She was the patient. Damn it, she hated being the patient. Worse, beside the first quick surge of irritation was another emotion, a hollow, aching sense of loss that made her want to curl into a ball and weep.

She racked her brain, trying to find the source, but found only the sadness.

‘‘What happened?’’ She pushed the words through a parched-dry throat, and they came out slurred, like she had a serious hit of happy pills in her system, blocking some monster pain. Remembering the feeling from the year before, when she’d taken a bullet in the leg during a bust gone wrong, she said, ‘‘Did I get shot again?’’

She heard motion nearby, and had the sense of a man leaning over her. She wasn’t sure why her eyes hadn’t come back online yet, but thanks to the drugs she wasn’t too worried about it. Besides, his presence was warm and reassuring, though he didn’t touch her.

‘‘What is the last thing you remember?’’ His voice sent a skitter of warmth through her, a little zip of electricity that had her heart bumping in her chest.

‘‘I don’t know.’’ Memory was a thick cloud of gray-green mist. ‘‘Not much.’’ Had she hit her head? Did she have amnesia? The idea brought a jolt of fear. ‘‘Why can’t I see?’’

‘‘Give it a minute.’’ He paused. ‘‘Can you tell me your name, and your parents’ names?’’

‘‘I’m Leah Ann Daniels,’’ she said, relieved when the information came quickly. ‘‘My parents are Timothy and Ann Daniels, and they live in Boca. I’ve got a place outside town, and I drive a ’sixty-seven Mustang named Peggy Sue. My brother—’’

She broke off, sucking in a breath as a big chunk of it clicked into place. Matty was dead, she remembered with a slice of grief so fresh it was like it’d just happened. Ever since then, she’d been trying to nail Zipacna and his 2012ers for the Calendar Killings.

‘‘We were meeting a snitch,’’ she said, remembering Nick’s unhesitating support and wondering why that brought another wash of grief. ‘‘Itchy. He showed up and . . .’’ She frowned, bumping up against that grayness again. ‘‘I don’t remember anything after that.’’

She let the silence continue for a minute, sure the doctor—because that was what he had to be, right?— would either fill in the gaps or ask her another question. But he did neither.

‘‘Hello?’’ she tried, wondering if the silence meant she was missing more than a few hours. ‘‘What day is it, anyway?’’

‘‘Tuesday,’’ a female voice answered. ‘‘Welcome back, Detective.’’

Leah frowned. ‘‘Where’s the doctor?’’

‘‘I’m Dr. Black.’’

‘‘What about the guy who was just in here?’’

The newcomer ignored the question, instead taking Leah’s pulse, then running her through the exact same ‘‘who are you and who are your parents’’ questions she’d just answered for the other guy.

Leah’s banged-up brain spun. Who the hell had she just been talking to? The easy answer was that he’d been one of Zipacna’s boys, sent to see what she remembered. Which meant there’d been something for her to remember, damn it. Problem was, she couldn’t convince herself the voice had belonged to a 2012er. First off, they didn’t tend to blend. Someone would’ve noticed. Second off, though she told herself she damn well knew better than to judge on looks—or sound—it didn’t feel right. The owner of that voice wasn’t a member of Zipacna’s cult; he was . . .

Nothing, she realized, coming up against that gray wall again. He was nothing to her. Probably just a dream, or a fragment of TV dialogue that she’d turned into something more.

Yet the image of piercing blue eyes stayed with her, even though she hadn’t seen his face.

When the doctor finished her exam, she said, ‘‘You’re looking good, considering.’’

‘‘Considering what?’’ Concentrating, Leah managed to open her eyes, wincing at the glare and the rasp of her eyelids. Her eyeballs felt like they’d been scorched, like all the tears had been burned away, and once the light leveled off, the dull pain at the back of her head increased to a steadily drumming headache. Her tongue was sore, too, and her body ached all over, though in a not entirely unpleasant way, like she’d had really good sex or something.

The doctor turned out to be a forty-something motherly type wearing round-rimmed glasses and happy-face scrubs that made Leah wonder if she’d gotten turfed to pediatrics. The room looked vaguely familiar, as did the view of Biscayne Bay. ‘‘I’m in Mercy?’’

The doctor nodded as she scribbled something in Leah’s chart. ‘‘Yep. Miami’s finest.’’

