Antsy, I took out my new phone, intending to make sure I remembered how to use the functions—but the screen was dark. I frowned and pushed the power button. Nothing happened.
“Ooh, did they kill your phone?” said a witch right behind me. She was a red-haired woman in her late fifties, with an enormous purse the size of a duffel bag. She dug her own phone out and glanced at it, then pulled out a Kindle and looked at that too. “Yep. They’ve shut down the electronics.” She shook her head with a little whistle. “I’d heard there’s a hex for phones now, but I don’t know anybody who’s used it.”
“Is it like an EMP?” I asked without thinking. “The phone is destroyed?”
“Oh no, honey, they wouldn’t do that. It’ll work again once you get outside the wards.”
Great. That was assuming I made it outside the wards.
The woman patted me gently on the shoulder, and I had to work hard to suppress a flinch. The crowd was making me nervous, and not having a weapon made it worse. She pointed toward the table. “Look, honey, it’s your turn.”
I stepped up to the table. There were two women sitting behind it, each wearing surgical gloves and a professional-grade smile. They were dressed in street clothes, but something about them immediately made me think of nurses. “Hand?” the woman in front of me asked.
Stomach rolling with nerves, I began to extend my hand. She made an impatient noise and grabbed it. “Come on now, it’s just a quick poke.” She was holding a tiny plastic box that looked familiar, but before I could remember where I’d seen it before, she was jamming it onto my right index finger. I felt a quick, sharp stick; then she released me, revealing a drop of bright red blood on my finger. The little box was a disposable needle poke, the kind diabetics used to draw enough blood to test their blood sugar.
“See? Nothing to worry about.” Clearly impatient, she waved me off with one hand while the other reached down to toss the little box in a plastic garbage pail. “Next!”
Shuffling to the side, out of the way, I almost laughed. Werewolves could heal very quickly from non-silver wounds, but witches didn’t have that ability. That was how you made sure only witches got in: a simple humans-go-away ward and a finger poke. I’d been lucky she was in a hurry. If she had seen the calluses on my fingers from laying ghosts, the conversation could have gone very differently.
Keeping the rest of my fingers curled up, I joined the throng of witches filing into the huge building. The male guard waved the metal detector over me and checked my finger to make sure the little needle mark was still fresh, and I was in.
In Colorado, and probably Wyoming, too, the word “rustic” is thrown around a lot, and it can mean anything from “cheap and shitty” to “handmade and priceless.” In this case, however, the word actually felt right for the space. The inside of the barn was a massive single room filled with oak pillars and natural light that pooled down from skylights in the barn ceiling. I suspected there was some sort of electrical lighting hidden in the shadows of the rafters, but it wasn’t necessary yet. Other than some discreet outlets, exit signs, and a thermostat, the whole place felt like it could have been made at the turn of the last century. Except I doubted they’d ever made barns this big. Or with skylights.
You had to go down a few steps to get to the main floor, but I paused for a moment to survey the massive room. Most of it was packed with rows and rows of what looked to be Amish-made wooden chairs. They were pointed at a rectangular stage, maybe twenty feet long, at the far end of the barn, partially hidden by ivory-colored lace curtains. Presumably, there was another exit somewhere behind them.
As soon as I’d taken in the building’s layout and exits, I was struck by the size of the crowd: there had to be hundreds and hundreds of witches already settling into their seats. I’d arrived a few minutes early, but the neat rows of wooden chairs had already been filled, and the extra chairs someone had haphazardly added were nearly filled too. Even more people were standing around behind the chairs, sometimes four or five deep, and I suspected we were violating at least a few different fire codes.
I went down the steps and moved to one side, where I spent a few minutes scanning the crowd as if I were trying to find my friends. I couldn’t have looked through the entire room without being obvious, but I managed to spot four different members of Clan Pellar just in my line of vision, which was troubling. I’d assumed most of Simon and Lily’s clan would be loyal to Hazel, or at least to the family overall, but apparently they were interested enough to have shown up.
