Their teammates had snagged a private room at the back of the hotel restaurant, which was mercifully low-key on the themed-wedding kitsch, instead leaning toward a trellised indoor-garden feeling, with skylights that were wide-open to the sunny morning.
Patience hesitated slightly at the sight of not only Strike, Jade, Rabbit, and Myrinne, who she’d been expecting, but also Alexis, Nate, Sven, Lucius, and Leah. “Wow. The gang’s all here. Almost, anyway.”
It shouldn’t have made her claustrophobic to step into the room or take one of the two empty chairs and have Brandt’s arm bump hers as he did the same. But the walls closed in on her nonetheless.
“Sasha stayed with Anna, and Michael’s on Mendez duty,” Leah said. “The rest of us figured we’d tag along and boost Jade, on the theory that the cardinal-day spell concealing this doorway of yours could be tough to unravel on a noncardinal day.”
And also, Patience knew, because the Nightkeepers were one-hundred-percent adventure junkies.
Just look at how easily she and Brandt had talked each other into exploring the tunnels below El Rey.
The good news was that, in doing so, they had discovered something the Nightkeepers badly needed.
Without preamble, she said, “The doorway leads to an intersection.”
There was a short pause; then Sven whooped and the others started firing questions, the mood in the room shifting abruptly to one of “Oh, holy shit. Finally something might be going our way!” Ever since Iago had destroyed the intersection beneath Chichén Itzá, the magi had been searching for another skyroad, a place where the barrier was thin enough to allow the gods to contact them directly.
Rather than trying to field the questions, Patience held up a hand. “Hold on. It’s complicated. I think we should start at the beginning.” She glanced at Brandt. “Do you want to tell it, and I’ll jump in where I’ve got a different perspective?”
He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” He didn’t look at her, but beneath the table, he shifted, looping his foot around hers and pressing gently in an unseen half hug. “We used a mirror in our hotel room to trigger the etznab spell,” he began, then went on to summarize the events of that long-ago night, with her adding details as they seemed relevant. They were forced to pause several times as the waitstaff filled their orders. By the time he had described Werigo’s banishment by the gods, and the final spell he’d cast, the room was dead quiet.
When he was done, there was a moment of silence that wasn’t so much stunned as it was a case of nobody knowing what to tackle first.
“Are you guys okay?” Leah said finally.
“We’re coping,” Patience said, not wanting an open forum on her and Brandt’s relationship, then or now.
Leah’s nod seemed to accept the evasion more than the answer.
“If it’s an intersection—” Strike began.
“There isn’t any question about that,” Brandt said, “at least not in my mind. It channeled both light and dark magic, and let both demons and gods reach through. Hellroad plus skyroad equals intersection.” He paused. “But there’s a problem. Given that Ix knew about the El Rey intersection, then we have to assume that Iago does too.”
Patience hadn’t really been thinking in that direction, but now her mind leaped ahead. “But if he had access to a functional hellroad six years ago, why didn’t he use it back then?” A cold knot twisted in her stomach as she answered her own question. “Unless what happened that night destroyed the El Rey intersection.”
Brandt nodded. “There has to be some reason why the site hasn’t pulled anyone else in since then.”
“But we—” She broke off as disappointment tugged. “Damn it, you’re right. We’ve scoured the area. We wouldn’t have missed something pumping that much magic.”
“You might if it’s not using the power you’re looking for.” That came from Lucius. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. You said there were two other doors leading out of the chamber, right? What else was different from the old intersection beneath Chichén Itzá?”
Brandt said, “This one was very plain, unadorned. The outer doorway was carved, but not the tunnel or the chamber itself. The sconces were strictly functional, and the altar was just a square chunk of stone, not a chac-mool.” He paused. “Anybody got a pen?”
When Nate tossed him a ballpoint, he got busy sketching a napkin schematic. Meanwhile, Patience put in, “The torches we found just inside the tunnel were carved, but not with glyphs. Patterns, mostly.” She went on to describe the slow-burning resin and unfamiliar incense.
When they were both finished, Lucius studied the napkin map, added a couple of notes from her description, and then lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “No guarantees, but based on the lack of carvings, and there being none of the tricks that were part of the intersection at Chichén Itzá—the sliding doors, the elevator-type mechanism, and such—I’d guess that this is a very early site, maybe the first few centuries after the Nightkeepers came to this continent.”
Understanding shivered through Patience. “Back when they were still using muk, you mean?” That was what he’d meant about it not being the power they were looking for: Muk was the ancestral magic that combined the light and dark aspects of the power. Among the magi, only Michael could use muk, and at that, he wielded only a small piece of its total power. Yet even that much was devastating.
Lucius nodded. “Up until the Nightkeepers came to this continent, they managed to maintain the balance between light and dark spells, but something about being here ramped everything up.” He made a boom noise and pantomimed an explosion. “The magic increased by the century, permeating the emerging Mayan culture.”
Jade put in, “Which is why the culture on this continent resembles that of the original Nightkeepers so much more closely than any of the civilizations our ancestors lived with before or after.”
“Right,” Lucius said. “Eventually the boar-bloodline king couldn’t maintain the balance anymore, the darkness corrupted a dozen of his strongest magi, and”—he snapped for emphasis—“the wielders of light and dark magic split into the Nightkeepers and the Order of Xibalba.” He paused. “Before that, though, the biggest rituals were split between light and dark . . . sometimes even with separate entrances to the ritual sites.”
“That would account for two of the doors,” Patience said, hope kindling at the inner click of connection that suggested they were on to something. “The one we came through was keyed to light magic, while Ix came in through the other one. Which probably means there’s a dark-magic entrance hidden somewhere in the ruins of El Rey. But that doesn’t account for the third door.”
“You said it was a closed stone panel.” Lucius thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s not even a doorway at all, just carved into the stone, which would mean it would be more of a symbolic entrance .
. . maybe for the gods?” He frowned. “Except that if that’s the case, then there should be one for the dark lords as well, in order to keep the balance.”
“Not if the site dates back before the Nightkeeper-Xibalban split.” Surprisingly, the comment came from Rabbit, who usually kept his mouth shut during meetings. He continued: “Back then, there wasn’t the same good-versus-evil distinction between entities that lived in the sky versus the underworld. They were all considered gods.”
Strike scowled. “Bullshit.” He inhaled to keep going, but subsided at Leah’s warning glance.
Patience had noticed several such exchanges in recent days, with Leah checking Strike’s temper against not only Rabbit but Jox and Sven as well.
Rabbit bristled, but it was Lucius who said, “Actually, it’s not BS. There’s some evidence in the library that the ancients viewed the sky and Xibalba as locations rather than moral barometers.”