Granted, it wasn’t as though he were being tortured or anything—they’d upgraded his accommodations to a three-room suite on day two. The rooms had new-looking bars on the windows, an empty phone jack, and a sturdy lock on the door, but it had a bathroom and a small kitchenette, and comfortwise beat the hell out of his apartment back in Austin. But still, it was a prison.

He’d watched as much bad satellite TV as he could stand, and had fiddled with the gaming console and cartridges Jox had brought him. But he’d never been huge on TV, and he’d sort of burned out on gaming a couple of years earlier, so neither of those distractions held much in the way of appeal. Or, more accurately, what was outside the suite held so much more.

His window overlooked a freaking Mayan ball court. How could he not want to be out there? Ball courts were his all-time favorite type of ruin. Only this was no ruin; it looked like fairly new construction, like the Nightkeepers still played the traditional game after all these years.

Two twenty-foot-tall stone walls ran parallel to each other, and were open at both ends. The walls were intricately carved, and although he couldn’t see the murals from his vantage point, he could guess what they looked like: scenes of ballplayers wearing the traditional yokes and padding, each vying to send a heavy rubberized ball—sometimes containing a skull at the center—through rings set high on the walls while members of the opposite team tried to stop them using any methods possible, fair or foul. The carvings might also show the losers—or sometimes the winners—being sacrificed in tribute to the gods, blood spurting from the stumps of their beheaded necks, the gouts turning to sacred serpents as they landed.

He would’ve given just about anything to be able to get down there and check it out. He also wanted to get a look at the kapok tree nearby, which must’ve had a serious irrigation system keeping it alive, because they weren’t supposed to grow in the desert. There was the big steel building behind the tree, a firing range beyond that, and what looked like a set of Pueblo ruins at the back of the canyon. . . .

Frankly, he didn’t care what he got to explore first; he just wanted to get his ass out there. He’d tried the door and window already, along with the vents and anyplace else he thought he might be able to break through, but had stopped short of busting up the furniture and using the shards to hack through the drywall into the next room over. Another couple of days, though, and he might give it a try.

He was trying not to blame Anna for deserting him; he’d blamed her for too much already, all but destroying a friendship that had once been very important to him. Besides, it wasn’t just about the two of them, was it? His being there was undoubtedly a security breach of epic proportions for her people, never mind the way her brother had implied that he’d been involved with them once before and was already living on borrowed time.

Lucius really wanted to know what that was all about. But the strange thing was, he was curious but not mad, bored but not blaming anyone for it, which felt more like the him of a year ago rather than the guy he’d become over the past six months. Something had changed inside him since he’d come to the compound. He’d arrived all pissed off and ready to lash out, feeling like the victim, like the world was out to get him and he’d be better off striking first rather than sitting back and waiting it out. He’d been mad at Anna, mad at Desiree for sending him on his quest, mad at Sasha Ledbetter for not being where he’d hoped she would be.

Since then he’d had a serious reality check. Maybe it was seeing Anna and realizing what she’d been hiding from him, and partly understanding why. Or maybe it was just the time he’d had to do some navel-gazing and figure out what the hell was important. Anna was important, he’d decided. What she and the others were trying to do was important, because the end date was less than four years away. And, more than anything, he wanted to help. He wanted to be a part, however small, of the war that was to come.

His mother had always said he’d been born into the wrong time, that he should’ve been one of Arthur’s knights, a hero in an age of heroes. He wasn’t sure about that, but he knew there were some battles a man had to step up and fight no matter what.

“I may not be a Nightkeeper,” he said aloud, “but with Ledbetter gone I’m the best-informed human they’re likely to find. I can help with the research, if nothing else.”

“I agree,” Anna’s voice said from behind him. “That’s why I’m busting you out of here.”

Lucius spun away from the window, shocked to hear another human voice after so many days of talking to himself. “Anna! How . . . Who . . . ?” Then her words penetrated, and he concluded with an oh-so-brilliant, “Huh?”

“Lucius, sit. Breathe.” She waved him to the generic sofa that took up most of the generically decorated sitting area. Once he was sitting, she took one of the chairs opposite him and leaned forward, folding her hands over her knees. “We need to talk.”

On the heels of shock came all the emotions he’d been sorting through over the past few days, crashing into one another until his brain was a total train wreck of half-completed thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he blew it out again and said, “I’d say that ranks pretty high on the understatement scale.”

