CHAPTER FIVE
Vibrating with excess energy after a good meal and
a short postmagic nap, Alexis headed for the pool an hour or so
after dinner, intending to work off her frustrations. She could’ve
used the gym that took up a good chunk of the lower level of the
mansion, but that was where she and Nate had initially hooked up,
the night after they’d each jacked into the barrier for the first
time, gaining their bloodline marks and a serious case of the
hornies. Which meant the gym and its ghosts were out.
Besides, she realized as she shucked out of her
yoga pants and zippered hoodie and dumped them on a pool chair,
baring her body in a decent one-piece, swimming a few hundred laps
or so would not only wash away the nonexistent evidence of the
sexual encounter she and Nate hadn’t had, it would give her an
excuse for the uncharacteristic aches in her inner thighs and the
hollowness in her core.
The heated pool water was warmer than the air,
and steam rose softly from the surface, making her think of the
barrier mists, and Nate’s insistence that nothing had
happened.
“And you so need to get out of your own head,”
she said aloud, then dove in cleanly. After growing up very near
the Newport beaches, with friends who’d brought her along to the
country clubs as their guest, she was nearly as at home in the
water as on land, and quickly fell into the rhythm of laps.
The pool was located at the back of the mansion
in a rectangular alcove flanked on either side by the residential
and archive wings, and fronted by the big glass doors of the sunken
great room. The open side looked over the ball court, with the
ceiba tree and training hall off to one side, the small cottages
where the Nightkeeper families used to live off to the other. In
the distance, lost in the darkness, the canyon walls were studded
with Pueblo ruins she’d visited only once, staying away thereafter
because the place gave her the creeps.
Nightkeeper traditions were one thing. Indian
burial mounds were another. Besides, the pueblo was Rabbit’s
territory, and most of the Nightkeepers left the kid more or less
alone, not because they didn’t like him, but because he seemed to
prefer solitude.
Relieved to let her mind skip from one thought
to the next, as long as none of them were dark haired and amber
eyed, Alexis was on lap number twenty when she heard Izzy call her
name.
A large part of her wanted to keep swimming—or
maybe dive down and hold her breath for a while, and pretend the
rest of the world didn’t exist. She just wasn’t in the mood for
conversation. But duty to—and love for—the woman who’d raised her
had Alexis stopping to tread water. “Hey,” she called softly to her
winikin, who stood by the edge of the pool
holding her robe and a towel. “You need me?”
Izzy nodded. “I thought we should talk.”
The winikin was petite
and ultrafeminine, with long dark hair caught back in a French
braid that was as elegant as it was practical. Wearing trim slacks
and a soft button-down that was about as casual as she ever got,
Izzy looked put-together and in control.
In contrast, Alexis was a scattered mess. “I
know,” she said, but what she really meant was damn it. She’d wanted to avoid this convo, at least
until after she’d gotten a good night’s sleep, and preferably after
she’d made the trip to New Orleans and acquired the sacred relic
from the witch. Not only because they needed the artifact and the
demon prophecy, but because she was hoping that spending the day
alone with Nate would remind her why the two of them didn’t work as
a couple, namely that he was an arrogant, detached, egotistical
jerk who didn’t want any of the same things she did, didn’t believe
in the things she believed.
“Come on out. You’ll shrivel.” Izzy held up the
robe and towel, her voice making it more of an order than a
suggestion.
Alexis sighed and obeyed her winikin, mostly because there was no point in
picking a fight just to blow off some steam. Her sense of peace was
gone, her hope of burning through the restless, edgy energy pretty
much shot. She might as well dry off and deal with Izzy.
The very thought gave her pause. Since when did
she “deal” with Izzy? The two of them were closer than most
mother-daughter pairs, and had stayed good friends through the ups
and downs of teenagerdom and life thereafter. They’d dealt with
things together, not one against the other, even after Izzy had
revealed the truth about Alexis’s parents and her role as protector
and conscience, not just godmother.
But as Alexis climbed out of the pool, shivering
as the crisp February air rapidly chilled the water on her skin,
she realized that she and her winikin were
back on opposite sides of one of their few true disagreements, a
battle they’d thought had turned into a moot point months ago: the
issue of Nate Blackhawk.
