Anna winced at the knowledge gap. “Camazotz is the ruler of the death bats, which are linked, as you might suspect, with death and sacrifice. You need a better researcher. Seriously. She’s missing basic stuff your average Google search is going to pull up.”
“She’s a therapist.” There was a bite in Strike’s tone now. “And she’s practically killing herself trying to catalog the archive, never mind looking up the things we need her to.” He didn’t add,
And we have a better researcher . . . or we would if you’d get your ass back here where you belong
, but they both knew that was what he was thinking.
Anna, though, was standing firm. She had a husband and a life in the real world, and didn’t intend to buy back into the universe that’d killed their parents, into the mythology that would eventually kill them all. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the end-time. It was that she didn’t believe a dozen or so half-trained magi were going to make a damned bit of difference determining whether it came or not, or that she could help save the world. Better that she live the next four years the best she could, and pray to the gods for forgiveness when the end came.
Still, though, she owed Strike something. Family mattered, regardless of how dysfunctional. “I’ll send Jade some Web links that should help her get up to speed on Camazotz.”
“Not good enough. I need you to come out early and read the starscript for us. I need to know what’s on the statuette ASAP, in case it’s something we can use in the eclipse ceremony,” Strike persisted, once again trying to draw Anna back to the world they’d both been born into. She wanted to tell him no, to tell him to call someone else. But like it or not—and she didn’t like it one bit—she was the only translator the Nightkeepers could trust.
She touched the yellow, skull-shaped quartz effigy that she wore beneath her shirt even though her seer’s powers hadn’t so much as twitched since the autumnal equinox. “Fine. I’ll move my flight up and try to leave early tomorrow.” She hated the thought of being at Skywatch longer than absolutely necessary, but she’d already been planning on being there for the penumbral lunar eclipse, which was a time of great barrier power that the Nightkeepers would try to use for one or more of the bigger spells. A couple of extra days wouldn’t kill her.
Strike sighed, the sound coming from deep within his chest. “Thank you.” He paused, then said in a different, more tentative tone, “So, are you okay?”
They hadn’t talked much since the equinox. She’d flown home immediately after their return from the intersection. She hadn’t even stayed for Red-Boar’s funeral, hadn’t been able to. Not after he’d bled out in her arms and died with his eyes locked onto hers. The experience had changed her, though, made her more aware of what mattered. She’d gone straight from the airport to her husband’s on-campus office in the economics building, shut the door at her back, and had the conversation they’d both been avoiding for months, i.e., the one that started with an accusation and ended with an ultimatum:
Ditch the other woman, whoever the hell she is
.
It hadn’t been as easy as that, of course, because Anna had earned her fair share of the blame for the shambles their marriage had become. She’d wanted a baby, because that was what marriage and family was about. Then, when months of not using birth control had stretched to years with no baby and even their first expensive try at in vitro had failed, she’d gotten wrapped up in the failure. As many times as she’d said she didn’t blame him, she knew he didn’t believe her, knew she hadn’t given him reason to believe. So they’d drifted, her to her work, him to his own pursuits. At first it’d been golf and hanging out at the faculty club. After a while she’d realized those were excuses, that he was actually having an affair. And the worst part was she’d been willing to go on that way, telling herself that it was okay their relationship had changed.
Her parents had died when she was fourteen, and her fledgling powers, those of an
itza’at
seer, had forced her to live through the experience with them. She’d relived it over and over in her dreams for years thereafter, until the day she’d left Strike and Jox, moving away to college at the age of twenty, after sticking it out for as long as she’d been able. She’d known even then that she was gone for good. As far as any of them had known back then, the magical backlash of the Solstice Massacre had sealed the barrier for good, averting the 2012 doomsday. She’d thought she was free to live a normal life, and had thrown herself with abandon into doing just that, meeting friends and lovers, and enjoying college, then grad school.
