Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic Book 1) (22 page)

Chapter 32

“
I’m
John Wheaton,” John said, his voice a terrible alloy of anger and fear.

The girl’s face bleached to a pale white. “I . . . I don’t know what could have happened,” she stammered. “I don’t remember seeing her. Karen?” she called, waving over one of the other two workers. “Do you recall signing out Charlotte Wheaton?”

“Eighteen months old,” John supplied.

Karen’s face was as blank as the first girl’s. Instinctively, I spun on my heel and hurried over to Dani, bending down to tug the earbuds out of her ears. “Dani, did you see someone take Charlie?” I demanded.

She blinked at me, pushing her round glasses higher on her face. “Yeah, that guy came and got her,” she said. “I was trying to help Peter get Chris down the slide, but I figured he was the babysitter . . .”

“John!” I yelled, startling him out of his heated conversation with the attendants. “I need you to get Quinn
right now
!”

“Who?” he said, confused and worried. “We need Elise, we gotta call the cops—”

“John,” I said, pouring as much patience into my voice as I could manage, “I can go after her, but I need Quinn right now. Please.”

He looked at me for the length of a heartbeat, then nodded, trusting me. He raced out of the room. I turned back to Dani, crouching down so our faces were level. “Honey, I need to know what he looked like.”

“Did I mess up?” Dani asked, her voice edged with fear. “Should I have gone to get Uncle John?”

I smoothed down her hair. “No, baby, you did just fine. Do you remember anything about how he looked?”

“He was like in college,” she volunteered. “Um, dark hair. I don’t remember what he was wearing but he was kind of . . . big?” She let go of the iPad and spread her arms, holding them away from her body. “Lots of muscles.”

Oh,
shit
. “Did he have a funny hooked nose?” I asked, miming a bump over my nose with one finger. “Like this?”

She nodded, her face relaxing a little as she realized I knew him.

“How long ago?” I said urgently, having to concentrate to keep from squeezing her arms.

“Like, two minutes. Did—”

John and Quinn ran in, John starting to panic in earnest. “John, I need you to stay calm and keep this quiet,” I said. “I can get her back, but we can’t—”

“You must be joking,” he interrupted. “We gotta call the police right now, time is everything—”

I met Quinn’s eyes. The vampire didn’t look confused or upset; he just gave me a calm, what-do-you-want-me-to-do look. “It was Kirby, and it just happened,” I said, ignoring John. “There’s no time. I’m going after him.”

He nodded. “I’ll press them and join you in a second.”

I winced, but he was right. If we let John make a big fuss and call the police, Itachi would throw his resources into containment rather than an investigation. “Tell him she’s spending the night at my house,” I said grimly. “He’ll be okay with that.”

John started to yell at me, and Dani burst into tears, but I couldn’t worry about any of that.

I was already running.

Holding the front of my dress, I raced down the stairs at neck-breaking speed, skidding down the last few steps so fast I had to catch myself on the wall. I raced out of the stairwell and burst outside, looking wildly
to my left and right. At first I figured he must have used a car for his getaway, but would he have gone for the southeast lot or the southwest one? I took a few steps southwest and realized that traffic was jammed up around the building. The fickle autumn weather had decided on a breath of warmth, and people were everywhere. Between the party and all the regular Saturday night events on campus, a car wouldn’t have been a very dependable way to get anywhere. He would probably have fled on foot, at least at first.

But that didn’t tell me anything about where he would have
gone
, goddammit. I turned in a slow circle, peering around the campus, hoping for a flash of movement, for the sight of someone running. There were plenty of people around, but I didn’t see Kirby, or anything else suspicious. I grabbed at my hair, ready to scream.
The frat house
, I thought suddenly. Would he have gone there to get his car? No, it wasn’t too far, but he would have had to take busy Broadway to get there, which would make it too likely that he’d run into people who knew him.

The smart thing to do, I decided, would have been to park a block or so away from the UMC, someplace out of the immediate traffic but easily accessible by foot. And if he was planning to get on Highway 36 toward Denver . . .

Grabbing the bottom of my dress again, I turned and sprinted southeast toward Macky Auditorium, ignoring the renewed surge of pain from my feet. There was a huge lot on the other side of the auditorium, with easy access to the highway and not much visibility. That was where I’d park, if I were stealing a kid.

I tried to figure out how many seconds I’d lost while I was considering my options. Thirty? Sixty? I ran harder, trying to make it up. The heels were making it hard to move, but my only other option was to take them off, and that’s how I’d hurt my feet in the first place. So I pelted down the sidewalk as fast as I could, ignoring the joggers and strolling couples who stared and murmured as I raced by, my emerald skirt flying behind me like a banner. I put everything I had into forward movement, well aware that if my shoe caught the asphalt wrong I was done. I wondered why my shoes felt wet, then realized that my cuts had reopened.

