Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic Book 4)

by Melissa F. Olson

  No dummy, Quinn perched cautiously on the ottoman instead of joining me the couch. I told him about Keith arriving, and the misunderstanding where both of us thought the other was there to hurt Mary. “Then I needed to call Simon to ask if the werewolves could hide out in the lab, and I didn’t want them to overhear the call. In case . . . you know.”

  Quinn nodded, understanding. In case Simon was worried about sleeping down the hall from a strange werewolf. I thought he kind of trusted Mary, but I couldn’t vouch for Keith.

  “But why would they take your car?” Quinn asked, practically. “They must know you could report it stolen.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, but Mary probably figured it was better to steal mine than get caught driving a vehicle belonging to a murdered couple who are all over the news.” And she was betting that I wouldn’t bring the police into Old World business. She was right.

  “True.” Quinn wasn’t a pacer—vampires didn’t feel the impulse to walk away nervous energy—but he had the same distant look in his eyes that Maven got when she was thinking. “You could call Elise, see if she can find it quietly,” he suggested.

  I shook my head. “You know she’ll ask a hundred follow-up questions.” My cousin Elise was a cop, but she was also human. I couldn’t exactly call her and say that I had lost my car to werewolf frenemies and could she please hunt it down without telling anyone or speaking to the thieves? It was already hard enough to keep the Old World hidden from her. I slumped back into the couch cushions, feeling exhausted.

  Quinn crossed the space between us and sat down next to me, lifting my legs and pulling them into his lap so I was facing sideways. He did it gently, slowly, so that I could easily pull away at any time. What can I say? The man got me.

  “Would it make you feel better,” he said quietly, “if you yelled at me some more?”

  I considered this for a minute. “It might,” I said, “if I really understood what I’m upset about. I’m still . . . sorting through it.”

  He nodded.

  “How about we turn our full attention to this werewolf thing, but I reserve the right to reopen this fight at a later date, when I know exactly what horrible thing you’ve done to piss me off?”

  Quinn smiled, as I’d hoped. “Sounds fair.”

  It really wasn’t, but we did need to move on. “There’s more,” I said. I told him about Simon and the witches and the very real threat of having their connection to magic stripped away. Quinn’s eyes widened with worry, which for him was the equivalent of screaming “holy shit!”

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “Losing magic would kill Lily. Simon might get over it eventually, with his work, but Lily . . .”

  I shook my head. “Simon has spent his entire life examining connections between science and magic. If he lost half of that, it’d be like losing half of himself. I practically heard it in his voice.”

  “But they don’t want you to get involved.” This was a statement, but there was also a hint of a question in his tone, like he was worried I wasn’t going to listen.

  “Technically,” I said, “they just told me to stay away from the problem. One could interpret that geographically.”

  Quinn started to protest, and I held up a hand. “Don’t worry. Right now, the witches are just talking. From what I understand, binding another witch’s magic would require help from out of state, and that takes time. I’m not going to do anything crazy tonight.”

  He relaxed a little, but said, “You know we have to go fill Maven in on all of this, right?”

  “Yeah.” I checked my watch: one thirty in the morning. Driving back into Boulder wasn’t exactly appealing after so many hours in the car, but Maven had a thing about discussing sensitive stuff on the phone. I thought she was a little paranoid, but Quinn had once pointed out that she’d been around when telephones were first invented—and when the only way to talk was on a party line.

  I looked down at myself and wrinkled my nose. “I’d like to clean up first, though, so I don’t stink of werewolf blood.”

  “Good idea.” His voice was carefully mild, but he was obviously relieved I’d suggested it first. Men.

  “I also haven’t had a chance to look at those files Maven sent.”

  He nodded. “Why don’t I go talk to Maven, and you stay and look at the files? If she needs time to think, I’ll just come back here. If she has something else for us tonight, you can meet me in town.”

  “We only have one car here.” He’d driven Maven’s Jeep. Since I wasn’t about to drive the dead couple’s vehicle either, it was the only vehicle I could use.

