Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,39
ago, my great-grandfather Amos decided to set a new course. He set up shop as a spiritualist in Sterling, along a branch of the Oregon Trail.” Her smile fell away. “He made a fortune. At first, anyway.”
“Spiritualist?” I asked.
She winced. “‘Medium’ would be a better term, I suppose. He led séances.”
“Was he a boundary witch?” Quinn said.
“No, of course not.” She sounded disgusted, like Quinn had asked if Amos had married his favorite sheep. “He could do a little trades magic, but he was really quite weak.”
“So he duped people,” I put in. “Tricked them out of their money.”
Her eyes hardened, but only a little. “He wanted it to be real, though. He developed contacts in the Spiritualist community, but in those days it was easier to travel north and east than to venture into Denver and Boulder. Eventually he got hold of some mandragora.”
“Which brings people back from the dead,” I said quietly.
She sighed. “In theory. You need a hell of a lot of power to make it happen, though, and Amos didn’t have it, even with a coven of twelve behind him.”
“He died?” Quinn asked.
She nodded soberly. “And took all twelve witches with him.”
A chill ran across my shoulders. Thirteen people dead, just so Amos Atwood could prove there was life after death. No wonder people thought the Atwoods were idiots. “None of that explains Billy selling the fetters,” I reminded her.
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “It does, in a way. What happened to Amos had . . . reverberations for us, for generations. No one in the Colorado Old World wanted anything to do with the Atwoods after Amos died. So my immediate ancestors became thieves and swindlers, taking Amos’s relatively benign calling and turning it criminal.”
“Why not just leave the state?” Quinn asked. “Start over somewhere else?”
“Some of us did,” she answered. “But there were a few who insisted that we had no reason to leave our territory. They were the same Atwoods who thought Amos was unfairly maligned. Billy’s father was among them.”
I’d never heard anyone mention Billy’s father. It probably showed on my face, because Ardie nodded as if I’d asked a question. “Oh, Jay was a piece of work. When Billy was quite young, Jay found Amos’s journals in an old wardrobe. He became convinced Amos was innocent, that his spell had been sabotaged. He left Billy’s mother to retrace Amos’s path all the way up to South Dakota and east to Omaha. He reestablished contact with the kinds of witches who . . . well, let’s just say they wouldn’t help the Atwoods’ reputation any.”
“And that’s how Billy got the plants,” Quinn concluded.
She nodded again. “Jay’s gift to his son,” she said wryly. “Personally, I think Jay intended for Billy to use the fetters against the Pellars somehow, tear everything apart. But Billy was never smart enough to make a move.”
But Ardie sure seemed smart enough. “And where do you fit into all this?” I asked. “This story about the Atwoods being trashed, it really only gives you more motive to use belladonna against the vampires.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got it backward. This story is exactly why I would never mess around with belladonna. Playing with the fetters is like giving a child a loaded gun.”
I glanced at Quinn. Vampires can’t exactly smell lies, but I knew he’d be able to pick up the sound of an elevated heartbeat and scent any fear coming off her, which were both pretty good indicators of whether someone was lying. His face remained blank.
“Besides,” she added. “You’re right. I work with plants, I’m related to Billy, and I live close to the vampires who were poisoned. But I’m not an idiot. If I wanted to kill a vampire with belladonna, I certainly wouldn’t do it in my own backyard, where I would be the world’s most obvious suspect.”
As soon as our car doors closed, the windows at Ardie Atwood’s house began to darken. I looked over at Quinn. “What do you think?” I asked, leaning back in the Jeep’s plush seat. All those tarps seemed to have worked—I didn’t see any bloodstains.
“If she’s lying, she’s good.” He started the car and began the drive back to Boulder, looking thoughtful. “Although the marijuana could easily be numbing her enough to fool me.”
“When Lily and I were talking in the bathroom at Simon’s,” I began, “did you overhear us?”
He squirmed in his seat. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop—”