‘‘How long am I going to be here?’’

‘‘Not long. I’ll run a few tests, make sure everything still checks out okay. You were unconscious for quite a while, but sometimes the body knows best. You may have needed to shut it off for a while. Considering what you went through, you’re in very good shape.’’

That was the second time the doctor had given her the ‘‘considering’’ line, but since she’d avoided the question the first time Leah didn’t bother trying again. ‘‘My head hurts. And if I’m doing so well, what’s with the drugs?’’

‘‘We haven’t given you anything.’’ Concerned, she put down the clipboard and crossed to Leah so she could do the penlight-in-eyes, follow-my-finger routine. ‘‘Is your vision blurry?’’

‘‘Getting clearer by the second, now that I’ve got my eyes open,’’ Leah said quickly, knowing she was on the verge of adding an overnight to her hospital sentence.

The doc didn’t look convinced. ‘‘Do you have someone who can stay with you for the next forty-eight hours or so?’’

Which begged the question of where the ‘‘utterly single with no prospects in sight’’ check mark went on the admissions form—and who’d filled it in for her.

Nick, probably, she thought. Then she remembered that he’d been with her for the gone-wrong meeting with Itchy. ‘‘How’s my partner? Nick Ramon. Did he bring me in?’’

The doctor headed for the door. ‘‘The waiting room is practically overflowing with cops. Captain Mendez, in particular, would like to speak with you.’’

Another evasion, Leah realized, a chill settling in her gut. ‘‘Bring her on.’’

Connie would tell it like it was.

Dr. Black pushed through the door. Moments later, Connie swung through, her heels tapping on the polished floor, her brown eyes fixed on Leah. She was wearing her usual conservative power suit—this one a member of the olive green family—buttoned tight across her thick fifty-something frame, but her serene I’m in charge expression showed cracks of concern.

She stopped beside the bed and stared down. The sight of her normally stoic boss with her mouth working and nothing coming out was enough to send a chill through Leah. It was the glint of tears in Connie’s eyes, though, that sealed it.

‘‘Nick’s dead, isn’t he.’’ It wasn’t even a question. Leah already knew. It explained the doctor’s reticence and the look in Connie’s eyes.

It also explained why, from the moment she’d woken up all the way from her dream, she’d felt as though her heart were breaking.

Strike dumped the borrowed lab coat on an empty gurney, slipped out of Mercy Hospital, and headed down the block to the Vizcaya Gardens, where Jox and Red-Boar were waiting for him. They had helped him hide Leah’s unconscious body near where her partner had died—an image Red-Boar had pulled from her mind. Once she was in place, he’d made an anonymous 911 call and stood watch until the cops arrived, and then he’d shadowed them to the hospital in order to make sure she woke up okay.

Red-Boar had bitched about the time suck, but Strike had been adamant. Bad enough he’d had to wipe her memories, had to leave her. He sure as hell wasn’t taking off without making sure she was okay. He’d also slapped a protection spell on her when Red-Boar and Jox weren’t looking. The threadlike connection running through the barrier would alert him if she thought she was in mortal danger. In theory, anyway. In practice, who the hell knew?

They’d lost too much of the knowledge and magic their ancestors had once commanded.

Fury and frustration bubbled up in Strike as he walked beneath the screaming Florida sun. He wanted to put his fist through something, wanted to drive too fast, wanted to press a willing woman—okay, Leah—up against the wall and pound himself into her until he forgot that he was a king without a people, a protector without much power, a savior who didn’t have the foggiest notion how to go about doing what thirteen hundred generations of his forebears had intended for him to do. The writs said that a Nightkeeper answered to the gods first, and then to his people, but what if he had no people? What if he was on his own?

‘‘Then he’s just a guy who can do a few parlor tricks, and the world is pretty much fucked four and a half years from now,’’ he said aloud, the words rasping in his throat.

He needed more power, needed more people, needed . . .

Help. He needed help.

You had help, a voice whispered inside. You let her go.

‘‘She’s better off without me,’’ he said, and meant it.

Strike paid his admission fee to Vizcaya, which was some sort of mansion-turned-tourist attraction. He did a thanks-but-no-thanks on the guided tour and headed straight through the main house, which was huge and rococo, a sort of ode to Italian Renaissance built in the early nineteen hundreds by some industrialist or another. It wasn’t his thing, but Jox had chosen the meeting place, and it hadn’t seemed worth arguing.

