Had they, like the Nightkeepers, hidden themselves, focusing on training for the end-time wars? Or had the order truly disappeared, meaning that the enemy mage was a new breed of danger?
Damned if I know,
Alexis thought, flipping Jade’s report back to the first page and starting to reread it more carefully, in case she’d missed something critical the first time through. As she did so, though, she knew she was just avoiding thinking about her convo with Izzy, and the fact that she and Nate were going to be doing the close-proximity thing the next day when they traveled to Louisiana.
They were flying commercial because Leah had long ago decreed that Strike’s teleport powers were emergency-only. Which only made sense; they didn’t know enough about the magic to predict its limitations. What if he had only so many zaps in him, and they used them up blip-ping off to get beer or something? Bad idea.
So it was Delta, first-class, nonstop, which almost made up for the fact that Alexis hadn’t been able to talk Strike out of sending Nate with her as backup. It wasn’t as though she’d been able to tell him the truth, either, because hearing about her dream-vision would’ve only increased the king’s determination to throw her together with Nate, for two major reasons: one, because gods-intended, mated Nightkeepers were so much more powerful together than an unmated Nightkeeper alone; and two, because Strike himself had dreamed about Leah long before he met her, and vice versa, even though neither male Nightkeepers nor humans were supposed to be precogs or visionaries. The king was a big believer in dreams and portents, and he’d already made it clear that he thought Nate and Alexis would make a strong pair-bond, and that a relationship between them would be an asset to the Nightkeepers in the coming war.
“So sad, too bad for him,” she muttered under her breath. “Because a happy couple we very definitely are not. Sex doesn’t make a lasting relationship if the people engaged in said sex can’t carry on a civil convo to save their lives.”
“Then I take it you won’t mind me adding a third wheel,” the king’s voice said from the doorway to her suite.
Alexis jolted, but stopped herself from an instinctive gasp and spin because she was always aware of how Strike saw her, what he thought of her, and how she could improve that impression. How she could make herself useful in an advisory capacity. He already had Jox’s long-range perspective on Nightkeeper matters, and Leah was at his side to give him the cop’s view and the female opinion. As far as Alexis figured, her best commodities were her business experience and negotiating skills. Either way, she knew she had some serious impressing left to do if she wanted to take her mother’s place at the king’s side.
Still, when she turned to wave Strike in, she wasn’t sure she liked his wary expression, or the way he closed the door at his back, as though he didn’t want anyone listening in.
“You’re coming to New Orleans?” she asked, hoping it was that simple—and that much of an opportunity.
“Nope, sorry.” Strike exhaled, looked around her carefully decorated room and shifting inside his T-shirt like he wasn’t feeling right inside his own skin. “I want you and Nate to take Rabbit with you.”
Squelching her knee-jerk
no way in hell
, Alexis went with a neutral hum while she processed the info and came up with only one good conclusion. “You want him out of the way.”
Strike shook his head. “He’s getting squirrelly and needs to get the hell out of the compound. That’s all.”
“No, it’s not.” Alexis kicked her feet up on the soft gray ottoman she’d bought to match the sofa, and folded her hands across her chest, thinking. “Given what happened today it’s not a good time to be sending anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to be off property, so there’s a reason you want Rabbit gone.” She sucked in a breath as she made an intuitive leap she was pretty sure was right. “Something’s wrong with Patience and Brandt?”
Of all the current Nightkeepers, Patience and Brandt White-Eagle were special thrice over: once because they’d found each other long before the barrier reactivated, meeting in Mexico on the night of the spring solstice, and waking up together the following morning wearing their marks; a second time because they’d defied the teachings of their
winikin
by getting married and having kids; and a third time because those kids were twins, which were sacred to the Nightkeepers because of their abilities to boost each other’s powers. The kids, Harry and Braden, hadn’t been put through any of the ceremonies yet, in order to protect them from being detected by magic seekers, but they lived at Skywatch among the bound Nightkeepers, watched over by Patience and Brandt’s
winikin
, Hannah and Wood, when Patience and Brandt were unavailable. Which they’d been more and more lately, Alexis had noticed, as though they were drawing away from the Nightkeepers—or each other—and didn’t want anyone else to know.
