Nightkeepers

finishing with a loud cry of, ‘‘Ye-ye-ye!’’ Reveal!

The gold burst like ground-level fireworks, raining down on them in pellets of power that felt cool to the touch. Air rushed into the space where the golden light had been, a howling whip of wind that moved the sand and plucked an eagle from the sky.

The bird recovered quickly, winging away over the canyon with a screech of protest, then swerving sharply to the right when a huge leafy tree materialized in front of it. As the eagle flapped its powerful wings, seeming eager to get the hell away, four other buildings shimmered to life, becoming solid and recognizable, and punching Strike with a grief so fresh that he nearly dropped to his knees. He couldn’t, though, because he was held up by Red- Boar’s viselike grip on his hand.

Through the connection, he saw the image of a golden-haired woman and two toddlers, identical copies of each other, and felt a wash of love so acute he wanted to scream with it.

Realizing he was catching Red-Boar’s emotional backlash, he tried to pull away, shouting, ‘‘Jack out!’’ When the mage resisted, Strike got in his face, grabbed him by the jaw, and forced the older man to look at him. ‘‘Listen to me! Let them go; they’re not real!’’

Red-Boar released his hand and the golden light cut out. The images dimmed, and Strike sagged, bracing his hands on his knees to stay upright.

Then Red-Boar punched him in the face and Strike went down anyway.

‘‘What the fuck?’’ Strike rolled and blocked, in case there was another coldcock incoming, but it’d been a one-shot deal.

The older man just stood over him, breathing hard. ‘‘They were real to me,’’ he said, and turned and walked toward the newly materialized buildings.

Red-Boar’s step didn’t change when Rabbit called after him. He didn’t hear the quaver in the boy’s voice. Or maybe he didn’t care.

‘‘Here. Up you go.’’ Jox hauled Strike to his feet with a strength that seemed disproportionate to his size. ‘‘You okay?’’ At Strike’s nod, he turned to Rabbit. ‘‘You?’’

‘‘Whatever.’’ The kid took a good, long look at what had sprung to life in the box canyon, and his lips twisted. ‘‘You guys better be able to magic us up about fifty Ty Penningtons, because this place needs a serious make-over. ’’

Strike followed the direction of his gaze—he’d managed to avoid looking at the compound up to that point—and let out a long, shaky breath. It was the scene of his nightmares. Yet at the same time it wasn’t.

Yes, the walls were scored with claw marks, but they were faded and worn from wind, rain, and blowing sand. Yes, wrecked cars dotted the landscape, but they were dated, rusted shells now, looking like a more appropriate setting for a junkyard dog than for fear.

Strike had worried that all he’d see was the past. Instead, he saw possibilities.

The main house was as huge as his nine-year-old self remembered, a three-story mansion of mortar-set sandstone with wings running off on either side, curving around, a swimming pool in the back. The driveway ran around the left side to the huge connected garage, and on the right a covered tunnel led to the Great Hall. At least, it had. Now the spot where the rec building had stood was nothing more than a dark stain on the canyon floor, marking the ashes of the dead children and winikin.

In the center of the rectangular impression where the hall had once stood, there was a huge tree that hadn’t been there before. Yet, oddly, it looked like it’d been there for hundreds of years, because there was no way it’d gotten that big in a couple of decades. It had to be five or six feet across at the base, probably fifty-plus feet high, with lush green leaves that seemed completely out of place amidst the arid dryness of the New Mexican landscape.

‘‘What the hell?’’ Rabbit said.

‘‘It’s a ceiba tree,’’ Strike answered, though he’d been thinking pretty much the same thing. Their ancestors had planted the sacred ‘‘world trees’’ in the center of their villages and plazas. They’d believed the ceiba’s roots ran to the underworld, and its branches held up the heavens. He turned to Jox. ‘‘Did you plant it?’’

The winikin shook his head, seeming stunned. ‘‘No. It makes a hell of a memorial, though. Wish I’d thought of it.’’

‘‘Someone did,’’ Strike said, though he couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew they were both thinking. It was one thing to jack in to a concentration of psi energy that existed at the barrier between the planes. It was another to suggest that an actual god had planted a tree in their backyard. A tree that grew exclusively in rain forests. One that shouldn’t have had leaves during the dry season, and looked like it’d been there far longer than was actually possible.

He stood there for a moment, wondering if this was the point where he woke up from the dream. Instead, he stayed exactly where he was.

After a moment, Jox looped an arm across his shoulders and hugged him close, as he had done when Strike was a boy. ‘‘Come on, kid. It’s time to call your people home.’’

But as Strike followed his winikin through the main entrance of the training compound built by his ancestors, he wasn’t thinking of the massacre and times past, or the renovations they’d need to do to get the place livable, or even of the strangers he was supposed to turn into a tiny army. He was thinking about Leah, and how she’d stood up to him, chin jutting like she was leading for a punch; how he’d watched her sleep, her face going soft and vulnerable; and how she’d looked at him after they’d been together, how she’d seen him as a man rather than something so much more complicated.

And as he stepped through the doorway into the entryway of the king’s mansion, where the past and future ran together and made his heart hurt, he wished like hell that he could’ve been just a man, could’ve been her man. But he wasn’t and couldn’t be.

He was a Nightkeeper.

PART II

APHELION