The gardens beside the mansion were pretty, green and hot, and the sound of fountain-borne water mingled with that of jetliners entering their landing pattern on the way to the airport. Strike followed the brochure map out to the meeting spot. Jox and Red-Boar were waiting for him in something called the Grotto, which proved to be a cavelike structure made of coral and carved stone that’d probably sounded really good when the architect first pitched it, but as far as Strike was concerned just looked lumpy and weird. Statues of the sea god Neptune flanked either side of the arched doorway, and a low bench ran around the interior. The coral walls absorbed the sounds made by the few other tourists meandering around the formal gardens, and that, combined with the rush of a large fountain cascading over and in front of the Grotto, gave the illusion of privacy for their council of war.

Jox stood by the entrance, pensive. Red-Boar sat cross-legged on the floor, doing his Yoda impression of eyes-closed, hands-folded-in-lap meditation.

‘‘It’s done,’’ Strike said.

‘‘Good.’’ Jox waved him into the small space, then sat near the door, so he could see both in and out. Guarding them, like generations of winikin had guarded their Nightkeepers.

Seeing that, Strike felt a layer of strangeness settle around them. How long had they talked about what-if? What if the barrier came back to life before the end-time? What if the Banol Kax found a way to contact evil on earth and set out to fulfill the final prophecy?

They’d never come up with good answers before. Why should it be any different now that what-if had become, Oh, shit?

‘‘She doesn’t remember you?’’ Red-Boar asked.

‘‘You did a good job,’’ Strike answered, hating that it had been necessary. Why had she been in his dreams if she wasn’t going to be in his life? Only half joking, he said, ‘‘You want to wipe my mind now, and we can pretend none of it happened?’’

‘‘Mind-wipe doesn’t work on Nightkeepers.’’

‘‘Right. I knew that.’’ Strike sighed and dropped onto the bench. ‘‘What now?’’

Jox gestured to the garden. ‘‘Did you look around on the way in?’’

Strike shrugged. ‘‘Yeah. Too fussy for my taste, and the staff salary’s got to be a killer, but whatever works for you, I guess.’’

‘‘It’s gorgeous,’’ Jox said, more ignoring him than disagreeing.

Strike said, ‘‘And this is relevant why?’’

But he stood and joined the winikin in the Grotto doorway, so they stood shoulder-to-shoulder looking out at the gardens and the fussy mansion beyond, with its pale stone, ornate ironwork, and yellow and blue-striped awnings. Figures moved on the east terrace, setting out chairs and bunting for some sort of event later in the day.

‘‘What do you see?’’ Jox said quietly.

The quick answer died on Strike’s tongue. After a moment, he said, ‘‘Shit. People. Mankind. The things we’ve built.’’

It shamed him, which had no doubt been Jox’s intention. He’d been so caught up in being pissed off about Leah, the barrier reopening, and the ajaw-makol getting away, so worried about the visions and what they might mean, so conflicted about the return of the magic and finally being able to jack in . . . that he’d lost track of what the hell this was all about.

It was about saving the world.

‘‘There’s just me and Red-Boar left,’’ Strike said, his heart heavy with the knowledge that they’d failed before they’d even begun. ‘‘Anna’s gone, and all of the others are dead.’’

There was a long moment of silence. Then Jox said, ‘‘That’s not exactly true.’’

The world went very, very still.

Strike’s breath left him in a long, slow hiss. ‘‘Meaning what?’’

Red-Boar’s head came up. His eyes fixed on Jox.

‘‘There are others out there, hidden. Raised in secret.’’ The winikin said it fast, not looking at Strike or Red-Boar.

Strike wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react, wasn’t sure how he felt, wasn’t sure he’d even heard it correctly. Somehow the words had gotten stuck between his ears and his brain, jamming him up, making his brain buzz.

Other Nightkeepers. Raised in secret. Gods.

After a lifetime of thinking he was the only male full-blood of his generation, the concept just didn’t compute.

Red-Boar rose, his face gone gray. ‘‘Winikin, what have you done?’’

