Nightkeepers

two. Jade-tips wouldn’t substitute for hard-core magic, but given that magic was in short supply at the moment, he’d take what he could get.

Which brought him circling back to Leah. Granted, just about every thought train he possessed eventually came back around to her these days. She was under his skin, in his blood. He knew where she was every minute of every day, both from gut-check awareness and from daily reports. Which was how he knew she’d practically been living on the gun range, and had gotten the makol-banishment spell from Jox.

It didn’t take much of a leap to figure out that she intended to be part of things when he teleported the Nightkeepers—all whopping ten of them—to the sacred chamber to meet the makol on the night of the autumnal equinox. What she didn’t know was that he had no intention of letting that happen. Unless there was a very good reason to include her in the attack—like she suddenly developed more power than the rest of them put together— she was going to become very good friends with a basement storage locker that night. He couldn’t afford the distraction of protecting her while trying to keep the others under control, finding the makol, blocking the intersection to keep the Banol Kax where they belonged . . .

Gods. It was too much even to think about.

And he’d just read the same page three times and didn’t have a frigging clue what it said.

‘‘Shit.’’ He slapped shut a binder-bound translation of a 1550s journal written by a missionary with a seriously antinative streak and shoved it aside. The binder slid into a teetering stack of accordion-folded charcoal rubbings, and before he could react, the whole mess went over the side of the table and hit the floor with a papery crash.

Knowing Jox would kick his ass if he’d buffed details off the rubbings, Strike cursed. Then, also knowing his increasingly unstable temper wouldn’t do a damn thing to speed things up or make them better, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and let out a long sigh. ‘‘This sucks.’’

‘‘So take a break,’’ Leah said from the doorway.

Going very still, Strike opened his eyes and looked over at her. She’d had a bunch of her clothes and stuff shipped from Miami and was wearing hip-hanging cutoffs and a belly-baring tank, and he wanted nothing more than to rub his cheek across the strip of taut, creamy flesh exposed between them.

Horns locked within him, tightening his muscles and sending his pulse up a notch. ‘‘You shouldn’t be here.’’

‘‘Don’t worry; I’m leaving. But I’m taking you with me.’’ She crossed the distance separating them, skirting the piles of books and notes as she came, and grabbed his hand. Gave it a tug. ‘‘Come on. And don’t stress; we won’t be alone.’’

He resisted for about a nanosecond, then let her pull him up out of the chair and away from the archives. Once they were in the hallway, he tugged his hand from hers. It was hard enough being near her, feeling her body heat and letting the light, fresh scent of her seep into him—soap and woman, with an undertone of something sharper, gun oil, maybe, or determination.

They walked through the mansion side by side, a little awkward with each other. Trying to ignore the sexual tension that snapped in the air and dug deep within his gut, Strike said, ‘‘You’ve got something on Zipacna?’’ But he didn’t think that was it; her energy was different than that, more relaxed, though maybe a shade wary.

She shook her head. ‘‘I’m declaring a moratorium on that stuff for the next few hours, at least until the party is over.’’

‘‘Party?’’ he asked, but the moment she got him through the sliders near the pool, his senses perked up at the smell of smoke and sauce. Hel-lo, barbecue.

He heard shouts and good-natured catcalls coming from the direction of the big steel building that had replaced the Great Hall.

Leah said, ‘‘Your gods—the gods, whatever—can’t expect us to keep going forever without cutting loose a little, right? Well, consider yourself cut loose for the rest of today. You need a break. We all do. And I think you need to do some reconnecting.’’

He barely heard her as he pushed ahead, drawn by the sounds and smells.

When they rounded the corner of the mansion, he saw the Nightkeepers and winikin all gathered beneath the ceiba tree in front of the big steel building. They’d dragged out folding tables and chairs and fired up a pair of big gas grills Strike didn’t recognize. Jox was manning one of the grills, Woody the other, while Hannah and Izzy chopped veggies and readied burgers, wings, and dogs. Red-Boar and the remaining winikin sat nearby at one of the picnic tables. Most of the trainees were in the middle of a touch- football game, while off to the side Jade sat apart, watching the twins sneak up on a lizard that was sunning itself on a flat rock.

They were all contained within the ash shadow of where the old Great Hall had been.

Before, when the Nightkeepers and their winikin had gathered in the compound for the four cardinal days, the Great Hall had been jammed with tables. Friends and families—and occasionally rivals and enemies—had packed in elbow-to-elbow for the rituals, and the hard partying that followed.

Now the tables formed a tiny cluster at one end of the ash shadow, and the football game ranged the length of the empty space.

‘‘There are so damn few of us,’’ Strike rasped, stopping to stare at the pitiful handful of magi. ‘‘We’ve lost before we even get started.’’

‘‘That’s probably true,’’ Leah said conversationally. ‘‘Unless you get your flipping head out of your ass.’’

It took a second for that to sink in. Another for him to believe she’d said it. His too-ready temper flared, fueled by his frustration with the situation, with her. He raised an eyebrow in warning. ‘‘Excuse me?’’

They had stopped at the edge of the ash-grayed footprint of the Great Hall, out of earshot of the football game and picnic tables. The others glanced over, then away. All but Jox, who stared down at the grill.

Which meant the winikin had been in on whatever was going on, Strike realized. He’d been ambushed. The knowledge didn’t do a damn thing to sweeten his mood.

Either unaware of his temper or figuring it was his to deal with—probably the latter—Leah said, ‘‘Look, I know