Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,72

draw me out or he could take a shot at me at home.

But a direct attack in broad daylight wouldn’t be Emil’s style. This was a man who’d set up several contingency plans just to meet me. He wouldn’t come to the cabin guns blazing, especially because he would have to assume that I’d have my own firearms. He might risk attacking a position of strength if he thought Maven was on the premises, but hopefully he wouldn’t think I was stupid enough to keep her here.

So what was Emil planning? And where was he hiding now?

After a long period of staring at the ceiling, I had to admit that I had no idea. I couldn’t predict his moves . . . but maybe I could counteract his best weapon against me.

After a few minutes of internet research, I grabbed my keys and headed out to the car.

Chapter 29

Despite the overcast skies and the smell of impending rain in the air, I felt a lot more relaxed than on my last visit to Nellie’s building. The brothel was much more palatable in the daylight; it crossed the line from “horror-movie creepy” back over to “old and rundown.” When I was sure no one was watching, I ducked around the corner and went in through the back, happy not to have to mess with a flashlight.

There wasn’t any furniture in the brothel, so I just sat down on the steps in the main entryway and opened the paper bag I’d gotten from the metaphysical store in Denver. The new stones were individually wrapped in tissue paper, but I managed to unwrap all of them without actually touching them, arranging them gently on the stair next to me, so they still rested on their tissue paper. I’d left the stones from Blossom in the car—I didn’t want to be protected from ghosts this time; I wanted to talk to one.

I pulled out the small encyclopedia of stones and crystals I’d bought, looking down at the cover, which featured a painting of a New Age goddess. Lily would probably know exactly what it meant.

“This is so stupid,” I muttered under my breath as I opened the book. But Simon had told me that some stones did work for witches, and I’d felt the little buzz of vibration at Blossom’s store. And I had time on my hands. What was the harm?

Blossom had said that crystals had to be cleansed before they would really work, so I flipped through the book to the section on crystal cleansing. Sunlight and running water were two of the most common options, so I gathered up the stones, pulled the bottle of water out of my bag, and headed over to the window where a board had rotted through, allowing for a bright stream of sunlight the size of a paperback. I held up the stones and dumped a thin stream of water over them, feeling like a complete and total idiot.

Back on the steps, I sat down and opened and closed my hands rapidly, warming them up again. The book I’d bought had a lot of information about chakras and meditation, not to mention instructions for things like body layouts and dreamwork, but even I had limits to the suspension of disbelief. I picked up a small, irregularly formed stone about the size of a large strawberry: cassiterite. In the sunlight I could tell it was brown, but without direct light it seemed like more of a milky black. The clerk had promised me that this specimen hadn’t been dyed or irradiated, even though I still wasn’t sure what that meant.

I just held the chunk of cassiterite between my palms, brought it to my lips and breathed on it. And I hoped.

Blossom had called cassiterite a “threshold stone,” and to me, that sounded like something a boundary witch might use as she interacts with the boundary between life and death. I was hoping it might give me just enough of a threshold to talk to Nellie.

I don’t know how long I sat there with the stone warm in my hands, but after a few minutes my thoughts wandered and I noticed the shape of it, all the little planes and angles jutting together in a complex non-pattern. My mind started to relax, and the word “threshold” started bouncing through my thoughts. What an odd term. A threshold could mean a doorway, but it could also mean a new beginning, like when someone says they’re on the threshold