Boundary Lines (5 page)

Chapter 7

We spent a few more minutes making plans before I finally trudged out to my car. Maven and Quinn would need to go to ground for the night anyway, and I was so exhausted I was almost nauseous from it. It was hard to believe that only a few hours earlier, I had balked at going home after Hazel’s party. Now I was ready to cry with relief at the sight of my own driveway.

My home was a modest three-bedroom fishing cabin near the Sawmill Ponds, about twenty minutes outside of Boulder proper. After I had returned from Iraq, my parents had insisted on giving it to me outright. I tried to refuse, but Sam had eventually made me see that I would be doing them a kindness if I accepted: The rest of my squad had been killed in an IED explosion in Iraq, and my parents were so stupendously grateful to have me home and alive; they’d been desperate to do
something
to take care of me. So I let them give me the cabin, and in return, they didn’t bat an eye when I more or less let my rescue animals half destroy it.

I was aching for sleep—and from the bump on my head—but I made myself stay awake long enough to carefully wash the dried bloodstains off my skin from where I’d hit my head. There was probably still a bit of dried blood in my dark red hair, but you couldn’t see it, and I decided a shower could wait until the morning. Before I could collapse, I took ten more minutes to feed everybody, let the dogs out, and scoop the cats’ litter boxes. My usual herd of three cats and four dogs had recently grown by one: I was currently fostering a one-year-old pit bull named Lady, and she was so happy to see me I thought she might tip her crate over before I could get it open. I felt guilty for being gone so long, and eventually fell into bed with three of the five dogs crowded around me.

Before I could do more than wiggle into a comfortable position, my phone began to chirp where I’d left it on the bedside table. I groaned and rolled over to check the caller ID, figuring it was Old-World related. Who else would call me before six in the morning?

But to my surprise, the caller was my cousin Elise, a patrol officer for the Boulder Police Department. I knew she was working watch three this week, the night shift, but that still didn’t explain why she’d call me before six in the morning. For some reason my thoughts leaped to Charlie, and my heart skipped a beat before I answered.

“Lex?” Her voice was breathless with excitement. “Hey, sorry to call so early, but random question: Are you still in touch with that biologist from CU?”

I blanched, thrown off by the whole idea of a connection between my personal life and the Old World, but after a moment I remembered: a few weeks earlier Elise had invited me to coffee on a day I had a magic lesson with Simon. I try to lie to my family as little as possible, so I’d said I was meeting up with a CU professor, the brother of a friend, to talk about auditing one of his classes. “Uh, yeah, we’re still in touch. Why, what’s up?”

“We got a call from an early-morning hiker who found a sort of bundle of something slimy on one of the Chautauqua trails,” she explained, the words tumbling out of her mouth so fast that the meaning seemed to appear in my brain a full second later. “My commander thinks it’s just garbage, but it looks animal to me. I thought it might be worth having a scientist look at it
before
our criminologist takes it apart.”

“A bundle of something slimy,” I repeated, trying not to sound as skeptical as I felt. The Old World was facing a serious threat from the same monsters who had killed Sam, and Elise was worried about some gooey clump of trash?

“Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. But I’m trying to go the extra mile here, Lex,” she wheedled. Elise wanted to be a detective someday. “I can go through the university, of course, but they won’t be open for a couple of hours, and the watch commander is humoring me by waiting
this
long. You said your friend’s brother was a biologist, right?”

“Uh, evolutionary biologist, yeah.”

“What’s the difference?”

Hmm, good question. “I honestly have no idea.”

“Well, can he come take a look?” she pleaded. “Please? As a favor to me?”

I rubbed my eyes with the heel of one hand, trying to think. Elise was pushing awfully hard, and she was family, so I couldn’t say no. At the same time, I wasn’t sure Simon would be up for this kind of adventure—the last time I’d seen him he’d needed crutches to walk—but I couldn’t actually
tell
Elise that Simon was too hurt, since I had no idea what story he’d told the university.

“Let me call him,” I said finally. “I’m not sure he’s the guy, but he should know who is.” Elise thanked me profusely, and I promised to call her right back.

I was half expecting Simon’s phone to go to voicemail, since it was So. Very. Early. But Simon was sort of like Quinn’s counterpart in the witch clan: He was a general problem solver, a fixer for the lady in charge—in his case, his mother, Hazel. And fixers have to answer their phones, even if they sound very groggy and possibly on painkillers.

“Lex?” he mumbled. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to wake you,” I began, because that’s just good manners. I told him about Elise’s call, ending with, “Everyone else at the station thinks it’s nothing, but maybe you could get Elise a phone number for the right person at CU?”

