Boundary Lines (9 page)

“Sybil included,” Lily put in.

“She sort of communicates with your body on a subconscious level,” Simon went on, starting to look a little excited. “Honestly, I think it’s fascinating, and I’ve been hoping to meet her. This could be just the reason.”

My skepticism must have shown on my face, because he shot me a pleading look. “Please? It could help. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

I sighed. “Fine,” I said, giving his cane a pointed look. “But only if she takes a look at you, too.”

Lily crowed, and Simon flushed a little. “In the interest of science,” he said with elaborate graciousness, “I’d love to experience what she does. Lily,” he added, turning to his sister. “Can you call Sybil and get the number?”

Lily made a face. “Ew. Like, right now? Why don’t you do it?”

I hadn’t actually met Sybil or Morgan, the two elder Pellar siblings, but from what Simon and Lily had said, Morgan was the heir-apparent golden child and Sybil was fussy and cold. Although to be fair, that could just be part of Simon and Lily’s schtick.

They squabbled for a few more minutes before Lily agreed to make the call. She stood up, grabbed Simon’s soda spitefully, and skulked toward the back door.

“Is Sybil really that bad?” I asked, watching Lily go.

“Honestly, she’s become a lot more tolerable since Morgan started having problems with her husband,” Simon said absently. I raised my eyebrows and he winced, as if just realizing what he’d said. “Sorry, that was an overshare. Let’s just say the Pellar family dynamic is complicated. Especially since my dad died.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard Simon mention his father. “What was his name?” I asked.

Simon’s eyes, which had gone distant for a moment, focused back on me. “Nero. Nero Carter. He was from Louisiana. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “Just wanted to know what to call him when I think of him.”

Simon’s face softened. “It’s funny,” he said in a sad voice, “I hardly ever think of him anymore. It used to be every day, all the time.”

“How old were you?” I asked. “When you lost your dad, I mean.”

“Nineteen. Lily was fifteen.”

I had just asked out of curiosity, but it suddenly occurred to me that Simon was in his early thirties. He would have been nineteen maybe twelve or thirteen years ago . . . right about when the werewolf packs were warring in Colorado.

Had Simon and Lily’s dad been killed by werewolves?

Simon must have seen the spark of understanding in my eyes, because he gave me one slow nod. Before I could get the question out, he added, “You needed me to fill you in on the pellet too, right?”

For a moment I floundered. “Uh, yes,” I managed, feeling incredibly guilty. Werewolves had invaded Colorado, and I hadn’t told him. I pushed it aside to think about later. “Any word on our mystery creature?” I asked, composing myself.

Simon raised his eyes to meet mine. His voice was completely casual as he said, “Yes and no. Since we talked this afternoon, I did learn that another pellet was found in Golden Gate Canyon Park.”

Chapter 14

“Whoa,”
I exclaimed, barely resisting the urge to smack my injured friend. “Way to bury the lead, Simon!”

He held up a hand. “Hang on, it’s not the same situation. The park rangers found a pellet on the twenty-eighth, probably dumped either that day or the day before, since it rained two days earlier. But this one had no human parts or clothes inside.”

“What was it, then?”

“Antlers,” he replied. “And hooves, and a little bit of fur.”

“A deer?”

Simon nodded. “The parts it couldn’t digest, anyway. That’s why the rangers didn’t pursue it much. It was odd, but not threatening. They sent a sample on to the CBI, but figured it’d be weeks before they got results.”

“So it ate a deer on the twenty-seventh-ish,” I said slowly, “and then it ate a person . . . do you know when?”

“Hard to determine. I called your cousin Elise and fished for more information. The cops are done with the CU prank theory, because they’ve tentatively identified the remains we found. The clothes matched descriptions of a homeless guy who hung out between Broadway and Chautauqua, panhandling the tourists. No one remembers seeing him since the twenty-ninth. Which could be when he was taken, or just when he went off-grid.”

I winced. It was one thing to find an anonymous hip bone, and quite another to know where it came from. I’d volunteered at a couple of local soup kitchens with my mother; I knew some of those guys. A lot of them were veterans. “So this animal, whatever it is, ate on the twenty-seventh and the thirtieth, spitting out gastric pellets both times. When will it need to eat again?”

