Worse, if one of them went, it’d be a chain reaction. Hold it together, Leah told herself as the door opened to reveal Red-Boar in his black robes and Strike in royal crimson, both wearing feathered headdresses and celts, and resolute expressions.
There were no nerves there, Leah saw, or if there were, they were well hidden as they all took their positions: the trainees in a circle around the altar with Red-Boar at the center, Strike on one side of the chac-mool, her on the other.
The sight of Strike in full-on I’m in charge here mode went a long way to settling her nerves.
Red-Boar flicked his black robes out of the way with a practiced move and sat cross-legged with his back to the altar. Over the top of the chac-mool, Strike and Leah faced each other and joined hands. Electricity arced across her skin at his touch, but it served only to bring the nerves right back where they’d been. What if the three-question ritual didn’t work?
Worse, what if it did?
She met his eyes, letting his apparent calm steady her fears. Letting the strength of his grip anchor her.
At Red-Boar’s gesture, the trainees dropped to sit cross-legged. Then the winikin filed in, carrying bowls, parchment, and ceremonial knives that they passed out. When they were gone and the door shut behind them once again, everyone had a bowl and knife except Jade, who sat against the wall, her expression caught somewhere between relief and humiliation.
Without a word, Red-Boar lifted his large, ornately carved stone knife, set it to his palm, and drew the blade sharply across his flesh. Blood welled, then dripped into the bowl, soaking into the layer of paper at the bottom. The others followed suit, then took turns passing a torch and using it to set the parchment aflame.
At Red-Boar’s gesture, each of them leaned forward and inhaled the smoke of burning blood, and whispered, ‘‘Pasaj och.’’
Seconds later they stilled and their faces went slack, indicating that they’d jacked into the barrier, sending their souls into the gray-green mist but leaving their bodies behind. When they did so, Leah felt . . . nothing. No power surge, no beckoning sense of urgency, no invitation to follow. Nothing except the edge of the altar digging into her ribs and the grip of Strike’s fingers on hers.
This isn’t going to work, she thought, panic kindling in her stomach. Whatever the magic was, I lost it.
‘‘Look at me,’’ Strike ordered. When she locked her eyes with his, he said, ‘‘Don’t you dare give up.’’
In the torchlight, his black hair and close-trimmed beard made his dark good looks lean toward dangerous, sending a quiver of awareness through her, a hum of nerves. He looked like he could be a demon, could be a king. He looked like a fighter, a warrior, like the man she’d dreamed of before.
The one she still dreamed of every damn night, and then woke up aching and alone.
‘‘Ready?’’ he asked, his voice a harsh rasp that licked along her nerve endings like fire.
She took a deep breath and nodded, but didn’t trust herself to speak. He wouldn’t even be bringing her into the barrier at all, except that the three-question spell was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, three questions per magic user per existence. And while she wasn’t a Nightkeeper, they were hoping she had enough of whatever magic she’d once possessed to get her into the barrier and call up the three-question nahwal with Strike’s help.
Better that, Red-Boar had pointed out with his usual lack of tact, than letting the king’s son burn his three questions on his human girlfriend. Jade’s research suggested the questions had to be specific to the petitioner, meaning that none of the other Nightkeepers could ask for her. The meant it was Leah or nobody.
‘‘Let’s do this.’’ Strike released her hands so he could cut his own right palm, then hers. Instead of letting the blood fall into separate bowls, they locked hands so the red wetness mingled as it dripped into the king’s ceremonial bowl, which had a small piece of parchment at the bottom. When the paper was wet with their blood, Strike lit it with one of the tapers, and they both leaned in to inhale the smoke. That put them face-to-face, and Strike shifted and touched his lips to hers. ‘‘Trust me.’’
Then he jacked in. Leah saw the change in his face, saw his eyes go blank and his expression slacken. Failure kicked her hard when she stayed behind, when she didn’t feel anything other than the burn in her palm and the tickle of smoke in her sinuses. Damn it, she couldn’t follow, didn’t have the power, didn’t know how to—
Hey, Blondie, his voice whispered in her mind.
Her nerves kicked. ‘‘Yeah?’’
Close your eyes and grab on.
‘‘To what?’’ But then she closed her eyes and saw a faint glowing thread that wasn’t part of her usual eyes-closed landscape. Excitement kicked her pulse a notch as she reached out with her mind and touched the thread.
There was a soundless explosion, a sense of flying while sitting still. Then her gut wrenched. Power screamed in her ears. And the bottom dropped out of her world.
Leah shrieked as she jolted down, then sideways, and the world went gray-green. She zapped in a few feet off the ground, several yards away from Strike, and fell face-first into a sea of mist, landing on something soft and squishy and vaguely mudlike.
Heart hammering, she rolled onto her back and concentrated on breathing. ‘‘Guess we made it.’’ The relief was so sharp it was almost painful.
‘‘This far, at least.’’ Strike grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. Once she was steady, he stripped off the headdress and set it aside, then reached inside his robe and withdrew a pair of stingray spines. ‘‘Now for stage two.’’
She took the spine. Tested the point with her fingertip. ‘‘Not very sharp.’’
‘‘That’s what makes it fun. Not.’’ He paused. ‘‘You ready?’’
She took a breath and nodded. At his signal, she opened her mouth and jammed the spine into her tongue, then yanked it out again. Pain was a quick slap and a longer burn, but she held herself still as blood filled her mouth and then overflowed, spilling down her chin and splashing on the blue robe.
Then, for the first time since the aphelion, she felt something. Sudden power bloomed on her skin, in her core. She smiled through the pain of her torn tongue. ‘‘I feel it!’’
‘‘Good. Say the words.’’
She began the chant, words she’d memorized phonetically but hadn’t really thought she’d use. Strike took position at her side, holding her right hand in his, joining their blood, boosting her power with his own. At first she was afraid the spell wouldn’t work. Then, as the mist thickened nearby and a human figure took shape, she was afraid it would work. Somehow, in that moment, getting the answers to the questions that’d dogged her the past few months seemed more frightening than not knowing the answers.
‘‘Steady,’’ Strike murmured at her side. ‘‘I’m here.’’
She leaned into him as the mists parted and the three-question nahwal approached, stopping a short distance away. It was a sexless humanoid figure with dead black eyes and no forearm marks or other distinguishing features, no expression on its desiccated face. Its tanned, leathery skin was pulled tight across its bones, and it made no sound when it moved.
‘‘Ask your first question,’’ it said in a toneless voice that seemed to be made of two voices, one high, one low, speaking in synchrony.