“Wow,” Strike said, shaking his head. “You got there fast.” But he didn’t deny that it was because of problems with Patience and Brandt, who had become Rabbit’s main support system after Red-Boar’s death. Instead the king went very serious and said, “I need you to keep Rabbit out of the way, and I need you to keep him safe.”
The teen was important to Strike; they’d grown up together, albeit separated by fifteen or so years, and Alexis had a feeling Strike and Jox had picked up most of the slack Red-Boar had left in the way of nonparenting. Which meant that the request was a sign of trust. She tipped her head. “Are you asking the same of Nate?”
“I’m putting him on notice,” Strike replied, making it clear he didn’t intend to ask Nate for a damn thing.
Alexis knew she should’ve regretted the low-grade animosity that existed between the two men, but she didn’t because it only helped her cause, and it wasn’t like Nate wanted to be part of the inner circle. As far as she could tell, he didn’t even want to be part of the outer circle. “I’m honored by your trust,” she said carefully, “but are you sure it’s a good idea to put him in the middle of all the New Orleans occult stuff?” She wasn’t sure how the half-blood teen’s magic worked—none of them were, except that it didn’t always behave the same as Nightkeeper magic.
Strike sent her a long, considering look, then shook his head. “Damned if I know the right answer to that.” He paused. “What I’m about to tell you comes in the strictest confidence, understand?”
Startled, she set aside Jade’s report. “Of course.”
“I’m pretty sure Rabbit’s mother was a member of the Order of Xibalba.”
Whatever Alexis had expected him to say, it sure as hell wasn’t that. She looked down at the thin report Jade had slapped together on a group of magi that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore, then back up at her king. “Holy shit.”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
Alexis wanted to say
holy shit
again, but didn’t figure it’d add to the convo, so she stayed silent, trying to process that new info. Finally she said, “I take it you got that from Red-Boar?” She didn’t think being half-Xibalban was something Rabbit would’ve kept to himself if he’d known.
Strike lifted a shoulder. “Let’s just say he didn’t deny it when I asked him directly. I think that was the main reason he didn’t want to induct Rabbit into the magic, why he didn’t want him trained as a Nightkeeper.”
“And why Rabbit’s magic is different, and sometimes dangerous.” Alexis thought it through, nodding. “Yeah, it plays. That’d explain why things have been weird for Rabbit during the ceremonies.” The first time she and the other new Nightkeepers had gone into the barrier, instead of them all transferring together like they should have, the trainees had gone one place within the gray-green nothingness, while Strike and Red-Boar had each been sent elsewhere. The second time, Red-Boar had been forced to use extra magic to keep them together.
“It could also explain why he’s got more power than he should,” Strike said, referring to the fact that Rabbit wore the pyrokine’s mark and could call fire, but also showed hints of telekinetic talents, in that he could unlock doors with a touch.
“I’m not sure I like how this sounds,” Alexis said quietly, thinking of the enemy mage’s powers, and how easily he’d wielded far more strength than she’d ever come close to touching. “You think the Xibalbans’ magic is stronger than ours.”
“Or Rabbit’s a special case.” Strike spread his hands. “Nobody knows. Besides, it’s just a theory.” But the way he said it made her think it was more than that.
“Damn.” She sat for a second, then frowned. “If that’s the case, why put Rabbit out in the field with us, especially given that this Xibalban—if that’s what he is—is after the artifacts too? Isn’t that taking a needless risk?”
“Not needless. Calculated.”
She froze at the possibilities . . . and the complications. “You want to see what happens if we put Rabbit and the new guy in the same room?”
Strike gave a yes-no wiggle of his hand. “Hopefully nothing’s going to happen. Best-case scenario, this Mistress Truth character sells you the knife with zero issues and you get your asses back here. Meanwhile I’ll be having a little sit-down with Patience and Brandt, and make sure that what’s going on with them doesn’t turn into a thing.”
Alexis didn’t ask, didn’t really want to know. She’d prefer to go on thinking that Patience and Brandt had the perfect marriage, the perfect love affair, because if the two of them, who fit together like halves of a whole, couldn’t make it work, what kind of a chance did anyone else have? So she focused on the fact that Strike was in her sitting room, offering her a chance to prove herself. She wasn’t going to screw it up. “I’ll do my best to keep him safe, best-case or worst-case,
Nochem
.”