“Thanks.” Alexis took the towel and dried off,
then pulled on the robe, which was a thick terry-cloth indulgence
with a pleasing nap and drape. Belting it securely at her waist and
pulling the lapels close across her chest, needing the sense of
being clothed, of being armored, she sat in one of the plastic
chairs that was set around the long poolside table that served the
Nightkeepers for everything from picnics to councils of war.
Izzy sat opposite her, folding her hands one
atop the other. “Okay, no more evasions. What did you really see
when you touched the statuette?”
Alexis thought about continuing to avoid the
question, but knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to
hold out very long. Izzy wasn’t just gorgeous and graceful; she had
a sort of sixth sense when it came to her charge, an almost
preternatural ability to tell when something was—or soon would
be—bothering her. So instead of ducking, Alexis said, “Were
Gray-Smoke and Two-Hawk lovers?”
There was a beat of shocked silence before Izzy
said, “Absolutely not—they could barely stand each other, and she
loved your father. Why in the gods’ names would you even think
something like that?”
Because when I dream, I
can’t tell if I’m myself, my mother, or someone else, some sort of
me existing in a parallel reality where I grew up so much better
than I did in this one, Alexis thought, but didn’t say, because
she didn’t want to get into the dreams. Hell, she didn’t really
want to get into what’d happened earlier in the day. Gods knew, she
hadn’t fully processed it herself. But because she depended on Izzy
for perspective, even when she didn’t agree with the other woman’s
opinion, she said, “I’ve been getting . . . I guess you could call
them flashes of a man and woman together. Sometimes I think it’s me
and Nate, but other times it’s different, like it’s us but
not.”
The winikin’s eyes
sharpened. “These flashes are sexual in nature?”
“Um. Yeah.” Quickly, feeling beyond awkward,
Alexis sketched out the scene she’d found herself in earlier that
day, describing the stone chamber and the water, skimming over the
sexual details for both their sakes.
Izzy frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t Blackhawk. Maybe
it was someone else and your brain filled in the last man you were
with.”
“Meaning if I hadn’t slept with Nate, it
would’ve been Aaron?” Alexis thought of the charming prick she’d
dumped just before Izzy revealed to her that she was a Nightkeeper.
She tried to picture Aaron Worth, heir, philanderer, and world
traveler, in the vision she’d had while touching the statuette of
Ixchel, and failed miserably. “Maybe,” she said, but she wasn’t
buying it.
A new gleam had entered Izzy’s eyes. “You should
have Jade pull some of the itza’at spells
for you. Your aunt and a couple of cousins had the sight.”
“I’m not a seer. I don’t have a talent beyond
the warrior’s mark.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“If I’m an itza’at, then
it wasn’t a case of my brain plugging in my latest lover,” Alexis
countered, fixing her winikin with a look.
“Which probably isn’t what you wanted to hear.”
Izzy looked away, refusing to comment. In the
distance a coyote howled, sounding mournful and alone.
“You ready to tell me what you’ve got against
Blackhawk?” Alexis pressed, though she’d never gotten far with the
question before. “You raised me to want to be the best at
everything, right? So why wouldn’t you want me allied with another
Nightkeeper? Gods know my magic could use some help.”
“He’s untrustworthy,” Izzy said, though Alexis
got the distinct feeling there was more to it than that. “He
already tossed you over once. Why would you go back there?”
“Lack of options?” Alexis said wryly, though she
didn’t mean it, not really. What was—or rather had been—between her
and Nate had always been way more complicated than simple
chemistry. She’d known his medallion before she’d ever met him, and
had a feeling he’d recognized her on some level, though she’d never
gotten him to admit it. And while their temperaments and priorities
were very different, the sex had been easy . . . and phenomenal.
Why shouldn’t she wonder whether it was worth another try,
especially after her vision?
But Izzy wagged a finger at her. “Don’t
settle.”
“But the magic—”
“I taught you better,” the winikin interrupted. “Find your own magic. Don’t put
that on a mate, or you’ll only be disappointed.”
For a second Alexis thought she saw something in
the other woman’s expression. “You sound like you’re speaking from
personal experience. Would that be you or my mother?” When the
winikin said nothing, Alexis knew she’d hit
a chord. Pressing, she said, “Is this about my father?”
She bore her mother’s bloodline name and glyph,
not her father’s, which was highly unusual, and Izzy always avoided
mentioning the man who’d sired her, except to say that her parents
had loved each other. All Alexis really knew about her father was
that he’d been a mage of the star bloodline, and he’d died a few
months before the massacre.