I ran across Euclid Ave, weaving through traffic, disregarding the honks and curses. I hit the grass in front of Macky—

And recognized the wall of muscle twenty feet in front of me. Kirby was strolling along the green lawn abutting the music building, wearing something strapped to his back. I skidded to a stop, but it was too late—he’d heard the crazy woman pounding along the sidewalk in heels and, like everyone else on the lawn, he had turned to look at me.

There was a long, frozen moment when I registered that he was wearing a BabyBjörn with my niece inside, her eyes wide and unfrightened, looking around the lawn with mild interest. She was okay.

And then she was turned away from me, as Kirby moved to run.

I chased him, but I was much too slow. “Stop him!” I screamed desperately to the students loitering on the lawn. “That’s not his kid!”

Several of them stood up, and two male professors in their forties began to halfheartedly chase after Kirby, who started running full-out. The gap between us began to widen, and I knew I was seconds away from losing Charlie. “No!” I howled, and without thinking I pulled on my mindset again, trying to target Kirby and pull the goddamned motherfucking undead
life
out of him . . .

I’d forgotten about what Charlie could do.

Kirby ran out of sight, completely protected from me by my niece’s power. I kept going for another moment, screaming, knowing it was useless, and then the two professors in front of me dropped to the ground like stones in a pond.

Then the group of students on the lawn nearest them. Then a jogger. Then two dog-walkers.

I was watching them in horror when my foot caught a tree root. I went flying through the air, crashing down hard on my right shoulder. I screeched with pain as it dislocated. By the time I managed to struggle to my feet and look around, every single person on the wide Macky lawn had collapsed on the grass.

The wave of stolen magic hit me, and I lost consciousness.

Chapter 33

I opened my eyes to darkness. For a moment I wondered dully if I’d blinded myself with the magic. It didn’t matter, really. I’d lost Charlie, and I’d killed a couple dozen people with my fucking mind. I’d stolen their life force—and for what? I’d been so sure that everything would be fine if I could just catch Kirby . . . and then I’d lost him. By morning Charlie was going to be in another state.

I had failed to save her, just like I’d failed to save her mother.

Very slowly, the room around me came into focus, and I realized with a dim sense of relief that I wasn’t blind—I was dreaming. I was sitting on the edge of my twin bed in the bedroom Sam and I had shared at our parent’s house, the one we had insisted on sharing even though the new house had plenty of space. I looked around the room fondly. There was Sam’s mussed bed, looking like she’d just jumped out of it. There was the stuffed bear she’d slept with since we were three, and I recognized the stack of novels on my nightstand as being from my AP English class.

Then I frowned. Something felt off. I dreamed about my sister all the time, but this felt different. I wasn’t usually so conscious of being asleep, for one thing, and everything was too . . .
detailed
. My dreams were usually fuzzy and content-oriented—I would dream about this or that event, real or imaginary, and that’s all I would remember later.

But this time I saw all the minutiae—what I was wearing (jeans and a plain Luther Shoes T-shirt), the names on the posters on our walls, the piles of clothes, clean and dirty, on Sam’s side of the room. It even
smelled
like the obnoxious floral air fresheners my mom had liked to use throughout the house when we were kids. Had I ever had a dream with
smells
before? This was too weird.

“
Finally
, Allie,” said a voice from in front of me. “It took you long enough.”

I looked up. There was Sam, sitting cross-legged on her own twin bed across from me, though it had been empty just a second ago. She was wearing the same outfit I’d last seen her in: black leggings, ballet flats, and a drapey turquoise top that hid her postpartum baby pooch. My sister had been small-framed, with a brunette pixie cut and big blue eyes that were identical to mine. People had rarely guessed we were twins, and sisters, but if you looked closely, our eyes gave it away.

“Sammy?” I said in a small voice. I began to stand up, but she shook her head, motioning for me to stay where I was.

“Sorry, babe, but you can’t hug me. It doesn’t work like that.”

I looked around for a moment and then sat back on my bed, folding my legs to mirror her. This was how we’d had a thousand conversations in high school, back when Sam and I were making plans to room together at college. Before 9/11, before I’d decided that being a soldier was my destiny.

“Usually when I dream about you, we get to hug,” I pointed out.

“You’re not dreaming, Allie,” she told me seriously.

I snorted. “Of course I am. I’m talking to my dead sister.”

Sam just raised one eyebrow at me, waiting for me to put it together.

“I’m talking to my dead sister,” I repeated. “Are you saying that this is real?
You’re
real?”

She nodded. “I’m me, or what’s left of me.” Then she put on a low, dramatic voice. “
I
am the
soul
of Samantha Wheaton!” A goofy grin broke out on her face.

I stared back, not believing. This was just another dream—more vivid and heartbreaking than usual, maybe, but still a dream. Wasn’t it?

