CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Skywatch
In her twenty-six
years on the earth plane, Patience had been a good girl and she’d
been bad. She’d been a student and a teacher, a child and a mother,
a sweetheart and a bitch. But she’d never considered herself a
sneak, a liar, and a thief. Until now. Her pulse thrummed as she
paused in the hallway leading to the royal suite. It was empty; had
been for the past five minutes. Strike and Leah were out at the
firing range, Jox was in the greenhouse, and, given that the magi
were largely scattered to their tasks, the coast was as clear as it
was going to get. It was now or never. Yet still she
hesitated.
“What are you waiting
for?” she murmured to herself. “If you’re looking for an
invitation, it’s not coming.” Nor was negotiation or any sort of
compromise—she’d been waiting for both of those things for nearly a
year now, and was finally ready to admit that it wasn’t going to
happen. She’d begged; she’d bargained; she’d worked her ass off in
an effort to earn Strike’s confidence, only to learn that it didn’t
get her as far as she needed to go.
“Be patient,” Brandt
said every time she brought it up. “Their safety has to be our
first priority.” Which would’ve been fine if she’d truly believed
that the boys’ safety was his first
priority. Over time, though, she’d come to realize that as much as
he loved her and their boys, he was bound to the writs first, with
his family coming in a distant second at best.
“Fuck that. I need to
see my boys.” Having exhausted all her bright ideas for getting
what she wanted within the writs, or even within the quasi- human
ethics Hannah had raised her with, she was going to have to take it
the other way. Sneak. Lie. Steal. Shit.
Taking a deep breath
and manning up, she crossed the last distance along the hall and
let herself into Strike and Leah’s quarters. Nausea was a low-
grade companion as she shut the door and slipped across the
entryway, ninja-style. For all that she’d imagined herself a
warrior as she’d trained endless hours in the dojos Hannah had
brought her to, she hadn’t truly understood what it meant to be a
warrior until that first fight against the Banol Kax. And now, she realized, she truly
understood the other half of her training: stealth. She strongly
doubted Hannah had meant for her to use it against her own king,
but once she was inside her doubts sloughed away, leaving her
determined to achieve the single goal she’d set herself: Find her
kids. Strike knew where they were, or at least how to contact them;
he was the only one, though. He hadn’t even told Jox, because the
royal winikin had a history with
Hannah. Leah might know, but she made Patience more nervous than
even the king did. The queen had a look
that went right through her. Patience wasn’t sure if that came from
cop work, magic, or something else, but she gave the queen a wide
berth. And now, as she crossed the royal couple’s sitting room and
beelined it for the dining room, where papers were strewn on a
dining table turned to office space, she knew she was running a
hell of a risk. If she were discovered . . . You won’t be, she told herself firmly. Just do it.
Working fast, she
rifled through the papers on the dining table, looking for an
address she didn’t recognize, a note in Hannah’s handwriting.
Something. Anything. But no. She pawed through Jade’s reports on
Kinich Ahau and a bunch of satellite photos of the Ecuadorian cloud
forests, but didn’t see anything she could connect with Hannah,
Woody, or the twins.
“Did you really
expect that he was going to leave it lying around?” she murmured.
“Maybe with a big arrow highlighting the phone
number?”
She’d thought it
through often enough, trying to figure out how to find what she
sought. She’d never come up with much of a plan beyond a flat-out
physical search, though. The Nightkeepers didn’t put anything
important on the Internet-connected computers. Iago’s people had
already shown themselves plenty capable of hacking, and a well-
made makol could command the thoughts
and memories of its human host, meaning that the Banol Kax could usurp their own hackers. Ergo, the
sensitive stuff was kept on non-networked machines. Patience was
assuming Strike and Leah had at least one of them in the suite. But
where was it?
A quick but thorough
search of the living space turned up a big, fat nothing. No
paperwork, no computer. She forced herself through the bedroom,
which boasted glass walls on three sides and was dominated by a
big, sybaritic bed that made her decidedly uncomfortable. But not
uncomfortable enough to give up the search. She pressed on, skimmed
through the closets and bathrooms, her nerves notching higher with
each passing minute.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Where could it be? They wouldn’t
have taken the safe machine with them to the gun range. It was in
the suite somewhere. Heart pounding, she checked the doorways
leading along a short hallway that didn’t seem to have much of a
purpose . . . until she got to a door about halfway down and hit
pay dirt.
