Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,83

boundary magic of the highest order, and it can only be done by a coven of boundary witches performing a complex ritual. I don’t know anyone who could do it.”

An entire coven of boundary witches? I was the only boundary witch I knew of in the state, if you didn’t count Nellie. Emil’s mother was supposedly in Nova Scotia, but he hadn’t made it sound like he had a lot of family there. Then again, Lysander had said something about my sisters and brothers.

No, I realized abruptly. It hadn’t been them—Lysander had implied that they were all weaker than me. It had been the others, this “militis mortis.”

I asked Kirsten if she had heard the term before, but she shook her head, frowning. “I haven’t, but my people haven’t practiced boundary magic in many centuries. I don’t even know any boundary witches, other than yourself.”

I almost choked on my tea. “You know?”

One side of her mouth turned up. “Of course I do.”

“You haven’t, like, spit in my face or tried to kill me or anything.”

She laughed out loud. “Well, what good would that do? No, I understand what you are, but I trust Jesse Cruz. And he trusts you.” Her eyes went distant for a moment. “Besides, even if you were an insane force for evil, right now the draugr wants to claim you, and you may be the only one who can stop him. That makes you worth defending.”

I took another slow sip of tea, accepting that. And making a mental note to thank Jesse later. “Okay, well, what else can you tell me? You said Lysander has particular abilities. What can he do?”

“So many things,” she said, with history now weighing on her face. “The draugr can command the wraiths. He can make his own size change. He can move through the ground as smoke. And on top of all that, he’s still the most powerful witch alive. During the Inquisition, he would raise his arms and call the lives right out of people’s bodies.”

My gut tightened with fear. “By choice? Or did the people who raised him make him do it?”

“Both,” she said matter-of-factly. “He killed the Inquisitors, just as the evocators wanted. But he also killed their families, and their neighbors, and their neighbors. Entire villages were slaughtered, and the Concilium had to blame it on a plague outbreak.”

That word had been in my history lessons from Simon and Lily. The Concilium was a group of vampires who used to serve as a sort of head government for all the Old World in Europe. Apparently, it fell apart when the New World was discovered, and the US never had any kind of formal governing system for the supernatural. It was still the Wild West over here.

“How did the Concilium stop the draugr?” I said, leaning forward. Context was good, but what I really needed to know was how to destroy the thing. Biological father or not, he was killing people in my town. I couldn’t allow that. And I couldn’t let him kill Maven.

But Kirsten spread her hands. “I’m afraid I don’t know. The Concilium fell shortly afterward, and I don’t know of any records.”

“Do you have a guess?” I rushed to say. “Or can you tell me anything else I can use to fight him? Weaken him?”

She frowned, thoughtful. “Possibly . . . I have books on Scandinavian history in my personal collection, so during the flight here I read up on the draugr legends. He can move around during the day, but he’s weaker when the sun is up. He gains power at night, but he also needs to take a life every night to stay alive.” She lifted a shoulder. “In theory, if you can keep him from killing anyone for a whole twenty-four hours, he may run out of magic and collapse. He wouldn’t be permanently destroyed, mind you,” she added, “but he would go back to an . . . inert state.”

I chewed my lower lip for a few seconds. “What about a null?” I asked. “What would happen if one of them got near the draugr?”

Kirsten’s eyes widened. “That . . . is interesting. I never even considered it. I don’t know that nulls were around during the European Inquisition. If they were, there are no records of one of them going up against the draugr.” She smoothed her hair, thinking it over. “I think a null might undo him,” she said at last. “Or at least collapse him into