no big deal. But after the accident, I came to live with Uncle Beau. He explained to me about vampires and witches.”
“Did you believe him?”
A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Not at first. I mean, we’d gone to visit Uncle Beau practically every week for my entire life. I’d never realized we were always there after dark—kids don’t notice that stuff.
“But that night, when I came home from the hospital, I made him run around the house in a circle, as fast as he could. And again. And again. Until I believed.” She gave a little shrug. “At that point, Mama and Daddy’s deaths were so fresh, and I think grief made it easier for me to accept magic, in a weird way.” Her smile faded. “A world of magic made more sense to me than a world without Mama and Daddy in it.”
I flinched, because that was exactly how I’d felt when I found out about magic. I was already living with a giant hole in the world where Sam was supposed to be. Might as well add “death magic” to the list of impossible things I had to deal with. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I told her.
“Thanks.”
The food arrived, but Odessa didn’t make a move toward it. Her eyes were faraway. “Sometimes I wonder, if I’d been a boundary witch, if I could maybe have saved them.”
I felt a great swell of sadness for her. I hadn’t really thought that Odessa was secretly a boundary witch, but now I crossed it off my list of possibilities. Her longing in that moment was just too real, too clear. More importantly, it was obvious that she knew very little about how boundary magic was used. “It doesn’t work like that,” I told her, keeping my voice low.
She looked up at me, finally picking up her fork. “I thought you could raise people from the dead.”
I glanced around, but no one was listening in. Becca, who had a newspaper spread across her own table, raised her eyebrows for a second, asking if we were okay. I nodded and looked back at Odessa. “Yes, I can raise someone who’s dead, but only by killing someone else. Like everything else, boundary magic requires balance. A life for a life.” I shook my head, deciding to be frank with her. “If you were alone in a car with your mom and dad, and they were already dead, there’s nothing you could have done, even if you were the most powerful boundary witch in the world.”
“Huh.”
I’d hoped that might be of some comfort, but Odessa just looked thoughtful, as if she needed to do some internal reorganizing.
Then she shrugged. “Anyway. To Uncle Beau and the Finches and everyone, I’m, like, this weird anomaly. I’m human, but I know about their world, and I kind of live in it, but I’m not a part of it. I could have been part of it, but only at the cost of, like”—she winced—“my innocence. Their words. Sorry again.”
I smiled, unable to hide my amusement. “No offense taken.”
“Would you . . . I mean, can you tell me . . .” She lowered her voice. “Would you mind if I asked how you died?”
“The first time? I drowned. It was an accident, on a white-water rafting trip. I was thirteen.” I added, “But I didn’t find out about boundary magic until a few years ago.”
I told her the story of someone trying to kidnap my niece. I didn’t mention that Charlie was a null. Beau already had that intel, but there was no reason to assume he’d told Odessa. The fewer people who knew about Charlie, the better.
“Wow,” Odessa marveled. “And then you died again?”
“A few more times,” I admitted. “My heart kept stopping on the operating table, but the boundary magic in my blood kept me from crossing over.”
She shook her head, looking amazed. “You can’t be killed. That’s so cool.”
“Oh, I can be killed,” I said. “It just takes a little more effort.”
She looked at me thoughtfully until she’d finished chewing a ladylike bite. “Like how? Decapitation?”
I smiled. “That would do it, yes. Anything that destroys the heart or severs the spine, as far as I know.”
“So . . . like a vampire.”
I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but she wasn’t wrong. “I guess so.”
“Do you have any kids? Like to pass on your magic?”
I managed not to cough out my bite of grilled cheese. “Um, no. And I’m not going