Her eyes warmed a little. She looked good, he realized. Then again, he’d pretty much always thought she looked good. At least, he had until recently. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped noticing how her hair looked brown in one light, chestnut in another, and how her deep blue eyes seemed to look into a guy, seeing far more than was on the surface.

Had he changed or had she? Or had they both gone in different directions and wound up back in the same place once again?

She was wearing jeans and a soft blue shirt he didn’t recognize, with long sleeves pulled down over her forearm marks. The yellow quartz skull-shaped effigy she’d started wearing the previous fall hung from a chain around her neck. The thing that got and held his attention, though, was the knife tucked into her belt.

Carved from black stone—obsidian, probably—it didn’t look terribly old, but it sure looked sharp.

With his eyes locked on the knife, he said, “You mentioned something about busting me out of here? That wasn’t a euphemism for something I’m not going to like, is it? Like telling a little kid that his sick old dog went to live on a farm?”

He expected a grin. Didn’t get one.

“Here’s the deal,” Anna said, “and hold the questions until the end, at which point you’re only allowed three. I know you too well—if I let you quiz me, we’ll be here until the solstice.” She paused until he nodded, then continued, “As you’ve figured, Skywatch is the Nightkeepers’ training compound. What you probably haven’t figured, and the reason that I’ve argued against the 2012 doomsday for so long, is that up until last summer I believed that the apocalypse had been forestalled. Twenty-five years ago my father led the Nightkeepers against the interplanar intersection, based on a vision from the god Kauil saying he could prevent the end-time. Instead, the demon Banol Kax came through the intersection and slaughtered the warriors, then sent their creatures here to Skywatch to kill the children. All but a few of the youngest Nightkeepers died.”

Her voice shook a little and her eyes had gone a very deep blue, as though she were seeing something he couldn’t. Lucius wanted to help, to comfort her, but he didn’t dare interrupt, so he waited.

After a second she continued, “The power backlash sealed the barrier. We checked the intersection every cardinal day for years after, but it remained closed, and the magic stayed inactive. We truly thought the end-time had been averted.”

“We?” he blurted, unable to help himself.

She fixed him with a look. “That’s your first question.” But she answered, “Me, Strike, our winikin Jox, and the sole adult survivor of the Solstice Massacre, a mage named Red-Boar.” Her eyes went sad. “You met him last fall, sort of, but won’t be able to remember it. He is—he was—a mind-bender.”

Which brought up so many questions Lucius didn’t know where to start, so he gestured for her to continue. “Go on.”

“Well, the short of it is that there was one remaining prophecy dealing with the end-time, stating that certain things would happen in the final five years before 2012. Sure enough, last year a makol—a human disciple of the underworld—used some major blood sacrifices to reopen the barrier at the summer solstice. All of a sudden the magic was working again, and the end-time countdown was back on. Strike was forced to recall the surviving Nightkeepers, who had been raised in secret by their winikin. Since then, we’ve been going through crash courses in magic and fighting skills in an effort to whip together a fighting force capable of defending the intersection at each equinox and solstice, and capable of either somehow averting the end-time, or at the very least holding the Banol Kax in Xibalba when the calendar ends in December 2012, and the barrier falls.” She paused. “There are thirteen Nightkeepers left on earth, counting a pair of three-year-old toddlers and a powerful freak show of questionable allegiance named Snake Mendez, who still has another six months before he’s eligible for parole.”

She fell silent, but it was a long moment before Lucius said, “Okay. My brain’s officially in ‘tilt’ mode.”

She sent him a warm look that recalled better days. “Join the club. You want to ask your last two questions now?”

“Sure. What’s a winikin?”

“That’s the most important thing you can think to ask?” she said slowly.

He grinned. “No. But it’s been bugging me for almost a week.”

After a serious eye roll, she said, “They’re the blood-bound protectors of the Nightkeepers, descended from the loyal slaves who sneaked fifty or so Nightkeeper children out of Egypt when Akhenaton started killing poly-theists. The single surviving adult Nightkeeper, who came to be called the First Father, led the slaves and children to safety, eventually ending up in Olmec territory. Knowing that history repeats, he put a spell on the winikin, binding them to the bloodlines they helped save and entrusting them with making sure the culture and the magic survived until 2012. In that way they became our partners rather than our slaves; they’re bound to protect us and guide us, though they have no magic of their own.”