Sam arched a single eyebrow at me, a trick she’d always been much better at than I was. “Allie, you know for a fact now that vampires are real, and you’ve personally died and come back several times. How is this any weirder than that?”

“Because I want it to be true,” I whispered.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll prove it. I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know. You can’t dream about things you don’t know.” Her eyes searched the air above my head for a moment; then she brightened. “Dad’s fifty-fifth birthday, when you were in Iraq,” she said to me. “Brie and I got drunk on champagne and threw up in the bushes behind Mom and Dad’s house. You can check the story with her.”

“That’s . . .” I shook my head. I believed her. “If it’s true, how did we . . . do this?”

She shrugged. “You tell me, Allie. You called. I just picked up the phone.”

“I miss you so much,” I said, my voice quavering. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when he killed you.”

Sam rolled her eyes again. “You’ve gotta get over that, babe.”

“Get over what? Your
death
?”

Her face softened. “Get over the idea that you could have done something. Why do you think I sent you the dream of that time in the park? You could only do so much to keep me safe, Allie. At some point I was gonna be the person I was gonna be.” I must have looked unconvinced, because she huffed out a sigh. “Look, I chose to live in LA. I chose to go out that night. Even if you’d been
with
me, you probably couldn’t have prevented it.”

“You’ve been sending me dreams?” I said stupidly. “You can do that?” Sam nodded. I thought of all the dreams I’d been having since Quinn had officially dropped the case. “What does that mean?”

“It means your access to magic is getting stronger, babe,” she said gently. “You’re communicating across the line.”

“You know about magic?”

“I didn’t when I was alive, no. But I do now.” She cocked her head to the side for a second, as if she were listening to someone I couldn’t hear. Her face darkened. “But I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of rules.”

Sam scrunched her face at me. “And you know I do
so
well with those. I’m trying to be good, though, so we can talk.”

I just shook my head, too bewildered to even know where to start. “I don’t know what to say. I . . . I lost her, Sam. I lost Charlie.” My eyes filled with tears. “I was so stupid.”

“Hey, hey,” Sam said hurriedly. “Don’t cry. She’s not lost yet. You’re going to find her.”

“I can’t.” I drew my knees up, hugging them in front of me. “I’m too dangerous to go anywhere near her right now, Sammy. I killed all those people. I can’t control myself.”

Sam sighed and scooted to the edge of her bed, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. She looked straight into my eyes. “Allison,” she said quietly. “Listen to me carefully. There is
no one
else, do you understand? The police can’t help, and the vampires only care about damage control. You are
the only one
who can help my baby.”

I sniffed, shaking my head. “I don’t know how. She could be anywhere by now.”

“Then you get your people together,” Sam said, “and figure it out.” She tilted her head again, pausing. Then she cursed. “I have to go. Babe, you’ve got to find my daughter. So
get up
.”

I did, or at least I tried to. I struggled for only a second before the pain in my shoulder and feet broke over me, making me writhe. A cool hand touched my face, brushed my sweat-stuck hair away from my eyes. “Lex?”

I went still. The man’s voice was so soft, so worried, that it took me a moment to place it. Quinn. I opened my eyes. I was lying on a couch, and he was crouched on the floor next to me. We were in some sort of darkened room. I recognized the carpeting and color scheme from Macky Auditorium. My eyes went wide as I remembered what had happened.

“Oh, God! Did I—all those people—”

“Alive,” Quinn said firmly. He hesitated for a second, then added, “But unconscious. The EMTs I talked to said they should be fine . . . probably.” In response to my questioning look, he added, “I pressed some of the cops into thinking it was a gas leak. Not my best story, but it will hold until Itachi can get some more vampires here to help.”

I struggled to sit up. Quinn must have popped my shoulder back in place while I was out, but the room still spun around me. When I tried to squint at a wall clock, the walls spun, too. At first I thought it was the pain, but pain didn’t make you feel drunk. I felt like I was about to burst from the forces swirling inside me. I lay back down. “What’s wrong with me?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said softly. “Your pupils are dilated almost to the edge of the irises. I called Lily and Simon, but there’s a clan assembly tonight. Nobody’s answering.”

“How long was I out?”

“Two hours.” He frowned. “I was starting to get worried.”

I tried to sit up again, but the room wasn’t any more cooperative this time around. Quinn laid a hand on my arm, trying to still me. “Lex, I don’t think you should—”

“He took Charlie,” I said, panting. “Help me, please.”

Quinn hesitated for one more second, then nodded. He draped my left arm around his shoulder and stood me up, supporting me around the waist with his right arm. For a moment I helped him as much I as I could; then I remembered that he was a vampire and let my body sag against him so I could focus my energy on thinking.

“Where exactly are we going?” Quinn murmured to me.

“You said the witches are getting together tonight?” He nodded. I smiled grimly, or at least I think I did.

“Well, I’m a witch, right? Let’s go get introduced.”