Always in the back of her mind had been the knowledge that she could have lovers, but wasn’t supposed to marry or have children prior to the end-time. It was one of the laws Jox had drilled into her head, that she and Strike had to remain unmarried and unmated. At the time she’d thought the
winikin
was just being a pain. Only later, when the barrier reactivated and Jox revealed that there were other Nightkeeper survivors, did she finally understand. He’d wanted her to stay available for a Nightkeeper mate, should the barrier reactivate and the need arise. Whereas she and Strike had survived because Jox had hidden them in a blood-warded safe room designed for the royals only, the other, younger magi had escaped the massacre because they’d been babies, too young to have been through their first binding ceremonies. That meant the surviving males were all a good dozen or more years younger than she, which might not’ve mattered if she’d stayed in the Nightkeeper milieu. But she hadn’t.
Instead she’d gone out into the world. And at twenty-five, she’d met Dick Catori, a wunderkind economist and sometimes poet who designed stunt kites as a hobby, and had taught her to fly them. Standing out in a windy Texas field with her back pressed against his front and his clever hands atop hers, showing her how to touch the lines and tease motion from air, she’d fallen hard somewhere between the stall and the five-forty flat spin.
She’d moved in with him a month later, married him six months after that, and hadn’t told Jox or Strike for nearly another year, avoiding the topic during her biannual duty calls. Jox had thrown a fit, Strike had congratulated her, and she’d spoken to them less and less as the years passed, and her new, normal life eventually fell into a pleasing pattern, then a less pleasing one, until one day she woke up and realized she and Dick were sleeping in the same house but living separate lives, and she was too much of a wimp, too afraid of failing at her marriage, her grand act of rebellion, to do anything about it. Then the barrier had come back online and Strike had called the Nightkeepers home. Anna had fought the call for as long as she’d been able, but in the end had been forced to return to the life she didn’t want, at least part-time. Duty compelled her—and a bargain made with a dead man. But how was she supposed to balance the two pieces of her life?
She couldn’t tell Dick about her heritage, because the moment the magic intruded on her normal life it wouldn’t be normal anymore. Besides, things had been so much better between them since she’d taken her stand and called him on his infidelity. They were actually talking—really talking—for the first time in a long time. They were having date nights, and working with a therapist. Things weren’t perfect, but they were improving. There was no way in hell she was jeopardizing their reconciliation.
She didn’t tell Strike any of that, though. She loved her brother, but she didn’t really know him anymore, hadn’t for a long time. So instead of telling him the truth, she glanced at her watch, intending to make up an excuse to kick him off the phone.
Which was when she realized she didn’t need an excuse. She was late for a meeting. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I’ve got to go. I’m due in my evil boss’s office five minutes ago for Lucius’s thesis defense.”
“How’s he doing?” The question was far from casual.
Knowing that Strike didn’t really give a crap about Lucius’s defense as long as her senior grad student didn’t mention where he’d gotten the scar on his palm, she said, “He doesn’t remember going through the transition ritual, or almost becoming a
makol
. Red-Boar’s mind block did the trick.”
Lucius had almost been dead meat the prior fall, and he didn’t even know it, didn’t know he was living on probation as far as the Nightkeepers were concerned. Hell, he didn’t have a clue that the Nightkeepers really existed. He liked to think they did, liked to believe in the end-time myths most Mayanists dismissed as sensationalism, but she’d deliberately steered him away from the truth, leaving him mired in fiction.
“Good to hear he doesn’t remember,” Strike said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Back before the equinox battle, when Lucius had unwittingly offered himself up on a platter for demon possession, Red-Boar would’ve sacrificed him, but Strike had made a deal with her: He’d have Red-Boar reverse the
makol
spell if Anna agreed to rejoin the Nightkeepers, at least during the ceremonial days.
Now, she knew, he regretted having made the deal, and considered Lucius a liability. The younger man had undergone the transition spell once already, and his natural inclinations had called upon the
Banol Kax
rather than the gods—which perplexed the hell out of Anna, because Lucius didn’t have much in the way of a dark side, but still, it’d happened. And because it had happened once, she knew Strike was worried that it would happen again.