“Actually,
I’m
the right person,” he replied. “One of them, anyway. The biology department gets requests to identify specimens all the time, from hunters or new property owners or whatever, and we all take turns. I think this is the first time it’s come from the actual police department, though.”

“Okay . . . but you’re probably not at full strength, right? So maybe you could call one of your colleagues?”

There was a long, very loaded pause. “I’m perfectly capable of doing my job,” he retorted, and I winced at the sharp edge in his voice.

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“Besides,” Simon interrupted, “one of my duties within the clan is to keep an eye out for weird shit that might be traced back to the Old World. If the cops are calling, it’s probably pretty weird. So I’m going, Lex.”

“Okay,” I said, as mildly as I could.

There was a pause, and Simon cleared his throat. With great dignity, he added, “But, um . . . I’m not cleared to drive yet. Can you give me a ride?”

I grinned, glad he couldn’t see it. “Pick you up in twenty.”

Chapter 8

I called Elise to say we were on the way, and threw on the nearest outfit at hand, jeans and a T-shirt with the name of a local radio station. Boulder is really expensive, and I don’t make much money, so roughly half of my tops began life as free swag somewhere. The other half were birthday and Christmas gifts, usually from Sam or my mom.

Simon and his girlfriend were renting a bland townhouse in Lafayette, about fifteen minutes away if I didn’t hit any traffic. I’d stopped by the townhouse a few times right after Simon got out of the hospital, but Tracy had never exactly warmed up to me. It was possible that she was just a shy or introverted person, but there was also a good chance that she disliked me because of the boundary magic thing. Or, you know, because I’d gotten her long-term boyfriend critically injured. Either way, I couldn’t really blame her. It made my visits to Simon awkward, though.

I went as fast as I dared, trying to make it before the early-morning commuter traffic. By six forty I was parking in the townhouse’s narrow driveway, just behind Simon’s Chevy. There was no sign of Tracy’s VW Beetle, which surprised me a little. None of my business, though.

Simon opened the door before I’d finished knocking, dressed in a blue flannel button-down and jeans, his trademark messenger bag clutched in his teeth. The crutches were gone, but he was leaning on a simple wooden cane. “Can you . . .” he said through his teeth, and I reached out and snagged the messenger bag, looping it over my own shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “Hurts to lift my arms that high.”

“No worries.” I looked him over carefully. The search for my niece a couple of weeks earlier had ended at the farm of a hillbilly named Atwood, in a decrepit barn full of rusty junk. Simon had climbed a ladder to the hayloft where Atwood was keeping Charlie, not realizing that the “shitkicker witch” had sabotaged the ladder to collapse when he was halfway up. My friend had landed on top of a pile of rusty junk, including some metal-and-glass lanterns, and wound up with torn-up back muscles and a lacerated kidney. The metal shards had also nicked the iliac artery in his lower back, which had caused him to bleed out and, technically, die.

Because Atwood was a witch, Simon would have been responsible for tracking him down regardless of my involvement. During the rescue, though,
I
was the one who’d told Simon to go into that barn to get Charlie. I used to be a soldier; I knew that you have to make decisions in the heat of the moment. And even when I look back now, I’m not sure I could have done anything differently with the information I had at the time. But there was still a voice at the back of my mind that insisted it was my fault Simon was hurt.

All things considered, though, he didn’t look too bad. He’d dropped weight from his lean frame, but his hair was clean, and his olive skin—Hazel and her late husband were a mixed-race couple—was no longer sickly. He looked tired, though. “Stop examining me,” Simon snapped.

My mouth dropped open, just a tiny bit. That wasn’t like Simon. He was always kind and even tempered—sometimes almost
too
laid-back.

Without waiting for me to respond, he hobbled past me onto the front steps. “Let’s go.”

I scrambled to follow, trying to spot him on the steps without looking like I was spotting him on the steps. Could whatever was bothering the other witches also be getting to Simon? Or was he just cranky from dealing with his injuries?

“Everything okay?” I ventured, when we were buckled in my car and on the road toward Boulder.

“Fine.”

“How have you been feeling?”

“Good. Much better.”

Yeah, right. I’d heard that tone of voice before. Like out of my own mouth. “Uh-huh,” I said, keeping my voice playful. “And how are you
really
feeling?”

“I’m
fine
, Lex,” he snapped, and then sighed. “Sorry. I know you mean well.”

There was a pause, and I didn’t think he was planning to finish the thought anytime soon. “
But
. . .” I prompted.