I didn’t see any open seats, which was fine—I’d much rather stand if it meant I could be near an exit, both for strategic and claustrophobic reasons. I took a position at the very back of the room, a few feet from one of the fire exits, and settled against the wall to wait.
Four o’clock came and went, and although the room buzzed with anticipation, the small stage at the front of the hall remained empty. Finally, at twenty after four, a single spotlight blazed down from the rafters, illuminating the stage and making me realize how dark the room had gotten while we waited.
A witch in her midtwenties emerged from behind the ivory curtain, pushing a podium in front of her. She was wearing a headset, her eyes lowered and shoulders hunched. She practically projected the words “don’t look at me.” When the podium was centered onstage, she immediately hurried back through the curtain, passing another woman on her way out. The newcomer was short, attractive, and maternal-looking, and as she stepped into the spotlight she smiled, throwing out her arms in a welcoming gesture.
And then my heart stopped, because it was Morgan fucking Pellar.
Chapter 21
The last time I’d seen Simon and Lily’s eldest sister, she had knocked John unconscious and threatened Charlie with a Sig Sauer.
I used to lose sleep wondering what Morgan was up to and whether she’d come back, but eventually I figured she’d settled down to be an asshole somewhere else. But nope, the bitch was back—and smart enough to stay out of Maven’s territory.
Maybe you’re wrong, I told myself in a daze. I hadn’t seen Morgan in nearly three years and I was in the back of an enormous hall. I was tired. Maybe this was someone else, who just looked a little like a Pellar. This woman was muscular where Morgan had been plump, and she had short, natural hair where Morgan had had long, straightened locks. She wasn’t wearing one of the feminine dresses Morgan used to favor, but brown corduroy pants and a cream-colored sweater that looked like it had been knit on a Scottish moor.
Before I could lie to myself any further, the woman leaned into the microphone. “Witches of Colorado,” she began, smiling demurely. “My name is Morgan Pellar, and I thank you for coming.”
An anxious murmur went through the crowd, and my composure snapped. My vision narrowed to a pinprick of rage, and I was already stepping forward when I felt a hand on my upper arm. “Steady,” a familiar voice whispered.
My head jerked sideways. “Katia?”
My biological aunt, the younger sister of my birth mother, had sidled up beside me. She was also in disguise: instead of her usual clinically cold, expensive clothes, she was wearing soft beige leggings and a blue cowl-neck sweater under a quilted jacket. Her hair was braided so it circled the top of her forehead, with tendrils floating loose in a romantic style. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her hair in anything but a practical low bun.
I had never been so happy to see a familiar face, but I couldn’t help but say, “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t supposed to come to Colorado until a couple of days before Christmas, and that was still weeks away.
Also, we were in Wyoming.
I had been too surprised to lower my voice, but the whole audience was still buzzing and no one even glanced at us. Onstage, Morgan had taken a tiny step back from the podium to give them a moment, smiling patiently.
“I heard you could use some backup,” Katia said quietly.
“Did Quinn call you?” I whispered, not sure
how I felt about the idea.
Katia smiled, showing her teeth. “No. Valerya did. She suggested I might enjoy a visit to Wyoming. Immediately.”
Ah. I nodded, understanding. Valerya was my dead birth mother, Katia’s sister. She could contact Katia in her sleep the same way Sam could contact me—at least, when I wasn’t having the Iraq nightmare. I didn’t know why we had links across the life-death boundary, and I’d never really made an effort to find out. Talking to my dead twin was only just starting to feel natural, and I’d been doing it for years now.
“What about work?”
She shrugged. “There will be other jobs.”
Well, there went my Christmas present. My nose itched, and I remembered my disguise. “You recognized me?” I asked, a little worried.
Katia grinned, a rare sight from her. “No,” she said. “When I was nearly to Boulder, I tried your phone, then Lily’s, and finally John’s. He described your new look.”
