“Does it feel like dark magic?”
Rabbit glanced at his forearm, at the scarlet quatrefoil above the black glyphs. “It doesn’t feel light or dark, really.”
“Please tell me it’s not muk.”
“Nah. I’m not even sure it’s magic. It’s more like—I don’t know, an itch between my shoulder blades, maybe. Like something’s going to happen soon.”
“You’re not going prescient on me, are you?” Strike tried to play it like he was kidding, but they both knew he wasn’t.
Nightkeeper males occasionally envisioned their destined mates before meeting them, but that was where Y-chromosome foretelling left off. What was more, precognition tended to have nasty-assed repercussions within the magic. So while the approach of the end date continued to increase the scope of the Nightkeepers’ powers—for example, allowing the warriors to cast shield spells at greater distances for longer times—there were some talents, like prescience, that they were hoping wouldn’t go on the rise.
Forcing aside the memory of the things he’d seen the night Myrinne had tried her foretelling spell on him, Rabbit shook his head. “It’s not prescience. It’s just . . . I don’t know. An itch.” The more he talked about it, the dumber it sounded. He wouldn’t even have said anything, but didn’t want to jeopardize the team by being a dumbass and keeping quiet about something that was probably nothing.
Strike thought for a minute. “Could you be sensing the solstice-eclipse ahead of the rest of us?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m getting paranoid because my ass is dragging.” Myrinne had pointed out—
rather acerbically—that fatigue sometimes triggered his old patterns. And gods knew the whole “the world is out to get me” thing used to be one of his fallback modes.
“How are your blocks?”
“My head’s locked down tight.” He’d made damn sure of it after they left Oc Ajal, and again this morning. No way he wanted Iago breaking back through. “And I’m not trying to bag out on you.
Myrinne almost never gets to see me do my thing, and I’m totally jonesing to get inside the pyramid.”
At the thought, the itch between his shoulder blades got worse. “I just thought it should be your call whether I stayed behind or not.”
“Yeah. It should be.” Strike didn’t seem as grateful as Rabbit would’ve expected, though. If anything, he looked more annoyed than before, though that sort of seemed to have become his fallback recently. Finally, after a long enough pause that Rabbit’s stomach had started to think about sinking, the king said, “I have a feeling we’re going to need your oomph to get this doorway open. But”—he shot Rabbit an “I’m way fucking serious” look—“if the itch gets worse or anything else changes, you pull out of the link immediately, and tell me what’s going on.” Before Rabbit could nod, Strike transferred his glare to Myrinne. “Same goes for you. If you see him doing anything you don’t like, you tell me. Got it?”
She played it cool, nodding and saying, “Will do.”
Inwardly, though, Rabbit knew she was doing a boogie-woogie victory dance. She was grateful to the magi for taking her in—on Rabbit’s say-so and with Anna’s support—even though she had been raised by one of Iago’s allies. Strike had given her a place to stay, spending money, an education, and some small jobs within Skywatch. But being grateful didn’t stop her from wanting more—not financially, but in terms of getting in on the action. She was dying to be out on the front lines with the other warriors.
Rabbit sure as shit knew how that felt; he’d been there, done that, and eventually earned the king’s trust. Now it was her turn . . . he hoped.
“Was there anything else?” Strike asked.
Rabbit shook his head. “I’m good if you are.”
“Then let’s go.”
They met the others outside the hotel and headed for El Rey. There, they all went in through the m ai n gate, paid the entry fee, and joined the scattering of other park visitors, who were being desultorily watched by a couple of attendants who wore uniforms but no sidearms.
Once they were in, Strike gave a little finger wiggle. “Let’s spread out. We’ll meet up in five at the back of the pyramid.”
Although the magi could conceal themselves with a chameleon shield or by uplinking with Patience when she went invisible, the spells would be a power drain, so they stuck to more conventional camouflage to start with, splitting up to wander into the park, flying casual.
At least most of them did. Rabbit stopped just inside the main gate and took a long look around.
Most of the old buildings were little more than stone footprints, lines in the limestone outlining where the village’s market buildings, houses, temples, and palace had once stood. It all looked exactly the same as it had two days ago . . . but the air carried a subsonic whine he didn’t remember from before, one that made him want to work his jaw and pop his ears.
Myrinne had initially moved off with the others, but now backtracked and put herself in front of him. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not wrong, so much. I’m just getting a strange buzz off this place. It’s probably just the same thing Brandt was talking about.” He resisted the almost overwhelming urge to scratch the back of his neck. “I’m probably feeling it because we’re almost on top of the solstice-eclipse. I bet the others will start noticing it soon.”
She looked dubious. “Should we tell Strike?”
“Not yet.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he warned, “Don’t cry wolf on me, babe.”
She made a face at him. “You’re just pissed that when he finally gave me something to do, it turned out to be babysitting you.”
“Ouch.” But he snorted, amusement smoothing out some of the itchiness. “Witch.”
“Pyro.”
They grinned at each other like a couple of idiots in love—which they pretty much were—then linked hands and headed for the pyramid. But even as he let himself be distracted by the bounce in her step and the excited gleam in her eyes, he stayed very aware of the angry-mosquito buzz that plagued him just below the audible level . . . and the feeling, deep in his gut, that he was missing something.
At the back side of the square pyramid, out of sight of the tourists and the park attendants, the magi gathered near the center point of the lowest tier.
Brandt flattened his hand on a section of stonework that looked exactly like its neighbors on either side. “It was right here.” Beside him, Patience nodded.
They were standing closer together than usual, Rabbit saw, and when Patience caught his eye and sent him a “hope this works” look, she didn’t look as tight as she had for the past few months. He hoped that meant she and Brandt were putting things back together. He didn’t like them being out of whack, because if those two couldn’t make it work—hell, he didn’t know. It wasn’t good.
Jade stared at the stones, her eyes going blurry with the inward-looking expression she wore when she used her spell caster’s talents. After a moment, though, she shook her head. “I’m not sensing any sort of concealment spell. Let’s try uplinking and see if the power boost helps.”
To be on the safe side, Alexis cast a thin chameleon shield that would obscure them from view, making them seem to blend into the surrounding stone. Michael had discovered the variation on the warrior’s traditional protective shield, and Alexis had picked up on it through her connection to Ixchel, the goddess of weaving and rainbows; she said it was like weaving light.