Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) (14 page)

C
hapter 25

This time, the look that passed between Simon and Lily was downright uncomfortable.

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Lily said, her voice careful. “Why send a proxy—Emil—if you’re also going to come yourself?”

“Plus, boundary magic is extraordinarily powerful,” Simon added. “If he used two different people as human sacrifices, he’d have the juice to raise the dead. And that kind of magic makes an impact—empty graves, confused loved ones, empty coffins at funeral parlors.” He gestured at the newspaper. “We would have heard something by now.”

Lily was nodding along as though Simon was voicing her thoughts verbatim. “Besides,” he continued, “we don’t know for sure that there’s
any
connection between these deaths and the belladonna attacks.”

“I do,” I insisted. “Look, none of us knows all that much about serious boundary magic, but Emil obviously came here to kill Maven, and he said he worked for
our
father. Presumably the man’s a boundary witch, since Emil and I both have strong boundary blood. Ergo, our father is behind the attacks on her, and somehow he’s behind this too.”

“Couldn’t it be Emil’s mother?” Lily offered. “You said Sophia was a powerful boundary witch.”

I shook my head. “Yes, but she was in Nova Scotia last night. I called and confirmed.”

“I’ve never heard of a male witch being strong enough to do human sacrifice alone,” Simon insisted. “And if your theory were true, why did they try to kidnap you?”

I had to admit, he had me there. I had no idea why someone powerful enough to use human sacrifice would want to drag me into this. But my instincts said that I was on the right track.

But Simon and Lily didn’t seem convinced. I couldn’t entirely blame them for not buying my theory, but it was still frustrating. I needed more evidence. “Let’s put a pin in this for the moment,” I said, looking down at the cluttered table. I brushed aside the newspapers, revealing a bunch of open books and the stones from the sculpture park. “What have you guys figured out about crystals?”

Both Pellars began to speak at once. I held up my hands in protest, and they exchanged another one of those sibling communication looks, which somehow resulted in Simon speaking first. “A lot of this is New Age crap,” he said, waving his hand at the table of research. Then he paused, considering me. “Um, unless you believe that tiny beings from another dimension live inside crystals and have the power to influence the exterior world. If so, congratulations on your wacko religion.”

Lily smacked his arm, probably a little harder than I would have. “Hey!” he protested, rubbing the arm with great exaggeration.

“Do the science part,” she ordered.

“Fine. Okay, so, the word ‘crystal’ actually refers to the structure of the material,” he began, relaxing into his explanation. Science was a lot firmer ground for Simon. “Rocks with an orderly arrangement of atoms are called crystals. They are unique from other rocks because they can produce a piezoelectric effect—”

“Which just means they can generate an electric charge in response to pressure,” Lily broke in.

“Right. Anyway, there are
some
people”—he cut his eyes to Lily—“who believe that because crystals vibrate in different frequencies under pressure, they can affect the human bioelectric energy fields.”

“Which is basically the aura,” Lily added.

I stared at them, not bothering to hide my incredulity. “Wait, you’re saying it’s real? I mean, we know crystals do
something
, but are you saying it’s common knowledge that they affect humans?”

“Yes and no,” Simon answered, tilting his flattened hand back and forth. “Yes, crystals have a measurable piezoelectric effect, and yes, human beings do conceivably have a bioelectric field, which in magic we call the aura. But there’s no scientific evidence that crystals actually affect people. In fact, I’d say most of the testimonial evidence comes from crystal users who want to believe in it so badly that they convince themselves it’s true.”

I looked at Lily. “Okay, now give me the woo-woo version. What do hard-core crystal users believe they can do?”

She took a deep breath. “The idea is that you can program crystals to do all sorts of things. Different crystals can supposedly amplify energy, broadcast information, heal wounds, and affect moods.”

“Wait, go back to the word ‘program.’ What does that mean?”

“Just how it sounds. You program the crystal to do something—heal a wound, ground energy, or whatever—and it does it.”

I thought about that. “That’s how Emil was able to run so fast when he’d taken the belladonna.”

“Exactly.”

“And if crystals can ground energy, and Sophia used them to ground boundary magic . . .” I went on.