Which totally dovetailed with the Nightkeeper myths Lucius had scraped together for the side project that’d slopped over into his thesis and then bitten him in the ass. It didn’t explain why the winikin were never once mentioned in the mythology he’d uncovered, but that so wasn’t the last question he needed to ask.

He took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Now, that’s the right question,” she said approvingly. “The simple answer is because you’re one of the best researchers I know, and our current archivist is actually a repurposed child psychologist. It’s another monumental understatement to say she’s floundering.”

“If that’s the simple answer, then there’s a more complicated one,” he said, careful not to make it be a question.

“That would be that I’m telling you a little about of our history and current situation so you’ll understand what’s at stake.”

He grimaced. “A dozen or so Nightkeepers against the fall of the barrier protecting the earth from the forces of Xibalba? I’d say the stakes are pretty high.” If, by pretty high, she meant insurmountable.

“Exactly,” she said, as if he’d uttered the last part aloud.

“Which doesn’t explain what you’re going to do with me. The term ‘busting out’ implies liberation, but I don’t see how freeing me helps, especially given what already happened with Desiree.” He paused, then said, “For what it’s worth, I’m really, really sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. It was like . . . I don’t know. Like I was somebody else for a while. Somebody I don’t like very much.”

“We go on from here,” she said, which wasn’t the same as accepting his apology. “That includes my asking you a favor.” She paused. “I want you to stay here and help us.”

The offer took a moment to register. “Me? Help the Nightkeepers?” Excitement was a quick kick, tempered by the complications she’d mentioned. “Would I have to stay locked up?”

“Not in this room.” Again with the nonanswer. “You’d have free run of the compound and access to the Nightkeepers, the winikin, and the archive, which contains a number of codices, artifacts, and original sources, along with commentaries from generations of Nightkeeper scholars, Spanish missionaries . . . pretty much everything ever written about the Nightkeepers and the end-time, along with some primary Mayan sources you won’t find anywhere else.”

His researcher’s soul sang. They have an archive! Excitement zipped through him, lighting his senses. “What’s the catch?” he asked, though there was no question that he was going to agree to whatever it was. He was being offered every Mayanist’s dream—access to a previously unknown stockpile of information. More, he was being offered a part—however small—in the end-time war.

“I’m going to need an oath of fealty,” she said.

“No problem. Where do I sign?”

“That’s not exactly how it works.” She drew the obsidian knife from her belt and balanced it on her palm. “It’s more along the lines of a spell that binds us together, making you my responsibility. You would become my k’alaj.”

His brain kicked out the translation, and he said slowly, “I’d be bound to you? Like a slave?”

“Technically, yes. My bond-slave.” Her eyes held his. “In practice, you’d be exactly who and what you are, except that you’d be restricted to the confines of this training compound, unless I’m with you or I give you a charmed eccentric granting passage through the wards surrounding the canyon.”

An eccentric was a small ritual item, usually carved from stone in the shape of a god or animal. Stomach churning, Lucius tried to imagine himself wearing one around his neck, like a cosmic hall pass, or a collar with a rabies tag. “A slave,” he repeated, hating the idea, the word. But there was more; he could see it in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She grimaced. “In binding myself to you, I’ll be granting you my protection, but also making myself responsible for your behavior. The bond will give me a limited sense of where you are and what you’re doing, and some degree of control over you. However, if you do anything to jeopardize or harm the Nightkeepers, it’s my duty to find and execute you, and upon my return I will also be punished as suits your crime. Which is why, as you might guess, this spell has been enacted only a handful of times throughout the Nightkeepers’ history, and then only with humans the bond-master or -mistress believe they can trust with their lives.” Her eyes showed worry fear.

Lucius couldn’t think of a response, couldn’t think of much except, “Holy shit.” He was going to be a slave. He’d be Anna’s slave, and in service to the Nightkeepers, but still. A slave. He shook his head. “What do you mean, you’d have some control over me? Like a mind-meld or something?”

“Nothing that elaborate. I’d be able to send negative reinforcement through the bond.”

He thought about it for a second, not liking any of it, but unfortunately able to see the logic from the Nightkeeper side of life. “Would you promise not to use the bond on me?”

“I can’t do that; I’m sorry.” She paused, exhaling. “Look, this is the only way I could convince Strike to let you help.” And by that he knew she meant “let you live.” “He agrees that we need your research skills, but because of who and what you are, we can’t risk letting you go free.” She reached out and took his right hand and turned it palm up, then placed her own beside it to show that she had a scar to match his own. “You’ve already been marked by the Banol Kax. I’ll tell you the whole story later, after the bond is complete. Suffice it to say that if you leave Skywatch without Nightkeeper protection, you’ll be subject to influence by the Banol Kax. That can’t be allowed to happen.”

