Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) Read Free Page A

at the basement lab, but last I’d checked it was a pretty depressing place: concrete floors, blank white walls, no TV or music to distract from the hum of equipment. Plus many chunks of dead snake monster. Lily referred to it as the Basement of Dr. Moreau.
    After a short exchange, Lily stuffed the phone in her pocket and reported, “He said it sounds like an average case of rabies, and you shouldn’t touch the saliva without gloves.”
    I blinked. “That’s it? He doesn’t want to come look at it?”
    She rolled her eyes. “He also asked me to remind you that he is not a veterinary pathologist and he hasn’t dissected anything but the sandworm and its pellets since grad school.”
    “So he was testy.”
    She held up her fingers with the thumb and index half an inch apart. “Little bit.”
    I frowned, but this wasn’t the time to discuss Simon’s ongoing withdrawal from the world. “Should we bury it?” Lily asked me, looking at the fox’s corpse again.
    “I have a better idea. It’s just . . . grosser.” I went to a shelf above the washing machine and grabbed a couple of rags, positioning them over my hands like makeshift oven mitts. Moving toward the fox, I stepped over it until I had one foot on either side of its head. Then I bent down, held the head carefully with the rags, and tilted it backward. “Plug your ears, Lily,” I advised. She clapped her hands over her ears, and I twisted until the fox’s neck snapped with a sickening crunch.
    Even though her ears were covered, Lily jumped, cursing. “ Why ?”
    I straightened, tossing the rags on top of the body and wiping my hands on my gym shorts. It wouldn’t exactly cleanse me of dead fox germs, but it was a psychological thing. “Now I can call my cousin, the vet, and he can test it for rabies,” I explained. “If he asks, it ran into the washer and its neck snapped.”
    “Oh. Good call.”
    “Of course,” I said with exaggerated regret, “this probably means we’ll have to put off the movie.” I shook my head. “So sad.”
    She tossed a water bottle at my face, but I caught it easily. As I unscrewed the top and took a gulp, I headed for my own phone, which I’d left on the bottom step. I called Jake, who was characteristically cool about the idea of getting a rabies-infected fox corpse delivered to his house at ten o’clock on a weeknight. I could have left it until the next morning, but I just didn’t trust my rescue animals to stay away from the body.
    And, okay, I just wanted to be rid of the thing.
    I hung up with Jake, but before I could put the phone back down, it buzzed in my hand. New text. I frowned down at the screen.
    “Is it your undead boyfriend?” Lily said brightly. She made a fake kissy sound. “Tell him I said hi.”
    I made a face at her. Sometimes I missed the days when Lily and Quinn couldn’t stand each other. “No, it’s from Maven,” I replied. “She wants me to come in right away.” Maven kept her communications brief and friendly, but there was no mistaking her text for anything but a command. I looked at the dead fox, then at my friend. “So, Lily,” I began. “I need a favor.”
    She wrinkled her nose at me. “Ewww, really?”
    I found an old cardboard box for Lily, who held it as far away from her body as she could. “Rabid fox in a box,” she grumbled. “I swear this is the beginning of a twisted Dr. Seuss book.”
    While she took the fox-box out to her car to keep it away from my animals, I ran upstairs to throw on jeans and a T-shirt. I also strapped a shredder stake to my arm with two doubled-up athletic headbands. Months ago, I’d nearly died for lack of a shredder. I no longer left the house without one. This meant that I wore long sleeves all the time, but that was fine by me. When summer came, it might be a different story, though.
    Lily had returned and was waiting for me at the front door, twirling her keys around one finger. Despite her earlier complaints, she seemed pleased