Nightkeepers

I’m invisible, she thought as shock fisted itself around her throat and squeezed until only a thin trickle of air got through. Impossible. Except it wasn’t impossible. She was a Nightkeeper, wasn’t she?

‘‘No. I’m not,’’ she whispered. ‘‘I don’t want to be.’’

She had other priorities now. Her sons were more important than her being a Nightkeeper and saving the world. She didn’t want the boys used, didn’t want them thrown into an impossible war, didn’t want them orphaned the way she and Brandt had been. Yes, she’d had Hannah and he’d had his godfather, Woodrow, who must’ve been a winikin, as well. But it wasn’t the same, had never been the same as having parents.

‘‘You need to be really, really quiet,’’ she whispered to the invisible boys, and thought she felt the warm bundles in her arms nod acquiescence.

Breathing through her mouth, she tiptoed out of the nursery, listening for any stray sound that could give her away, and hearing nothing. You can do this, she told herself. You can.

The doorbell was at the front of the house, but there were two other exits—the garage and the back door. She would’ve gone out through the garage, but starting the car would negate the whole invisibility bonus. That left the back.

A quick glance showed her that the coast was clear. She eased out, juggling the boys and trying not to feel the pull in her right shoulder, which she’d strained during a judo class the week before. She’d head around the side, cut through the Fitches’ backyard and across the next street over. Her friend Joanie lived two blocks down from there. She’d help.

And by then, Patience figured she was going to need some help. Already the buzzing had decreased, and a heavy pounding had started up in her skull. She didn’t know how much longer she could sustain the now you see me, now you don’t routine. Steps dragging, she started toward the Fitches’ yard, only to backpedal furiously when Hannah appeared from around the front, her brows furrowed.

Patience’s heart gave an uneven bump at the sight of her godmother’s lovely, scarred face beneath a bright pink scarf. She hated knowing she had to disappoint one of the most important people in her life in order to protect two others. Then again, she hadn’t liked keeping her marriage or babies secret from Hannah, either, talking on disposable cells and finding neutral places to meet a couple of times a year. She’d been living a second life, living a lie, and now it was coming back to bite her in the ass.

Get moving, she told herself. Just go and don’t look back. Instead, she stood for a moment and watched Hannah, wishing impossible things.

The winikin moved to the back door and said something unladylike when she found it hanging open. She raised her voice and called, ‘‘She’s gone!’’

‘‘Not exactly,’’ a male voice said from directly behind Patience.

Before she could turn, before she could react, something went pzzzt in her brain and everything turned dark. Strong arms caught her as she fell, bearing her weight and grabbing her sons as they started to struggle and squall.

‘‘Easy, boys,’’ the man said, and took them. ‘‘Here. Meet your auntie Hannah.’’

The last thing Patience heard was the man muttering under his breath, something about half-bloods and idiot neophytes who thought their powers worked on mages. No, she wanted to say. I might be an idiot and I’m definitely a neophyte, but my sons aren’t half-bloods. Their father is a Nightkeeper, too.

And that was the whole problem, because they were her babies. They weren’t weapons in a war nobody could win.

Nate Blackhawk considered himself a straightforward guy with straightforward goals. He never wanted to spend another night in jail. He wanted to work for himself. And he wanted to make his first million before he turned forty without being ashamed of how he’d done it.

But he’d never really wanted to be a hero, or a magician.

Sure, he’d written games for both. Even Hera, the kick-ass hottie at the heart of his Viking Warrior franchise, could see the future sometimes. But he’d never really pictured himself in the role of sorcerer’s apprentice . . . until the dark-haired guy with the tats had hung him off the roof and left him with a business card and some bruises.

He’d tried to tell himself it was all part of an elaborate scam, that the guy had somehow found out he was an orphan—not exactly something that was front and center on the Hawk Enterprises home page—and was using that as an in. But that didn’t explain the teleporting trick, and it didn’t explain why the stranger had asked about Nate’s medallion, which was the one thing he possessed that he was pretty sure had come from his parents.

As the SUV limo bounced its way along the optimistically named Route 57, deep in the middle of nowhere New Mexico, Nate pulled the medallion out from beneath his white button-down and rubbed his thumb across the metal disk, feeling the etched marks that looked like a hawk if you turned the piece one way, a man if you turned it the other.

He’d had the thing for as long as he could remember. According to the records, he’d been wearing it when he’d appeared in the waiting room of the University of Chicago’s Lying-In Hospital at the age of two. He’d been wearing soiled pj’s stained with blood that wasn’t his, he’d had the words ‘‘My name is Nathan Blackhawk’’ written on his forehead in ballpoint pen, and he hadn’t spoken for nearly fourteen months thereafter. For a while, they’d thought he was mute.

He’d had night terrors regularly until his teens and then sporadically ever since—amorphous dreams of bright red-orange creatures that dripped flame and killed everything around them. The prison therapist had told him the monsters represented his mother, and his anger at her for leaving him alone, but Nate was pretty sure the monsters were just monsters. He didn’t hate his parents. He’d never met them, and if they hadn’t cared enough to keep him, then he didn’t care enough to hate them.

But that didn’t stop him from being curious about what the stranger had hinted at.

He’d thought about it for a couple of days, until the bruises had gone from red to purple, and then he’d okayed EmoPunk III—God help him—downloaded the storyboard for Viking Warrior 6: Hera’s Mate—he still wasn’t sure about the hero—and hopped a flight to New Mexico.