Basically, Lucius was living on her good graces, and the knowledge weighed, especially given the political crap going on in the art history department these days. The department head, Desiree Soo, had never been warm or fuzzy, but she’d grown increasingly critical over the past half year, particularly when it came to the Mayan studies department. Anna couldn’t prove it, but she was pretty sure Desiree had chased off her last intern, Neenee, who’d taken off around Christmas, leaving only a terse e-mail of nonexplanation. Since then, Anna’s lab had had reimbursement requests kicked back from admin over tiny quibbles, room assignments were constantly getting screwed up, and Anna had found herself loaded down with intro-level lectures that were usually handed straight to the TAs. And then there was Lucius’s thesis defense.
Desiree had been acting professionally enough back when Lucius had asked her to chair his thesis committee. Given the way she’d been behaving lately, though, Anna could pretty much guarantee there was going to be a problem.
Sighing, feeling a hundred years old rather than her own thirty-nine, Anna said, “Seriously. I’ve gotta go.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Call Jox with your flight info and he’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Will do.” She hung up and headed for the dragon’s lair.
Okay, so it wasn’t literally Desiree’s lair—they were meeting in the conference room across the hall from the department head’s office—but Anna had the distinct feeling she was headed into enemy territory as she stepped through the doors. She was the last one in, which meant the entire committee was arranged on one side of the conference table, all facing a slump-shouldered Lucius.
Desiree was seated in the center of the long side of the conference table, flanked on either side by the lower-ranking committee members. She almost always wore long-sleeved, high-collared shirts in jewel tones that enhanced the red highlights in her hair, accessorizing the outfits with a heavy silver cuff on her right wrist. The cuff was embossed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Anna didn’t remember ever seeing her without it. Desiree was long and lean and gorgeous, with high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, and shoulder-length hair that fell pin-straight from an off-center widow’s peak. Her eyes were an unusually pale hazel that might’ve looked dreamy on another woman, but somehow managed to look vaguely reptilian in her face.
Or maybe Anna was projecting on that one. As far as she was concerned, the woman was a bitch, pure and simple.
The other committee members included a stout, bearded Greek mythology expert named—ironically—Thor; a cheerful, round-cheeked classics professor named Holly; and a gaunt, aged relic of an art historian whom everyone called Dr. Young. Anna was pretty sure that wasn’t his name, more of a joke that’d stuck. The committee members acknowledged Anna when she came through the door, with nods from the two men, a little wave from Holly. Desiree made a mean little moue.
Lucius, on the other hand, whipped around in his chair and gave her a
where the hell have you been?
look liberally dosed with nerves.
He was tall and skinny, and typically moved with an awkward sort of grace. Now, though, sitting folded into the conference room chair, he looked pointy and angular, like a praying mantis that someone had bent the wrong way. Or maybe that was the strangeness of seeing him in a shirt and tie rather than his usual grad student uniform of bar-logo tee and ratty jeans. He’d traded his sandals for hiking boots that made a stab at formality, and somewhere over the past twelve hours had subjected his normally shaggy brown hair to an unfortunate trim that screamed “eight-dollar walk-in.”
The overall effect was one of quiet desperation.
Lucius had grown up in middle America, a dreamer misfit in a large extended family of jocks. He’d escaped to the university on a scholarship and had discovered Mayan studies when he’d taken an undergrad intro course on pre-Columbian civilization as a frosh, in a bid to avoid the foreign language requirement. In the nearly ten years since—four years as an undergrad and almost six as Anna’s grad student—he’d proven to be both the best and most frustrating student she’d ever dealt with. He was an intuitive epigrapher, able to tease out the most worn inscriptions and decipher them into translations that stood up remarkably well to scrutiny from even the toughest of critics, including her. Unfortunately, that same level of intuition caused him to see patterns where there weren’t any—or, as in the case with the Nightkeeper myths, in places where she’d rather he not see them. When he saw such patterns, his scientific method sometimes went out the window while he focused on the answer he’d convinced himself was right, searching for evidence that proved his theory and ignoring anything that suggested otherwise.