‘‘My duty. Always my duty.’’ That was said with a hint of self-directed anger, as Jox pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and offered it to Strike. ‘‘I protected the bloodlines from their enemies.’’ The look he shot at Red-Boar suggested he wasn’t just talking about the underworld, either, but Strike let that pass as he took the folded paper and opened it with fingers that trembled faintly.

It was a computer printout of names. Not just any names, though. The words Owl and Iguana leaped out at him, seeming to burn his eyeballs.

A bolt of something that might’ve been excitement, might’ve been dread, hit him square in the midsection and fired through his veins. Behind him, Red-Boar dropped down to one of the benches as though his legs had given out.

‘‘Jesus,’’ Strike said. He looked at Jox. ‘‘How?’’

‘‘That night . . .’’ The winikin swallowed hard before continuing, as though he, too, still saw the bloody images of the massacre in his sleep. ‘‘The boluntiku smelled the magic. Any connection to the barrier was a way for them to track the children. But there were a few they couldn’t chase down, a few who got away.’’

‘‘The babies,’’ Red-Boar rasped. ‘‘They didn’t have their bloodline marks yet. The monsters couldn’t see them.’’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘‘Gods. How did I not know?’’

‘‘The babies,’’ Strike repeated, thinking of the crèche in its soundproof globe. Excitement kindled. ‘‘You’re fucking kidding me.’’ They’d be what—twenty-five, twenty-six now?

And they’d be full-bloods. Nightkeepers. Magi.

The world took a long, lazy spin around him. This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be real. Could it?

‘‘How many?’’ he whispered, almost afraid to ask, because if they were going to pull this off he was going to need a whole fucking army. The sheet of paper suddenly seemed heavy, like it carried the weight of the world. ‘‘How many survived?’’

‘‘Ten, along with their winikin.’’ Jox paused. ‘‘With you two and Rabbit or Anna, that makes thirteen. A powerful number.’’

Strike drew his finger down the list, pausing where two names sat beside the name of a single winikin. ‘‘Siblings?’’

‘‘Twins,’’ Jox said, and there was a wealth of meaning in the single word. The Hero Twins were the saviors in countless Mayan legends, reflecting the fact that twins were a powerful force in Nightkeeper magic. Siblings could boost each other’s magic through the bloodline connection, mates through the emotional link. The twin link was ten times stronger than either.

‘‘Gods.’’ Strike looked at Jox—the man who’d saved him, the man who’d raised him. ‘‘They don’t know who they are? They don’t know the magic?’’

‘‘They can learn,’’ Jox said with quiet authority. ‘‘Each of them was raised by a winikin. They know the stories by heart. They can learn the rest.’’

In the silence that followed, the winikin’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from his back pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and frowned. ‘‘Police?’’

Everything inside Strike went on red alert in an instant, and he nearly lunged across and grabbed the phone before he stopped himself. The protection spell hadn’t given him the slightest quiver, and besides, Leah and Jox hadn’t swapped cell numbers. There was no reason she or anyone else at the MDPD would be calling.

‘‘Hello?’’ Jox answered. ‘‘Yes, this is he.’’ He listened, stiffened, and his face went blank, then flushed a dull red. After a moment, he said, ‘‘His father is part owner in the business.’’

Strike winced. Oh, hell. What’d Rabbit done this time?

The conversation went on for a few minutes, with Jox giving nothing but an occasional, ‘‘Yes, of course,’’ and, ‘‘Uh-huh,’’ his voice going thicker each time, his complexion going paler. Finally, he said, ‘‘Yes, please put him on.’’

‘‘What’d he do?’’ Strike hissed.

The winikin held up a wait a minute finger and said, ‘‘Rabbit? It’s Jox. Are you okay?’’ He listened for a moment, and Strike caught the rise and fall of the teen’s voice, sounding younger than usual, and atypically high, like he was on the verge of losing it.

Strike’s irritation morphed to worry. Had the kid actually hurt himself this time? Worse, had he hurt someone else?

‘‘It’s okay, son. It’s okay. We’ll get through this, I promise. I need you to listen to me. Rabbit, are you listening? Good. It was an accident. There were candles and alcohol, and that’s all the cops need to know.’’

‘‘Oh, shit,’’ Strike said, putting two and two together and getting zero.

‘‘I’ll kill him.’’ Red-Boar held out his hand. ‘‘Let me talk to him.’’