Lucius wanted to be able to laugh that off, but he couldn’t. It aligned too well with the feeling of a dark cloud lifting off him over the past few days. On some level he didn’t need to know anything more than that. “Shit.”

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”

He stared at his hands, not daring to look at her when he asked, “Why are you willing to risk yourself like this? If I’m connected to the demons somehow, what’s to say I won’t turn on you again, like I did by dealing with Desiree?”

“If you stay inside Skywatch, you’ll be the Lucius I know and love.”

The statement brought his head up as he thought, just for a second, that maybe the occasional flash of interest he’d seen in her eyes was for real.

But she shook her head. “Not that way. As a friend only. I owe you, though, in more ways than I can count. I traded my freedom from the Nightkeepers for your life last fall because it was my fault you crossed paths with the Banol Kax. I’m offering to bind myself to you now because I think you can help us, and because of our friendship. You let me lean on you when things got bad with Dick, let me wallow when I needed to, and kicked my butt out of the funk when it got to be too much.”

He looked away. “I didn’t tell you about Desiree.”

“No, you didn’t. But I can see how that’d be a tough judgment call . . . and I’m not sure much would’ve happened differently if I’d known she was Dick’s mistress. It’s a sucky situation, but it had nothing to do with you . . . and not much to do with Dick, either, if she is what we think she is. Besides, I’m dealing with it as best I can. Part of that involves your staying here and helping Jade when I head back home.”

Lucius closed his eyes and tested out the idea of never going back to the university, and was surprised to find it didn’t hurt that much. He had lots of friends but few close ones, and he could call home from Skywatch just as easily as from Austin. It wasn’t as simple as that, of course, but the lure of the Nightkeepers overshadowed the other issues. He’d spent a big chunk of his life defending their existence. How could he not help them when asked?

He took a long, deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

She hesitated. “In the interest of full disclosure—”

“Will any of it change what has to happen?” he interrupted.

“No.”

“Then tell me later.” He nodded to the knife, his gut tightening in anticipation of pain, his brain blocking out the concept of servitude. “Do it.” But when she lifted the obsidian blade, he said, “Wait. What about Sasha?”

She gave him a long look, but said, “We’ve reopened the search already. There’s a chance her father was one of us, probably a better chance that he was Xibalban. Either way, we need to know where she is. Strike has his PI, Carter, looking for her, and also for the Xibalbans, on the theory that they probably know where she is.”

“You won’t give up on her this time?” Lucius pressed as something tightened in his chest, making him feel that finding Sasha was somehow more important than the question of his own servitude. “You promise?”

“I promise.” Without another word she slashed her own palm, then his. Pain slapped at him, wringing a hiss, but he didn’t pull away, couldn’t move. His body was locked in place, frozen by the sight of the blood that welled up and spilled over.

Gripping his bloodied hand in hers, she closed her eyes and rapped out a string of words he couldn’t parse, coming so quickly, when his brain was more used to sounding out the syllables from glyph strings.

Something stirred beyond his being, a sense that there were things going on at a level he couldn’t perceive. A sudden gust of wind slapped through the room, though the windows were closed. The disembodied gust blew his hair in his eyes and whipped around the two of them, forming a sharp funnel cloud with them in the center. Above the wind roar, a buzzing noise sang a high, discordant note.

Then Anna said a final word, and the world shifted sideways, tilting and swerving around him. He slid off the sofa, landing hard on his knees while Anna hung on to his hand. The note racheted up to a scream, and pain lanced through him, centered not on his bleeding palm but on his forearm. He cried out and bowed his head as something snapped into place around him, an invisible force that vised his body, then inside to grip his heart, which went still. The wind quit abruptly, leaving only silence inside his skull.

He couldn’t even hear his heartbeat.

Panic gripped him, but he couldn’t struggle, couldn’t scream. He could only wait in the silence. Finally he heard it. Lub. Then lub-dub. Another, lub-dub. The beats stuttered and then sped, finally dropping into normal sinus rhythm. The moment they did, the force field disappeared, leaving him to sag back against the sofa.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. “Jesus Christ.”

“Wrong pantheon,” she said, voice wry. Shifting her grip, she lifted his arm and turned his hand palm up. He saw blood but no cut, only the scar he’d gotten last fall, ostensibly in a drunken kitchen accident that he now realized had been far more than that.