“He has nothing to do with this or you,” Izzy
said, her expression going grim. “He was a good man who wanted only
the best for you and your mother.” But then her face softened and
she reached across the picnic table to grip Alexis’s hands in her
own. “Just please promise me you won’t act based on any of these
visions until you’ve talked to somebody about them.”
“Like who? In case you haven’t noticed, part of
the reason we’re having trouble figuring out what the hell happened
today is because we don’t have a seer. Which means I can’t exactly
ask a seer.”
“The eclipse ceremony is in a couple of days.
Anna will be here. Talk to her.”
Anna was an itza’at; it
was true. But she couldn’t control her visions, and really, really
didn’t like talking about magic. Not exactly a primo source of
info. But Alexis nodded, mostly to appease her winikin. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”
“And you won’t make any decisions until
then?”
Alexis snorted. “Nate and I are headed to New
Orleans tomorrow to buy a knife from a wannabe witch who calls
herself Mistress Truth. We’ll be lucky if we don’t kill each other
on the plane ride, never mind finding time for some one-on-one.”
Still, she felt a kick of excitement at the prospect of the trip,
and the thought of Nate seeing her at her best—negotiating a
purchase. Which just went to show that she so wasn’t over him,
despite what she kept telling herself.
“Promise me,” Izzy said, her voice low.
“Fine, I promise I won’t do anything about the
vision,” Alexis said, tempering it with a mental, for now, anyway.
Since her swimming mojo had been thoroughly
disrupted, she exchanged good-nights with Izzy and headed back to
her room to read over the references Jade had found to the Order of
Xibalba. Sitting on the elegant gray sofa she’d had shipped down
from the city, Alexis started reading the summary report Jade had
pulled together.
Strike seemed to think the enemy mage might have
something to do with the Xibalbans, while Jox kept insisting the
order was nothing more than a bogeyman legend the Nightkeepers and
winikin had used to scare the crap out of
their kids and keep them more or less behaving. But eventually Jox
had admitted that the legend, like so many others, was rooted in
fact. The Order of Xibalba had existed, and
its members had been seriously bad news.
More important, they’d been marked with a
quatrefoil glyph that represented the entrance to hell. Which meant
. . . what? Was the guy she’d gone up against a surviving member of
the original order, or someone who’d gotten hold of their magic,
maybe through a spell book or something? And if it was one of those
things, what the hell did it mean for the Nightkeepers?
Unfortunately, the more she read, the worse it
sounded.
Some of the references Jade had uncovered said
the order had arisen from the Mayan shaman-priests themselves, who
had been astronomers and mystics in their own right, aside from
their association with the Nightkeepers. Other references suggested
the order arose when a group of rogue Nightkeepers split off and
began to teach the Mayan priests some of the Nightkeepers’ spells,
which was forbidden. When the Nightkeepers’ king had learned of the
betrayal he’d gone after the rogues and their followers, who had
fled into the highlands and disappeared into hiding, emerging only
on the cardinal days, when they practiced their dark arts.
After that point the stories converged to agree
on one major point: Around the year A.D. 950, the Xibalbans—which
was how they’d come to be known by that point—had somehow breached
the barrier and unleashed several of the Banol
Kax onto the earth plane. The demons had slaughtered hundreds
of thousands of Maya, wiping out entire cities and putting the
empire on the brink of collapse. The Nightkeepers had eventually
managed to recapture the creatures and restore the barrier, but the
damage had been done. The Mayan Empire had never recovered to the
heights it’d achieved prior to the Xibalbans’ attack, soon losing
ground to the vicious Inca, Aztecs, and Toltecs, who had flourished
with the help of the Xibalbans until the fifteen hundreds, when the
Xibalbans convinced them to welcome Cortés and his conquistadors.
The Nightkeepers warned that the conquistadors should be sent away,
but their counsel went unheeded. The two decades following Cortés’s
landing had seen the deaths of ninety percent of the Maya, Inca,
Aztec, and Toltec; the destruction of the Mayan writing system; and
the slaughter of all the polytheistic priests. A few dozen
Nightkeepers had escaped, and the Xibalbans had disappeared
entirely from the historical record, which was largely why Jox and
the others assumed they’d been wiped out.
Had they, like the Nightkeepers, hidden
themselves, focusing on training for the end-time wars? Or had the
order truly disappeared, meaning that the enemy mage was a new
breed of danger?
