Home > Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(2)

Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(2)
Author: Melissa F. Olson

At any rate, I was expecting one or both of them to fall asleep in the car, so I was a little surprised when Lily said in a chirpy voice, “I’m starving! Do you have snacks?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess . . . Do you guys want to—”

She was already half turning in her seat so she could see her brother. “Si? You in for snacks? We could play cards or something.”

We were nearly there, and I noticed that someone had turned on my outside lights. I grinned and hit the garage door button. “It’s getting really late—” Simon began. As the door rose, it exposed the bumper of Quinn’s car. “But I could stay for a little while,” he finished. “Despite the obvious presence of that undead scum.”

I laughed, pulling into the driveway. “Or because of it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Simon said airily, as I parked and turned off the car. Interspecies friendship was apparently a little unusual in the Old World, so my witch friend and my vampire boyfriend were constantly insisting they hated each other.

As if to prove the point, Simon added, “That bloodsucking son of a bitch owes me twenty bucks.”

He yelled the last two words as he climbed out of the car, which is unnecessary when addressing someone with vampire hearing. The inner door to the house opened, and Quinn was suddenly there, wearing jeans and a black button-down shirt, looking cool and collected in his blond, craggy way. He raised an eyebrow at Simon, crossing his arms over his chest. “I already gave you your money,” he said mildly. “Don’t you remember?”

Simon was already in the garage, stomping his boots to clear the snow, but he actually paused for a second. “Don’t try your Jedi mind tricks on me, vampire. I’m immune.”

Vampires could press only humans, and Simon was one of the rare males with active witchblood. But Quinn still liked to mess with him. “Or is that just what I’ve led you to believe?” he said, deadpan. Simon just snorted in response.

Quinn turned sideways and held the door open so Simon and Lily could get past him into the house. I waited for them to go through, then went up and kissed Quinn on the lips.

I’d meant for it to be a brief peck, but he put his arms around my waist and I automatically reached up to wind my arms around his neck. “Hi,” he said, pressing his forehead against mine.

“Hi.” I have this stupid thing where I can’t stop smiling when he looks at me like that. It’s like a horrible teenage-girl tic. “Did you get done early?” I said, referring to his security work with Maven. “Or do you have to go back?”

“Nope, all done. It’s another quiet night.”

I made sure my expression didn’t change, but Quinn gave me a sympathetic smile anyway. It’s not easy being in a relationship with someone who can hear your pulse and smell changes in your pheromones.

When I’d first begun working for Maven, the Colorado Old World had been in a state of serious upheaval. Maven had killed the previous cardinal vampire, and it took some time for everyone, especially other vampires, to accept her new regime. While things were still settling down, there had been a string of supernatural catastrophes that complicated the transition further—including a killer sandworm and my biological brother showing up with my . . . well, I didn’t like to use the word “father” in relation to Lysander, but I wasn’t quite sure what to call him. “My biological mother’s rapist” was awfully wordy.

At any rate, it had been more than two years since Maven’s takeover, and everything had finally calmed down . . . a lot. I was supposed to be Maven’s daytime security person, but lately she’d had very little for me to do. It had gotten to the point where I was picking up the occasional shift at my old convenience-store job just to fill the time.

I knew I shouldn’t complain—having no emergency situations was a good thing. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself, usually with a thick layer of guilt.

Quinn bent to kiss my forehead; then Lily’s face popped back into view in the hallway. “Yo, hostess. Are we supposed to just forage for our own snacks during your make-out session?”

Rolling my eyes, I started toward Lily and the kitchen. “I think we both know Simon’s already going through my fridge.”

“Do you have any more of those beef sticks?” Simon called.

“You mean the ones I keep for my dogs?”

Quinn took over hosting duties so I could feed the menagerie of rescue animals I’d acquired since coming back from overseas. The cats were hiding, and Quinn had herded the barking or cowering dogs into the laundry room when he’d arrived. Animals, as a rule, do not care for vampires. We’d been dating for a couple of years now, though, and while the animals were never going to warm up to him, they were at least used to this routine.

I let the five dogs into the fenced-in backyard to do their business, then put four of them back in the spare bedroom, which used to house a crabby three-legged iguana named Mushu. To everyone’s surprise, Mushu had taken a special liking to my biological aunt, Katia, another boundary witch. When Katia had moved to New Mexico, she’d taken Mushu with her, although his old aquarium remained in its usual spot for when she drove up to visit.

The four dogs—Cody, Chip, Pongo, and my newest foster, Stitch—weren’t happy about being shut up again, but I promised myself I’d take them for a run the next day. The fifth dog, a fatally stupid Yorkshire terrier named Dopey, got to stay out in the hall. Unlike the other canines, Dopey was just too dumb to understand why she should be freaked out by Quinn. If he called her, and if she remembered her name at the moment, she would even jump up to sit in his lap.