“But you don’t really know what it’s like for me now.”

I’m not sure what I’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Actually,” I pointed out, “I may be the only one who does.”

His whole face creased into a frown. “What do you mean?”

“You
died
, Simon,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “And I’ve . . . you know . . . died a bunch of times.” As a boundary witch, my body had a natural resistance to crossing the line from living to dead. I had drowned as a teenager and I’d bled out after surviving the IED in Iraq. I’d also been stabbed to death by a crazed vampire only a few weeks earlier. My body wouldn’t let me die—and now I had refused to let Simon’s.

“I guess you’re right. Do you . . .” he started, but had to pause and take a breath. “Do you have nightmares?”

I smiled sadly. “On and off. When I was a kid, I dreamed about drowning a lot, and death. Dead people. And after Iraq . . . yeah. But it fades. For what it’s worth.”

Another long moment of silence passed between us, and I could feel him working up to something. “You haven’t asked me where Tracy is,” he said at last.

I shrugged. “None of my business.”

“She’s been sleeping at her mother’s. She says it’s because of the nightmares, but things have been tense.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Simon and I had always enjoyed a very casual student-teacher relationship, so it felt strange for him to share something so personal. Then again, I was the one who’d encouraged him to share, wasn’t I? “I’m sorry, man,” I finally said.

“I remember, you know,” he said abruptly. “I remember disconnecting. Floating. Seeing you.” I glanced over at him. He was staring it me intently, curiously. “You were crying.”

There wasn’t much I could say about that. Simon squirmed in the seat, trying to find a comfortable position despite the bandages he probably had on under his clothes. I changed the subject. “So in case someone asks me, what kind of biology do you do?”

Some of the tension smoothed off his face. Back on familiar territory. “Officially, I’m an associate curator at the Natural History museum on campus, and I teach undergraduate classes in biology. My specialty is mammalian vertebrate systemics.”

When I had untangled that particular phrase in my mind, I asked, “And unofficially?”

“I’ve spent most of my career trying to understand Old World systemics,” he explained with a little shrug. “Why we evolved the way we did. But the police don’t need to know that, obviously.”

“Got it.”

I knew the way to the massive, concrete-and-glass Public Safety building that housed the police department in Boulder—not because of my arrests, after which I was sent straight to the county jail, but because I stopped by every now and then to bring Elise some lunch or shoot with her in the basement firing range. The range wasn’t technically open to civilians, but sometimes Elise talked them into letting her ex-military cousin help her train for the firearms qualification.

When we arrived I parked in the small visitors’ lot in front of the main doors and showed Simon to the marble-floored lobby, where the receptionist called Elise for us. My cousin rushed through the security door a moment later, dressed in her street clothes: slim-fitting dark khakis and a lavender button-down. Her shift must have ended at six, which meant she was here on her own time now. Stifling a yawn, I made the introductions, and Elise shook Simon’s hand with enthusiasm. “Thank you so much for coming, Dr. Pellar.”

Simon shook back, subtly cocking an eyebrow at me to say
See,
she
treats me with respect
. I tried not to chortle. Teacher or not, it was too weird to think of Simon as a doctor of anything. He was only a couple of years older than me.

Elise used her ID card to swipe us through the security doors and led us down a long, narrow corridor. I looked around with interest. Though I’d been downstairs to the shooting range and upstairs to the dining area, I hadn’t spent much time on the ground floor. I had to admit, I didn’t hate the decor: some brave and optimistic interior designer had dared to pair the usual institutional beige with accent walls of a gorgeous deep teal. The hallway was lined with photos of cops: men and women who’d earned medals or other accolades, or who’d been killed in the line of duty. I wanted to stop and read some of the placards, but Elise was hurrying us along at a pace Simon could barely match.

We turned a few corners, enough for me to know I’d need help to find my way back out again, when I began to notice the smell, like vomit that had been left out in the sun for days. The deeper we got into the building, the worse it was. “What
is
that?” I asked Elise. “Did something die in the ventilation system?”

She smiled wryly. “I wish.”

Finally we turned one last corner and entered a small room dominated by an enormous table. A teeny cubicle office was attached, and Elise poked her head in. “Natalie? The expert’s here.”

There was a mumble, and then the sound of chair wheels squeaking. Elise backed up to make way for a Caucasian woman of around forty, with a cropped haircut and smile lines in her golden tan. I had been expecting a lab coat, like in the movies, but she was dressed in neat charcoal trousers and a boatneck sweater that flattered her figure. “This is our criminologist, Dr. Natalie Lafferty,” Elise introduced. “Natalie, this is Dr. Simon Pellar, and my cousin Lex, who’s sort of serving as his assistant today.”