  He grinned. “I’ll take the bike.”

  Quinn had spent most of his spare time over the summer restoring an old BMW motorcycle—there were advantages to months with no Old World violence—which now resided in my garage. We’d gone for a few leisurely rides during the warmer months, but it was way too cold for me to take it anywhere now.

  Vampires weren’t bothered by low temperatures, though, and the idea clearly appealed to him. “Wear gloves,” I warned him. “And your helmet.”

  Quinn wrinkled his nose. “I know,” I said before he could argue, “you can survive a crash. But riding bareheaded on a motorcycle when it’s twenty degrees outside does not scream ‘I’m passing as a normal human.’”

  He smiled. “You’re not wrong.”

  After Quinn left for the coffee shop, I went back into the bathroom, took off my shirt and sports bra, and scrubbed off every speck of red I could find with a washcloth. I didn’t find any blood on my jeans, but I changed into a new pair just in case, taking care to replace the holster at the small of my back and secure the revolver. I wasn’t going anywhere without silver bullets until we figured out who had killed Dunn and the others.

  Back in the kitchen, I held a fresh ice pack to my forehead as I pulled the files out of the drawer. I spread them over the table, choosing Keith Zimmerman’s folder first. There was a photo of him attached to the inside of the cover, and it looked like an employee ID photo: Keith smiling a little awkwardly, wearing a red polo shirt embroidered with the logo of a shipping company. Keith, I read, was currently middle management at Sierra Trading Post, a Cheyenne-based retailer for outdoor gear and exercise equipment. Before that, he’d been an engineer with the Wyoming Department of Transportation. It seemed like an odd career change, but as I understood it, a lot of werewolves had to switch jobs after being turned. Something to do with the change in their temperament.

  Scanning the file, I found several typed pages of biography, a few more photos, and a newspaper article about an attack on a campsite near Yellowstone—probably how he had been turned into a werewolf. I had once asked Maven how Trask had built up his pack so quickly, and she’d said soberly that in addition to absorbing existing packs, he and his people “recruited” at popular public campgrounds. Becoming a werewolf was an excruciating, life-altering event that left you reliant on the pack for physical, emotional, and often financial support. An unscrupulous alpha could target anyone he wanted and they would be entirely dependent on him.

  According to the article, Keith had been turned only five years earlier, so he would never have met Trask. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of Trask’s people were still engaging in his “recruitment” methods in Wyoming. There just wasn’t much I could do about it.

  Other than that, there wasn’t a lot to the file, and I found myself setting it aside. Keith had no history of violence or conflict within the pack. In the file—and when I’d met him—he came off as a boring middle manager who’d adopted the same position in the pack as he filled in life. It made sense that he’d come looking for Mary, a more dominant wolf, after she’d slipped off the radar. I was still pissed about him attacking me in my home, but it was probably the bravest thing he’d ever done.

  It didn’t take long to skim through the rest of the files. Finn Barlow was the newest pack member, a huge, muscular man who looked like he’d been rejected from the WWE for scaring the other wrestlers. W
hen I read through the bio, though, I saw that he was also an ex-marine, a friend of Dunn’s from Minnesota. Barlow had been diagnosed with fast-progressing ALS before he was forty. There was a Minneapolis police report of a suicide attempt; then he’d seemingly left his home state, turning up in Cheyenne a few months later as a healthy man who’d received a false diagnosis.

  It was so easy to read between the lines that Maven’s investigator hadn’t bothered to spell it out: Dunn had changed Barlow to save his life. I frowned. That didn’t mesh well with the theory that he’d murdered the alpha . . . unless maybe the werewolf magic had driven him insane? He was big enough to take out the Ventimiglias, and trained in combat, vehicle mechanics, and weapons. Was it possible he’d arranged things this way so the rest of the pack wouldn’t know he had betrayed the alpha?