Jox turned his back. ‘‘I’ll take care of everything. I’ll deal with it, I promise. Do you still have your ID and the AmEx I gave you for emergencies?"

‘‘Winikin.’’ Red-Boar’s voice turned deadly. ‘‘Give. Me. The. Phone.’’

‘‘Good,’’ Jox said, ignoring him. ‘‘I want you to get your ass to Logan Airport and wait for me to call you with a destination. If the cops give you any grief, tell them it’s a family emergency and have them call me. Got it?’’

When Red-Boar moved, looking as though he were going to deck Jox and take the phone, Strike stepped between them. ‘‘Don’t,’’ he said quietly. ‘‘He’s more than earned our trust.’’

‘‘Speak for yourself.’’ But Red-Boar stalked away, slammed the heels of his palms against the coral-trimmed doorway, and leaned out, breathing deeply.

‘‘Bye, kid,’’ Jox said, then added, ‘‘And hey— congratulations, sort of. Next time wait for an escort, though, okay?’’

‘‘Oh, shit,’’ Strike said as Jox hung up the phone.

‘‘Yep,’’ Jox said grimly, losing the everything’s okay facade he’d pulled together for the teen’s sake. ‘‘You guessed it. The good news is that Rabbit’s a pyrokine.’’ He left it hanging, but there was no need to say it aloud.

The bad news is that Rabbit’s a pyrokine.

And his magic was shit-strong, or the barrier wouldn’t have reached out to him, giving him his talent without the proper ceremonies. Not only that, he was a half-blood, which automatically made his talents volatile, and not necessarily subject to the same rules as Nightkeeper magic.

Red-Boar turned back. ‘‘Did he hurt anyone else?’’

‘‘No.’’ Jox shook his head. ‘‘Thank the gods.’’

‘‘What about—’’ Strike broke off, afraid to ask.

The winikin shook his head. ‘‘It’s all gone. The cops are willing to call it an accident, but we’ll have to take a flier on the insurance. No way they’re paying out on a party gone wrong.’’

Strike tried to take it in, but on some level he was numb to the tragedy. He’d found his dream woman, only to learn that she wasn’t his at all. The barrier was open and there was an ajaw-makol on the loose. And there were more Nightkeepers. Ten of them, plus their winikin.

After that, losing their business, home, and possessions didn’t seem all that major. Then again, the garden center hadn’t been his dream. It’d been Jox’s.

‘‘Hey. I’m sorry.’’ Strike reached out to the winikin, then hesitated. They were close, but not particularly touchy-feely. ‘‘I’m really freaking sorry.’’

Jox backed away, holding up a hand. ‘‘Don’t.’’ There was something broken in his voice. ‘‘Just don’t, okay? Give me a minute.’’ He sat. Blew out a breath. ‘‘It’s stupid, really. We would’ve had to leave anyway, right? That part of our lives is over.’’

Strike sat beside him. ‘‘Doesn’t make it any easier.’’

‘‘Sacrifice.’’ Jox scrubbed his hands over his face. ‘‘It’s all about sacrifice.’’

‘‘We’ll have to find someplace to train the newbies,’’ Red-Boar said from the doorway, seemingly ignoring the fact that his kid was an untrained pyro who had torched Jox’s pride and joy. ‘‘Maybe a farmhouse. Something near some good ley lines, with no close neighbors. Maybe the Midwest. Shit.’’ He scowled. ‘‘The robes and bowls are probably trash. Altar might be salvageable if the stone didn’t crack in the heat. Spellbooks are gone. So what the fuck am I supposed to use to teach the magic to these hypothetical magi?

‘‘Having them meet us at the training compound would be a good start,’’ Jox said quietly.

Something in his voice had Strike sitting up. ‘‘The training center’s long gone.’’ When the winikin said nothing, Strike got a weird shimmy in his gut. ‘‘Isn’t it?’’

The morning after the massacre, Jox had left him and Anna down in the bunkerlike safe room beneath the archives while he’d collected the bodies and set the Great Hall ablaze as a massive funeral pyre. Then the winikin had gathered the robes and a few sacred objects, and all the spellbooks he could fit in the Jeep he was taking. Finally, he’d invoked the training compound’s self-destruct spell. Known only to a select few Nightkeepers and the royal winikin, the spell was intended to keep the magic away from human eyes. It—as Jox had explained it, anyway—basically shoved the compound into the barrier, wiping it from the earth forever.