Simon nodded. “She could store spells in the crystals, and Emil could set them off later. Technically,
he’d
only be using gravitational magic.”

“Okay, well, that’s one mystery solved.” I tried not to think about how many animals—I was really hoping it was animals—had died just so Emil could attack me with wraiths. I looked at Simon. “Why did the spell stop when you picked up the big stone? Is it based on touch or something?”

He shook his head. “Emil had laid these out in a grid system,” he said, gesturing at the pile of stones on the table. “The idea is that if you place certain stones in a certain ritualistic pattern, it creates an energy net that the magician can control. That’s how Emil was able to activate such a complex spell.”

“It’s just like witches’ circles,” Lily said.

“Only more vulnerable,” Simon pointed out. To me, he added, “When I picked up the big crystal, I disturbed the grid, and the spell failed. He also probably had a grid around your house, so picking up this one rock”—he pointed to the chunk of maybe-amethyst—“would be enough to break the spell.”

Which meant he’d set out a grid of crystals at the sculpture garden before I’d ever picked up last night, just on the off chance that his effort to kill Maven failed. He was a planner.

I sat down at the table and took the amethyst from Simon, examining it. It was pretty, but I didn’t see anything particularly special about it. I certainly didn’t feel any vibrations, menacing or otherwise. “What was it doing?” I wondered.

“Supposedly, amethyst is a protective stone,” Lily said. “But I don’t understand why Emil would want to protect you, if the only threat against you is coming from him and whoever he works for.”

“But it’s hard to say for sure, without seeing the rest of the pattern.” Simon shook his head.

I considered that for a moment. “I’ve felt a little weird at home lately,” I said slowly. “But in more of a good way.” I told them about how peaceful and relaxing the cabin had seemed over the last few days.

The Pellars exchanged a bewildered glance. “You need an expert,” Simon declared. “A lot of the public ‘knowledge’”—he mimed quote marks with his hands—“about crystals is based on the theories of a single guy, who made them up based on his meditative practices.” Seeing my baffled look, he added, “The ‘feelings’ he got from the crystals. If you want to know how actual magicians use crystals, you’re probably going to have to find one,” Simon told me.

“Great.”

“There are at least two crystal stores on Pearl Street,” Lily offered. “Probably more in Denver.”

Simon, ever the scientist, said, “But we have no way of knowing if the people who work there are the real thing, or just wannabes.”

I considered that for a long moment. “Hang on, people, I’m having an idea.” I retrieved my cell phone from my other jacket pocket and called Anna.

“Hey, cousin. What’s buzzin’?” she said cheerfully.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Hey. Listen, do you know anything about crystal healing?”

“Yeah, of course.” Her voice was amused. “You realize that I have a degree in religious studies, right?”

I paused. I’d never really considered crystals as part of an actual
religion
. “Right, so if I send you a picture of a stone, would you know what it’s, um, meant for?”

There was a pause. Simon and Lily were both watching me expectantly. Finally Anna said, “Maybe, but why don’t you just ask Blossom?”

I blanked for a long moment. “Blossom
Wheaton
?” I said incredulously. “John’s mother?” The Pellars exchanged a confused look, but I waved them off.

“How many other Blossoms are there?” Anna asked me.

“Dude, this is Boulder. Last month I met two different kids named Dandelion.”

“Girls or boys?”

“Anna—”

“Right, anyway. Blossom
Wheaton
works at the crystal shop in downtown Longmont. You didn’t know?”

Blossom lived thirty miles outside of Boulder in a little house with two defense-trained Dobermans and an armful of rifles. I’d never considered what she did for money. “I guess I just figured she ate the kids she lures into her gingerbread house.” Simon made a choking noise in the back of his throat.

Anna just laughed. “She’s not
that
bad, Lex. She actually helped me with a paper on ceremonial applications for various quartzes. She’s just a little . . . mmm . . . prickly.”

I had a very distinct memory of Blossom chasing Sam and me out of John’s house with a giant butcher knife, because we’d used one of her woven throws as a picnic blanket. “Prickly” wasn’t the word I’d use.

“I’m sure this stuff is probably on the internet,” I hedged.