I nodded. My brother-in-law had met Katia many times, back when she was staying with me in Boulder. He knew that I trusted her.
I wanted to ask more questions, but Morgan was stepping back to the podium now, holding up her hand. I still wanted to charge the stage and beat the snot out of her, but Katia’s arrival had shocked me out of the worst of my anger. Which was probably the point.
“Please,” Morgan said placatingly, “I have no doubt that you have all heard terrible things about me, but if you’ll bear with me for just a moment, I will explain everything.”
The crowd settled down a little at that, though I saw a number of witches take out their phones, only to frown with disappointment when they couldn’t call or text anyone. I sympathized. This was big news. Big, horrifying news.
“As you know,” Morgan said, “the past eighteen years have been a difficult time for witches. We were unable to prevent the mongrels from wreaking havoc across the state, and lives were lost.” She paused with a sad smile, probably to remind everyone that her own father had been killed. God, I hated her. “Then my mother, Hazel Pellar, made a Faustian bargain with a vampire, and our people have suffered ever since. Our magic was restricted, and our leadership, well . . .” She heaved a great sigh. “I truly believe my mother tried her best, at first, but she was unable to perform the balancing act required to serve all of your diverse interests. And over time, I’m afraid she became corrupted.”
It was dead silent in the great hall then, but I could see heads turning to glance at one another—including two of the Pellar witches in the back row. “Three years ago,” Morgan continued, “I began to suspect that my mother was no longer pushing for the best interests of witches. She was far too complacent, too deferential to the vampire. But the last straw was when she welcomed a boundary witch into the clan, at Maven’s request.”
She said “boundary witch” the same way anyone else would say “flesh-eating virus.” Boundary witches had done some very creepy, very evil things during the Inquisition, and if there was one thing the entire Old World was good at, it was holding a grudge. It shouldn’t have shocked me to hear myself mentioned, but my head was still spinning.
And Morgan was just getting started. “I knew I had to do something, before anyone else in my clan could be corrupted by Maven’s influence. But what could I do? How could I stop an ancient cardinal vampire?” She held up her hands, a helpless expression on her sweet-looking face. I clenched my teeth. “Oh, she is good,” Katia whispered, so quietly I could barely hear her.
Morgan summoned a look of great sadness. “Some of what you’ve heard about me is true: I did stir up the ley lines in Boulder. My intent was to use the power boost to take my mother’s place as clan leader, and save my clan, including my own brother and sisters, from Maven’s influence.”
“Bullshit,” I muttered. Morgan was making herself sound like a crusader for good, but Hazel hadn’t done anything wrong, except raise a daughter who would make such a callous power grab. True, she had allowed me at a few clan functions, but I’d hardly been “welcomed.”
Morgan heaved a sigh. “Unfortunately, this was a mistake. There was no way I could have known that activating the ley lines would awaken a hungry creature. Or that innocent people would be killed.” She hung her head, and even rested her right hand over her heart. “For the rest of my life, I will carry the weight of those deaths. But because of my efforts to right a wrong, I was excommunicated from my clan and banished from my home. From my children.”
This time the crowd’s murmur held a note of sympathy. “That’s not how it happened!” I protested to Katia, feeling the anger building in my chest. “She’s spinning everything!”
A few of the nearby witches glanced my way and Katia made a shushing motion with the flat of her hand. Onstage, Morgan said solemnly, “At the time, I thought a death sentence would have been better. You have no idea how hard it’s been to leave every person I’ve ever loved, including my own babies.”
She actually paused to wipe tears from her eyes with a quick swipe of her fingers, and Katia must have sensed my urge to scoff, because she shot me a warning glance. “But I kept an ear to the ground,” Morgan went on. “When I heard that Maven was allowing the mongrels to run amok in Colorado, practically parading their crimes under your noses, I knew it was time for me to step forward again.”
