Jade lunged to her feet, reaching for him, but he held her off with an upraised palm, suddenly grokking what was going on. He yanked his hand away from Anna’s. “No,” he started. “Don’t—” But then he stopped, because he knew it was already done. “Fuck.” The world settled down around him, his vision coming clear as he flipped his arm and confirmed that the black slave mark was gone. He wasn’t bound to her anymore. Technically, he wasn’t bound to the Nightkeepers anymore, either. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
His forearm now bore only the red hellmark, startling in its geometry, deadly in its coloration. “The quatrefoil’s not balanced anymore.” His heart thudded in his chest; his thoughts played demolition derby inside his head. What was this going to mean for his ability to tap the library? Something?
Nothing? Was it an entirely moot point?
Jade moved up beside him, so they were facing Anna as a couple. No, he thought, not a couple. As partners. A team. She snapped, “That was a rotten thing to do without talking it through. For all we know, that was his only link to the magic. And you just took it.” She was so angry she was practically vibrating.
“It was mine to take.” Anna turned her palms up, not to indicate the gods, but rather saying, Not my problem . In doing that, she bared her right palm, where the sacrificial slice had already closed to a thin scab. Lucius’s palm, in contrast, still bled sluggishly.
“That sucks,” Jade snapped.
“That’s life.”
Lucius followed the exchange as if from a distance, through a cool numbness that began where the slave mark had been and spread throughout his body. Anna was a Nightkeeper who didn’t want the magic. He was a human who did. “The gods have a strange sense of balance,” he muttered.
“The gods are gone.” Anna held out her hand to shake, human-style. “And as of today, so am I.”
Knowing it was futile to argue further, that he didn’t have the strength to shift an entrenched jaguar on his own, he finally nodded. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Have it your way.” He moved to scoop up the effigy.
“No, wait,” Anna said. He paused, hopeful. But she gestured to Jade. “That’s why I asked you to be here. I want you to wear it back to Skywatch. If it’s not being carried by a member of the jaguar bloodline, it’s enough that it’s being worn by a mage I consider a friend.” Her voice caught on the last word.
Lips pressed tightly together, Jade merely scooped up the effigy, draped the chain over her head, and tucked the sacred skull beneath her yellow polo, doing up the lower two buttons to conceal the priceless artifact. Taking her hand, Lucius headed for the door, aching with the knowledge that, unless Strike and Jox worked some major magic, it would probably be the last time he’d see Anna, who’d been a big part of his life for so long. When he had the panel open, his eye caught the laminated sign.
What have you got to lose? When had the answer become “Everything”?
“Lucius,” Anna said.
He glanced back. “Yeah?”
“Good luck.” Her eyes shifted to Jade. “And to you. I wish . . . I wish I could be as brave and strong as you’re learning to be. Gods keep you both.”
Jade didn’t answer, but her eyes glittered with unshed tears. Lucius tipped his head. “Good-bye, Professor Catori.”
Out in the hallway, he tried to breathe through the numbness and the sense that the squat, dark building was collapsing inward around him. Jade’s eyes were stark, her face pale, but she said only, “Do you want to grab any of the stuff from your old office? She boxed most of the things you left behind.”
“Leave it,” he said curtly. “There’s nothing here I need.”
“You up for tracking down Rabbit?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” In a way, he hoped the kid was up to something. Knowing Rabbit, it’d be guaranteed to take his mind off Anna’s defection, and the fact that Jade was wearing the crystal skull.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Jade couldn’t get either Rabbit or Myrinne on her cell, she and Lucius headed over to their summer sublet. The apartment proved to be the top floor of a detached garage. The main house was a good-size, brick-faced residential house with freshly painted white trim, ruthlessly shaped shrubs, and a perfectly trimmed lawn.
“Huh,” Lucius said. “Doesn’t look like either of their styles.” It was the first thing he’d said since they left the art history building. He’d just walked beside her, grim faced and stone silent.
Jade slid a glance over at him. The fierce tension that had gripped his body seemed to have eased slightly, but his expression still had all sorts of Keep Out signs plastered across it. She didn’t blame him; the past half hour had been a serious shock to her system, and she hadn’t had nearly the relationship with Anna that he’d had. Unconsciously, she touched the bulge beneath her shirt made by the skull effigy. She felt a faint hum of power coming from it, but not one that resonated with the way she usually experienced the magic. That confirmed what Anna had said about the skulls being bloodline- and seer-specific. She didn’t think it would affect her magic, or Lucius’s . . . at least, not directly. Indirectly, though, its presence was a heavy weight between them, as was the bare spot on his forearm where the slave mark had been. She didn’t know what Strike and the others were going to think about that. Heck, she didn’t know what she thought about it. All she knew was that her plan of talking to Lucius about the emotional component of the magic on their drive home wasn’t seeming like such a good idea now. He might be standing right next to her, but he’d never seemed farther away.
Hoping he just needed time to work things out in his head, she focused on the task at hand: finding Rabbit. And Lucius had a point on the digs. Although the relative isolation was consistent with Rabbit’s fierce need for distance from everyone but Myrinne, the suburban-USA surroundings and soccer-mom minivan in the driveway didn’t jibe. If they had just been normal students, Jade would have assumed it was a cost thing, but the Nightkeeper Fund had been set up to support an army of hundreds, if not thousands. It was beyond sufficient for the two dozen survivors. Heck, she’d heard Jox urging the kid to just buy a damn house rather than worry about a sublet. Granted, the winikin had followed that by muttering something about getting as much fire insurance as possible, but still.
So why the sublet?
“Can I help you?” A dark-haired woman nudged open the storm door of the main house with one foot. She wore sweats, was jiggling a swaddled baby in one arm, and had a why the hell did I sign up for this? look on her face. In the background, an older kid was screaming something about spaghetti.
Jade took a step toward her, smiling. “We’re friends of Rabbit’s. Are he and Myrinne around, do you know?”
“Sorry, I haven’t got a clue if they’re home. I saw them headed out this morning; don’t know if they came back or not.” The woman tilted her head. “They expecting you?”
“Not specifically.” Though Rabbit had to know Strike wouldn’t put up with being ignored for long, and would have seen her number pop up on caller ID just now.