Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,21

really needed her? Maybe if I went to sleep, I would see her?

In the end, my body sort of made the decision for me. I’d only had a few hours of sleep, and when exhaustion began to sink in, I laid down on the couch, prayed for my sister, and let sleep come.

Chapter 8

When I opened my eyes again, I was not in the desert.

I sighed with relief, looking around the walls of the bedroom that Sam and I had shared as teenagers. I didn’t know if I chose this place or if Sam did, or if it was some combined effort of our subconsciouses, but this was where we always spoke, and it looked just like it always had. The old familiar posters, the bedspread, the stacks of books on the small desk we shared—everything was as it should be.

And there was my sister. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, leaning against the wall to face me. This was how I’d last seen her in life—brunette pixie cut, black leggings, draped top that hid her little postpartum paunch. She was grinning so hard she was practically bouncing in place.

A rush of relief, love, and grief poured into me at once. “Hey, Sammy,” I said.

“Hey, babe! Long time no see.”

My smile fell. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Wait—am I sorry? Is it my fault?”

She grinned. “That you’re having those dreams, and they’ve completely preempted my channel? No, of course not. I know you let those memories back in to help Charlie.” Her smile faded. “But you should really see someone about it. What about that shrink at the VA?”

I scowled. “Don’t Mom me, Samantha. I already have Mom for that.”

She held up her hands. “Sorry, you’re right. That’s not what we do. I’m just worried about you.”

I was never sure how much Sam knew about my day-to-day life. She wasn’t omniscient, but she seemed aware of things beyond my own experiences. She wouldn’t—or more likely, couldn’t—tell me how it worked. So I asked, “Do you know why I wanted to talk to you?”

Her face turned serious. “Yeah. Emil, right?”

I nodded. “Do you know anything about him? Should I trust him?”

She gave me a wry look, opened her mouth, closed it for a moment, and then said carefully, “Valerya talks about him sometimes.”

My mouth dropped open. Apparently my dead sister was communicating with my dead birth mother. That was huge. That was more than she’d ever told me about where she was and how she was doing.

“He hasn’t always done the right thing, historically,” Sam went on, “but she thinks he’s basically okay.”

Before I could ask any of my thousand follow-up questions, she shot me a warning look that I could understand as easily as if she’d spoken aloud. I can’t give you details. Watch what you ask or I’ll disappear again. Out loud, she said softly, “I can still listen, you know.”

Whatever I was about to say next got stuck in my throat, and I had to swallow several times to choke it down. Instead, I said the one thing that I could only say to my sister. “I’m scared, Sammy. I don’t even really know why. He seems nice, I guess, but it just feels really . . . big. And I’ve already got an awful lot of big on my plate right now.”

“I know, babe.” Something flickered across her face. “I am limited in what I can say here, you know that,” she said slowly. “But maybe being cautious isn’t such a bad thing. There are many things I can’t see from where I am, for one reason or another.”

I studied her, not understanding. Was she telling me not to trust Emil? Or was this about something else? “There’s some weird new animal disease going around,” I offered, but she just nodded. “And John is pissed at me.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “You know he’s not. He’s angry, period, because his kid’s been threatened. But he can’t be mad at Charlie because she’s a toddler, and he can’t be mad at me because I’m dead.” She gave me a rueful smile. “That’s one benefit to dying, I guess. He mostly only remembers the good stuff.”

That made me sad, somehow. I remembered childhood fights with Sam, her pulling my hair and me making her cry. I remembered the times we did what she wanted to do, because Mom and Dad treated her like the baby and she milked it. But that was all part of her: not a saint, not