Home > Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(5)

Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(5)
Author: Melissa F. Olson

“You really think we’ll need all this?” Simon sounded dubious. “It’s not that cold.”

I closed my eyes for a second. The memory of a different desert flooded me, and I swallowed the urge to spit. I may not have been to the Dunes since I was a kid, but if there was one thing I knew about, it was sand. “Trust me on this. The desert has a way of twisting the weather. Everything feels worse than it should.”

“Oh,” Simon said, in a tone that suggested he’d just remembered who he was talking to.

Lucky for us, at that moment John stumbled through the garage door, looking no more awake than when we’d arrived. “Here,” he said, thrusting a small pile at me. “Books and maps.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” John started to shove his hands into his pockets, then remembered he was wearing boxer shorts and awkwardly crossed his arms over his chest, shifting from foot to foot. The garage floor would be cold. “Did you find what you need?”

“Yup.” Keeping my voice low, I asked, “What’s Clara studying?”

John smiled, looking awake for the first time. “She gets bored, and I got tired of her sharpening her shashka collection in the living room, so I suggested she take some online classes.”

Clara? “Let me guess,” I said. “Medieval History? Weapons through the Ages? The Seven Actual Ways to Skin a Cat?”

“There are eleven ways,” Clara’s voice called from inside the house.

John shot me a smug look and I winced. Served me right for talking too loudly around a vampire. “American literature,” John whispered.

Huh. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just shrugged and handed Simon a hat and a pair of lightweight snow pants, closing the lid on the tub. The three of us started toward the interior door, and then John stopped so abruptly I almost smacked into him. “What?” I asked.

“Almost forgot.” John turned and went around the rack of tubs, reaching behind for something I couldn’t see. He came out with two large, flat pieces of wood with black padding on them. “Sand sleds,” he explained, holding them out. “Like for snow, but they have a slick back to go down the dunes. I decided to just buy instead of rent, figuring we’ll go back next summer.”

Simon and I exchanged another look, this one more positive. If the werewolves were injured—or worse—these could be very helpful in transporting them through the dunes. “Thanks,” I said, meaning it. “Go back to bed.”

John nodded. “Good luck,” he mumbled, starting to turn away. “Charlie will probably FaceTime you sometime tomorrow. She wants to see”—he yawned—“the new foster dog.”

Charlie had figured out how to FaceTime a year earlier, and John had given up trying to stop her from calling to chat. She was a social kid, and she missed me. And I realized, with a pang, I missed her too. I hoped whatever this was could be resolved in time for me to make my usual Friday babysitting date with her. “Give her a kiss for me, okay?” I said to John.

“Will do.”

After we loaded the sleds into Simon’s back seat and climbed in, I saw him looking thoughtfully back at the house, watching the front lights go off. “What?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Nothing. You’re just . . . you’re different with him. With your family.”

“Isn’t everybody?”

Simon blinked, and I realized my error. Simon wasn’t different with his family, because they knew all the aspects of his life. It made me a little jealous.

He started the car and pulled away from the curb. “I don’t know, you just have this whole Luther family thing going on, and the Old World has to stay separate, and John can know about some of it but not all . . . It must get confusing.”

I considered his words for a moment, then shrugged. “I couldn’t tell them about my work when I was in the army either. It’s not that weird—medical doctors can’t tell their families about patients because of privacy laws. People who work in government or technology have to keep professional secrets.” I gave him a wry smile. “Maybe you’re just spoiled, clan witch. We don’t all get to have everything out in the open.”

Simon snorted. “Spoiled. Right.”

There was no traffic in the middle of the night, so it took no time at all to get to Magic Beans, where Quinn was waiting outside with the keys to Maven’s Jeep and a large coffee in each hand. I went over to him and relieved him of the cups. “I could have gone in and gotten my own,” I said.

“No need. Maven’s on the phone anyway.” Quinn’s voice was easy, but there was worry in his eyes. The two of us weren’t affectionate in public—there actually weren’t that many people in the Old World who knew we were together—but he stepped close, his head bent toward me. He looked worried. “Be careful,” he said quietly.

“Me? I’m always careful.”

That got me a tiny smile. “Don’t think I don’t see how excited you are to finally have something interesting to do.”

I winced, then tried to look like I wasn’t excited about missing werewolves in Colorado. “Organizing Maven’s barista schedule isn’t exactly what I pictured for the direction of my life,” I pointed out. “I’m not hoping for trouble, just . . . excited to feel useful.”

“I know.”

I pecked his cheek quickly and turned toward the Jeep. Simon was leaning against it, his eyes averted. When he saw me heading his way, he went around and pulled open the driver’s door for me, reaching a hand out to take a coffee. “This one’s yours,” I said, handing him the coffee from my right hand.

“How do you know?”

I didn’t bother to hide my smile. “Because someone wrote ‘Geeky Mama’s Boy’ on the cup.”

