Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,5
vet, and he can test it for rabies,” I explained. “If he asks, it ran into the washer and its neck snapped.”
“Oh. Good call.”
“Of course,” I said with exaggerated regret, “this probably means we’ll have to put off the movie.” I shook my head. “So sad.”
She tossed a water bottle at my face, but I caught it easily. As I unscrewed the top and took a gulp, I headed for my own phone, which I’d left on the bottom step. I called Jake, who was characteristically cool about the idea of getting a rabies-infected fox corpse delivered to his house at ten o’clock on a weeknight. I could have left it until the next morning, but I just didn’t trust my rescue animals to stay away from the body.
And, okay, I just wanted to be rid of the thing.
I hung up with Jake, but before I could put the phone back down, it buzzed in my hand. New text. I frowned down at the screen.
“Is it your undead boyfriend?” Lily said brightly. She made a fake kissy sound. “Tell him I said hi.”
I made a face at her. Sometimes I missed the days when Lily and Quinn couldn’t stand each other. “No, it’s from Maven,” I replied. “She wants me to come in right away.” Maven kept her communications brief and friendly, but there was no mistaking her text for anything but a command. I looked at the dead fox, then at my friend. “So, Lily,” I began. “I need a favor.”
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Ewww, really?”
I found an old cardboard box for Lily, who held it as far away from her body as she could. “Rabid fox in a box,” she grumbled. “I swear this is the beginning of a twisted Dr. Seuss book.”
While she took the fox-box out to her car to keep it away from my animals, I ran upstairs to throw on jeans and a T-shirt. I also strapped a shredder stake to my arm with two doubled-up athletic headbands. Months ago, I’d nearly died for lack of a shredder. I no longer left the house without one. This meant that I wore long sleeves all the time, but that was fine by me. When summer came, it might be a different story, though.
Lily had returned and was waiting for me at the front door, twirling her keys around one finger. Despite her earlier complaints, she seemed pleased to be doing something useful, which probably had a lot to do with her inability to master the art of punching people.
I was just flicking off the lights to leave when I realized my skin was tingling. I paused and held up my arm, examining one of my tattoos. Was it pulsing? Or was something wrong with my eyes? “Lil . . .”
I felt, rather than saw, her turn and look me over. “You killed the fox,” she said, understanding. “You have to ground the magic, Lex.”
Oh. Right. Witches are made to channel, not possess. If I didn’t expel the death magic, I could end up “magic-drunk,” which was not nearly as fun as it sounded. Unfortunately, I only knew two trades witch spells, and one of them involved throwing people backward. “Hang on.” Stumbling a little, I made it back down the basement stairs and planted my palms flat on the floor so the tips of my tattoos touched the cold concrete. I mumbled the spell Simon had taught me for cleaning a space.
“Good,” Lily said approvingly, as the grime, fur, and fox saliva vanished from the floor. “The tattoos help with your control.”
“Yeah, thanks to you.”
I gave Lily Jake’s address, waved goodbye, and climbed into my own ten-year-old Outback, steeling myself for a nighttime drive into Boulder. Since I’d unblocked my ability to see ghosts, being behind the wheel after dark had gotten . . . complicated. A lot of people die in car accidents each year, and their deaths are so sudden and traumatic that they often leave behind remnants, spiritual snapshots of the dead. Driving through translucent figures of people was unnerving as hell, so these days I rarely drove anywhere after dark unless my job or my family required it. I had developed a few routes that bypassed as many ghosts as possible for when I needed to go somewhere alone at night, but I still had to mentally brace myself every time. They’re not real people, I would tell myself. They’re just psychic echoes.