That was it. I was absolutely certain Morgan had orchestrated all this, and I wasn’t about to let her get away with this bullshit. My temper flared, and I started to step forward—but Katia was waiting for it. She grabbed my arm and dragged me back through the entryway before I could regain my balance.
“Hey!” I protested. Behind her, I could see that Morgan was still talking, though a bunch of witches in the back snuck curious glances at us. “Let me go. I have to tell them—”
“What?” she hissed, so quietly that I could barely make out the word. “That Morgan is lying? The first thing they’ll say is ‘well, how do you know?’ Then what will you do? Tell them you were there, because you’re Lex Luther the infamous boundary witch?” She mimicked Morgan’s disgusted tone.
“No,” I said, although I hadn’t actually gotten that far. Part of me knew she was right, but this was Morgan Pellar, who had seduced John and threatened Charlie and broken Simon and Lily’s hearts, not to mention Hazel’s. My chest burned with anger, and I really wanted to punch something. Well, someone. “Maybe I’ll just beat the shit out of her onstage and leave it at that. She can’t lie with a broken jaw.”
“There are a thousand of them and two of us,” she whispered matter-of-factly. “And any one of them can throw you through a skylight.”
That brought me up short. “I . . .” She was right. I just really didn’t want her to be right.
“You can’t be here anymore,” Katia pronounced, reading my face. “I’ll listen to the rest of it and meet you at your place in a few hours.”
“But—”
“Go.”
Reluctantly, I allowed Katia to push me through the double doors, where the two guards were now sitting with the table attendants, all of them chatting amiably. They looked up when I stumbled outside, and for a second I really wanted them to rush me. I was just aching for a fight.
“Everything okay?” the female guard said, sounding concerned. “You look a little pale. Do you need to sit down? Do you want some water?”
Well . . . shit. Where’s a rude, aggressive asshole when you really want one? The anger began to leak out of me like a balloon with a pinhole. “No,” I said, trying not to sound sullen. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I’m heading out early.”
They nodded, and as I began to walk toward the darkened parking area, the male guard actually called, “Feel better, miss!”
Leaving the annoyingly friendly guards behind, I stalked past the rows and rows of cars, fuming to myself. Morgan fucking Pellar. I wondered how she’d managed to set all this up. It would have cost a ton of money to rent this space and hire guards. To say nothing of the difficulty of arranging the d
eaths of three werewolves.
Katia had been right, though. I needed to calm the hell down and think it through before I did anything. I took a deep lungful of the crisp winter air, slowing my pace. Passing the last row of cars, I reached the end of the massive lot and turned onto the road. The sun was already down, and the remaining light was fading quickly, so I had to squint to pick out Opal’s sedan. Ten or fifteen cars were lined up behind it now—people who’d arrived after the lot was full.
I didn’t really want to trudge through the ditch in the near darkness, so I checked for cars, then began walking right down the middle of the road.
Something caught my eye, and I paused for a moment. Had I just seen movement? I looked around, wondering if someone else had left the meeting early, but I didn’t see anything in the twilight. I noticed that the vehicle next to me was the same make and model Subaru as Ryan Dunn’s, and I felt a pang of heartache as I remembered those claw marks. I couldn’t help but picture Dunn, frantic and half-changed, scrabbling wildly at the reinforced glass. I had agreed to be his escort through Colorado, and I had blown it.
I stood there staring dully at the Subaru, and that moment of melancholy probably saved my life. In my peripheral vision, I saw the shadows between the cars shift, and I managed to get my arms up and shift my weight properly just before the werewolf leaped out and attacked me.
Chapter 22
That was twice in two days that I’d been tackled by a werewolf. It wasn’t any more fun the second time.
The woman was about my height and weight, but faster—too fast, which was how some part of my brain immediately processed what she was. The rest of me was busy reacting. When she ran at me, I had just enough time to bend forward at the waist, letting her momentum roll her over my back and onto the road. Unbalanced, I dropped to my hands and knees.
Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic Book 4) Page 14