He shrugged helplessly. “There’s no way I could determine that with the data we have now.”

“Best guess, then.”

Simon cracked his knuckles, thinking. “Best guess, the thing needs two days to digest a deer, maybe a day to digest a person, with its smaller mass. That’s approximate, Lex.”

“So it could be taking its new victim as we speak.” I grunted with frustration and rose to pace back and forth a little near our table. I kind of understood how to hunt down vampires, and even werewolves thanks to the silver allergy, but how the hell were we supposed to track a magical monster that lived underground? “What about the folklore?” I said, sounding a little desperate even to my own ears. “Quinn suggested you look into that.”

Simon leaned forward, excitement brightening his eyes again. I went over and sat down so we wouldn’t be overheard. “Now,
that
was interesting. Folklore isn’t my specialty, but when I started digging into it, I found that a number of cultures around the world believe in an enormous wormlike cryptid.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what that is.”

“A cryptid is a plant or animal that people believe exists despite the fact that there’s no definitive proof,” he lectured. “Bigfoot, the chupacabra, the Loch Ness Monster, that kind of thing.”

“I don’t believe in any of those things.”

“Well, that’s all right. I don’t either.” He waved a hand. “The thing is, belief in a specific cryptid is usually regional—the people of Loch Ness believed in Nessie, so it became a local legend. That’s standard. What’s interesting is when there are
multiple
cultures across the world that develop a belief in the same thing.”

I finished my calzone and pushed the cardboard box aside. “Gimme an example.”

Simon smirked. “Vampires. Hundreds of different cultures around the world have developed a myth about a parasitic creature that could pass as human and is intricately linked to the dead.”

I made a face at him. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“Yep. Anyway, when you look at the folklore about a carnivorous worm- or snakelike creature that dwells underground, you run into the same widespread legends.” He began ticking off numbers on his fingers. “There are a number of Central American myths about the Minhocão—a giant snakelike earthworm that was theorized to be part of the caecilian family. Which are amphibians that look like snakes,” he hurried to add, before I could ask. “In the Gobi Desert there is supposedly a creature called the Mongolian Death Worm—seriously—that spits a paralyzing venom before dragging its prey underground to be consumed. It can also electrocute people from several feet away. Then there’s the lamia—half woman, half enormous snake body. And European bestiaries tell of the basilisk, the king of snakes that can kill with a single glance—”

I held up a hand to stop him. “I read Harry Potter with my cousin’s kids. I’ve heard of a basilisk.”

Quick nod. “Anyway, you have to realize that South America, China, and Europe are thousands of miles apart, and when these legends originated, the natives had no way of traveling those distances,” he said excitedly. “Then you add on the creatures we know to be real—Komodo dragons, anacondas, and the other members of the genus
Eunectes
, and of course the many appearances in science fiction of the sandworm—”

“Science
fiction
?” I interrupted him. “Simon. You are a
scientist
, for crying out loud. Get your shit together.”

He deflated, but only a little. “You’re right, I am a scientist. But remember, when we look at the fossil record and make all the connections, there are always bits and pieces of evidence left over: footprints or tail prints or coprolites that we can’t conclusively say came from any certain creature. All I’m suggesting is that perhaps there is, or at least there
was
, some kind of snakelike creature that inspired some of these myths.”

“But where has it
been
?” I demanded. “Even if this cryptid thingy once existed right around here, how could something that big disappear for a thousand years and then pop right back up?”

Simon grinned. “Magic.” My face must have indicated that I was ready to punch him, because he hurried to add, “No, seriously. Remember, that gastric pellet was drenched in magic. It’s possible that magic allows it to slumber for centuries, or move around the tectonic plates from place to place so it’s never spotted. And now it’s here.”

“And it’s gonna need to eat again soon,” I said grimly. I didn’t love how excited he was getting about something that was literally eating people.

“Well, there’s that, yeah. But if I could study this thing, or even autopsy it once we find it, I could learn so much about magic, about where we came from.”