That was a nice way of putting it. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, her words turning into a giant yawn. “Sorry, haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Right there with you,” I muttered.

“Where is the object?” Simon asked, ignoring me.

The woman gestured at the table. “Ordinarily I’d have it out already, but under the circumstances we didn’t want to stink up the building more than we absolutely have to.” She gave us a wry smile. “I did try to pawn it off on the CBI—that’s the Colorado Bureau of Investigation—but they won’t accept it until we take it apart. And Elise here”—she glanced at my cousin with a faint smile—“
insisted
that we couldn’t do that without a biologist present.”

I realized that Elise was very pointedly not looking at me. Wait a minute . . . was she
blushing
? I hadn’t even known she
could
blush, but there was definitely a little chemistry going on between her and the criminologist, no pun intended. I worked to keep the grin off my face.

Then Dr. Lafferty took a deep breath and stepped toward a closed door. “Breathe through your mouth,” she advised. She opened the cupboard, and I forgot all about teasing Elise.

The smell hit us like a concussion wave, violent and foul and revolting. Elise had already experienced the stench, so she just locked her fingers around her nose without comment. Simon gagged and covered his mouth and nose with both hands, but I got that sense that this was less to keep the smell out and more to keep his stomach contents
in
. I had smelled worse in Iraq and managed to keep my hurried breakfast down, but my eyes were watering. “Yeah,” said Lafferty, as though the word explained everything. “There’s that.”

She turned around, struggling under the weight of a metal
tray,
and we finally got a good look at the bundle. “Whoa,” Simon
breathed. It looked like a number of wet objects had been compressed together into a brown, lumpy sphere, then covered in some kind of translucent liquid. It was much larger than I’d imagined, like someone had taken one of those big stuffed medicine balls and dipped it in snot.

“The hiker smelled it first,” Elise explained, her plugged nose
subduing the words. “She thought maybe something had died near the trail, went to look.”

“The working theory is that some kids from the university got hold of a bundle of clothes,” Lafferty went on, “maybe from a homeless man, and decided to dump a chemistry experiment all over it. We already took photos, so I’m ready when you are.”

I glanced at Simon. I’d nearly forgotten he was here to do a job. My friend had straightened up a bit, lowering his hands and breathing hard out of his mouth. I recognized his expression, because it was the same one he’d worn all the time when we were first experimenting with my abilities. Simon was fascinated.

He stepped forward and handed me his cane without taking his eyes off the bundle. Lafferty gave him a pair of latex gloves, and while he put them on, she opened another cupboard and pulled out a pan full of sterile instruments. She set it on the table near the tray.

“Do you know what it is?” Elise asked Simon, her tone a little more demanding than the situation required.

“It’s the strangest thing,” he murmured, and from his distracted tone I wasn’t sure he’d even heard the question or if he was just thinking out loud. He had bent over to get a closer look at the mound of slime, so I did too, trying to breathe as slowly as possible. On closer inspection, I could make out some bits of clothing and what might have been the sole of a shoe.

Simon murmured, “It almost looks like a—”

“Gastric pellet?” Elise interrupted, excitement in her voice.

To my surprise, Simon nodded. “Exactly,” he said. For the first time his eyes lifted from the bundle, to fall on Elise. He and Lafferty both stared at her.

She ducked her head, embarrassed but pleased. “I saw a thing about Komodo dragons on the Discovery Channel.”

Lafferty looked impressed, but Simon just nodded, his attention moving back to the thing on the table. “Gastric pellet?” I asked no one in particular.

“When birds and lizards swallow insects and small animals,” Simon explained, spinning the tray slowly so he could study the thing from all angles, “they regurgitate a little pellet of undigestible materials—bones, fur, claws, and so on.” He selected a large set of tweezers from the tray and looked at Lafferty. “May I?”

She shrugged in a “be my guest” kind of way, and Simon gently probed the edges of the sphere, looking for a weak point. While he was doing that, he continued, “But the largest living animal that produces gastric pellets is probably the Komodo, and those are maybe the size of a softball.” He found a spot he liked and inserted the tip of the tweezers, the tongs tightly closed. Then he slowly released pressure on the handle, and the tweezers opened, cracking the pellet open like an egg. Although it seemed impossible, the smell somehow intensified. The two halves of the bundle fell apart with a disgusting wet sucking noise, exposing more scraps of fabric, the sole of a sneaker, and a large piece of rounded bone. The table was big enough to hold both halves, but only just.