Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,57

“What makes you say that?” Simon asked carefully.

“When I confronted him, he said someone was going to be pissed that he screwed up. I asked who, and he said, ‘our father.’ Then he ran.”

“Leaving you to face . . . whatever the hell those were,” Simon finished for me.

“They were wraiths,” I whispered, shuddering as I remembered the cowboy’s rage and desperation, his vise grip on my throat.

“But that’s impossible,” Lily protested. “Wraiths are tied to where they die, except on Samhain.” She looked uncertainly at her brother. “Right?”

He pushed up his glasses. “Right. And nothing I’ve ever read suggests that they can interact with the world physically.” He gestured to the bruises on my neck. “That’s some serious physical contact, Lex.”

“Trust me,” I said shortly. “They were wraiths. I could feel it. But they’d been trapped or directed somehow. They were being made to attack.”

Simon and Lily fell into awed silence. “How is that even possible?” Lily asked in a hushed voice.

“That big crystal,” I croaked. “Did you bring it back?”

He nodded. “And it wasn’t the only one.”

Lily got up and went to the counter, bringing back one of those reusable shopping bags from Trader Joe’s. She upended it on the table, and a bunch of gleaming stones tumbled out. Most of them were a sort of translucent gray, but there were a few chunks of dark green in there as well. They were just as shiny and cared-for as the purple stone I’d found in my backyard. “These were scattered all over the sculpture garden in a sort of circular pattern, similar to many witch spells,” Simon told me. “I wanted to document their placement a little more, but we were worried about you.”

“Do you have the jacket I was wearing?” Someone had pulled it off me while I was unconscious, probably to make me more comfortable. Lily got up and retrieved it from the hall closet.

When she handed it to me, I dug the purple stone out of the side pocket and placed it on the table with the others. “I found this in my yard yesterday. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the dogs reacted to it like they do to magic. Do you recognize it?”

Lily picked it up and examined it, then shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say amethyst, but I really only know about it as a birthstone. I don’t know much about crystals.”

I looked at Simon. “Me neither,” he said.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. I’d sort of assumed that as trades witches, Simon and Lily would know all about using stones in magic. “You don’t?” I asked.

They both shook their heads. “Crystals and stones are gravitational magic,” Simon told me. “We don’t know much more about it than the average citizen of Boulder.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said patiently, “most gravitational magic doesn’t work with witch magic.”

I looked back and forth between them, confused.

“Crossed signals,” Lily explained. “Sort of like . . . having the bluetooth and the wireless turned on in your laptop. Makes everything slower and clumsier. So we don’t use it.”

It scared me a little that I almost followed that. Simon held up a finger. “There are a couple of crystals that are compatible with witch magic,” he cautioned. “For example, pretty much every witch I know has a bracelet or a necklace made from labradorite.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Lily said with a nod. “I have a brooch.”

“But other than that,” Simon continued, “the important thing to know about gravitational magic is that it isn’t limited to the Old World. In theory, anyone can use it.”

So Emil really didn’t have access to boundary magic. He’d just found a work-around. “Like scrying?” I offered.

“What do you know about scrying?”

“That’s how Emil said he found me.” I described the shiny black stone disk he’d shown me when we first met. “I never really gave much thought to how he could do that without active witchblood. I should have.”

“He’s a magician, then,” Lily said, as if that explained everything.

Simon was nodding, but I was still confused. “Like at kids’ parties? Sawing a woman in half and rabbits out of top hats?”

Simon snorted. Lily answered, “No. Magicians are humans who use gravitational magic.”

“There are a few things that any human can do, in theory,” Simon explained. “It’s like an equation: A plus B equals C. It’s usually weaker than our magic, but more stable. If your—if Emil knows how to use crystals, he’s a magician. There aren’t many