Awe gathered in Lucius’s chest at the sight of the healed wound. “Magic,” he breathed.

“Yep.” She pushed his shirtsleeve up across his forearm, revealing something else, something that made his heart stutter in his chest when she said, “Welcome to the family.”

His forearm was marked like hers, with two glyphs. One was the same jaguar she wore, only smaller. The other was the k’alaj glyph representing the back of a human hand and a length of rope or sinew: the “was bound” mark, used for slaves and captured enemies . . . and sacrifices.

He took a deep breath. Let it out. Looked at Anna, the woman of his dreams, who was now his mistress, and not in the way he’d wished. “Okay, boss,” he said, doing his best to act like everything was okay when he wasn’t yet sure that was the case, “take me to your library and tell me what I’m looking for.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “We want everything you can find on the Order of Xibalba.”

His heart, so recently knocked off-kilter, took another stutter step. “You’re kidding me.”

“Wish I were.”

“The order’s real too?” It was a little like learning that not only was the Loch Ness monster real, so was Godzilla.

Anna nodded. “Worse, we’re pretty sure Desiree is a member.”

“Desiree is—” He broke off, slamming his eyes shut as an awful gulf of guilt opened up inside him. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Still not.”

“Shit.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“We’re dealing with it.”

“I’m surprised your brother didn’t have me thrown into the Cenote Sagrado,” he said, naming the huge sacrificial well at Chichén Itzá.

“I promised him you’d behave.”

“I will,” he said fervently. “You have my word.”

“I don’t need your word. I have your blood oath.” She bared her forearm, where she too had gained a new mark, a closed fist. His heart shuddered as he recognized ajawlel . . . the slave-master’s mark.

Once Anna had handed Lucius over to Jade in the archive, she went in search of her brother. She found him in his and Leah’s quarters, the expansive royal suite once shared by their parents.

Anna hesitated at the double entry doors, assailed by memory.

She’d been fourteen on the night of the Solstice Massacre, which meant she had fourteen years’ worth of childhood memories from Skywatch. Strike had been only nine, and his mind had blocked off the bulk of his early years as a defense. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been so lucky. Maybe it was because she carried the seer’s mark, maybe because of the five-year difference in age. Whatever the cause, she’d been unable to outrun the memories, her brain choosing to block her power rather than the past.

Ever since her partial return to the Nightkeepers, she’d dealt with the memories by staying at Skywatch as little as possible, and avoiding the spaces with the most ghosts . . . like the royal suite. Now she forced herself to knock on what she still thought of as her parents’ door, and made herself push through when her brother’s voice invited her in.

“It’s me,” she called, standing just inside the royal suite and trying to concentrate not on the memories but on the differences, the new decor and the way the walls had been painted, the floors stripped and redone, all part of Jox’s efforts to exorcise the ghosts.

“I’m in the altar room,” Strike said, his voice echoing from a door off to her right. “Come on back.”

Although the royal couple’s shrine of private worship was pretty much the last place on earth Anna wanted to be, she forced herself down the short hallway leading to the ceremonial chamber. She couldn’t make herself step inside the tiny room, which was little more than a closet with stone-veneered walls and a gas-powered torch in each corner, with a chac-mool altar against the back and a highly polished obsidian mirror on the wall.

Strike stood in the center of the small space, on a woven mat marked with bloodred footprints facing the altar. In ancient times the mats had symbolized a position of power or leadership; to stand on the mat was to claim the right to speak and be heard. Since then, among the Nightkeepers those mats had come to represent the king’s right to speak to—and for—the gods.

Just then, though, Strike looked less like a god-king and more like a tired man, a former landscaper with a business degree and teleporting skills, who was in way over his head. He and Leah had made a try for Kulkulkan’s altar stone in Germany, only to find that it wasn’t where it was supposed to have been. Leah had stayed behind, following where the trail led, while Strike had come home alone to deal with the business of securing Skywatch against the Xibalbans. Anna knew that Leah could reach him instantly through the blood-link of their love, knew that he could ’port to her in a flash. He knew it too, but the separation was wearing on him, worrying him. His eyes were tired, his expression drawn.

Anna could relate.

Leaning against the doorframe to ground herself when the reflection in the mirror threatened to waver and show her things she didn’t want to see, she said, “It’s done.”