Damned if I know, Alexis
thought, flipping Jade’s report back to the first page and starting
to reread it more carefully, in case she’d missed something
critical the first time through. As she did so, though, she knew
she was just avoiding thinking about her convo with Izzy, and the
fact that she and Nate were going to be doing the close-proximity
thing the next day when they traveled to Louisiana.
They were flying commercial because Leah had
long ago decreed that Strike’s teleport powers were emergency-only.
Which only made sense; they didn’t know enough about the magic to
predict its limitations. What if he had only so many zaps in him,
and they used them up blip-ping off to get beer or something? Bad
idea.
So it was Delta, first-class, nonstop, which
almost made up for the fact that Alexis hadn’t been able to talk
Strike out of sending Nate with her as backup. It wasn’t as though
she’d been able to tell him the truth, either, because hearing
about her dream-vision would’ve only increased the king’s
determination to throw her together with Nate, for two major
reasons: one, because gods-intended, mated Nightkeepers were so
much more powerful together than an unmated Nightkeeper alone; and
two, because Strike himself had dreamed about Leah long before he
met her, and vice versa, even though neither male Nightkeepers nor
humans were supposed to be precogs or visionaries. The king was a
big believer in dreams and portents, and he’d already made it clear
that he thought Nate and Alexis would make a strong pair-bond, and
that a relationship between them would be an asset to the
Nightkeepers in the coming war.
“So sad, too bad for him,” she muttered under
her breath. “Because a happy couple we very definitely are not. Sex
doesn’t make a lasting relationship if the people engaged in said
sex can’t carry on a civil convo to save their lives.”
“Then I take it you won’t mind me adding a third
wheel,” the king’s voice said from the doorway to her suite.
Alexis jolted, but stopped herself from an
instinctive gasp and spin because she was always aware of how
Strike saw her, what he thought of her, and how she could improve
that impression. How she could make herself useful in an advisory
capacity. He already had Jox’s long-range perspective on
Nightkeeper matters, and Leah was at his side to give him the cop’s
view and the female opinion. As far as Alexis figured, her best
commodities were her business experience and negotiating skills.
Either way, she knew she had some serious impressing left to do if
she wanted to take her mother’s place at the king’s side.
Still, when she turned to wave Strike in, she
wasn’t sure she liked his wary expression, or the way he closed the
door at his back, as though he didn’t want anyone listening
in.
“You’re coming to New Orleans?” she asked,
hoping it was that simple—and that much of an opportunity.
“Nope, sorry.” Strike exhaled, looked around her
carefully decorated room and shifting inside his T-shirt like he
wasn’t feeling right inside his own skin. “I want you and Nate to
take Rabbit with you.”
Squelching her knee-jerk no
way in hell, Alexis went with a neutral hum while she processed
the info and came up with only one good conclusion. “You want him
out of the way.”
Strike shook his head. “He’s getting squirrelly
and needs to get the hell out of the compound. That’s all.”
“No, it’s not.” Alexis kicked her feet up on the
soft gray ottoman she’d bought to match the sofa, and folded her
hands across her chest, thinking. “Given what happened today it’s
not a good time to be sending anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to
be off property, so there’s a reason you want Rabbit gone.” She
sucked in a breath as she made an intuitive leap she was pretty
sure was right. “Something’s wrong with Patience and Brandt?”
Of all the current Nightkeepers, Patience and
Brandt White-Eagle were special thrice over: once because they’d
found each other long before the barrier reactivated, meeting in
Mexico on the night of the spring solstice, and waking up together
the following morning wearing their marks; a second time because
they’d defied the teachings of their winikin by getting married and having kids; and a
third time because those kids were twins, which were sacred to the
Nightkeepers because of their abilities to boost each other’s
powers. The kids, Harry and Braden, hadn’t been put through any of
the ceremonies yet, in order to protect them from being detected by
magic seekers, but they lived at Skywatch among the bound
Nightkeepers, watched over by Patience and Brandt’s winikin, Hannah and Wood, when Patience and Brandt
were unavailable. Which they’d been more and more lately, Alexis
had noticed, as though they were drawing away from the
Nightkeepers—or each other—and didn’t want anyone else to
know.
“Wow,” Strike said, shaking his head. “You got
there fast.” But he didn’t deny that it was because of problems
with Patience and Brandt, who had become Rabbit’s main support
system after Red-Boar’s death. Instead the king went very serious
and said, “I need you to keep Rabbit out of the way, and I need you
to keep him safe.”
