Nightkeepers

He heard distant voices, a woman’s cry of alarm. ‘‘He’s bleeding! Someone help!’’

Inside his head, though, there was nothing beyond the spin and the terrible, awful pressure in his throat. Then he saw something in the grayness behind his eyelids. A single slender thread of yellow in the fog. Holy crap. Acting on instinct, he reached out with his mind and touched the thread, grabbed onto it, and whispered the second word of the barrier spell. ‘‘Och.’’ Enter.

And the world around him vanished.

Jox was counting bags of cow shit when he heard raised voices from out front, and what sounded like a woman’s scream. Seconds later, Rabbit burst through the warehouse doors, his eyes wild, his hood thrown back, and one earpiece dangling. ‘‘Jox, come quick!’’

Jox’s heart shimmied in his chest. Oh, hell. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

‘‘Hurry!’’ The kid disappeared back through the doors and Jox bolted after him, spurred by a quick jolt of adrenaline, because anything that rattled Rabbit had to be bad.

Shit, he thought. The pipes. The plumbing running the length of the store had needed replacing when they bought the property five years earlier, but there was always something that needed fixing more urgently, so the pipes had waited. Maybe too long.

But when he got out to the front, he didn’t see a flood, didn’t hear the telltale hiss of a broken pipe. A few customers were gathered around the counter waving their hands and talking loud and excitedly, but the source of the drama wasn’t immediately obvious. Pausing, Jox looked around for Strike, who no doubt already had things under control. Then he froze.

He. Didn’t. See. Strike.

Brain instantly upshifting from store owner to winikin mode, Jox shoved between two customers to where Rabbit was hunched behind the counter. He grabbed the teen by the sweatshirt. ‘‘Where is he?’’

Rabbit’s face had gone chalky. ‘‘He was here a second ago, I swear.’’

‘‘He disappeared,’’ said a thirty-something woman, voice cracking with excitement. ‘‘His hand was bleeding— there, you can see the blood. Then he said something, and—poof! Gone.’’

Jox stared at the blood pool and the stained utility knife lying nearby. A litany of denial rattled through his brain. Oh, shit. Oh, no. Oh, shit, no. No. Please, no.

‘‘The barrier,’’ Rabbit said, his voice climbing. ‘‘The solstice is today. He must’ve—’’

‘‘Zip it!’’ Jox shook him harder than necessary, because he needed Rabbit to stop talking, and also because the kid was right, damn it.

‘‘Poof! Then he was gone,’’ the woman said again, and two other customers behind her nodded, like they’d seen it, too. There were four of them, eyes bright and excited, and a fifth was edging in with his camera phone aimed at the blood pool.

‘‘Excuse me; I need to borrow that.’’ Jox snagged the phone and stuck it in his pocket before the guy could even yelp.

His brain raced. They needed damage control and a search party, pronto. If it’d been three decades earlier he would’ve had his choice of magi. As it was, he had no choice at all.

‘‘Go get—’’ Jox started to say to Rabbit, then broke off. ‘‘Never mind, I’ll get him.’’ He leaned close to the teen and hissed, ‘‘Make sure nobody else comes in, and nobody gets out.’’

Rabbit looked startled. ‘‘How am I supposed to do that?’’

‘‘Get creative.’’

As Jox headed up to the apartment above the shop, he knew he was asking for trouble, giving the kid free rein. But Red-Boar was a mind-bender. He could wipe Strike’s disappearing act from the customers’ brains . . . and he could go deeper if Rabbit went too far.

That was assuming, of course, that the barrier was all the way active. Jox had to assume that, because if it wasn’t and Red-Boar couldn’t go into the barrier and drag Strike’s ass out, then they were seriously screwed. The possibility made the winikin’s breath whistle in his lungs as he pounded up the stairs and skidded through the main door of the apartment. Going on instinct, he headed for the back, to a door that was almost always kept locked.

The padlock hung open.

Taking a deep breath, Jox pushed open the door and stepped through into Red-Boar’s ritual chamber.

They’d had the windows drywalled over, the recessed lights removed, and the walls covered with a fake stone facade. Lit braziers hung at the four world corners, and a small chac-mool altar stood against the far wall. Shaped like a man sitting in a sort of zigzag shape, with his feet, ass, and elbows on the ground, and his knees and upper body raised, balancing a flat slab on his kneecaps and collarbones, with his head turned ninety degrees, the chac-mool, represented the sacred rain god. It served as altar and throne, and as a place for sacrifice.

Red-Boar sat cross-legged in front of the chac-mool, with his eyes closed and his hands lying on his knees, palms up. His right palm was slashed and bloodstained, though already partway healed. Another sign that the magic was working.

‘‘I need you,’’ Jox said quietly, hating to disturb him but having no choice.

Red-Boar’s dusky face, with its slashing, hooked nose and wide, high cheekbones, didn’t change. He didn’t even twitch.

He was wearing his ceremonial robes, which were long and black, with stingray spines forming intricate glyph patterns at the cuffs and collar. The hood was thrown back, revealing his dark, close-clipped hair and the gray streaks at the temples that made him look older than his forty-five years, though his body was big and strong beneath the robes.