Strike nodded. “He’ll help?” But what he was really asking was, Have you bound him as your slave?

“Yes.” She hated the necessity, hated the decision, but hadn’t been able to argue either. In saving Lucius from Red-Boar’s knife she’d taken responsibility for him. The binding ritual had simply been a formal extension of that duty. Or so she was trying to tell herself.

“And the other?”

“That’s why I’m here. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t reconsidered.”

His lips twitched. “Wanted to see if I’d come to my senses, you mean.”

“Something like that.”

“Consider your objections noted.”

Fat lot of good that would do in the long run, Anna thought, but inclined her head. “I’ll make the call.”

Feeling as though she were escaping from the room, if not the duty, she headed for her own suite, which was the same one she and Strike had shared as children. Jox had overseen the renovations, yielding a pleasantly neutral space with a few personal touches in the jaguar motifs of the art prints and small trinkets on the bamboo furniture. They’d all been placed by the winikin, not her, but they did serve to warm the suite, making it fairly comfortable for the short stints she was in residence, during the cardinal days and a few other ceremonial occasions.

Now she let herself sink into the soft, earth-toned sofa and dug out her cell phone. Dialing the main university switchboard from memory, she punched in an extension and waited through two rings, then three.

Just when she was wondering how much to say on voice mail, the line went live. “Desiree Soo speaking.”

“I have Lucius,” Anna said without preamble.

There was a startled pause before Desiree said, “You can keep him. He’s served his purpose.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. We’d like to invite Iago to the compound for a parley.”

Desiree’s surprise was palpable, but she snorted. “Parley? What is this, Pirates of the Caribbean?”

“A meeting, Desiree, between your leader and mine. March thirteenth. And your agreement that the Xibalbans won’t come after us between now and then.”

“The day after Saturn at Opposition? What, you think your ancestors are going to come through and tell you how to get hold of the remaining artifacts? Keep dreaming.”

Anna dug her fingernails into her scarred palms, determined not to let the bitch bait her. “Do we have a deal?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Where can I reach you?”

“Leave a yes/no on my office voice mail. I’ll be back in town tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”

“Interesting.” Desiree paused, then said sweetly, “Would you like me to let your husband know of your plans? Apparently he expected you back from your ‘meeting,’ ”—there were obvious finger-quotes in the words—“the day before yesterday, and couldn’t reach you on your cell.”

“Don’t trouble yourself; I’ll call him,” Anna said through gritted teeth, and cut the connection.

Once they’d figured out that Desiree was Xibalban, and had most likely been sent to the university solely to keep an eye on Anna, it was a logical extension to assume she’d gone after Dick for additional inside information, and probably for leverage. That didn’t make his infidelity any less galling, but it made Desiree’s part in it that much more insidious.

Hating that she’d bought into the bitch’s manipulation, Anna dialed Dick’s cell phone, intending to apologize for not checking in sooner. She couldn’t tell him about Lucius and the Xibalbans, and would have to explain away the ajawlel mark as another on-a-whim tattoo, when he wasn’t too crazy about the ones she already wore. But though there were so many things she couldn’t tell him, so many little lies, she wanted to talk to him, wanted to hear his voice and remember her real life, and the man she’d made that life with.

When the call dumped to voice mail, though, she didn’t know what to say. So she hung up without speaking and just sat there on the sofa, staring at the one personal touch that had found its way into her room, borrowed from the training hall with Rabbit’s permission.

The boar-bloodline death mask might’ve been an impulse buy on Alexis’s part, but Anna was grateful for the impulse, because looking at the mask made her think not of Red-Boar, but of the fact that in some cases, death was only the beginning of the great cycle, the start of the next life.

At this point she was starting to hope she got it right in her next life, because her current one was turning into a train wreck.

In the weeks following the trip to Belize, Nate felt like he was rattling around Skywatch, disjointed and out of step with himself.

He and Alexis had brought the carved fragment back and united it with the main statuette, and watched in awe while the pieces had knit, going molten and then seaming together with a hum of magic and color, creating an entire whole. Then they, along with most everyone else in residence at the compound, had gathered outside later that night. When the starlight had come, the full demon prophecy had been revealed.

Lucius had done the translation, because Anna had returned to her husband. The shaggy-haired grad student, who Jade said seemed to be alternating between fascination at being among the Nightkeepers and deep depression at being a slave, had parsed out the glyphs, copying them down on the kitted-out laptop Anna had sent from the university. Even before the program had confirmed the translation, he’d quietly intoned, “ ‘The first son of Camazotz succeeds unless the Volatile is found.’”