She didn’t follow me down the hall right away, so I left her snuffling around the floorboards like they might contain dog treats. I’ve given up trying to understand Dopey’s thought process.

When I finally joined my friends in the living room, everyone was settled in their favorite spots: Quinn in the armchair, Lily and Simon on either end of the couch. The Pellars each had a beer, and Simon was eating from a Tupperware container of pretzels covered in white chocolate and dipped in red and green sprinkles. My mother had brought it over the previous afternoon as part of her campaign to push the holiday-cheer agenda. She had also offered to send my dad to help me put up some Christmas lights, but I needed to draw the line somewhere.

I snagged a handful of pretzels for myself and dropped into the other armchair. “What are we talking about?”

“Code names,” Simon told me, in his most serious voice.

“I’m just saying, I get why Lex is Griffin, and Lily being Flower Child is painfully obvious,” Quinn said. Lily gave him the finger. “But why is Simon Phoenix?”

“Simon Phoenix!” said both Pellars at once. They met in the middle of the couch to high-five. I felt a familiar stab of grief for my own sibling: my twin sister, Sam. We’d had our own in-jokes and near-telepathy. Sam could talk to me in my head sometimes thanks to boundary magic, but it wasn’t the same as getting to hang out together.

Since the Pellars hadn’t actually answered his question, Quinn looked at me with his eyebrows raised. I just shrugged. “I assumed it was because he died and I brought him back to life.”

“Yeah, that too,” Lily said. She was munching on a carrot from a bag I kept in the fridge just for her.

“Does Quinn get a code name?” I asked Lily.

She made a show of scrutinizing my boyfriend, who shot me a thanks a lot look. “Varney? Edward? Dracula, Dead and Loving It?”

“That’s not funny,” Quinn told her gravely.

Simon’s hand shot up in the air like an eager third-grader’s. “I think it’s funny.”

Quinn started to retort, but I slowly raised my hand too, causing both Pellars to burst into laughter. Quinn couldn’t help but smile.

“Anyway . . .” he said with emphasis, obviously hoping to change the subject.

“What did you do today, Lex?” Lily asked.

I knew she was trying to pull me into the conversation—Lily was good at that—but I felt my expression sour. “Well, I worked out, picked up Maven’s dry cleaning, and ran three errands for my mother.”

Everyone else exchanged pitying looks. “Maven didn’t have anything for you?” Lily asked. Quinn leaned forward in his chair to rest a hand on my leg.

“Nope. She’s been preoccupied lately, so she hasn’t had time to give me busywork.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. I had taken an oath of loyalty to Maven. I shouldn’t be talking about her activities or criticizing her orders. I glanced sideways at Quinn and mumbled, “Sorry.”

He shrugged it off. Quinn knew that I’d barely seen Maven lately. During the last couple of months, whenever I stopped by Magic Beans at night, she was on the phone in her office with the door closed.

Simon broke in to smooth over the awkwardness. “Any word on how Katia’s settling into Albuquerque?” he asked me.

I brightened. “She’s doing okay. She found a job as a nighttime security guard at the art museum.”

Simon wrinkled his nose. “Albuquerque has an art museum?”

“And people want to rob it?” Lily added.

I tossed a pretzel at her. “Anyway,” I went on, “we talk every week, and she’s coming to visit in a couple of weeks for Christmas. Maven gave the okay.”

“That’s cool,” Lily said brightly. She had crouched down on the floor to pet Dopey, who had finally found her way out of the hall. “What are you going to get her for Christmas?”

“A children’s book about art history,” I said with a little smile.

Simon grinned. “Is your other friend coming again too?”

For some people, “your other friend” would be much too vague, but outside of the people in this room and my cousins, I had about two other friends, and only one of them had ever visited for the holidays. “Sashi? I’m not sure. The last few times we’ve talked, she’s been with a new guy. It sounds pretty serious.” Which would make for a very awkward holiday visit, since Sashi had dated my brother-in-law, John, for a while. I shrugged. “Maybe Grace will go to Las Vegas for the holidays this year.”

Simon and Lily exchanged a dark look at the mention of Grace Brighton, and I wished I hadn’t brought her up. Grace was Sashi’s daughter and a nineteen-year-old college student here in Boulder. She was also human . . . because Sashi had never told her about the Old World. Witches had a window of time, right around puberty, to activate their magic, or it was lost to them forever. Sashi had chosen to let that window pass.

I hadn’t actually told the Pellars that part, but they knew how strong Sashi was, and they’d met Grace. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

Denying a witch her magic went against Simon and Lily’s whole way of life—but then, they were clan witches. They had always known about magic, and they’d always had a place in the Old World. Like Sashi—and, I supposed, Katia—I was an outclan witch, born, raised, and living outside of the old customs. I had gone most of my life with no knowledge of the Old World, and there were days when I wished I could go back to that.

   
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