He winced at the honorific for
king
in the old language—he was still settling into his title, just as the rest of them were still getting used to being part of a monarchy. But instead of telling her not to call him that, which was his usual response when one of them
nochem
ed him, he said, “Rabbit’s a good kid who’s had some tough breaks. Use him if you can; protect him either way. To be honest, I’d rather keep him here, but he’s eighteen and itching for a fight. If I don’t send him somewhere soon I’m afraid he’s going to go looking for action on his own, and I can guarantee he’ll get into trouble if that happens.” He paused. “Take care of him for me, okay?”
Alexis nodded. “I will.” They shook on it and he headed for the door. But as the panel swung shut behind him, she couldn’t help thinking that she might’ve just agreed to way more than she was sure she could deliver.
His father had been right all along: He was a loser. It’d just taken him longer than the rest of them to figure it out. But what else could he call himself when he’d singlehandedly torpedoed the degree he’d spent the last five—okay, closer to six—years working toward? Anna had flat-out told him not to mention the Nightkeepers, and what’d he done? He’d gotten in the Dragon Lady’s face over it, even knowing—when apparently Anna hadn’t— that Desiree was in full-on woman-scorned mode, with Anna as the target. Worse, he’d compounded that monumental screwup by striking out at Anna. They might not be as close these days as they had been before, but that was no excuse. He’d been embarrassed and ashamed, and he’d lashed out.
Which meant he owed her an apology, he thought as he crossed the cement bridge leading to the partially concealed main entrance of the art history building—a squat, dark concrete shape right out of the seventies. Her first-floor office was locked, which probably meant she’d gone home for the night. He really didn’t want to put off the apology until tomorrow, though; he’d screwed up too badly. But was calling—or driving out to—her house any better? It was late, and he wasn’t the Dick’s favorite person to begin with, never mind him having been the one to drop the Desiree bomb. Which meant . . .
Hell, he didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know what anything meant anymore. Things that used to make sense didn’t, and things that shouldn’t have made sense kept seeming like they did.
“Damn it,” he said, and headed for his small office because he couldn’t think of a better alternative. When he got there he saw that the message light on the landline phone was blinking, which was weird. Anybody who was anyone would’ve called his cell. Unless it was official university business, he thought, gut churning. That’d probably be done by landline, by some dean’s secretary deputized to tell him he was out on his ass.
Wishing he could pretend he hadn’t seen the blink, he hit the button, braced for the worst.
“Meet me in my office in fifteen minutes,” Desiree’s voice snapped. “And come alone.”
“Shit!”
He checked the time stamp on the message and saw that he was already an hour late. It didn’t matter whether she’d called to kick him out or give him another chance; being late wasn’t going to help. When the boss called a meeting, you showed. Or at least made a good effort to show. Stomach clenching on too many awful possibilities to name, he headed for her corner office. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or bummed when he saw that her lights were still on, the door open.
He knocked on the doorframe, and the Dragon Lady—
Dr. Soo
, he corrected himself—looked up from her seat behind a wide desk. He couldn’t read her expression when she saw who it was. “Come on in.”
Her office was professionally done up in rich-looking blues and golds, accented with accessories that reflected her specialty of ancient Egyptian art. He wasn’t sure, but the delicate faience bowl set in a case just inside the door looked real. Not willing to chance knocking it over, he gave the thing a wide berth as he stepped over the threshold.
“Shut the door,” she ordered, returning her attention to her laptop computer screen. Her tone didn’t make it sound like she’d reconsidered her decision on his thesis—more like she was getting ready to kick him out. He was pretty sure she couldn’t do that without Anna’s okay . . . but then again, it was entirely possible that Anna had okayed it and hadn’t had the guts to tell him herself, he thought on a low burn of anger that was both foreign and tempting.
“Sit.” Again with the orders, but he wasn’t about to argue. At least not until she said she was kicking him out.