It was hard to give a shit about that, considering John took Charlie to the playground at Chautauqua. Seeing that I wasn’t invested, Simon pressed, “Look, Lex, you asked me to find a connection between nulls and boundary witches, remember? Well, it’s entirely possible that this thing could provide us with some clues.”

I fell silent, considering that. I did want to know if there was a connection between boundary magic and nulls, but was I willing to risk more lives in order to find out?

No. I was not. “Can’t the witches help?” I asked him. “Put up a barrier or ward or something?”

“We can try,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “But deflection spells don’t work that far underground. All that earth, well,
grounds
them.” He gave a helpless shrug, not meeting my eyes. I was pretty sure there was something Simon wasn’t telling me about the witch clan. It stung a little, but I wasn’t really in a position to push him on it. I did sort of work for the oppressor.

Moving on. “You’re not gonna like this,” I said, “but I think we better talk to Maven about pressing someone to close down the park for a couple of days, until we can figure out what this thing is.”

“You’re right, I don’t like it,” he said immediately. “That’s the most popular park in Boulder, Lex. Shutting it down is gonna bring up a lot of questions.” He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, and I let him think it over. “But yeah, I agree,” he said at last. “It has to be done. We just gotta move faster.” I saw him shoot a venomous glare toward his cane. “The snakelike creature . . . God, I don’t even know what to call it.” For a second his eyes gleamed, and I could see the words “
Eunectes
pellaricus
” practically glowing off him.

“
I
wanted to call it a graboid,” Lily said, returning to the table. I’d been so focused on the conversation I hadn’t even heard her come back in. “But Simon wouldn’t let me.”

“Why graboid?” I asked.

They shot me identical disbelieving stares, which I recognized as
Lex is missing a pop-culture reference
. I held up my hands. “Forget I asked. Let’s go with ‘sandworm,
’
” I decided. “It’s a lot less terrifying than ‘Mongolian Death Worm.
’
”

“Plus, very
Beetlejuice
,” Lily said agreeably.

Simon looked up at his sister. “Did you get a hold of Sybil?”

“Yes, and I called the thaumaturge,” she reported. “She said she’s worked with psychic trauma before, like repressed memories, but never on a witch. She’ll come if you want to give it a try, but only if we pay her expenses and a fee, and she wants to bring her daughter along.”

“How much?” I asked.

Lily winced. “I did a quick look at last-minute flights on my phone. It’s not going to be cheap.”

She named a figure so high I nearly fell off my chair. “What? I could buy a car and go pick her up for that much.”

Lily shrugged. “She gets top dollar for what she does, Lex. That’s
already with a friends-and-family discount.” She looked at me hesitantly. “Don’t you have, like, mad hazard pay from being in the army?”

“Not anymore,” I said shortly. I
had
made good money as a soldier, and hadn’t blown through it the moment I got home, the way a lot of us did. But Sam had died so young, without much life insurance, and John had wiped out a lot of their savings to pay for the memorial and moving back to Boulder, not to mention the empty grave with Sam’s headstone. My parents had money, but it was all tied up in Luther Shoes, which had taken a hit during the recession that they still hadn’t bounced back from. So I’d quietly shoved all of my leftover army pay into a savings account for Charlie’s college.

I was making a bit more money now that I had the stipend from Maven, but my checking account barely had a comma, much less the money I’d need to bring the Las Vegas witch to Boulder. Especially after my recent last-minute trip to LA.

“You want me to call it off?” Lily asked, seeing my expression.

“No.” I stood up. “Gimme the info. I’ll call Maven and ask for the money.”

Lily handed me a scrap of paper with a name and number written on the back. “Better you than me, lady.”

Chapter 15

Simon promised to call me as soon as he had more information, and I said I would let both of them know when I had the travel plans for the thaumaturge witch. Lily offered to walk me part of the way back to the coffee shop to get my car, and I accepted, suspecting that she wanted to talk about something without her brother present.

Sure enough, as soon as we were in the parking lot, Lily blurted, “He looked bad, didn’t he?”