“Hey!” he yelled over my shoulder, but of course, Quinn had vanished inside.

In only a few hours, the traffic going through Denver would be nuts, but for now the roads were clear, and I was able to sail the Jeep down 36 at three miles over the speed limit. Maven had an arrangement with the Colorado Highway Patrol and Boulder PD—it wasn’t exactly carte blanche, but no one would blink at the Jeep going twenty over. The werewolves wouldn’t have the same perk, however, and we were trying to keep our profile low.

Simon spent the first part of the trip reading through the materials John had sent about the Dunes. In true Simon style, he seemed fully absorbed by the research, even looking through the coloring pamphlet for kids.

“Anything useful in there?” I asked in a very serious voice.

“No, but I think you might want to get Charlie in some art lessons. This is not good work.”

“Hey, that’s my niece you’re talking about,” I said, smiling. I gestured toward the pile in his lap. “What about the rest of it?”

Simon leaned back, sighing. “It’s mostly just a refresher course on how the dunes were created by wind blowing through the various mountains and the kind of wildlife that lives there.”

“There’s wildlife in the dunes?” I said with surprise.

“Sure, plants and a few lizards and stuff. Nothing that will bother us.”

He moved the pile of information to the back seat, carefully, and then there was an awkward silence. Simon and I didn’t spend much time alone, which was intentional, at least on my part. There was a certain . . . tension? No, that wasn’t the right word. I felt a connection to Simon, which made me uneasy.

I told myself the strange intimacy between us was the result of my saving his life once with boundary magic . . . and maybe that was even true. It didn’t really matter, though, because Quinn and I were together, and Simon and Quinn were friends. Nobody wanted to change any of that, so we were both mindful of keeping a certain distance.

I wondered if Simon was seeing anyone seriously. It would make me feel better if he was, but it would also be ridiculously awkward to bring it up. I made a mental note to ask Lily. “Why don’t you get some rest?” I suggested instead. “It’s a four-hour trip, and I’m used to staying up.” Simon, on the other hand, had to keep a diurnal schedule to go with his teaching job.

“Good idea,” he said, looking relieved.

Simon fell asleep quickly, and my thoughts turned to the Cheyenne werewolf pack. My overall impression of werewolves had come a long way since one had murdered my sister, but part of me still saw them as enemy combatants. I’d seen what a werewolf had done to Sam’s body, and I still had nightmares about it.

You know that was an isolated incident. Sam’s voice said inside my head. I used to think this was just my brain predicting what she would say if she were still alive, but after I found out I was a witch, I’d realized that my sister and I were still connected, thanks to boundary magic. Sometimes her voice came through that connection, popping into my head like a catchy song. Tonight she sounded a little weary, like she was sick of making this argument.

“But it’s not just me,” I said under my breath, with a quick glance at Simon. He was deeply asleep. “Sashi has some kind of terrible history with werewolves. And they were responsible for killing Lily and Simon’s dad.”

There was no response, but this time I could predict what Sam would say, because we’d had this argument before, in my dreams. She would say that people were complicated, and werewolves were just people who’d gotten tangled up in magic, like me or Quinn or anyone else in the Old World. You would think that if Sam didn’t hold a grudge against werewolves, I wouldn’t either. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work like that. Not with the image of Sam’s ravaged body still in my memory. I had seen carnage in Iraq, but never with such brutality or disdain, like my twin’s body was a chunk of useless meat.

I tried to pull my thoughts back to the current situation—and the current werewolves. Sam’s killer was dead, and I did respect Ryan Dunn, werewolf or not. I had met him only twice, and he was brusque and pushy and concerned only with his own pack, but . . . I understood him. He and I would probably never be friends, but all that mattered was that I could work with him. Besides, it was just for this one thing. I owed him a debt, and he was calling it in.

Simple as that.

Chapter 5

Traffic was light on I-25, thanks to the early hour, and soon I was winding my way along 160, which curled around the bottom corner of the park and led to the park turnoff: a pretty, straight-shot road that probably provided a nice view of the dunes when it was light enough to see them.

By the time we reached the park entrance, the stars had faded away and a ribbon of orange-pink was spreading along the horizon. The visitor center wasn’t open yet, so I drove right past it, following the sign to the parking area. “Simon,” I said, reaching over to nudge his shoulder. “We’re almost there.”

He sat up, yawning and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. He looked around for a moment at the miles of empty darkness and the straight road ahead. “Why are we going so slow?”

   
Most Popular
» Nothing But Trouble (Malibu University #1)
» Kill Switch (Devil's Night #3)
» Hold Me Today (Put A Ring On It #1)
» Spinning Silver
» Birthday Girl
» A Nordic King (Royal Romance #3)
» The Wild Heir (Royal Romance #2)
» The Swedish Prince (Royal Romance #1)
» Nothing Personal (Karina Halle)
» My Life in Shambles
» The Warrior Queen (The Hundredth Queen #4)
» The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen #3)
vampires.readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024