  I set that folder to one side to show Quinn and flipped through the rest. None of the other pack members seemed to scream “murder suspect.” Alex Elliott was the other person I had seen, but not officially met, during the sandworm incident. Alex was nonbinary, an accountant for Dunn’s construction company. The included photo showed a cool, assessing gaze, and once again, their bio spoke of infinite loyalty to Ryan Dunn. Alex was not a great candidate either.

  The last two pack members, Nicolette Wan and Lindsay Magner, had been brand-new werewolves at the time of the sandworm attack, so they hadn’t accompanied the others to Boulder. They were both twenty-year-old college students at the University of Wyoming who’d been turned while on a mission trip to Costa Rica. After taking two years off to adjust, both women were now trying to finish their degrees, although Lindsay had switched from animal studies to ecosystem science, probably because most animals would be terrified of her. Nicolette and Lindsay were sharing an apartment in Cheyenne, commuting to classes in Laramie. If either of them had killed Dunn, I would eat the stack of files.

  Which left Mary. I still didn’t think she could have anything to do with the murders, but I took a look at her file anyway, out of simple curiosity. Mary had moved to Wyoming from Houston, where she’d spent her early twenties partying and experimenting with drugs. As a human, she had a few arrests for possession, and there were photos of her copied from another arrest record—the werewolf boyfriend who’d regularly beaten the shit out of her.

  Mary’s story just got worse from there, and even under current circumstances I felt guilty about reading her file. On the other hand, I thought I might now understand why Mary had taken a liking to Simon, enough to save him from the sandworm. He was the spitting image of her brother, who’d died trying to save her from her abuser.

  There was nothing in the file to make me think Mary had the slightest interest in hurting Dunn, though.

  I picked up my cell to call Quinn, but before I could even unlock the phone, the dogs abruptly went nuts—barking furiously and swarming the front door. I stood up and started toward them, in no particular hurry—they freaked out several times a day over squirrels, and vampires or werewolves were capable of sneaking up on them. “Guys, come on—” I began, but then I saw a folded piece of neon-green paper slide under the door.

  Chapter 15

  Without looking at the note, I waded through the dogs, flipped on the exterior light, and flung the door open. Big wet snowflakes were still falling, so all I could really see was a dark outline moving quickly away from the house. “Stop!” I yelled, pushing open the exterior door so I could follow. I made a belated effort to block the dogs, but four of them nearly trampled each other to race outside after the intruder. I cursed and sprinted after them, my bare feet instantly freezing on the fresh snow. I was fast, but the dogs were faster, and in seconds I heard a girlish scream as they overtook the trespasser.

  “No!” The figure stopped and held up their hands like this was a gunfight on television. The gesture only excited the dogs, who thought they were being offered a treat. Tails wagging frantically, they began to jump up on the newcomer, trying to reach the raised hands. The revolver was in my hand, but I kept it pointed at the ground, my finger out of the trigger guard. The dogs would have reacted very differently if the intruder were a werewolf.

  “Please,” a woman’s voice begged. “Call them off. I give up!”

  She sounded so terrified that I actually felt sorry for her—and I wanted to get the hell back inside the house and get some shoes. “Chip, Cody!” I shouted, skidding to a halt twenty feet away. “Come here!” The two lab mixes were the ringleaders when it came to security.

  A little begrudgingly, the two big dogs turned and trotted back toward me. Pongo, my black-and-white mutt, gave the woman’s legs one last sniff and followed the others back toward me. “Now turn around,” I yelled, trying to look dignified while hopping from one foot to the other. Holy crap, my feet were cold.

  She pivoted slowly, but I still couldn’t make out her features. Her head was tilted toward the ground, where Stitch, the enormous new foster, remained at her side, gazing up at her with his tail wagging happily.

  “Is it going to bite me?” she asked fearfully.

  “Of course not,” I said, a little exasperated. “Put your hands down; he thinks you’ve got a treat.” I didn’t actually say you idiot, but it was kind of implied.