Which told them nothing new, really, and sort of made the cave trip seem like a waste.

Jade and Lucius’s research had turned up a couple of references to the Volatile, indicating that he was male and a shape-shifter, which put him firmly on the bad-guy side of life, as far as the Nightkeepers were concerned. A great deal of post-Classical Mayan religious practices were based on the idea that their kings were gods, and capable of turning into sacred creatures, mostly jaguars. That, however, was due to the influence of the Order of Xibalba, which seemed to have worshiped a mimiclike shape-shifter that could take on many forms. The Nightkeepers, in contrast, wanted nothing to do with shifters, who had the rep of being fiercely independent at best, dangerously unstable at worst.

At the same time, the word “volatile” was also associated with the daylight hours and the levels of heaven. Which meant there was no telling whether the Volatile named in the demon prophecy was a Xibalban—maybe even Iago himself?—or something else. They weren’t even sure the Volatile was a shifter; the info was that foggy. It was also perplexing that the demon prophecy discussing the Volatile had been written on the statuette of the rainbow goddess, yet didn’t say jack about what Ixchel was supposed to do.

The facts that the rainbow goddess’s statuette held the prophecy and that she’d formed the Godkeeper bond with Alexis suggested that Ixchel should be instrumental in defeating the first of Camazotz’s sons . . . yet the prophecy directed them to the Volatile. Did that mean they were supposed to hand over Alexis to the Xibalbans? That was so not happening as far as Nate was concerned.

Alexis had become more and more withdrawn as the debate had dragged on. Nate had tried to engage her, tried to have a sit-down, but she’d been distant and had quickly excused herself each time. He couldn’t blame her, really. And in a way her detachment was a bonus, because it had somehow weakened the crackle of magic between them, blunting the sexual energy. Maybe the statuette was somehow helping her channel the goddess’s powers without his help. Maybe the magic was lessening as the barrier thickened, cycling between the eclipse and the approaching opposition. Or maybe he’d finally managed to gain control over his attraction to her, to the point that he could make a decision for himself, one that wasn’t dictated by politics or power.

That should’ve made him feel better. Thing was, he didn’t, not in the slightest. He was snarly and out of sorts, humming with an edgy energy that he didn’t recognize. Working himself into exhaustion down in the gym didn’t help; if anything that made his mood worse, with the added annoyance of sore hamstrings. Training didn’t help; research didn’t help. Hell, he couldn’t even work on VW6; Hera was still stuck midstory, not sure if she wanted to partner with Nameless or behead him.

And yeah, Nate could see the parallels between the storyboard and his and Alexis’s on-again, off-again relationship; he wasn’t an idiot. Seeing it didn’t mean he knew what to do about it, though. Which was why he headed out to the Pueblo ruins near dusk in early March, five days before the opposition ceremony, needing some serious time to himself. Instead of going all the way out to the pueblo, though, he wound up detouring over to his parents’ cottage, knowing that was where he’d meant to go all along.

When he opened the door and stepped through, he found someone waiting for him in the sitting room, and stopped dead. “Carlos.” Shit.

“Are you ready to listen yet?” the winikin asked, making it sound as if he were willing to wait as long as he needed to, even though they both knew time was running out. The equinox was nine days after the opposition, and Alexis needed to have full access to the goddess’s powers by then if she hoped to have even a prayer of battling the first of the foretold demons. That meant having her Nightkeeper mate’s full support.

The operative word there being “mate.”

“I can’t pull hearts and flowers out of my ass just because it’s convenient for everyone else,” Nate snapped. “And for what it’s worth, I offered. She turned me down. End of story.” Okay, so technically he’d offered some fairly clinical, no-strings sex approximately sixty seconds before she’d asked him about Hera and realized she’d been a stand-in. Or was Hera the stand-in? Fucked if he knew; they were all mixed-up together in his head.

“I wasn’t talking about you and Alexis,” Carlos said mildly. “Although if you’d like to talk about the two of you, I’m more than happy to listen. I had twenty wonderful years with my Essie. I could probably teach you a few things.”

“I don’t,” Nate said between gritted teeth, “want to talk about me and Alexis. I don’t want to talk at all.” But he didn’t turn around and leave, either, just stood in the middle of the sitting room, glaring at his father’s paintings. “Not everything that happened before will happen again, goddamn it. I don’t need to know the history of my bloodline to be a warrior.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The winikin should’ve looked out of place, but somehow his snap-studded shirt and big old belt buckle fit into the subtle—albeit dated—elegance of the furnishings and decor.