I glanced over at her worried expression. Lily was a sunny person, cheerful, animated, with very little interest in filtering. I was starting to feel like everyone in my life had done some sort of bizarre personality flip-flop. “He looked tired,” I said cautiously. “This sandworm thing . . .”

She shook her head. “It’s not just that. He’s been different since . . . well, since you brought him back.”

Oh. That’s what this was about. I had never actually told Lily what I’d done to Simon, preferring to let him decide, but he must have told her. Or, more likely, she’d pried it out of him. “He was only gone for a couple of minutes,” I offered. “That happens to people all the time, with no lasting damage.”

A big group of CU students threaded through the two of us, talking and laughing. When they had passed, Lily said, “Yeah, but it’s not like Simon was brought back with a defibrillator and kept alive with an IV. That, he could accept.”

“Well,
that’s
kind of hypocritical,” I pointed out. “You guys are witches, and you’re suggesting Simon could only tolerate being brought back to life by science?”

She shook her head. “Simon doesn’t see science and magic as mutually exclusive, but that’s not really the point. There are things that we . . .” She struggled for the right words, finally sighing. “Look, Lex, how much do you know about the witches’ deal with Maven?”

That got my attention. I looked over at her. Lily had jammed her hands into the pockets of her jean jacket, and there was something like anger on her face. “Quinn told me that when the werewolves were going crazy under Trask, some of the clans got caught in the crossfire. Your mom went to Maven and asked for her help,” I said carefully. “Maven got Itachi to ride into the state and kill the bad guys.”

“That’s all true,” Lily allowed. “But how much did he tell you about what we gave up in exchange?”

My brow furrowed. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “He said the witches had to agree to Maven and Itachi’s leadership in Colorado for a period of twenty years. You guys basically have to do what Maven says. And that was, what, thirteen years ago?”

Lily nodded. “Also true. But there’s something Quinn left out, or maybe he doesn’t even know. He’s only been a vampire for a few years. Hey, stop a second.” She led me to a nearby wrought-iron bench, scrunching herself into the far corner and glancing around to make sure no one was paying attention to us.

Ignoring the cold coming off the metal bars, I turned sideways on the seat to face her. “There are some big-league spells out there, for things like violence, healing, and protection,” Lily explained. “We call that upper-tier stuff apex magic, and even when you have good intentions, it’s very powerful. Things can go wrong. In Clan Pellar, we stopped teaching it a couple generations ago. My ancestors decided to focus on Wicca, using our magic to do good rather than as a tool for getting what we wanted.” She winced. “But we aren’t the only clan in Colorado. When Maven cut her deal with the witches, she ordered all the clans in the state to bind their abilities. None of us can use apex magic during that twenty-year window.”

I suddenly remembered Simon’s expression, how he seemed to be holding something back from me about the witches. “Why would she do that?” I asked. “What does she care if witches are using witch magic?”

Lily sighed. “Her argument was that if witches were using combat magic, they could use it against
her
, or each other, and restart the Old World war all over again. My mother thought it was a valid point. More importantly, she didn’t think the other witches should be using magic for violence anyway. That catapult spell she used on you? That’s as violent as we get. Mom hoped that weaning the other clans off apex magic would be a good thing in the long run. But there were plenty of witches who didn’t agree with her.”

She was leading me toward a connection. I tried to push my thoughts ahead to see it. “Was Simon one of those witches?”

Bingo. Lily’s face went stony. “He wasn’t then. At the time, he threw his full support behind Mom. We all did.”

“And now he’s changed his mind,” I summed up. I was struggling to see why this was relevant right now, with everything else going on. I was worried about Simon, too, but unlike the sandworm, his problems didn’t seem all that time-sensitive.

“
You
were the one who changed his mind, Lex. When you brought him back, it wasn’t just that you used magic to do something that he only expected from science. You also reminded him that there are dangerous things out there, and that our people are no longer equipped to handle them. And
we did it to ourselves.
”

“
Oh,” I said softly.

She nodded. “It’s weighing on him. And creating a lot of tension between him and Tracy, who basically worships the ground my mother walks on.”