  “Oh.” Sheepishly, she crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Without being told, she began trudging back toward me. Stitch danced at her side, his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

  The voice hadn’t been familiar, but when she reached the glow of the front security light, I could see that she was petite and Chinese-American, dressed in an expensive knee-length quilted coat. Her glossy black hair flowed out from under a snow-dotted ski cap that perfectly complemented the coat.

  And I knew her.

  “Tracy?” I asked, genuinely shocked. The young witch was a member of Clan Pellar—and Simon’s ex-girlfriend. In the years since I’d learned about the Old World, we’d probably exchanged twenty words, all of them variations on “hello.” I’d gotten the impression that she was frightened of me. Now she was on my doorstep in a burgundy winter parka, looking like she was about to cry. “It’s two thirty in the morning. What are you doing here?” I asked, holstering the revolver. This woman was not going to hurt me.

  “I was just trying to stay out of it,” she told me, her voice trembling. Stitch began enthusiastically licking the hem of her coat.

  I sighed. “You better come inside.”

  I led Tracy through the entrance and into the living room, the dogs clustered around our legs like a vanguard. They tracked fresh snow into the house and shook even more of it off their backs, but I was too relieved to be back inside to care. I rubbed my own wet, frozen feet on the carpet, trying to warm them up.

  Tracy followed me with wide eyes, looking around as though she’d entered the lair of a boogeyman and couldn’t believe he had comfy furniture.

  “Sit down,” I said, more sternly than I’d meant to, and Tracy dropped onto the sofa without unzipping her coat. The dogs crowded around her again, and she pulled her arms around her body. I considered shutting them in the back bedroom again, but when it became obvious that Tracy wasn’t going to pet anyone, they all got bored and wandered away—except for Stitch, who dropped his butt down on Tracy’s feet and panted at me happily. He probably looked like he was preventing her escape, but his expression said what a fun adventure we’re having.

  I had snagged the neon paper on the way back into the house and now I unfolded it. It was a sort of fancy flyer, the letters all in calligraphy, advertising a town hall meeting Friday night to discuss new leadership for the witch clans.

  “What is this?” I asked, looking up at Tracy. She seemed to be trying to figure out a way to get Stitch off her feet without actually touching him or moving in any way.

  Her eyes lifted to me. “You heard about what happened at the Pellars’ tonight?”

  “A little,” I said cautiously. The last thing I wanted to do was get Simon in more trouble for talking to me. “I heard that som
e other witches showed up to talk to Hazel.”

  Tracy snorted, showing a little defiance for the first time. “That’s one way to put it. It was more like an impromptu trial.” She looked down again, playing with the pull tie on her zipper. “People are saying she let werewolves back into the state in exchange for access to apex magic.”

  “Oh shit,” I blurted. That’s what Simon had meant about the timing. All these things happening at once had to look terrible. Not for me—I was a boundary witch, and therefore everyone expected me to do evil shit. But I’d dragged the Pellar family name through the mud. “But that’s not what happened,” I said. “Come on, Tracy. You know Hazel isn’t for sale.”

  Tracy shook her head. “I thought I did, but . . . I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Her voice and body language were despondent, and Stitch turned around to lick her hand. Belatedly, I remembered Lily telling me that Simon’s ex worshipped Hazel, wanted to be just like her. Crap. No wonder she was so shaken.

  I felt a rush of sympathy. I understood the idea of disillusionment with an authority you believed in, though I knew Hazel hadn’t been bought, at least not for power or money. She’d bartered for the safety of her daughter. It was probably the most selfish thing she’d ever done, and it was for her kid.

  I would do a hell of a lot worse for Charlie. If I hadn’t already.

  “Tracy,” I said more gently, “what happened tonight? What was decided?”

  A small shrug. “Nothing was decided. Yet. Hazel called a witch congress.”

  Her voice was reverent, but I didn’t get it. “What’s that?”

  She blinked at me, a look I’d seen many times from Simon and Lily. The how do you not know our customs? face. “A meeting of all the clan leaders in the state. They haven’t done that since Trask started killing people.”