It was the last Nightkeeper magic done before the barrier shut down. Or so Strike had always believed. Now, when the winikin stayed silent and Red-Boar glared, Strike said, ‘‘Jox?’’

‘‘The training center is still there,’’ the winikin admitted. ‘‘It’s just . . . hidden.’’

Red-Boar’s voice shook when he said, ‘‘You used a curtain spell?’’

Jox nodded. ‘‘King Scarred-Jaguar preset a disguise spell for me before he left, sort of a level below the self-destruct. Maybe he knew what was going to happen; I don’t know.’’ He paused, glancing at Strike. ‘‘You can reverse the spell. The Great Hall is gone, but the rest of the training center stands intact . . . including the archives.’’

Oh, gods in heaven. ‘‘The archives,’’ Strike repeated, his brain buzzing with shock, with possibilities. Though most of the spellbooks had been lost to the missionaries’ fires, a handful had survived. That collected wisdom, along with generations of written commentaries from various spell casters and magi, had been located in the three-room archive of the Nightkeepers’ training compound.

Apparently, it still was.

‘‘Christ.’’ Strike was having a hard time processing this. He was being offered the ultimate knowledge base, but with a serious caveat—to get it, he’d have to go back to the place that still haunted him.

It’d taken years before he could close his eyes and not see the boluntiku, not relive the deaths of his friends and their winikin. The nightmares were few and far between these days, but they were hard and dark and crippling when they came.

He looked over at Jox. ‘‘What does it . . . look like?’’ Last he’d seen it, the place had been in shambles, littered with torn clothing and the debris of violence. Six-clawed marks had marred the buildings, and the wrecked cars had been awash with blood.

‘‘Probably not so good.’’ Jox lifted a shoulder. ‘‘The curtain spell protects it from sight, but not from the elements. It’s been twenty-four years. Who knows what we’ll find when we get there?’’

Great, Strike thought. But Jox was right—they had to go. There was no turning down the lure of the archives . . . and Rabbit had fucking burned down the garden center. Hating the necessity, he nodded. ‘‘New Mexico it is.’’

They were silent a moment, each caught in memory. Finally, Strike said, ‘‘What I don’t get is why you didn’t tell us about the others sooner. Why not let us all grow up together?’’

‘‘I couldn’t risk it,’’ the winikin replied. ‘‘The younger ones never went through their first binding ceremonies, so the barrier didn’t recognize them at all. You and Anna had your first marks, though, and Red-Boar was fully bound.’’

‘‘So if the boluntiku came through the barrier again, they’d come straight for us, and once they found us, they’d be likely to kill the youngsters, too.’’ Strike nodded, his gut knotting at the memories. ‘‘But after a few years, once you knew it was safe, you could’ve said something.’’

‘‘I couldn’t risk it,’’ the winikin said in his end of discussion voice, warning Strike that it wasn’t worth pressing. Not now, anyway.

Besides, he could make an educated guess from the way Jox and Red-Boar were careful not to look at each other. There’s something there, Strike thought, and he wondered, not for the first time, exactly what had happened between the two men back when Red-Boar had disappeared into the rain forest near the sacred tunnels, and returned several years later with his son in tow.

And why the winikin had felt it necessary to protect the young survivors from the sole remaining full-fledged mage.

Twelve hours later, Strike, Jox, Red-Boar, and Rabbit stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the New Mexico badlands, staring at an empty box canyon off the Chaco River cut-through.

Some thirty miles away over rough terrain lay the intricate, soaring ruins of the six-hundred-room Pueblo Bonito, which the early Puebloans—with a little help from traveling Nightkeepers up from the Yucatán—had built as a ceremonial home for the gods around A.D. 1000. The larger-than-life stone-and-mortar ruins formed the center of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, which saw its share of tourist traffic. Farther north, the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness offered dinosaur skeletons and funky ’shroom-shaped rock formations.

Here, though, a stiff five-mile drive off a gravel track that optimistically called itself Route 57, there was nothing but canyon walls of sandstone, flatlands dotted with chamisa and saltbush, and the occasional rock formation.

