The ground yawed and threatened to shake apart. Something crashed down from above, but was deflected by shield magic.
“Thanks,” Brandt grated, not sure who had set the shield, but understanding that the others were protecting him so he could concentrate everything he had on locking stone against rubble, rubble against sand.
Although the original causeways had ended at the island’s shores, he continued inward, reinforcing Cabrakan’s prison all the way inward to the Templo Mayor, which was the central point where all four causeways intersected, and where slave-built temples had been soaked in blood.
There, wielding the magic of love and family, of past and present, Brandt joined the causeways together, stabilizing the ground beneath Mexico City and sealing the demon into Xibalba.
And then, spent, he let himself fall, knowing that Patience would catch him and bring him home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
December 22 One year, three hundred and sixty-four days to the zero date Skywatch Woody’s funeral rites were planned for noon the day after the solstice-eclipse. His pyre was built at the edge of where the Nightkeepers’ Great Hall had stood before the massacre. Red-Boar had been sent to the gods from that spot, as had Sasha’s father. There had been zero discussion of setting up a second funerary site for the winikin even though the separation had been traditional in their parents’ generations. Winikin, Nightkeeper, human . . . they were all teammates, all equally worthy of the gods’ attention on their way to the sky.
Brandt, Patience, and Hannah did the bulk of the work on the pyre, with Harry and Braden alternately helping and getting in the way. To Patience, their perpetual motion and piping voices brought a sense of lightness, completion, and joy that she had so badly missed . . . and one she would yearn for when they left again.
But now, more than ever, they needed to stay hidden.
Iago’s injuries would heal, and when they did, he was going to be pissed. She didn’t want the boys anywhere within his reach. If she could have sent them to another planet, another plane, she would have. As it was, she was doing the next best thing: She was entrusting them once again to Hannah, and this time she wouldn’t go looking for them, no matter what. She would love them best by letting them go. Even if it killed her to do so.
“There.” Brandt stepped back, dusted off his hands, and stuck them in the front pockets of his jeans as he surveyed the work. Braden did the same, mimicking his father so they stood side by side, both with their hands in their jeans pockets and their shoulders slightly hunched beneath black T-shirts, staring at Woody’s pyre with matching frowns.
Patience’s heart turned over when Brandt glanced down, caught Braden’s fierce scowl, and laughed out loud. It was a rusty-sounding chuckle, one forced through his grief for Woody, and his sorrow at knowing the boys would be there for only a few more hours. But instead of shutting all that away, he caught her eyes and shared it: the laugh, the grief, and the sorrow.
“You guys are going to be okay,” Hannah said softly from behind her.
Patience turned to find the winikin sitting atop one of the nearby picnic tables, with Harry cross-
legged on the picnic bench near her feet, watching his father and brother debate the placement of the three ceremonial sticks of ceiba, cacao, and rubber-tree wood.
Moving to sit on Harry’s other side, Patience propped her elbows on the table and nodded. “You know what? I think so.”
In another lifetime, when she’d been young and so caught up in being in love that she hadn’t remembered to be herself, she would have been adamant about it, would’ve made sweeping statements about love at first sight and forever. Now she was far more cautious. But at the same time, now she knew what it took to make love at first sight last forever . . . and she had a partner who knew he had to meet her halfway.
As if he’d caught a hint of her thoughts through their vibrant jun tan connection, he looked for her again, sent her a “hey, babe” smile . . . and went back to consulting with his junior contractor.
Seeing the exchange, Hannah nodded firmly. “I know so.”
Patience smiled, because she knew so too, and also because Harry gave them a disgusted look, muttered something about girl talk, and headed over to join the engineering debate.
“How about you?” Patience asked the winikin once Harry was out of earshot. “Are you going to be okay?”
They both knew she was really asking, How upset are you over Woody? Did you lose a friend, a lover, or the one and only?
Hannah’s lips curved softly. Wearing a deep purple bandanna over her missing eye, along with a black, puffy-sleeved blouse, she looked particularly piratical, though Patience suspected she’d been trying to tone down her usual peacock hues to human-style mourning colors.
After a moment, the other woman said, “Woody and I worked together better as winikin than we did as lovers. We synced amazingly well when it came to raising the boys and making family decisions. In that regard, it was a perfect match. In the other”—she lifted a shoulder—“we kept each other warm sometimes, but he wasn’t my one and only and I wasn’t his, and that was okay with both of us.” Her eye drifted in the direction of the mansion. “I’m sad about Woody, and I’ll miss the heck out of him.
He was a part of my life, and I’ll remember him until the gods call me up to the sky . . . but my heart isn’t broken.”
“Are you going to be okay working with Carlos?” It had been decided that the ex-wrangler would go with Hannah and the twins, in order to share the workload that came with raising a couple of bright, active boys, and—unstated but understood—to provide redundancy in case something happened to her. He had raised Sven and his own daughter, Cara, and had helped Nate through his rough transition into the Nightkeepers. He was a good choice.
But perhaps, Patience thought, not the absolute best choice.
“Carlos is a good man,” Hannah said. “A good winikin.” Which wasn’t really an answer. But before Patience could press her on it, the funeral procession emerged from the rear of the mansion and started heading in their direction.
Leah led the way, followed by most of the winikin. They carried the litter that bore Woody’s body, which had been intricately wrapped with cloth and tied into a mortuary bundle.
Hannah frowned. “Strike and Rabbit aren’t there.”
“Jox either,” Patience put in, though she suspected Hannah had noticed that first, then looked for Strike. She stood and started toward the procession. “Something’s up.” Please, gods, not something bad.
But Leah sent her an “It’s okay. Stay where you are” wave, and when she got out to the pyre, she said, “Strike and Jox will be out in a minute. They said for us to set up without them, that they’d be here for noon.”
As the winikin carefully placed the mortuary bundle atop the pyre, though, Patience noticed that Leah kept glancing back toward the mansion. When Patience caught herself doing the same thing, she made herself stop it, and focus on the ceremony.
Brandt, who had moved up to stand beside her in the loose ring of Nightkeepers, winikin, and humans surrounding the pyre, whispered, “Woody wouldn’t mind. He’d be dying to—” He faltered, then swallowed and continued. “He’d want to know what’s going on too.”