The teen was important to Strike; they’d grown
up together, albeit separated by fifteen or so years, and Alexis
had a feeling Strike and Jox had picked up most of the slack
Red-Boar had left in the way of nonparenting. Which meant that the
request was a sign of trust. She tipped her head. “Are you asking
the same of Nate?”
“I’m putting him on notice,” Strike replied,
making it clear he didn’t intend to ask Nate for a damn
thing.
Alexis knew she should’ve regretted the
low-grade animosity that existed between the two men, but she
didn’t because it only helped her cause, and it wasn’t like Nate
wanted to be part of the inner circle. As far as she could tell, he
didn’t even want to be part of the outer circle. “I’m honored by
your trust,” she said carefully, “but are you sure it’s a good idea
to put him in the middle of all the New Orleans occult stuff?” She
wasn’t sure how the half-blood teen’s magic worked—none of them
were, except that it didn’t always behave the same as Nightkeeper
magic.
Strike sent her a long, considering look, then
shook his head. “Damned if I know the right answer to that.” He
paused. “What I’m about to tell you comes in the strictest
confidence, understand?”
Startled, she set aside Jade’s report. “Of
course.”
“I’m pretty sure Rabbit’s mother was a member of
the Order of Xibalba.”
Whatever Alexis had expected him to say, it sure
as hell wasn’t that. She looked down at the thin report Jade had
slapped together on a group of magi that wasn’t supposed to exist
anymore, then back up at her king. “Holy shit.”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
Alexis wanted to say holy
shit again, but didn’t figure it’d add to the convo, so she
stayed silent, trying to process that new info. Finally she said,
“I take it you got that from Red-Boar?” She didn’t think being
half-Xibalban was something Rabbit would’ve kept to himself if he’d
known.
Strike lifted a shoulder. “Let’s just say he
didn’t deny it when I asked him directly. I think that was the main
reason he didn’t want to induct Rabbit into the magic, why he
didn’t want him trained as a Nightkeeper.”
“And why Rabbit’s magic is different, and
sometimes dangerous.” Alexis thought it through, nodding. “Yeah, it
plays. That’d explain why things have been weird for Rabbit during
the ceremonies.” The first time she and the other new Nightkeepers
had gone into the barrier, instead of them all transferring
together like they should have, the trainees had gone one place
within the gray-green nothingness, while Strike and Red-Boar had
each been sent elsewhere. The second time, Red-Boar had been forced
to use extra magic to keep them together.
“It could also explain why he’s got more power
than he should,” Strike said, referring to the fact that Rabbit
wore the pyrokine’s mark and could call fire, but also showed hints
of telekinetic talents, in that he could unlock doors with a
touch.
“I’m not sure I like how this sounds,” Alexis
said quietly, thinking of the enemy mage’s powers, and how easily
he’d wielded far more strength than she’d ever come close to
touching. “You think the Xibalbans’ magic is stronger than
ours.”
“Or Rabbit’s a special case.” Strike spread his
hands. “Nobody knows. Besides, it’s just a theory.” But the way he
said it made her think it was more than that.
“Damn.” She sat for a second, then frowned. “If
that’s the case, why put Rabbit out in the field with us,
especially given that this Xibalban—if that’s what he is—is after
the artifacts too? Isn’t that taking a needless risk?”
“Not needless. Calculated.”
She froze at the possibilities . . . and the
complications. “You want to see what happens if we put Rabbit and
the new guy in the same room?”
Strike gave a yes-no wiggle of his hand.
“Hopefully nothing’s going to happen. Best-case scenario, this
Mistress Truth character sells you the knife with zero issues and
you get your asses back here. Meanwhile I’ll be having a little
sit-down with Patience and Brandt, and make sure that what’s going
on with them doesn’t turn into a thing.”
Alexis didn’t ask, didn’t really want to know.
She’d prefer to go on thinking that Patience and Brandt had the
perfect marriage, the perfect love affair, because if the two of
them, who fit together like halves of a whole, couldn’t make it
work, what kind of a chance did anyone else have? So she focused on
the fact that Strike was in her sitting room, offering her a chance
to prove herself. She wasn’t going to screw it up. “I’ll do my best
to keep him safe, best-case or worst-case, Nochem.”