The box canyon was maybe a half mile across, widening out past the mouth to form a flattened arrow shape of open land that dead-ended in a sheer rock face about a mile away. High stacks of cumulus clouds dotted the blue sky, and large bird shadows passed now and then, one of the few signs that they weren’t completely alone.

Strike squinted into the sharp-edged sunlight and thought he could just make out the shadows of pueblo ruins high up on the rock face of the box canyon’s back wall. The memory of climbing up to those ruins with a group of kids his own age was the only thing that clicked. Nothing else seemed familiar.

‘‘You sure this is the right place?’’ Red-Boar asked suddenly.

It was a relief to hear him speak after so many hours of silence. As far as Strike was concerned, it was also a relief to know he wasn’t the only one with doubts. He’d expected to feel something when he got here. He’d expected to remember more, but the canyon was just a canyon.

‘‘This is the place,’’ Jox said with quiet assurance. He stepped back, gesturing for Rabbit to join him. ‘‘Let’s let these two work.’’

‘‘Hey,’’ the teen protested. ‘‘I want to—’’

"Not now," Red-Boar said sharply. ‘‘Go with the winikin."

The kid shot his father a look, and Strike could’ve sworn that the air crinkled with heat for a second. Then Rabbit slouched over to join Jox, temper etched in every fiber of his sweaty-assed, hoodie-wearing self.

Strike glared at the older Nightkeeper. ‘‘Do you think we should—’’

‘‘Not now.’’ Red-Boar did the interrupting thing again, then palmed the knife from his belt. It was a Buck knife knockoff they’d bought from a roadside stand, not a purified ceremonial dagger, and they wore combat black-on -black instead of the ceremonial robes, but they’d tied fabric strips around their upper arms—black for Red-Boar, royal crimson for Strike—as a nod to the regalia they’d lost in the fire.

With a smooth motion, the older man flipped open the knife and drew it across his right palm, signifying that his would be the lead power for this spell. He tossed the knife to Strike, who caught it on the fly and scored his left palm for the subordinate role.

The moment the first drop of blood hit the sand, the air hammered with an invisible detonation. The ground trembled, then stilled, but the world around them shimmered gold.

‘‘Pasaj och,’’ the men said in unison, jacking in.

Strike could feel the power within, could feel it straining against the barrier. He saw a yellow thread but didn’t dare grab on, because he’d promised Jox he wouldn’t ’port again until he’d done some controlled practicing. Catching a flash of motion, he turned his head to follow, but didn’t see anything. Was that weird? He didn’t know.

‘‘Focus,’’ Red-Boar said quietly, and held out his hand. The blood from his palm looked crimson in the golden air, which shimmered some twenty feet away from them at the mouth of the box canyon, as though some sort of field were repelling the power itself.

Strike pressed his bleeding palm to Red-Boar’s, boosting the older Nightkeeper.

‘‘Gods,’’ Red-Boar said, and power sang through their connected hands and exploded in Strike’s head. The jolt rocketed through his body and blasted outward in a shock wave that drove Jox and Rabbit back on their asses. The golden curtain thickened before them, moving and roiling as if it were a living thing that fought destruction.

Red-Boar rapped out a string of words so quickly and so oddly accented that Strike couldn’t begin to follow, finishing with a loud cry of, ‘‘Ye-ye-ye!’’ Reveal!

The gold burst like ground-level fireworks, raining down on them in pellets of power that felt cool to the touch. Air rushed into the space where the golden light had been, a howling whip of wind that moved the sand and plucked an eagle from the sky.

The bird recovered quickly, winging away over the canyon with a screech of protest, then swerving sharply to the right when a huge leafy tree materialized in front of it. As the eagle flapped its powerful wings, seeming eager to get the hell away, four other buildings shimmered to life, becoming solid and recognizable, and punching Strike with a grief so fresh that he nearly dropped to his knees. He couldn’t, though, because he was held up by Red-Boar’s viselike grip on his hand.

Through the connection, he saw the image of a golden-haired woman and two toddlers, identical copies of each other, and felt a wash of love so acute he wanted to scream with it.

Realizing he was catching Red-Boar’s emotional backlash, he tried to pull away, shouting, ‘‘Jack out!’’ When the mage resisted, Strike got in his face, grabbed him by the jaw, and forced the older man to look at him. ‘‘Listen to me! Let them go; they’re not real!’’

