends
,” he replied. “But if you mean Sybil’s thaumaturge acquaintance, then yeah, that’s what Mom’s thinking.”

Lily chewed her lower lip. “It’s probably not going to work, though.”

“Guys?” I waved my hand. “Right here. What are you talking about?”

“Sorry,” they said in unison. Simon went on, “Our older sister Sybil knows a thaumaturge witch in Las Vegas . . .”

“A witch who specializes in healing, the way you specialize in death,” Lily added helpfully.

I winced at the phrasing, but it wasn’t like she was wrong. “So you’re thinking she can heal the scar tissue?” I asked.

“If you were human,
maybe
,” Lily answered, shooting her brother a look. “But her magic shouldn’t work against your magic.”

“She might not be able to
heal
the scar tissue,” Simon reasoned, “but she can probably communicate with it.” Lily and I both gave him wide-eyed looks. He shrugged. “From what I understand, she doesn’t just give you a potion or do a spell, like some witches—”