He winced at the honorific for king in the old language—he was still settling into
his title, just as the rest of them were still getting used to
being part of a monarchy. But instead of telling her not to call
him that, which was his usual response when one of them nochem ed him, he said, “Rabbit’s a good kid who’s
had some tough breaks. Use him if you can; protect him either way.
To be honest, I’d rather keep him here, but he’s eighteen and
itching for a fight. If I don’t send him somewhere soon I’m afraid
he’s going to go looking for action on his own, and I can guarantee
he’ll get into trouble if that happens.” He paused. “Take care of
him for me, okay?”
Alexis nodded. “I will.” They shook on it and he
headed for the door. But as the panel swung shut behind him, she
couldn’t help thinking that she might’ve just agreed to way more
than she was sure she could deliver.
After his disaster of a thesis defense—and the
way he’d gone after Anna in the aftermath—Lucius went for a walk,
trying to burn off the restless, edgy anger that’d been dogging him
for weeks now, maybe longer. By the time he looped back to the art
history building, he was calm enough to feel seriously
ashamed.
His father had been right all along: He was a
loser. It’d just taken him longer than the rest of them to figure
it out. But what else could he call himself when he’d
singlehandedly torpedoed the degree he’d spent the last five—okay,
closer to six—years working toward? Anna had flat-out told him not
to mention the Nightkeepers, and what’d he done? He’d gotten in the
Dragon Lady’s face over it, even knowing—when apparently Anna
hadn’t— that Desiree was in full-on woman-scorned mode, with Anna
as the target. Worse, he’d compounded that monumental screwup by
striking out at Anna. They might not be as close these days as they
had been before, but that was no excuse. He’d been embarrassed and
ashamed, and he’d lashed out.
Which meant he owed her an apology, he thought
as he crossed the cement bridge leading to the partially concealed
main entrance of the art history building—a squat, dark concrete
shape right out of the seventies. Her first-floor office was
locked, which probably meant she’d gone home for the night. He
really didn’t want to put off the apology until tomorrow, though;
he’d screwed up too badly. But was calling—or driving out to—her
house any better? It was late, and he wasn’t the Dick’s favorite
person to begin with, never mind him having been the one to drop
the Desiree bomb. Which meant . . .
Hell, he didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t
know what anything meant anymore. Things that used to make sense
didn’t, and things that shouldn’t have made sense kept seeming like
they did.
“Damn it,” he said, and headed for his small
office because he couldn’t think of a better alternative. When he
got there he saw that the message light on the landline phone was
blinking, which was weird. Anybody who was anyone would’ve called
his cell. Unless it was official university business, he thought,
gut churning. That’d probably be done by landline, by some dean’s
secretary deputized to tell him he was out on his ass.
Wishing he could pretend he hadn’t seen the
blink, he hit the button, braced for the worst.
“Meet me in my office in fifteen minutes,”
Desiree’s voice snapped. “And come alone.”
“Shit!” He checked the
time stamp on the message and saw that he was already an hour late.
It didn’t matter whether she’d called to kick him out or give him
another chance; being late wasn’t going to help. When the boss
called a meeting, you showed. Or at least made a good effort to
show. Stomach clenching on too many awful possibilities to name, he
headed for her corner office. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or
bummed when he saw that her lights were still on, the door
open.
He knocked on the doorframe, and the Dragon
Lady—Dr. Soo, he corrected himself—looked
up from her seat behind a wide desk. He couldn’t read her
expression when she saw who it was. “Come on in.”
Her office was professionally done up in
rich-looking blues and golds, accented with accessories that
reflected her specialty of ancient Egyptian art. He wasn’t sure,
but the delicate faience bowl set in a case just inside the door
looked real. Not willing to chance knocking it over, he gave the
thing a wide berth as he stepped over the threshold.
“Shut the door,” she ordered, returning her
attention to her laptop computer screen. Her tone didn’t make it
sound like she’d reconsidered her decision on his thesis—more like
she was getting ready to kick him out. He was pretty sure she
couldn’t do that without Anna’s okay . . . but then again, it was
entirely possible that Anna had okayed it and hadn’t had the guts
to tell him herself, he thought on a low burn of anger that was
both foreign and tempting.
“Sit.” Again with the orders, but he wasn’t
about to argue. At least not until she said she was kicking him
out.
