Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) - Melissa F. Olson Page 0,93

surprising me. “Whatever stupid, suicidal plan you’ve got, don’t do it.”

“Lily . . . I have to.”

I was about to hang up, but she blurted, “Then you have to promise me something.”

I paused. “What?”

“Be a witch,” she said fiercely. “Not just Lex, the ex-soldier, not just Maven’s employee or Charlie’s bodyguard. Simon and I, we’ve been trying to teach you that you’re a witch first, and I don’t think we’ve succeeded.”

“I hear you.”

“Boundary magic isn’t a tool in your toolbox, Lex. You’re it, and it’s you. You’re the channel. Don’t ever forget it. And please be safe,” she begged.

I smiled, even though she couldn’t see it. “Lily, it’s been an honor.”

Then I hung up the phone.

As soon as Emil had said that Ardie was involved and Lysander was surrounded by the dead, I knew where he’d be.

I’d been to the Botanic Gardens in Denver as a child, and two years ago I’d chaperoned a field trip for my cousin Brie’s son, Peter, when Brie came down with the flu. The volunteer working the ticket booth that day had mentioned an upcoming “haunted tour” event at the Gardens, and my face must have shown my skepticism. Lowering her voice so the children wouldn’t hear, she’d informed me that the ground we were standing on had once been part of Denver’s first cemetery. Although the cemetery had been moved, not all the bodies were successfully reburied.

“To this day,” she’d said dramatically, “they’ll sometimes dig for a new exhibit and hit bones.”

At the time, I assumed the story was garbage, the type of crap that was cooked up every Halloween to milk the ever-growing haunted house industry. But it was just so weird that I looked it up later.

And it turned out I owed the ticket seller an apology. Sure enough, the land containing both the Botanic Gardens and the neighboring Cheesman Park, where Sam and I had gone to outdoor concerts as teenagers, had been designated as Mount Prospect Cemetery in 1859. It had eventually been divided into different sections for Catholic, Masonic, and Jewish burials, plus additional sections for paupers and Civil War veterans. Mount Prospect was badly organized, unattractive, and riddled with stories of corruption and controversy. Soon the grounds became less of an official cemetery and more of a sewer for the unwanted dead.

When a better site opened in 1876, the number of burials at Mount Prospect—now known as City Cemetery—began to decline. By 1893 the city got fed up and decided to turn the area into a public park instead. They gave notice to the relatives of those buried at City Cemetery that they had ninety days to move their loved ones.

Unfortunately, not everyone bothered.

Which left the town with a big problem. There were never complete records of who was buried at City Cemetery or where the graves were located, so the city had no way of knowing how many people were left after the relatives’ ninety days were up. In an effort to clear up the whole mess, the city hired an undertaker named McGovern to dig for all the remaining bodies and move them to a new cemetery.

But McGovern, as it turned out, was the world’s least ethical coroner. Since he was paid by the body, the undertaker would often split the remains of one person into two or even three coffins to collect more fees. Eventually the city leaders figured out what was happening and fired him, but they never got around to replacing him—or to figuring out exactly how many people he had really transferred. Thousands of bodies stayed buried beneath the grass. And every year, the night security guards at the Botanic Gardens reported strange noises, objects moving around by themselves, and all the other classic signs of hauntings.

When I’d first read the story, I’d been shocked that the city knew about thousands of unclaimed human bodies, and no one had done anything about it. The situation was disgraceful. I had said as much to Sam, who’d been the pragmatic one for a change. She pointed out that none of the deceased could have living family members left, and at least the bones were buried beneath a park and a garden. There were worse places to have your final resting place. She had a point, and I dropped the subject—but it had never sat well with me, especially given the way I’d seen bodies treated when I was overseas.

As I got off the highway in Denver and made my way south on York