Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,43
back to the office and find notes all over my desk, and I’d get interested again. I kept another set of notes at home, and sometimes it’d work the other way around. Later, of course, I realized I was being pressed to forget, but at the time I thought someone was drugging me. I started leaving myself little notes, little clues to remind me to keep pushing. And then I . . . I pushed too hard.”
His voice quieted, so I prompted him. “The women,” I said. “They were being turned into vampires?”
“The ones who survived the process, yeah. As it turns out, there’s this vampire pimp in St. Louis, Oskar. He wanted to add to his stable of hot vampire girls, but we’re not allowed to stay in the same city after we turn.”
“So he came up to Chicago to recruit.”
“More or less. I never did find out if the girls really wanted to be vampires, or if they were being pressed to think something else was happening. All I know is that I eventually got too close to this guy, and he . . . noticed me.”
His voice caught at the end, so I tried to help him skip ahead in the story. “And turned you.”
But Quinn shook his head. “No. The vampire that Oskar sent after me was supposed to kill me.”
“How did you survive?”
He winced as his eyes filled with the memory of pain. “I was dying, but I managed to get to my gun. I shot her once in the heart, once in the neck. It didn’t kill her, but it was enough to get her to back off while she healed. I crawled out into the street where there were too many witnesses for her to finish me off.”
“You got her blood on you?” I had only a rudimentary understanding of vampire biology, but I thought you needed to ingest vampire blood in order to turn.
He nodded. “I was in too much shock to realize it in the moment, but I’d nicked her carotid artery at close range, so blood went all over my face and into my mouth.” He gave me a wan smile. “Still, I shouldn’t have turned—the odds are terrible. But here I am. I refused to swear troth to Oskar after that, so he sold me to Maven.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
Quinn shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
It really wasn’t, not to a vampire, but I didn’t say that. I considered asking him about attacking his wife, but decided it wasn’t the right time. “Thank you for telling me,” I said instead.
He rolled over on top of me, holding himself up on his elbows so our bodies pressed together. “If you really wanted to thank me,” he began very seriously, and my laughter rang through the house.
I woke up alone the next morning, as usual, but this time I felt exceptionally relaxed and peaceful—and I hadn’t had a single dream about Iraq.
I stayed in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, thinking over the case, feeling lazy. Eventually, I reached out to check my cell phone. I’d missed a text from a number I didn’t recognize. Lex, this is Emil. I don’t mean to pressure you, but I need to leave town tomorrow night. Can we talk today?
I started to text back a “sure,” but before I could hit “Send” my phone rang and a picture of Simon replaced the text screen. I answered.
“Hey, Simon,” I said through a yawn. “Good morning. Or noonish or whatever. What’s up?”
There was a momentary pause. “Um, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m great. You sound stressed, though.”
“Have you seen the news today?” Simon asked. “The thing about Gunbarrel Ave?”
“Nope, I just got up.” I flipped off the covers and got up, stretching. The dogs on my bed looked up, tails wagging hopefully. Quinn must have opened the back bedroom door before he’d left. I patted my leg, and they stampeded off the bed en masse. They were so loud that I missed the next thing Simon said to me.
“Sorry, what?”
“Lex,” he yelled. “Listen to me. The police found a body last night.”
Chapter 17
I blinked, frozen with my hand on the doorknob. “Anyone we know?”
He sounded exasperated. “No, but Boulder averages like, one murder a year. Doesn’t it seem like an awfully big coincidence that someone is killed right after the attack on Maven?”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, ‘huh.’ You should call your cousin to see if it was a vampire.”