He took one of two chairs set opposite her desk,
both of which were made of dark, carved wood and somehow managed to
be big and imposing at the same time that they were delicate and
feminine. The chair creaked under his weight; that was the only
sound in the room for close to five minutes, as she kept reading
and he sat in silence, partly because he wanted to wait her out,
partly because flapping his trap had already gotten him in enough
trouble that day.
Finally the Dragon Lady hit a couple of keys and
pushed the laptop away, then looked him up and down and up again,
until he started twitching under her scrutiny. Just when he was
getting ready to break the silence, she said, “You know something,
Lucius?” She tapped one high-gloss nail against her lower lip. “I
like you.”
On a one-to-ten scale of what he’d expected to
hear, that ranked about a minus fifty. “Excuse me?”
“I like you,” she repeated, “which is why I’m
going to do something I almost never do. I’m going to give you
another chance.”
If anyone else on the faculty had said that, he
would’ve thanked the hell out of them, and then asked when they
should reschedule his thesis defense. Given who he was talking to
and what she’d been up to lately, his first and potentially
suicidal response was, “What’s the catch?”
Something flashed in her eyes—irritation or
amusement, or maybe a bit of both. “It’s not a catch; it’s an
opportunity to expand on the work you’re already doing. If you pull
it off, you’ll be making a hell of a name for yourself, and you’ll
get your degree.” When he said nothing, simply waited, she leaned
forward, giving him a glimpse of the steel in her eyes and the edge
of a lacy bra beneath her camisole. “I want you to prove that the
Nightkeepers are real.”
“You—” he started in surprise, then broke off as
he got it. She hadn’t tanked his defense to embarrass Anna. She’d
done it because she’d wanted his research. Embarrassing Anna had
been a side benefit.
Son of a bitch, he
thought, not sure if he was disgusted or impressed, or a bit of
both.
Legend had it that the Nightkeepers had lived
with the Egyptians up until Akhenaton had gone monotheistic. If
that particular legend were real, proving the existence of the
Nightkeepers wouldn’t just blow the doors off the field of Mayan
studies, it could rewrite a big chunk of Egyptology. And even
better—as far as the Dragon Lady was concerned, no doubt—proving
the Nightkeepers were real would invalidate a big chunk of Anna’s
anti-end-time publications, putting a serious cramp in her forward
momentum at the university, maybe even providing enough ammo to get
her tenure pulled.
Bitch, Lucius thought,
his anger cranking hard and hot. But beneath the anger was a
stealthy slide of, Hmmm . . .
Anna had never supported his research on the
Nightkeepers. Was she his priority, or was the research?
The Dragon Lady continued, “Tell Anna you need
some time off to figure things out. I’ll fund your travel as
necessary, and you’ll report directly to me.”
“I won’t do it,” he said, but it sounded weak
even to him.
“There have to be things you’ve wanted to try,
but couldn’t because she wouldn’t sign off on them, things you
figured you’d do once you had your own grant money.” She paused.
“What if you could do them now?”
I can’t, he repeated,
only what came out of his mouth sounded an awful lot like, “I
shouldn’t.”
“Come on; name it. If you had to pick one line
of evidence to follow, and you had decent travel money, where would
you go first . . . Belize?” That was where the Nightkeepers who’d
survived Akhenaton’s religious “purification” had supposedly wound
up, where they had—again supposedly—hooked up with the Olmec, who
had just begun to develop a cultural identity that would become,
with the Nightkeepers’ help, the Mayan Empire.
In theory.
But Lucius shook his head. “No, actually. I’d
start in Boston. There’s this girl—” He broke off, afraid that he’d
come off sounding like an idiot, like he was crushing on someone
he’d talked to on the phone for, like, twenty seconds, just long
enough to take a message. A girl who hadn’t returned any of his
calls in the months since.
But Desiree—she’d gone from Dragon Lady to first
name in his head all of a sudden—said only, “What about her?”
He let out the breath he hadn’t consciously
known he’d been holding. Which made him he realize something else,
too. He was actually considering taking her up on the offer.