As she opened the
door, gas torches flared automatically to life, lighting a
bathroom-size chamber lined with stone veneer and holding a
chac-mool altar. Adrenaline zinged at
the sight of a blond woman looking back at her; it took her a half
second to recognize herself, wild-eyed and nervous, reflected in a
highly polished obsidian disk hung behind the altar. The king’s
heavily carved ceremonial bowl sat on the altar, with an unfamiliar
knife beside it, weighing down a short stack of the heavy parchment
that was used for small blood ceremonies. The room was imbued with
magic, and a weighty sense of history. Under any other
circumstance, Patience would’ve backed her ass out of there and
pretended she knew nothing about Strike’s private place of worship.
And she would have done that now . . . if it hadn’t been for the
laptop case tucked in the corner of the ritual chamber. It was
hidden, she suspected, not so much from Leah but from
Jox.
Last chance, a little voice whispered inside
Patience. You can still take off. Nobody would
know you’d been here. Which was true . . . except that
she would know she’d wussed out. And
that wasn’t an option for her, either as a warrior or a
mother.
Her legs shook a
little as she knelt; her hands trembled as she fumbled open the
case and powered up the little mininotebook. There was no password
or security—why would there be? Strike wouldn’t have imagined
anyone would break into his quarters, into his freaking
shrine, and fire up his
machine.
“Come on, come on!”
she chanted under her breath as the stupid thing took precious
seconds to boot, longer to bring up the Windows screen, with its
reassuring blue background. The desktop was stripped down to the
absolute basics, just a couple of folders. She opened one labeled
KINGLY CRAPOLA, which was pure Strike.
It contained six
subdirectories, none of them obviously what she wanted. She opened
each of them and quickly scanned through, discarding anything with
last-update codes well before the middle of the prior year, when
Strike had ’ported Hannah, Woody, and the twins away from Skywatch.
Nothing. Nothing. Still nothing. Oh, gods . .
.
She struck gold on
subfolder number four; she couldn’t remember the name, knew only
that she was looking at a reference request and credit check on
Woodrow Byrd, who was applying to rent a four- room apartment in
Seattle. The first name was right. The date was right. And Strike,
with the help of the Nightkeepers’ tame PI, Carter, had made sure
the credit checks all came back fine without linking to anything
substantive. More, there was a second file in the subfolder: a
lease agreement, signed for a year in Woody’s name . . . but in
Hannah’s handwriting.
A sob caught in
Patience’s throat and the luminous screen blurred as tears filled
her eyes. But when emotion would’ve put her on her ass, her
warrior’s talent flared, clicking her over to logic and rationality
on one level of her consciousness. That part of her fumbled out her
family-only cell phone, punched in the address, and saved the
precious information. Then she closed out of the files, powered
down the mininotebook, and tucked it back into its case in the
corner. Leaving the room as she’d found it, save for being a few
degrees warmer, smokier, and lower on oxygen, thanks to the gaslit
torches and her own hyperventilation, she slipped out of the shrine
and shut the door, pausing to wipe the door handle, not because she
thought anyone would be likely to dust for prints, but because . .
. well, just because. Then, breathing shallowly through her mouth
and moving on cat’s-paw feet, she retraced her steps through the
royal suite.
Even as her body was
going through those motions, though, her heart and mind were
focused on her phone, and the treasure within it. An address. She
knew where her babies were—or at least where they’d been. Rather
than exultation or excitement, she felt numb with the emotional
hugeness of it, the prospect that she might soon be watching them
walk past as she stood nearby, invisible. Hungry for even the sight
of them. Would they sense her? Would they somehow know she was
there?
“Don’t get ahead of
yourself,” she warned herself. “One thing at a time.” And just
then, the one thing was getting out of there unseen. She’d been in
the suite far longer than she’d planned, but a quick pause and scan
at the main doors showed that the hallway was still empty, the
coast still clear.
Once she was out in
the hall with the carved door closed behind her, she exhaled a
long, deep breath and inhaled its return, the oxygen making her
suddenly light-headed. Her blood buzzed in her veins and she
could’ve sworn her feet weren’t touching the ground anymore, though
it was joy rather than magic making her feel that way. Laughter
bubbled in her chest as she spun a full circle, her hands spread
away from her body and her hair flaring out.
“Bullshit,” the
king’s deep voice said, faint with distance. “I had you beat until
the last set of targets. And you cheated.”
Patience froze, her
smile turning to an “O” of horror.
“Gods, could you be
any more of a sore loser?” Leah’s voice was light and teasing as
the two of them continued their long-standing debate over who
rocked the gun range. “I took out one more target with half a clip
fewer jade-tips. And you shot one of the good guys; that’s an
automatic forfeit.”
“I still say she
looks like a shifty bitch,” he said of one of the new false-alarm
targets Michael had installed in an effort to train the warriors to
avoid collateral damage.
“She’s eighty if
she’s a day, and she’s using a walker.”