I winced, unsure how to react to that. Oops? “Is this why the clan doesn’t like me? Because I represent all the violent magic you guys stopped using?” A new thought occurred to me. “Or because I’m not a clan witch, so
I
don’t have to abide by Maven’s agreement with you?”

“Yes. To all of the above.” She sighed. “Look, from their perspective, you came along, proved that you have power over life and death, and immediately threw in with our evil overlord.”

She was trying to keep her tone light, but failing miserably, and it was obvious from her expression that she felt the same way. I wanted to ask her why no one had told
me
any of this, but the answer was too obvious: I was an outsider, a threat, and that put me on a need-to-know basis.

Pressure built in my chest as my temper rose. “Let me show you something,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. I scrolled through the functions until I found what I wanted, a message my mother had sent me that morning while I was napping. I held it up so Lily could see: A picture of my nineteen-month-old niece standing on top of my mom’s kitchen table, holding a giant stack of graham crackers she’d swiped while Mom was in the bathroom. Rather than looking guilty, Charlie’s whole face had erupted into a gleeful, euphoric smile. Everything was right in her world.

Lily looked at it, then at my face, not getting it. She shrugged. “Cute.”

“She
is
cute,” I said evenly, because, well, she was. “And she’s also the only part of my sister that’s left in this world. I would do anything,
anything
to protect her, just like you’re trying to protect your brother right now.”

Lily crossed her arms over her chest. “I get that.”

“No, Lily, you don’t. I don’t really give a shit if Clan Pellar feels hamstrung. I want a good relationship with the witches, but you’ve
all
made it clear that I’m not actually one of you. And I’m sure as hell not one of the vampires, either, boundary blood or not. All the witches in your clan—even you and Simon—act like I happily signed up to be some vampire hench-slave because I’m an evil boundary witch who doesn’t know any better. But it’s not like that. I didn’t pick Hazel’s side or Maven’s side. I picked
Charlie’s
.”

Her lovely face hardened. “You walked into this situation that has all these years of history, and you can
bring people back to life
,” she hissed. “And you just signed right up with the big bad; you didn’t even give us a
chance
—”

I couldn’t help it; I started laughing. I was physically exhausted, and so sick of Old World politics that I could scream. “A chance to what? Have the clan adopt me? Pull me into the fold? We both know that’s never going to happen, Lily. You saw how those witches looked at me last night. I’m never going to be anything to them but a black aura and a bad attitude. An
atrocity
. You and Simon are my friends, and I’ll help you however I can, but your clan’s subservience to Maven is not my concern. Charlie is.”

Lily’s lips compressed into a single thin line. “I see,” she said curtly. “Good to know where we stand.” She stood up, turned on her heel and strode away without another word.

I sat there on the bench for a long time, staring into space and absently rubbing my tattoos under my sleeves. I could have handled that better, I knew. Without Simon and Lily, I would never have gained enough control of my magic to earn the deal with Maven. But what exactly did Lily want from me? It wasn’t my fault that the witches had made a deal with their perceived devil. And it wasn’t my fault that I could use magic that existed more or less outside of that deal. Besides, I wasn’t exactly going to apologize for bringing Simon back.

But you could have been more understanding of Lily’s position,
said Sam’s voice in my head.
You know what it’s like to be stuck in a deal with Maven, and you didn’t show much sympathy.

I no longer knew if this really was Sam, talking to me from across the line and through our bond, or just what my imagination told me she would say. It didn’t really matter, I supposed. Either way, she was right.

I jumped as my phone began vibrating in my hand. I checked the screen. To my surprise, it was Maven, whom I’d just left less than two hours ago. She couldn’t, like, sense when I was thinking about her, could she? Yesterday I would have said no, but it was becoming clear that I had no idea what Old World creatures could do. And also no idea what I was doing.

I answered the phone. “Lex, you need to get to the Walrus,” came her voice, crisp and tense. There was loud music in the background, so I could barely make out her words. “I need you.”

“Walrus . . . ? Oh, the bar?”

“Now!”
she hollered, and the line went dead. I shoved the phone in my pocket and started running.