Anna made a little grunting noise that perfectly communicated a verbal shrug. “Your call, but Blossom would probably save you some time. Assuming you tip her well. I had to buy, like, eight pounds of quartz to get that paper done.”

I sighed. “Thanks, Anna.”

When I hung up the phone, I let my head fall to the table with a clunk. “So,” I said into the Formica. “I think I might know a magician.”

C
hapter 26

As I drove northeast on 119, I tried not to think about having to confront Blossom and beg her for information. My efforts were futile. “She’s not an ogre, Lex,” I muttered to myself. “She’s not gonna hurt you.”

Some fears run a lot deeper than logic.

Blossom was a full-blooded Arapaho. She grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, but after her father died, her mother had married a white man, which caused a serious rift between her and Blossom. As soon as she turned eighteen, Blossom moved to Boulder and began waitressing and taking classes at the community college. She intended to go to CU, but she got pregnant by a man who left her. She wound up quitting school and taking in sewing to pay for the little tract house next door to the one where my parents lived when Sam and I were little.

Some of my strongest memories from those years involve the smell of cotton and the sight of yards and yards of color spread across John’s living room and kitchen. Blossom would screech at Sam and me to stay away from her material, cursing us in both English and Hinóno’eitíít, the Arapaho word for their native language. I learned the Arapaho words for “filthy white monster” before I could ride a bike.

At the time, I thought Blossom was a merciless witch, but looking back, I can have sympathy for her: a young single mother, trying to keep the rambunctious neighbor kids away from her only way to put food on the table. She worked day and night—I didn’t remember seeing her without a mouthful of needles and a measuring tape around her neck until I was at least eight.

My dad—my real dad—started Luther Shoes out of our little tract house, and when it began to take off, he hired the best seamstress he knew to oversee the stitching. Blossom worked for Luther Shoes for years, and during that time, John more or less lived at my house. My mother helped him with his homework just like she did with Sam and me, and he ate dinner with us every night. Sometimes Blossom, who had never experienced much freedom because she’d had John so young, would take advantage of the free childcare and go out, and John would end up camped on the living room floor. By the time we were ten, his sleeping bag had a permanent place in the corner by the couch. The three of us were inseparable—not like a brother and sisters, exactly, but like best friends who had been given the extraordinary gift of never being separated. We accepted him as a permanent part of our world, as only children could.

Those were great years, but when we were fifteen, Blossom and my dad had a falling out. The company was growing so fast that he needed to move all stitching to machines, even the special orders. Blossom was a brilliant seamstress, but not exactly a people person, and he hired someone else to manage the team over her. He kept her in the sewing department and drastically overpaid her—my dad was passionate about rewarding talent—but Blossom’s ego was wounded. She quit in a now-legendary public tantrum, and forbade John from ever returning to our house.

John did not take that well. He may have been quieter and gentler than his fierce mother, but in his own way he was just as stubborn. He went to court, became legally emancipated, and moved in with us. By then my parents had bought their dream house in Mapleton, which came with a small apartment over the garage. John had his own space, and we had our best friend only a few feet away.

The last couple of years of high school were complex and rich and mostly wonderful for the three of us, but Blossom never forgave John for choosing us over her. She saw John’s decision as a betrayal not just of his mother, but of his entire heritage. She accused him and my parents of some ugly things, including racism and brainwashing. If Sam and I were around, she would scream at us too, trying to shame us by implying that we were teenage seductresses who’d poisoned John’s mind by tempting his body.

By then, though, Sam and I understood that Blossom had completely missed the point. John chose us because he knew us better than he knew Blossom, and he understood that we loved him—because we told him so. For John, it was really that simple.

After high school, John went years without speaking to his prickly mother. It was actually Sam who eventually reached out to her mother-in-law, declaring that she wanted her new baby to know both sides of her heritage. Blossom may have been a shit mother, and she may have hated my parents and disliked Sam and me, but she couldn’t resist Charlie. Who could?

Over the past two years, Blossom and John had begun to build a sort of wary, grumbling relationship. She had flown to LA to help with the baby while John was preparing to move back to Boulder, and she’d attended Charlie’s first birthday party despite the presence of so many Luthers. Once there, she stood in the corner with a drink, glaring at the other guests, giving only curt responses to anyone who tried to speak to her, including John. But she did come, and when Charlie opened her gift—a little doll that Blossom had sewed herself—I swear, she actually smiled for a second.