It was disloyal as hell, yes, and he owed Anna
better. But really, that low, mean voice
inside him said, how much do you owe her? She’d shut him out, withdrawn, left him
behind. It’d been her fault they’d had to reschedule his defense;
if he’d turned in his thesis last fall, on schedule, he would’ve
sailed through. But he’d been forced to reschedule because she’d
done her little disappearing act, leaving for a few weeks at the
start of the fall semester and returning a pale, strange version of
herself. If she’d stayed put and soldiered on, he’d have his Ph.D.
and probably some new funding by now, enough to follow the clues
that Anna pooh-poohed at best, derided at worst. She’d never wanted
to even entertain the possibility that the Nightkeepers had
existed, never mind discussing whether they still did, and what it
might mean on the zero date. And it wasn’t just a closed discussion
in her book; it’d never been a discussion at all. To her, the
Nightkeepers were nothing more than a bedtime story.
But that doesn’t make it
okay to go behind her back, he told himself, feeling as though
there were two sets of feelings at war within his head: one that
said he should trust that Anna would appeal Desiree’s ruling on his
thesis, and another that said he hadn’t been able to trust Anna to
do anything for him ever since she’d turned away from him, cut him
adrift.
Rubbing a thumb across the raised knot of flesh
on his opposite palm in a gesture that’d become habitual since he’d
acquired the scar in a night of drunken stupidity, he told himself
that friendships waxed and waned, that it was only natural for Anna
to pull away from a relationship that’d perhaps gotten closer than
she was comfortable with once she and the Dick had reconciled. The
only relationship she really owed him was one of thesis adviser to
student, and she’d never shirked that duty. Or had she? She’d
steered him safely through his project, true, but had she kept him
too safe? Desiree was right that the person who proved that the
Nightkeepers truly had existed would be able to write his own
ticket.
As the scar began to ache with the beat of his
heart and the sluggish pound of anger through his veins, Lucius
started to think Anna hadn’t been helping him at all. She’d been
holding him back.
“The girl in Boston?” Desiree prompted, and the
victorious glint in her eyes said she knew she had him.
“Sasha Ledbetter,” Lucius answered. “She’s the
daughter of a Mayanist named Ambrose Ledbetter. Back in the
mid-eighties he wrote a few papers on the end-time, one of which
included a description of a Mayan shrine that nobody’s ever seen
except him.” He took a breath, held it. And took the leap straight
onto Woo-Woo Avenue. “I think it was a Nightkeeper temple. If I can
get a look at it, if I can translate the hieroglyphs, I can prove
the Nightkeepers existed. I’m sure of it.”
She nodded. “So why not call him
directly?”
“He disappeared last summer while doing
fieldwork in the highlands. At this point he’s presumed
dead.”
Desiree’s expression sharpened. “And you think
you can get his notes from the daughter?”
“I think it’s a good place to start,” Lucius
answered, not willing to tell the Dragon Lady that he couldn’t
explain why; he just knew he had to see Sasha. When he’d heard her
voice on the phone, something had shifted inside him. He didn’t
know why or what it meant. He knew only that he had to find her,
had to see her.
Desiree said nothing, simply opened her center
desk drawer, pulled out a black plastic square, and slid it across
the desk toward him. “Then go.”
He stared at the credit card, at his own name
imprinted on it. “Since when does the university hand out no-limit
AmEx cards?”
“It’s drawn on one of my private grants,” she
replied, in a voice that said, Don’t
ask.
Apprehension shivered through Lucius. The part
of him he recognized as himself knew he should stand up, walk away,
and never look back. But that darker part of him, the part that
said nobody had ever given him a major break before, that he
deserved this one now, told him to take the card and book the
flight.
A thin whine started up in his ears, making his
jaw hurt, and the world went a little fuzzy around the edges. What
was he supposed to be worrying about? Oh,
right. Betraying Anna by accepting Desiree’s offer of some
grant money. But really, could Anna honestly object to his taking
on a side project? It wasn’t as though she’d been using him lately.
Anna hadn’t been doing much of anything in the way of research ever
since Neenee took off. And, come to think of it, that lack of
academic production probably hadn’t helped his thesis defense
any.
When he came right down to it, Desiree’s offer
might be his best chance of cutting his losses and moving on—a
logic that felt both right and wrong, depending on which part of
himself he listened to.
“I’ll do it.” He picked up the card and balanced
it on his palm for a moment, then closed his fingers. On some
level, a level far away from the man he’d once been, he was
unsurprised to feel the plastic slice into his scarred palm,
bringing blood to the surface. Not pausing to tend to the cut, he
held out his bleeding hand to Desiree. “You can count on me.”
When she shook his hand, the silver cuff she
habitually wore on her right wrist slipped back, and he saw the
edge of a bloodred tattoo that looked oddly familiar.