Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,53

have against Maven?”

Somewhere in front of me there was a low, dry chuckle that lifted the hairs on my neck. “This isn’t how I wanted to do this,” said his voice, wafting out of the darkness. He was panting, out of breath. Well, good. “But you forced my hand. You really are quite like your mother that way.”

I fought the impulse to shiver. “So you did know my mother,” I called back, trying to keep him talking. The sound bounced off the walls and the bronze sculptures more than seemed natural. Where was he?

“He’ll be cross with me,” the voice went on, as though I hadn’t spoken. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this. But I think he’ll forgive me. If you survive, he’ll know you’re worth all the trouble.”

Fuck it. I was not going to stand here and play mind games with shadows. I stepped forward, crossing the oval path into the inner courtyard.

At last, I saw him. He was crouching next to my favorite statue, a life-sized female settler with her baby strapped to her chest. I felt a bizarre spark of indignation, like he was defacing the sculpture just by being next to it. His hand was on the ground, resting on something cylindrical that was nearly as long as my forearm. A piece of glass?

“Who? Who will be cross?” I asked.

When he spoke, his voice curled with reverence and fear. “Our father,” he said, and twisted the glass sideways.

There was an explosion of smoky light—no, several small explosions, dotting across my vision. There was no sound, but the lights began to move closer to me, forming shapes. Human shapes. They were ghosts. I backed up, heading away from the settler statue, but when I turned to run, I saw there were more of them behind me. I whipped my head around, looking for Emil, but he’d vanished.

I couldn’t even process that, though, because the ghosts were getting closer, surrounding me in a shrinking circle. I was starting to make out details: the bloodstains, the missing limbs, the gunshot holes. Their faces were twisted with anger and their mouths opened and closed soundlessly as they glared at me.

A jolt of recognition hit me. Oh, God. I’d seen these things on Halloween, when they had to return to their graves, but this time they had a terrifying sense of purpose. They reached out for me, and with every step, they seemed to solidify further.

Emil—whoever he was—had found a way to weaponize the wraiths.

Chapter 21

As the wraiths advanced, I spun in a circle, counting. There were eight of them, and they were moving slowly, but they were still closing in. The light coming off them had faded, and they were now terrifyingly solid-looking, even more so than Nellie had been when the ley line was active. My best option was to act quickly, while there was still enough space between them to run. I picked the two that were farthest apart and sprinted for the space between them.

The woman on the right couldn’t have been more than twenty when she died, and her hairstyle suggested the sixties or seventies. The ghost on the left was a cowboy in his forties, his eyes bulging out and an angry line of red running across his neck. His clothes were probably from the mid-nineteenth century, although it was too dark and I was moving too fast to look closely. I put my head down and ran, hoping that if they closed rank I would slide through them.

But that’s not how it happened.

The woman didn’t react in time, but the man leaned sideways into my path and held out a rigid arm, clotheslining me at the chest. My legs flew forward and my torso flew back, my back slamming into the ground. The man planted a heavy boot on my chest, squatted, and wrapped his hands around my throat, his face twisted in a snarl.

I panicked.

My legs kicked out wildly, ineffectively, while my fingers scrabbled at his hands. They were locked tightly around my throat—real, so real—and now the young woman was coming around to help him, trying to trap my legs. I was focused on evading her, unwilling to be completely pinned down, but that meant my attention was divided and I couldn’t get the man off and I couldn’t breathe—

Stop reacting like a victim, Allie! Sam’s voice screamed in my head. Show this fucker who you are.

With enormous effort, I shut down the panic and assessed. These two had me pinned,