“Not anymore she’s
not,” Strike said with dry satisfaction. “Bitch is
dead.”
Leah’s laughter
burbled, but Patience felt only dread at the happy sound.
Oh, shit. What was she going to do? The
hallway dead-ended at the royal suite; the only other doorway along
it led to the royal winikin’s rooms.
Both of the suites had exterior doors, but if she could hear the
royal couple’s footsteps, they’d be able to hear a door
shutting—the heavy panels weren’t quiet, and it’d be far worse to
be caught trying to escape versus bluffing it through. Going
invisible wasn’t an option because the other magi could see right
through the illusion; the magic worked only on non-Nightkeepers. So
it was bluff time.
You can do this, she told herself. You’ve prepared for this. She’d run through the
scenario in her head a hundred times, thought of a dozen excuses
for why she was in the royal wing univited. But as Strike and Leah
rounded the corner and caught sight of her, their steps hesitating
nearly in unison, her mind went completely and utterly
blank.
“I’m—” Sorry, she stopped herself from saying, because
that hadn’t been in any of the scripts. A hot flush climbed her
cheeks and flop sweat spiked its way down her spine.
“Uh—”
“Oh, good, there you
are,” a new voice said from behind the royal couple. Patience
boggled as Brandt rounded the corner, moving full steam ahead and
looking purposeful. He nodded to her. “I was coming to tell you
they weren’t still out at the gun range, but I see you found
them.”
Leah sent Patience a
sharp glance; Patience tried to replace the look of panic with one
of purpose. “Well, technically I’d say they found me.” She hoped to
hell they couldn’t see her hands shaking.
Strike seemed to buy
it. He refocused on Brandt. “You need us for
something?”
“It’s just an idea
I’ve been kicking around. Pretty preliminary stuff, but I wanted to
get your take on it.” He nodded toward the royal suite. “Do you
have a few minutes now?”
The king nodded.
“Sure thing.”
The three of them
moved past Patience, but then Brandt paused very near her, letting
the others get ahead. As she stared up at him, he looked almost
like a stranger, all hard eyed and angry . . . until he leaned in
and brushed a kiss across her cheek and whispered, “One of these
days you’ll start believing we’re on the same side.”
Then he straightened
and walked away, motions stiff and angry. But instead of dismay at
his anger, or the irritation she’d so often turned to recently, she
felt warmth unfurl in her chest. And as she headed back toward
their apartment with her phone clutched to her chest in an
unconscious hug, she felt, for the first time in a long, long time,
that maybe she wasn’t so far away from putting her family back
together, after all.
Texas
Lucius and Jade made
a quick stop at a drive- through for calories, after which she
dozed off in the passenger seat, recovering, Lucius assumed, from
the scribe’s magic. When they’d left the sublet, he’d been strung
tight and jonesing for the sex her kiss had promised, but it was
probably better this way. He’d been raw from the scene in Anna’s
office and the knowledge that he was leaving his old life behind
once and for all, making him more vulnerable to her than he’d
wanted. He’d been shaken by the makeout session, loose kneed and
knocked off-kilter by the intensity of his own response and the
sudden, almost overwhelming urge to sweep her up, lose himself in
her, promise her things he had no intention of
promising.
That was the old
Lucius, the one who’d charged headlong into flawed relationships,
only to pancake hard. That wasn’t him. Not anymore. Still, though,
the need for sex rode his blood. He would’ve liked to think it was
magic, that he was close to breaking through whatever barrier kept
him locked on the earth plane, but he knew it wasn’t the magic. It
was Jade.
He kept glancing over
at her as he drove. She was partway curled on her side facing him,
with one hand under her cheek, the other fisted loosely in her lap.
Her forearm marks were a dark contrast to her pale skin; he wanted
to kiss her there, wanted to kiss her all over, until she felt
desired. Cherished.
Let her sleep, he told himself. There’s time yet.
But how much time?
They were down to less than four days to the solstice. If the
Banol Kax managed to put Akhenaton into
the sun god’s place, there was no telling what would happen. Would
the pharaoh come after his ancient enemies once again? For all they
knew, Skywatch would be a damned crater by the twenty-second,
unless he found a way to get his ass back in the library to pull
out the info they so badly needed. But, short of offering himself
up for a soul sacrifice and hoping to hell his body would become
the receptacle for a true Prophet, he didn’t know what he could do
to help. More, he and Jade were bringing back news of Anna’s
defection, which was going to have ripples beyond the cow Strike
was going to have. But at the same time, Lucius couldn’t help
wondering whether Anna might not have a point. The Nightkeepers
needed a super-Prophet but didn’t have one. They needed Godkeepers,
a seer, the library . . . hell, more manpower. None of those things
seemed imminent. Some didn’t even seem possible.
