Since the barrier woke up and the pee stick started refusing to turn pink month after month, she admitted bitterly, at least to herself. If she couldn’t be a mother, and she was a pretty sad excuse for a wife, she might as well be a princess.
There was little joy in the thought.
‘‘He have any family?’’
It took her a moment to process Red-Boar’s question, another to frown. ‘‘Since when did you get sentimental?’’
‘‘Just wondering if anyone’s going to raise a stink when he doesn’t come home.’’
‘‘The university will notice, and his students. But friends and family? Um . . .’’ She frowned. ‘‘I’m pretty sure he mentioned a woman once in passing.’’
‘‘Girlfriend?’’
She shook her head. ‘‘I don’t know.’’
‘‘You think anyone stateside is going to make trouble?’’
Anna lifted one shoulder, staring down at the headless torso. ‘‘There’s always a risk when you come down here for fieldwork. Families get used to it.’’ Or they fell apart, which happened more often than the community liked to admit. ‘‘Besides, Ambrose was even more eccentric than the norm, and had the rep of disappearing for months at a time. Most likely this woman, or one of his students, will go to the university when they realize he’s overdue. They’ll contact the consulate, and either there’ll be a quick search or the government will pretend there was, and everyone will wave their hands and have benefit dinners. ‘Very sorry for your loss, he was a pioneer. Died the way he would’ve wanted, doing what he loved, blah, blah . . .’ ’’ She trailed off, staring at the hacked-through vertebrae and ragged flesh. ‘‘We can’t bring him back with us. We’ll have to rebury him here.’’
The question was, where?
They couldn’t leave him where he was, first because the grave was far too shallow, and second because if another researcher discovered the site in the future, odds were that he—or she—would eventually want to punch through the cenote cap and study the artifacts that’d been tossed into the sacred well. The discovery of a modern burial atop the cenote would trigger way too many questions.
‘‘Let’s put him at the edge of the trees.’’ She gestured to a sunny, pleasant-looking spot she thought the dour old researcher might’ve liked, assuming he got pleasure from anything other than making other researchers look like idiots.
Gods, she was going to miss knowing the old coot was somewhere on the earth plane with her, she thought, then winced again at hearing herself think like a Nightkeeper. In that moment, Dick and her real life seemed very far away.
‘‘Grab his shoulders,’’ Red-Boar ordered. ‘‘I’ll get his feet.’’
‘‘Can’t we—’’ Anna broke off, realizing that no, they couldn’t. There really wasn’t a better way to get Ledbetter from point A to point B.
Holding her breath, she grabbed Ledbetter’s shirt near the collar, and nodded. ‘‘I’m ready.’’
He snorted. ‘‘Don’t be such a girl. Get him by the pits.’’
‘‘Fine,’’ she said. ‘‘Pits it is.’’ She forced herself to dig under and lift as Red-Boar tugged on the ankles, and the body came up from its thin covering of leaves and soil with a faint resistance and a noise she didn’t want to think about. As they carried him across the clearing, she tried not to breathe through her nose. Not that mouth breathing was a big improvement, but she told herself the heavy, oily taste was purely her imagination.
‘‘He’s lighter than I expected,’’ she said when they were about halfway across. Alive, Ledbetter had been nearly Red-Boar’s size. Now she could handle her half of his weight without too much trouble.
‘‘Ground’s dry in the direct sunlight,’’ Red-Boar said. ‘‘He’s partway to mummy already.’’
‘‘Any idea how long he’s been here?’’
Red-Boar pulled a small, collapsible shovel out of his pack, assembled it, and got to work digging a hole at the site she’d chosen. The ground was moist at the edge of the rain forest canopy, and the flimsy shovel cut through the humus with little effort.
Still, Red-Boar was puffing lightly when he answered, ‘‘You said he’d left the States a month ago?’’
‘‘That’s what his assistant said.’’ Anna looked back in the direction of the cenote as faint waves of energy prickled across her skin. ‘‘You think he’s been dead that long?’’
‘‘Probably not. Critters would’ve gotten to him. I’d say a couple of days, tops.’’
Meaning they could’ve saved him if they’d been faster.
Red-Boar glanced over at her and shook his head. ‘‘Don’t beat yourself up. It doesn’t fix anything.’’
‘‘I knew him,’’ she said.
‘‘Don’t get the impression you liked him much.’’
‘‘Still,’’ she maintained. ‘‘Someone should grieve. He wasn’t a bad man, just ornery.’’
He didn’t say another word, just bent to his work. Ten minutes later, he had a credible grave dug, deep enough to foil the scavengers, and long enough to take a body that was nearly six feet, even without the head.
Anna frowned, looking at the corpse. How had she not noticed how big Ledbetter was before? He’d slouched, she remembered now, always hunched over some obscure text, ignoring all efforts at conversation. ‘‘He was a strange old man,’’ she said thoughtfully.
‘‘Now he’s a dead old man. Let’s get him planted and search the area. Maybe the makol missed his campsite, or the ruin we’re looking for is nearby.’’
Both seemed like pretty thin chances, but that was what they were down to these days.
Steeling herself, Anna grabbed Ledbetter’s arms and lifted, helping Red-Boar angle the body toward the hole.
‘‘A little more to your left,’’ he ordered, and she obeyed.
Loose dirt shifted beneath her foot and she wobbled, trying to get her balance, but lost her footing at the edge of the open grave.
And fell with a screech.
Red-Boar let go of the dead man’s ankles, lunged forward, and grabbed her around the waist. She knew she should let go but she didn’t move fast enough, and Ledbetter’s shirt ripped and came away in her hands.
His body tumbled into the grave, leaving her standing in Red-Boar’s arms, holding a dead man’s shirt. Red-Boar’s pulse hammered against her spine as he held her, warm and strong and bare chested, but those sensations were lost as Anna’s heart stopped, simply stopped in her chest when she saw what Ledbetter’s shirt had hidden.
Old, gnarled scar tissue covered the entirety of his inner right forearm, right where a Nightkeeper wore his marks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Shock gripped Anna, disbelief thrumming as she stared down into the grave and came to the only conclusion she could. ‘‘Ledbetter was a Nightkeeper.’’
Despite the slouch, which had probably been designed to camouflage his true size, Ledbetter had been far too big to be a winikin, and there was no way the scar pattern was a coincidence.
‘‘Looks that way.’’ Red-Boar’s voice was nearly inflectionless.
‘‘He—’’ Anna broke off when her voice trembled. ‘‘Who was he?’’
‘‘I haven’t a clue.’’ He paused, then shrugged. ‘‘Doesn’t change the fact that we can’t take him with us and we can’t waste time. Let’s get him planted.’’
He dropped into the grave and quickly searched the body for other marks, other evidence of who Ledbetter had been and how he’d survived the Solstice Massacre. Finding nothing, he arranged the body in a more natural position. And though Red-Boar was trying to pretend it didn’t matter, Anna could see that his shoulders were tight and that sadness shimmered in the air around him—a translucent hum of tears tinged red with anger.
He boosted himself out of the grave, then paused and looked down at the dead man. Then he stripped a jade circlet from his upper arm and tossed it in beside the bundle. The carved armband landed on Ledbetter’s chest, just above his heart. An offering. A talisman to accompany the dead man through the underground river to Xibalba, and then out the other side to the sky.