“Nate!” Alexis dropped down beside him, her hands hovering in midair, as though she wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. He didn’t know whether it was meant as comfort, to reassure herself that he was alive, or, hell, to remind the king that she’d been an important part of the rescue, but Nate found it to be a nice moment nonetheless. And for a few seconds, as the coughing eased and the Nightkeepers’ accelerated healing started to do its thing, he let himself relax and pretend she’d come after him because he mattered, not in the grand scheme of the Nightkeepers, but to her personally.
“Thanks,” he said, though it came out as more of a croak.
She went still for a moment, and he was expecting a dig or a snappy comeback, so he was surprised when she said only, “You’re welcome.” And then she touched him, laying her palm against his scorched cheek so she could send him a wash of warmth and power, and an edge of softness he hadn’t known he needed until just then.
Once Nate was asleep—okay, so he’d passed out, but who could blame him?—Alexis stepped back so Carlos and Jox could carry him to his room and get him cleaned up. She badly needed a shower too, but instead she found herself crouching down beside Rabbit, opposite Strike and Leah.
The king’s face was streaked with soot and burn marks, the latter of which were already most of the way healed. But the strain and worry didn’t ease; they wouldn’t, Alexis knew, until the teen awoke.
“We left him behind so he’d be safe,” she said softly, feeling guilt dig deep. “We didn’t know the witch would come back to the tea shop.” Which didn’t explain why Rabbit had been three blocks away when he’d called the fire magic. But it also didn’t own the full responsibility she carried. “I should’ve listened to Nate,” she said, her shoulders sagging beneath the failure. “When the witch refused to sell us the knife outright, he wanted to steal it and get back home. I convinced him to wait. It’s my fault.”
But the king shook his head. “You didn’t do this. The redhead did.”
Rabbit stirred and whispered something from between cracked lips.
Strike leaned in. “Come again?”
“Iago,” Rabbit said, his voice a dry rasp. “His name is Iago. And you were right; he’s Order of Xibalba.”
Leah stiffened. “How do you know?”
“Myrinne told me. Iago offered the witch a deal.” The teen exhaled and faded again.
“Who the hell is Myrinne?” Strike demanded, voice rough with worry.
Alexis said, “If I’m guessing right, a dark-haired girl with a shiner; I think she may be the witch’s apprentice or servant, maybe her daughter.”
“Which means she probably knows what she’s talking about. Shit. Order of Xibalba.” He shared a complicated look with Leah, one that excluded Alexis and the rest of the world.
Leah nodded. “Yeah. Problem.”
“I’m sorry I lost the knife,” Rabbit said, his cracked voice painful to hear.
“Not your fault either,” Strike said with a look at Alexis. He reached out to touch the boy, then hesitated and let his hand fall. “Heal up. We’ll talk later.”
At the king’s word, Jox came in to tend the boy. Strike rose with a soft curse and headed out of the room, with Leah following. The cop-turned-queen paused at the archway leading to the louvered hall and raised an eyebrow at Alexis. “You coming?”
Alexis stalled, confused. “I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . what?” Treacherous hope unfurled. “You want me in on your meeting? Even though I screwed up?”
“At least you tried something,” Leah said, her blue eyes cool and assessing, not giving away a thing.
“You interested in maybe trying something else, or at least talking strategy?”
Alexis was filthy and sore, and a weak, feminine part of her really wanted to check in on Nate, but all of those things could wait. The toehold to an advisory position, the one thing she’d wanted ever since this all began, was being offered to her. She took a tentative step in Leah’s direction, aware that the king was standing behind his mate, waiting for Alexis’s decision.
She paused a moment longer, then lifted her chin and nodded, accepting her mother’s place—her rightful place—among the king’s council. “Count me in.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Today is not a good day to travel this road,” said Abe, the guide Lucius had hired to lead him into the Yucatán rain forest. The vague warning was the fifth he’d given in the past hour, as he and Lucius trekked along a nonpath through the heart of the jungle.
Lucius wasn’t sure if the guy was trying to spook him, or if he really thought the gods had slapped a big old cosmic Keep Out sign across their path. But if anyone was going to get the omens right, it was someone like Abe, who was in training to become a Daykeeper, a shamanistic tradition the modern Maya had retained from their long-ago ancestors. Centuries of push-pull between Christianization and tradition had given birth to a blended religion that nodded to Christian themes while retaining many of the old ceremonies and beliefs, including the Daykeepers, who were in charge of the multiple Mayan calendars and their associated prophecies and portents.
According to Abe, those portents indicated that the spirits of the rain forest were restless, and wanted Lucius out of their ’hood.
Normally Lucius would’ve given in. Anna had taught him early on that a Mayanist worked within the local community, even when studying the ancient glyph system that was no longer practiced in the modern day. If she’d been there, she would’ve turned back on warning number two or three. She wouldn’t’ve kept going until Abe broke out in a light sweat and his eyes went wild around the edges.
But Anna wasn’t there, and Lucius had no intention of turning back. Something was pulling him onward, drawing him along the faint pathway one of Ledbetter’s grad students had mentioned seeing in his notes. The old coot had been secretive about the site, the girl had said; he’d nearly bitten her head off when he realized she’d seen the journal entry.
That was what she’d told Sasha Ledbetter when she’d come looking for a clue as to where her father had gone. And Lucius, thanks to Desiree and her magic AmEx, had followed, more than four months after Sasha had flown south, and fallen off the map, just like her old man.
Logic said that Ambrose Ledbetter and his daughter had perished, probably taking with them whatever Ambrose had known about the Nightkeepers. But Lucius needed to know for sure.
As though in answer to his thought, the wind picked up, moaning through the top level of the leafy canopy in an eerie descant. Okay, that’s creepy, Lucius admitted inwardly. Doesn’t mean I’m quitting, though.
Abe planted himself in the middle of the nonpath and jammed his machete into the loam. “We’re going back now.”
“It was just the wind,” Lucius said, because really, there was nothing to suggest otherwise. The birds and critters were still doing their thing, and the sun still dappled through the canopy, though slanting a little lower in the sky than it’d been when they left the Jeep at the place where the narrow footpath intersected the muddy track that passed for a road. The air hadn’t changed. Nothing was different.
Yet at the same time, something was different, he realized suddenly. There was a hum in the air that hadn’t been there before, subsonic, almost a buzz running beneath his skin.
“I’m not going back,” he said before he was even aware of having made the decision.
“I am.” Abe stepped away and spit on the ground. “Good luck.”
The loogie wasn’t a sign of disrespect, Lucius knew, but rather the exact opposite. Moisture was precious in the Yucatán, where water ran entirely underground, coming to the surface only at circular openings, fallen-through sinkholes called cenotes. The spittle was a sacrifice. A blessing.