He took one of two chairs set opposite her desk, both of which were made of dark, carved wood and somehow managed to be big and imposing at the same time that they were delicate and feminine. The chair creaked under his weight; that was the only sound in the room for close to five minutes, as she kept reading and he sat in silence, partly because he wanted to wait her out, partly because flapping his trap had already gotten him in enough trouble that day.
Finally the Dragon Lady hit a couple of keys and pushed the laptop away, then looked him up and down and up again, until he started twitching under her scrutiny. Just when he was getting ready to break the silence, she said, “You know something, Lucius?” She tapped one high-gloss nail against her lower lip. “I like you.”
On a one-to-ten scale of what he’d expected to hear, that ranked about a minus fifty. “Excuse me?”
“I like you,” she repeated, “which is why I’m going to do something I almost never do. I’m going to give you another chance.”
If anyone else on the faculty had said that, he would’ve thanked the hell out of them, and then asked when they should reschedule his thesis defense. Given who he was talking to and what she’d been up to lately, his first and potentially suicidal response was, “What’s the catch?”
Something flashed in her eyes—irritation or amusement, or maybe a bit of both. “It’s not a catch; it’s an opportunity to expand on the work you’re already doing. If you pull it off, you’ll be making a hell of a name for yourself, and you’ll get your degree.” When he said nothing, simply waited, she leaned forward, giving him a glimpse of the steel in her eyes and the edge of a lacy bra beneath her camisole. “I want you to prove that the Nightkeepers are real.”
“You—” he started in surprise, then broke off as he got it. She hadn’t tanked his defense to embarrass Anna. She’d done it because she’d wanted his research. Embarrassing Anna had been a side benefit.
Son of a bitch,
he thought, not sure if he was disgusted or impressed, or a bit of both.
Legend had it that the Nightkeepers had lived with the Egyptians up until Akhenaton had gone monotheistic. If that particular legend were real, proving the existence of the Nightkeepers wouldn’t just blow the doors off the field of Mayan studies, it could rewrite a big chunk of Egyptology. And even better—as far as the Dragon Lady was concerned, no doubt—proving the Nightkeepers were real would invalidate a big chunk of Anna’s anti-end-time publications, putting a serious cramp in her forward momentum at the university, maybe even providing enough ammo to get her tenure pulled.
Bitch,
Lucius thought, his anger cranking hard and hot. But beneath the anger was a stealthy slide of,
Hmmm . . .
Anna had never supported his research on the Nightkeepers. Was she his priority, or was the research?
The Dragon Lady continued, “Tell Anna you need some time off to figure things out. I’ll fund your travel as necessary, and you’ll report directly to me.”
“I won’t do it,” he said, but it sounded weak even to him.
“There have to be things you’ve wanted to try, but couldn’t because she wouldn’t sign off on them, things you figured you’d do once you had your own grant money.” She paused. “What if you could do them now?”
I can’t,
he repeated, only what came out of his mouth sounded an awful lot like, “I shouldn’t.”
“Come on; name it. If you had to pick one line of evidence to follow, and you had decent travel money, where would you go first . . . Belize?” That was where the Nightkeepers who’d survived Akhenaton’s religious “purification” had supposedly wound up, where they had—again supposedly—hooked up with the Olmec, who had just begun to develop a cultural identity that would become, with the Nightkeepers’ help, the Mayan Empire.
In theory.
But Lucius shook his head. “No, actually. I’d start in Boston. There’s this girl—” He broke off, afraid that he’d come off sounding like an idiot, like he was crushing on someone he’d talked to on the phone for, like, twenty seconds, just long enough to take a message. A girl who hadn’t returned any of his calls in the months since.
But Desiree—she’d gone from Dragon Lady to first name in his head all of a sudden—said only, “What about her?”
He let out the breath he hadn’t consciously known he’d been holding. Which made him he realize something else, too. He was actually considering taking her up on the offer.
It was disloyal as hell, yes, and he owed Anna better.
But really,
that low, mean voice inside him said,
how much
do
you owe her?