I tried to remember that smile as I parked near Blossom’s store, Crystals of the World, and walked into it, hearing a strand of store bells jangle just above my head. I
hated
those bells.

The inside was one large, well-lit room filled with glass shelves, so you could see straight through to the other wall if you were so inclined. Every shelf held a neatly arranged pile of stones, which seemed to be in order of color. Some of the crystals had been adapted into jewelry, while some were polished and carved in the shape of hearts or skulls. And still more were set out as raw chunks, unaltered. I noticed that these seemed to be the most expensive.

The girl at the counter looked up with a shy smile. She was in her late teens, maybe early twenties, and at least part Indian, with glossy black hair that was cut in a sharp bob near her chin. Her shoulders looked permanently hunched, as though she spent a lot of time getting yelled at. Despite this, her movements were confident, her hands capable as they worked with a small roll of copper and a pair of wire cutters. Behind her, there was a heavy velvet curtain leading to a back room.

“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you find something?” Her eyes were focused on me, but her hands never stopped working, measuring the wire by muscle memory.

Stupid, Lex.
What if Blossom wasn’t even working today? I should have called ahead. “Um, I’m looking for Blossom. Um, Wheaton.”
How may Blossoms do you know?
Sam’s voice in my head sounded amused.

The curtain ripped aside, and a petite, wiry woman with graying braids was suddenly glaring at me. She seemed smaller than I remembered. “You. What do you want?” Blossom demanded.

“Hello, Blossom. How have you been?” I said pleasantly.

“Don’t sweet talk me, white girl.” The young woman blinked in surprise, but just ducked her head in deflection. Her expression said
better you than me
. “You come here looking for me, you must want something.” A stricken look passed over her face. “Is my granddaughter okay?”

“Yes,” I said hurriedly. “Charlie’s fine. She’s at Disney World with John and my parents.”

I immediately regretted my choice of words. To Blossom, it would seem like I was throwing the Luther money in her face.

Sure enough, she glared at me with fresh resentment and irritation. “Then what do you want?”

I marched up the aisle to the counter and upended my shopping bag of stones, right over the girl’s rows of cut copper. There were more stones than ever, since Lily had managed to find an additional dozen placed outside my cabin. They poured out of the bag in a glittering rush and scattered over the counter, filling in all the little spaces between the wires.

The girl gasped, her eyes wide. And for the first time in my entire life, I got to see Blossom Wheaton completely speechless.

It was awesome.

“I need to know what these are used for,” I said into the silence. “And how to stop the guy who’s using them.”

Blossom looked from the stones to me and back again. She picked up the long piece of smoky quartz that Emil had used to activate the spell, examining it under the desk lamp. “Kathy,” she said, without taking her eyes off the crystal, “Take your lunch break. Lock the door behind you.”

“But Momma said—”

“I don’t care what your momma said,” Blossom snapped. “If she asks, you can blame me. Go now.”

The girl—Kathy—hopped off the stool, grabbed a cheap purse from under the counter, and fled out the door. “My brother’s daughter,” Blossom groused, her eyes still on the crystal. “Stupid.”

She’d been smart enough to run away from Blossom, but I didn’t say that out loud. “Does your brother own this store?”

“His wife.”

“You’re not sewing anymore?”

“Arthritis.” For the first time, she took her eyes off the quartz and eyed the bruise on my cheek. “Although I feel better than you. You look like shit, white girl. Someone’s been hitting you.” It was a simple observation. She did not sound particularly concerned about my welfare.

I touched the scarf around my neck, glad she couldn’t see most of the damage. “Do you know what they do or not?”

Her eyes slitted. “Of course I do. But information has a price.”

“Of course it does,” I countered. “God forbid Blossom Wheaton do someone a favor.”

Her face reddened, and I could tell she was about to wind up into one of her hard-core rants, so I held up my hands in peace. “I’m sorry. You’re right; I’m not feeling well. What do you want in exchange for telling me?”