“The magic has to be
the answer, for my part of things, at least,” he said, thinking
aloud as the miles unfolded beneath the Jeep’s off- road treads.
“I’m human, so therefore shouldn’t have magic, but Cizin was
attracted to me. There had to have been nastier dudes than me on
campus, and they would’ve been an easier sell on the ajaw-makol possession. So why me?” It was tempting
to think that there was some reason the demon had been able to
reach through the barrier and influence him the way it had.
Although the Nightkeepers guarded their bloodlines and had strict
mores against producing half-bloods, the fact that those mores even
existed suggested there had been some strays over the years. So he
supposed it was possible he could have a Nightkeeper descendant way
back . . . but that didn’t play, given that his only real
connection to Nightkeeper magic had been through the slave mark.
Glancing at his forearm, he suppressed a shudder at the thought
that he could just as easily be part Xibalban. Regardless, the
library spell was Nightkeeper magic, suggesting that he could
access either light or dark magic. “But how the hell am I supposed
to do that?”
A mildly irritated
beep-beep from his left warned him that
he’d better concentrate on driving; he’d gotten so caught up in his
thought process that he’d wandered into the fast lane. A pickup
truck zoomed past going a solid ninety, and pulled away, leaving
him alone to wander the lanes. Startled from his mull-and-ponder,
Lucius realized that he’d gotten farther than he’d thought; the
city and suburbs were gone, leaving him on a long, straight stretch
of highway with not much to see in all directions. It was also
later than he’d realized; the orange sun was dying behind
scrub-covered, rolling hill silhouettes. A few more miles down the
road, when he passed a small sign for lodging, he pulled off the
highway and followed three more arrowed signs that claimed to be
leading him to the Weeping Willow Inn. It was farther off the
highway than he really wanted to be, but just as he was getting
ready to turn back, he saw the turnoff leading to the
inn.
The place had
probably been a working ranch in the past; the driveway wound
through the middle of sparsely covered grassland. Lucius didn’t see
any livestock, though, and the lane was marked off with neat
split-rail fencing rather than the more common barbed wire or
electric used for working rangeland. That and the relative newness
of the signage kept him from turning around, thinking the place
would probably be way too sketchy for an overnight. Then he topped
a low hill, got a look at the Weeping Willow Inn, and let the Jeep
roll to a stop, not because the inn was sketchy at all, but because
it wasn’t.
Nestled in a small,
scrub- furred valley, a half dozen bunkhouselike cottages were
scattered behind a main ranch house that was fronted by a wide,
welcoming porch. In the fading light, he saw that all of the
buildings were done in earth-toned clapboards and rough-cut wood,
and dressed up with fanciful touches of gingerbread molding that
gave the buildings a distinctively feminine air. Window boxes and
whiskey barrels bloomed with flowers, and stones marked winding
paths from each cottage to the main house, which a discreet sign
identified as both the office and the kitchen. Two vehicles sat in
a fenced-off parking area: a dusty SUV with a cargo clamshell
strapped to its roof, and a pickup with WEEPING WILLOW INN painted
on the side. So there’s probably room for
us, he thought wryly. More, he liked the cottage idea. He’d
dealt with the high-rise hotel the night before, but even leaving
the balcony door open to its screen hadn’t totally taken away his
sense of being boxed in. He’d sleep better in a place like
this.
In fact, the inn was
pretty much perfect . . . if he’d been planning a honeymoon. It was
way more intimate than he’d been expecting, though. The generic
hotel room they’d stayed in the prior night had been a way station.
This was more like a spot for lovers. The man he’d been before
would’ve rocked a place like this, buying into the kitsch in the
hopes that the ambience would make up for his own shortcomings. The
man he’d grown into since leaving UT told himself to do a
one-eighty and find a Motel 6. A woman couldn’t possibly
misinterpret a Motel 6.
At the sound of a
soft sigh, he looked over at Jade. She’d tucked her other hand
beneath her cheek and was trying to snuggle into the hard foam
seat, her neck crooking in a position that had to be getting
uncomfortable. She’s tired, he told
himself. Not to mention that he was tired too, or at least sick of
driving. He wanted some downtime, some space to reset his brain.
And the pretty little cottages made him think of
Skywatch.
“Fine. The Weeping
Willow Inn it is.” He eased his foot off the brake and let the Jeep
coast down the hill toward the parking area. As he did so, he was
aware of a low-grade churning of nerves, one warning him that he
was making a mistake. He ignored it, though. He had enough troubles
already; he didn’t need to borrow more.