She’d shut him out, withdrawn, left him behind. It’d been her fault they’d had to reschedule his defense; if he’d turned in his thesis last fall, on schedule, he would’ve sailed through. But he’d been forced to reschedule because she’d done her little disappearing act, leaving for a few weeks at the start of the fall semester and returning a pale, strange version of herself. If she’d stayed put and soldiered on, he’d have his Ph.D. and probably some new funding by now, enough to follow the clues that Anna pooh-poohed at best, derided at worst. She’d never wanted to even entertain the possibility that the Nightkeepers had existed, never mind discussing whether they still did, and what it might mean on the zero date. And it wasn’t just a closed discussion in her book; it’d never been a discussion at all. To her, the Nightkeepers were nothing more than a bedtime story.
But that doesn’t make it okay to go behind her back,
he told himself, feeling as though there were two sets of feelings at war within his head: one that said he should trust that Anna would appeal Desiree’s ruling on his thesis, and another that said he hadn’t been able to trust Anna to do anything for him ever since she’d turned away from him, cut him adrift.
Rubbing a thumb across the raised knot of flesh on his opposite palm in a gesture that’d become habitual since he’d acquired the scar in a night of drunken stupidity, he told himself that friendships waxed and waned, that it was only natural for Anna to pull away from a relationship that’d perhaps gotten closer than she was comfortable with once she and the Dick had reconciled. The only relationship she really owed him was one of thesis adviser to student, and she’d never shirked that duty. Or had she? She’d steered him safely through his project, true, but had she kept him too safe? Desiree was right that the person who proved that the Nightkeepers truly had existed would be able to write his own ticket.
As the scar began to ache with the beat of his heart and the sluggish pound of anger through his veins, Lucius started to think Anna hadn’t been helping him at all. She’d been holding him back.
“The girl in Boston?” Desiree prompted, and the victorious glint in her eyes said she knew she had him.
“Sasha Ledbetter,” Lucius answered. “She’s the daughter of a Mayanist named Ambrose Ledbetter. Back in the mid-eighties he wrote a few papers on the end-time, one of which included a description of a Mayan shrine that nobody’s ever seen except him.” He took a breath, held it. And took the leap straight onto Woo-Woo Avenue. “I think it was a Nightkeeper temple. If I can get a look at it, if I can translate the hieroglyphs, I can prove the Nightkeepers existed. I’m sure of it.”
She nodded. “So why not call him directly?”
“He disappeared last summer while doing fieldwork in the highlands. At this point he’s presumed dead.”
Desiree’s expression sharpened. “And you think you can get his notes from the daughter?”
“I think it’s a good place to start,” Lucius answered, not willing to tell the Dragon Lady that he couldn’t explain why; he just knew he had to see Sasha. When he’d heard her voice on the phone, something had shifted inside him. He didn’t know why or what it meant. He knew only that he had to find her, had to see her.
Desiree said nothing, simply opened her center desk drawer, pulled out a black plastic square, and slid it across the desk toward him. “Then go.”
He stared at the credit card, at his own name imprinted on it. “Since when does the university hand out no-limit AmEx cards?”
“It’s drawn on one of my private grants,” she replied, in a voice that said,
Don’t ask.
Apprehension shivered through Lucius. The part of him he recognized as himself knew he should stand up, walk away, and never look back. But that darker part of him, the part that said nobody had ever given him a major break before, that he deserved this one now, told him to take the card and book the flight.
A thin whine started up in his ears, making his jaw hurt, and the world went a little fuzzy around the edges. What was he supposed to be worrying about?
Oh, right.
Betraying Anna by accepting Desiree’s offer of some grant money. But really, could Anna honestly object to his taking on a side project? It wasn’t as though she’d been using him lately. Anna hadn’t been doing much of anything in the way of research ever since Neenee took off. And, come to think of it, that lack of academic production probably hadn’t helped his thesis defense any.
When he came right down to it, Desiree’s offer might be his best chance of cutting his losses and moving on—a logic that felt both right and wrong, depending on which part of himself he listened to.
“I’ll do it.” He picked up the card and balanced it on his palm for a moment, then closed his fingers. On some level, a level far away from the man he’d once been, he was unsurprised to feel the plastic slice into his scarred palm, bringing blood to the surface. Not pausing to tend to the cut, he held out his bleeding hand to Desiree. “You can count on me.”
When she shook his hand, the silver cuff she habitually wore on her right wrist slipped back, and he saw the edge of a bloodred tattoo that looked oddly familiar.