I was expecting her to name a dollar amount—Simon, Lily, and I had pooled all the cash we could manage—but her eyes dropped to the stones on the counter. “I want
them
. The whole package.”

I almost laughed; it was too easy. I didn’t want the creepy rocks anyway. But the greedy way she was eyeing them made me pause. There was power in these stones; did I really want to give it to Blossom?

“Will you use them to hurt people?” I asked finally.

She looked up in surprise. “No. I’m going to sell them.”

“And the people who buy them, will they use the stones to hurt people?”

She shrugged. “S’pose they could. But only that big one is outright dangerous. The rest of ’em are high quality, to be sure, but not uncommon.”

“Then the big one never leaves your possession,” I stipulated. “And you don’t use it to hurt anyone.”

“Deal.”

She was still too eager, for Blossom, so I pushed a little farther. “
And
I want something I can use to stop the guy who used these on me.”

I could see her thinking that over for a long moment, then she nodded. “But you’ll have to pay for the stock. Crystals ain’t free.”

I held out my hand. “Deal.”

Her handshake was firm and leathery. Without another word, she tugged the copper wires out from under the crystals and moved them to a shelf behind the counter. Then she began sorting the stones into piles, a look of intense concentration on her face. I watched quietly, noticing how quickly she recognized subtle differences in the texture and color of the various crystals. Subtleties that I would never have noticed by myself. I had thought there were four or five different kinds of stones, but before I knew it, Blossom had sorted them into more than a dozen piles.

When all the stones were separated, she stared down at them and reached up to tug on her lower lip. “Two different casts here,” she said at last.

“How can you tell?”

She looked up long enough to glare at me. “I just can. Do you want my help or not?” Without waiting for me to answer, she pointed to a small pile of amethyst, which was next to some stones of a slightly lighter purple. “Amethyst and sugilite together . . . interesting.”

“Why?”

Her fingers went back up to her lip. “Because it’s not a conventional cast; your guy is improvising. Ignore the malachite”—she pointed to a pile of green stones—“that’s just a booster. Sugilite and amethyst and dream quartz all together in a grid . . .” She looked up sharply. “It’s a painkiller. A deadening of one’s senses and instincts. Placing these in a grid around someone’s home would be like giving them a heavy narcotic, or maybe one of those date rape drugs.”

I tried to keep the shock off my face. Emil had placed that spell around my house to make me less resistant to him. I suddenly remembered how relaxed and happy Quinn and I had felt the other night, and how I’d slept with no dreams of Iraq. Then I remembered that Emil had called that night, presumably to talk me into something. Betraying Maven, maybe? My fingers curled into fists. “Son of a bitch.”

Ignoring me, Blossom swept the piles of stones for that spell to one side, focusing on the remaining groups. “Now, this. This isn’t just unusual; this is a blitz. Celeste for other dimensions, blue tourmaline to see through the veil, mystic Merlinite for magic, obsidians for the dead . . . and the smoky quartz turns the whole thing into an offensive.” Blossom shook her head, taking a small, unconscious step backward. “This is some kind of necromantic attack.” She looked up, her hard eyes meeting mine. “Who did this?”

“How do I stop him?” I asked, ignoring her question. “I mean, is there a way of shutting him down remotely?”

“You can’t. I’ve never seen anything like this; it’s
old
power. If your guy has more like these”—she pointed to the stones—“and you don’t know where he is or where he’s setting up . . .” Blossom crossed her arms in front of her chest, a defensive posture. “I don’t know of any way to stop him from a distance. You’d have to disturb the grid.”

I’d never seen Blossom like this—she looked intimidated, awed. What could scare the meanest woman I knew?

I felt a chill. I hadn’t known that crystal grids could be so powerful, which made me anxious about what else Emil could do with them.

And then I realized that after last night, he knew where we were keeping Maven. Oh, God.

“Hang on a second,” I told Blossom, stepping away from the counter. I ignored her scowl and called Simon to explain the problem. “You need to move her, Simon. Immediately.”

“But how?” he asked. “It’s broad daylight out there.”

“You must have a box or a big suitcase or something. It doesn’t have to be dignified, it just needs to happen
right now
.”