"But I found—"
‘‘Go.’’ She crossed the room, pulled him out of his chair, and shoved him toward the door. ‘‘It’ll still be here in a few hours. One nice thing about the study of an ancient civilization is that life-threatening emergencies are rare.’’
The sentiment was so un-Anna-like that he paused. ‘‘Is everything okay?’’
She avoided his eyes. ‘‘Everything’s fine. I want to get a jump on things before the grant vultures descend this afternoon.’’
‘‘Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Anna.’’ Talk to me, he wanted to say. Tell me what’s wrong. I’ll listen; I want to help. But he didn’t go there, because she’d already let him know in so many little ways that she was flattered, but not interested in a student nearly ten years her junior. Rumor said her marriage to Dick Catori of the economics department was on shaky ground, but she left that at the door. At least, she usually did. Tonight, she seemed to waver, seemed to lean toward him for half a second.
Then she straightened and shook her head. ‘‘It’s nothing you can help me with.’’
‘‘Try me.’’
Her eyes softened to the you’re so cute look he hated like poison, and she nudged him toward the door. ‘‘It’s not your fight. Go home.’’
Lucius didn’t like the thought of her sleeping at the lab because things had gotten bad with the Dick, but he’d just look like an idiot if he invited her to his place, a shared apartment furnished in Early Roach, so he said, ‘‘Call me if you change your mind.’’
‘‘I will,’’ she said, but they both knew she wouldn’t.
‘‘See you in a few hours.’’
‘‘Not before noon, or I’m docking your stipend.’’ He shot her a grin. ‘‘Can’t threaten me. Half of nothing’s still nothing.’’ But the moment the door swung shut at his back, his smile faded.
What was going on? She’d been distracted lately, worried by more than just the grant committee. A bubble of anger worked its way through his normal calm. If the Dick was giving her grief, he’d . . .
You’ll do what, he thought bitterly, tell on him?
Lucius was two inches taller and a good fifty pounds lighter than his younger brothers and his father, who were all cut in the Hunt mold of dark, handsome, and built. Lucius looked more like his mother and sister, and while light and willowy was gorgeous on them, he looked more wussy than willowy, and doubted Anna’s ex-linebacker husband would be impressed.
He’d have to try another angle, then. So, think, he told himself as he crossed the narrow bridge at the front of the art history building. What does Anna need?
The question bumped against the twitchiness deep inside him, and he glanced up at the waning moon overhead. He could swear he felt the night in his bones, a subsonic itch that added to the restlessness.
His mother used to say he should’ve been born in another time, when he could’ve lived the quests he read about and played on VR games. But neither books nor games were enough, had never been enough. He wanted to do something, be something more than a scrawny glyph geek who was constantly getting himself in trouble more through accident than design.
Going on instinct, he doubled back, circling the outer edge of the dark, seventies-style building until he reached the window of Anna’s first-floor office. The window was closed but the room was fully lit. Trusting that the darkness at his back would shield him from view, he squelched the guilt and peeked in.
He saw his laptop open on the desk, with the monitor switched to a deep crimson that really popped the line of glyphwork he’d been working on. The red showed the skull screaming, clear as day. But that wasn’t what had Lucius freezing in place.
It was the sight of Anna, slumped in her desk chair with her eyes closed and blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
Leah awoke midafternoon, with a serious crick in her neck from having slept on a MAC-10 autopistol and a profound wish that she’d open her eyes and find that the last few weeks—hell, the last year and a half—had been a really twisted dream.
But when she did the eyes-open thing and found herself in a sumptuous bedroom with tall ceilings, thick carpets and drapes, and a faintly impersonal Native American- themed decor that practically screamed ‘‘high-end hotel,’’ she had a strong feeling the weirdness was just beginning.
As the events of the night before came clearer in her mind, she was sure of only one thing: She was way out of her jurisdiction.
The red-rock canyon walls visible beyond the wide bedroom windows suggested the Southwest, and what she now remembered of the explanation Strike had given her in the Mayan temple—after they’d had total-stranger sex—suggested she’d stumbled into a cosmic-level battle that went well beyond the MDPD.
It should’ve been utterly ridiculous even to consider that any of what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen— was real. But what was the alternative? Hallucination? Insanity? It felt way too real, and her online searches on the Survivor2012 doctrine had made it sound like an awful lot of experts—including real scientists, not just doomsday nuts—agreed that something wonky was going to happen at the end of 2012. And if she believed the Maya had predicted the zero date a few thousand years ago, was it such a stretch to believe that there was a religious component to it all?
‘‘But religion isn’t the same as actual magic,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘An astronomical event isn’t the same as gods and demons battling for control of the earth.’’
In order for her to believe what Strike had told her about the Nightkeepers, she had to accept that the 2012 apocalypse was going to boil down to a battle between good and evil, and while that might make a hell of a movie, it didn’t do much for her in terms of common sense. She was a cop. A realist.
‘‘There’s no such thing as magic,’’ she said. But she didn’t sound convinced, even to her own ears, because if there was no such thing as magic, how did she explain all that she’d seen and done recently?
A tap on the door interrupted her thoughts, which was a relief, because they weren’t getting her anywhere. Scrambling out of the plush, king-size bed, she pulled on her bloodstained clothes and fastened her belt loosely enough that she could jam the MAC beneath it. Exiting the bedroom, she crossed an equally opulent sitting room, taking note of the attached kitchenette and a short hallway beyond, leading to what looked like a solarium and a few other closed doors.
Forget upscale hotel. Apparently she’d rated a small condo.
The main door to the suite was actually a set of double doors, both elaborately carved with the same sort of glyphs Strike wore on his arm. At the thought of the marks—and the man—Leah’s skin warmed, anger at his deception tangling with desire. The churned-up heat had her voice sharpening when she opened one of the doors. ‘‘Yes?’’
Jox stood there, his lived-in face tight with disapproval as he held out a small pile of clothing, with a pair of sneakers on top. ‘‘They’ll be too big for you.’’
She bristled to meet his ’tude. ‘‘Better than bloodstains. ’’ She took the clothes before he could snatch them back. And what the hell was his problem? It wasn’t like she’d asked to get herself dragged into this mess. She’d just been doing her job.
More or less.
He bowed stiffly. ‘‘Aj-winikin.’’ Then he turned on his heel and strode off, somehow making his faded jeans and long-sleeved shirt look like livery.
‘‘Wait,’’ she said quickly. She needed more info, needed to figure out if these people—these Nightkeepers—were the real deal, and if so, whether they were the good guys or the bad. She wanted to believe Strike, wanted to trust him. And that was a serious problem, because her track record really sucked in the picking-trustworthy-men-for-relationships department.