Which, damn it, made Nate wonder about the others who’d sat on that same couch. His mother and father. Their friends. Hell, Alexis’s mother had probably been there a time or two, if only to bitch at his father for something. He didn’t know much about the goings-on at Skywatch prior to the Solstice Massacre, but it would’ve been impossible to miss knowing that Gray-Smoke and his father had spent a good chunk of their time as royal advisers trying to argue each other into the ground.

Kind of like him and Alexis. Not that he believed in history repeating itself. Shit.

Nate dropped down to the sofa and let his head bang against the backrest. He tried not to look at the paintings again, because he already knew from experience that he’d stare at them way too long if he gave himself the luxury.

“I’ve never even seen a picture of them,” he said after a moment, damning himself because he knew he was losing the battle.

Carlos had the good grace not to do a victory dance, saying only, “Have you looked around?”

“Hell, no.” Nate glanced back at the open front door and the fading light of freedom beyond. He’d been toying with the idea of trying the ball court and figuring out the game Lucius kept going on about. Maybe that’d help the restlessness. And, hell, it couldn’t be much harder than basketball, right? The hoops were higher and set vertical rather than horizontal, but there was no dribbling to worry about on the pounded-dirt surface; it was mostly knees and elbows. He bet he could get the others into the idea, maybe use the game to burn off some frustrations.

He should get started now, he thought. But he stayed put.

Carlos rose. “Come on. I’ll help you find some snapshots.”

“No,” Nate said again, but it was more of a plea than a denial.

The winikin ignored him and headed for the second bedroom. Unable to do otherwise, Nate followed.

And stopped dead in the doorway of a frigging nursery.

He didn’t recognize the crib or toys, or the spinning mobile of stars and moons above the bed. He had no memory of the rain-forest scenes painted on the walls, or the birds of prey painted on the ceiling. But his gut confirmed what logic said had to be true: that this was where he’d slept for the first two years of his life.

It wasn’t just any nursery; it was his nursery.

Sucking a breath past a punch of pain, he cursed and turned to retreat. Except his feet didn’t move, planting him there in the doorway as Carlos crossed the room and opened a large closet, which was stacked with toys, clothes, and baby stuff on one side, neatly labeled boxes on the other.

“You snooped,” Nate said, the words coming out on a wheeze. “You cased the joint before I got here.”

The winikin didn’t turn back. “You’re a tough case, Blackhawk. I’ll take whatever leverage I can get.”

Which was pretty much what Carol Rose, his social worker, had said about him. She’d refused to take “fuck off and die” as an answer, and had ridden his ass until he straightened up and made something of himself. He was starting to get a feeling that Carol and Carlos had more in common than the similarities in their names. And that was simple fucking coincidence, he thought bitterly. Not fate.

“So what exactly do you want from me?” he finally asked.

“Nothing much.” Now Carlos did glance back, and his lips twitched. “I just want you to help save the world.”

It should’ve been a joke, probably had been meant as one, at least in part. But the winikin’s words shot straight to the heart of Nate’s frustration, his pounding sense that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, yet he couldn’t do what the others wanted him to. Letting his legs unlock, he slid down the wall just inside his nursery until he was sitting on the floor, his spine propped against the doorjamb. Looking up at the stand-in father figure he hadn’t met until seven months earlier, he said, “I don’t know how.”

Rancher-practical, Carlos said, “I can’t tell you how to feel or what to do. But I can tell you what’s been done before, and how those before you thought, felt, and acted.”

“Their history ended in 1984,” Nate said, though the words came out less like a protest and more like a plea. “It’s just not relevant today.”

“Then you will have wasted a few hours listening to an old man’s stories. Is that really any worse than going up to the Pueblo ruins and getting hammered on Rabbit’s stash of pulque?”

“Busted,” Nate said, and found a grin. Forcing himself to breathe, he waggled his fingers in a bring it on gesture. “Okay, winikin, you win. Introduce me to my family.”

Which was how, as the quick desert dusk fell and day turned to night, Nate found himself staring at a snapshot of a tall, handsome man with eyes like his, wearing the hawk medallion around his neck, with his arm curved protectively around the waist of a dark-haired woman who had laughing, loving eyes, and an infant cradled in her arms.