Red-Boar released his hand and the golden light cut out. The images dimmed, and Strike sagged, bracing his hands on his knees to stay upright.

Then Red-Boar punched him in the face and Strike went down anyway.

‘‘What the fuck?’’ Strike rolled and blocked, in case there was another coldcock incoming, but it’d been a one-shot deal.

The older man just stood over him, breathing hard. ‘‘They were real to me,’’ he said, and turned and walked toward the newly materialized buildings.

Red-Boar’s step didn’t change when Rabbit called after him. He didn’t hear the quaver in the boy’s voice. Or maybe he didn’t care.

‘‘Here. Up you go.’’ Jox hauled Strike to his feet with a strength that seemed disproportionate to his size. ‘‘You okay?’’ At Strike’s nod, he turned to Rabbit. ‘‘You?’’

‘‘Whatever.’’ The kid took a good, long look at what had sprung to life in the box canyon, and his lips twisted. ‘‘You guys better be able to magic us up about fifty Ty Penningtons, because this place needs a serious make-over. ’’

Strike followed the direction of his gaze—he’d managed to avoid looking at the compound up to that point—and let out a long, shaky breath. It was the scene of his nightmares. Yet at the same time it wasn’t.

Yes, the walls were scored with claw marks, but they were faded and worn from wind, rain, and blowing sand. Yes, wrecked cars dotted the landscape, but they were dated, rusted shells now, looking like a more appropriate setting for a junkyard dog than for fear.

Strike had worried that all he’d see was the past. Instead, he saw possibilities.

The main house was as huge as his nine-year-old self remembered, a three-story mansion of mortar-set sandstone with wings running off on either side, curving around, a swimming pool in the back. The driveway ran around the left side to the huge connected garage, and on the right a covered tunnel led to the Great Hall. At least, it had. Now the spot where the rec building had stood was nothing more than a dark stain on the canyon floor, marking the ashes of the dead children and winikin.

In the center of the rectangular impression where the hall had once stood, there was a huge tree that hadn’t been there before. Yet, oddly, it looked like it’d been there for hundreds of years, because there was no way it’d gotten that big in a couple of decades. It had to be five or six feet across at the base, probably fifty-plus feet high, with lush green leaves that seemed completely out of place amidst the arid dryness of the New Mexican landscape.

‘‘What the hell?’’ Rabbit said.

‘‘It’s a ceiba tree,’’ Strike answered, though he’d been thinking pretty much the same thing. Their ancestors had planted the sacred ‘‘world trees’’ in the center of their villages and plazas. They’d believed the ceiba’s roots ran to the underworld, and its branches held up the heavens. He turned to Jox. ‘‘Did you plant it?’’

The winikin shook his head, seeming stunned. ‘‘No. It makes a hell of a memorial, though. Wish I’d thought of it.’’

‘‘Someone did,’’ Strike said, though he couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew they were both thinking. It was one thing to jack in to a concentration of psi energy that existed at the barrier between the planes. It was another to suggest that an actual god had planted a tree in their backyard. A tree that grew exclusively in rain forests. One that shouldn’t have had leaves during the dry season, and looked like it’d been there far longer than was actually possible.

He stood there for a moment, wondering if this was the point where he woke up from the dream. Instead, he stayed exactly where he was.

After a moment, Jox looped an arm across his shoulders and hugged him close, as he had done when Strike was a boy. ‘‘Come on, kid. It’s time to call your people home.’’

But as Strike followed his winikin through the main entrance of the training compound built by his ancestors, he wasn’t thinking of the massacre and times past, or the renovations they’d need to do to get the place livable, or even of the strangers he was supposed to turn into a tiny army. He was thinking about Leah, and how she’d stood up to him, chin jutting like she was leading for a punch; how he’d watched her sleep, her face going soft and vulnerable; and how she’d looked at him after they’d been together, how she’d seen him as a man rather than something so much more complicated.

And as he stepped through the doorway into the entryway of the king’s mansion, where the past and future ran together and made his heart hurt, he wished like hell that he could’ve been just a man, could’ve been her man. But he wasn’t and couldn’t be.

He was a Nightkeeper.