Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,60

over.

I practically tore it open. The headline above the fold read SECOND BODY FOUND.

I scanned the opening paragraphs. The second corpse was a college student from Oregon, no obvious connection to the first victim, although the article spent some time speculating on possibilities. Her body had snagged on a fallen tree in Boulder Creek and been spotted early this morning by hikers in Open Space and Mountain Parks. The police had no idea where the body was originally dumped, but the victim was wearing a fitness tracker that had stopped transmitting at 9:05 p.m., which must have been when she’d gone into the water. I automatically glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was after eleven. I rounded on Lily and Simon. “You let me sleep for over three hours?”

Neither of them looked the least bit contrite. “Your body needed it, Lex,” Lily said.

“What are you thinking?” Simon asked, reading over my shoulder. “The bodies really are connected to the Old World? Why?”

“Because Sam said they are.”

I didn’t bother to watch Simon and Lily react to that. I didn’t care if they believed me about Sam. There were too many pieces here, and it was driving me crazy that none of them seemed to fit together.

Ordinarily this is where I would have really wanted to pace, but I was too tired to move. I sat down and closed my eyes, trying to reason through it. “Two and a half weeks ago, the Denver vampires were poisoned. It took two weeks for the news to get to Maven, who sent Quinn and me to Denver to investigate. Ford tried to kill us, and when we killed him, we thought we’d put the belladonna attacks to rest. But Maven was poisoned the next night.”

“And the next day, Emil tried to finish her off right in front of us,” Simon prompted. “Where are you going with this?”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Ford wouldn’t work for Emil. Vampires don’t do that, especially not a dominus dickhead like Ford supposedly was. So let’s say Emil was working for Ford, as unlikely and coincidental as that seems. I could see Ford sending Emil on a sneak attack to kill Maven.”

“Then Ford could swoop in afterwards and claim the state, without actually needing to face Maven himself,” Simon offered.

I pointed at him. “Exactly. I can buy that plan. But then why would Emil still try to kill Maven after Ford was already dead? And where does our father fit into all this?”

“Maybe Emil didn’t know Ford had been killed,” Lily suggested. “Maybe they’d already set the wheels in motion before the attack.”

I turned that over in my mind, and shook my head. “Emil seems too smooth for that kind of mistake. When I met him for coffee he was incredibly convincing. Besides, Emil didn’t kill the college student last night.”

“How do you know?” Simon asked.

I jabbed a finger on that morning’s headline. “Because he was with us at 9:05 last night, and that was long after Ford died. Neither of them could have killed this student.”

“Emil could have set traps in crystals, like he did with you,” Lily ventured.

“I don’t think so. Setting traps would have required stalking the victims and predicting their behavior. These attacks were random; these people were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Simon studied my face. In some ways, he knew me better than Lily did. “You have a theory,” he said.

I nodded. “I think my father killed them with boundary magic.”

Chapter 25

This time, the look that passed between Simon and Lily was downright uncomfortable.

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Lily said, her voice careful. “Why send a proxy—Emil—if you’re also going to come yourself?”

“Plus, boundary magic is extraordinarily powerful,” Simon added. “If he used two different people as human sacrifices, he’d have the juice to raise the dead. And that kind of magic makes an impact—empty graves, confused loved ones, empty coffins at funeral parlors.” He gestured at the newspaper. “We would have heard something by now.”

Lily was nodding along as though Simon was voicing her thoughts verbatim. “Besides,” he continued, “we don’t know for sure that there’s any connection between these deaths and the belladonna attacks.”

“I do,” I insisted. “Look, none of us knows all that much about serious boundary magic, but Emil obviously came here to kill Maven, and he said he worked for our father. Presumably the man’s a boundary witch, since Emil and I both have strong boundary blood.