dead twin sister sound far away?
But I looked, and saw Becca sway back and forth a few times, her mouth opening and closing. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
Then she collapsed next to me, and everything went dark.
Chapter 32
My dreams were on tumble dry.
Images bounced and sank around and around in my head: Cisco and the hacky sack, the burning ghosts, the IED exploding. Wraiths jumping through the doorway to the other side, Quinn’s spaced-out eyes when I’d pressed him. A noxious swirl of rotten memories and pain.
Sometimes an image of Sam would pop up—her yelling something at me from her side of the bedroom—but I couldn’t get her to stay. I couldn’t stop the spinning.
When I opened my eyes next, Quinn was standing in the barn. Except he wasn’t, because there was a beam of sunlight pouring in from the other end of the barn. One of these things isn’t real, I thought dizzily, Quinn or the sun. There was no way I was lucky enough for it to be the sun.
Not-Quinn crouched down in front of me, looking worried, and although his lips moved, there was no sound. Then his face morphed into Simon’s, complete with nerdy glasses, and before I could adjust he was back to Quinn again.
I reached up a hand to touch him, fascinated, but there was a weightlessness to my arm that made me suspect it hadn’t actually moved at all.
I tried to say his name, but I didn’t have the energy to make my own lips move.
After a while this got frustrating, so I closed my eyes again.
Time passed.
The next time I surfaced, it was because of a voice.
“Look, will you just get over here?” The words were impatient, annoyed. There was a pause, and then she continued, “Yeah, I have Becca’s gun . . . but even after I get them on the tarp, I can’t get them into a vehicle by myself. And my car’s not big enough anyway.”
Odessa. I hadn’t heard that tone from her before, but it was her. Without opening my eyes, I tried to take stock of my body. I wasn’t paralyzed, as I’d first feared, but everything felt frail and empty, like when your fever has broken after the flu but you’re still too drained to get up. It felt like every muscle in my body had been surgically replaced with half-melted rubber, so I was somehow sore, numb, and weak all at the same time.
But at least I could think again.
I cracked my eyes open. My head was facing the right side of the barn now, away from where Becca had fallen. How much time had passed? Was Becca even alive? I didn’t know what Odessa had put in our tea, but it was entirely possible that it was lethal, and my boundary magic had just refused to let me die. Again.
Odessa had asked me how boundary witches could be killed. God, I was an idiot.
I could see Odessa pacing back and forth in front of Deimos as she talked into a cell phone. When she turned, I saw a handgun tucked into the back of her jeans.
“No, that’s not good enough. And might I remind you, we wouldn’t be in this position if you’d done your job the first time?”
Odessa listened for a long moment, then sighed in frustration and snapped, “Forget it. I’ll figure it out myself.” She hung up the phone, but immediately called a new number.
“Hey, hon.” This time, her voice was sugary sweet, and the contrast was startling. Had she been putting on an act the entire time? “Can you get the girls together for tonight? We’re doing the fifth spot.”
She listened for a long moment, looking annoyed. “I know it’s a risk, but I’m burned now. I want to make sure we have enough to impress the buyers and then I’m gone.” Her pacing turned her toward me, and I squeezed my eyes shut again.
There was a long pause, and then: “Great! Meet you at the fifth spot at ten.” There was a pause. “Actually? Make it midnight. I have a couple of things to deal with first.”
She must have hung up, because the next thing I heard was her footsteps walking out of the barn through the opposite doors.
Experimentally, I tried moving my hands, my neck. I could sort of turn my head, but my fingers felt like they’d been replaced by surgical gloves filled with jelly. I couldn’t even make a fist; there was no way I’d