Nightkeepers

questions on his human girlfriend. Jade’s research suggested the questions had to be specific to the petitioner, meaning that none of the other Nightkeepers could ask for her. The meant it was Leah or nobody.

‘‘Let’s do this.’’ Strike released her hands so he could cut his own right palm, then hers. Instead of letting the blood fall into separate bowls, they locked hands so the red wetness mingled as it dripped into the king’s ceremonial bowl, which had a small piece of parchment at the bottom. When the paper was wet with their blood, Strike lit it with one of the tapers, and they both leaned in to inhale the smoke. That put them face-to-face, and Strike shifted and touched his lips to hers. ‘‘Trust me.’’

Then he jacked in. Leah saw the change in his face, saw his eyes go blank and his expression slacken. Failure kicked her hard when she stayed behind, when she didn’t feel anything other than the burn in her palm and the tickle of smoke in her sinuses. Damn it, she couldn’t follow, didn’t have the power, didn’t know how to—

Hey, Blondie, his voice whispered in her mind.

Her nerves kicked. ‘‘Yeah?’’

Close your eyes and grab on.

‘‘To what?’’ But then she closed her eyes and saw a faint glowing thread that wasn’t part of her usual eyes- closed landscape. Excitement kicked her pulse a notch as she reached out with her mind and touched the thread.

There was a soundless explosion, a sense of flying while sitting still. Then her gut wrenched. Power screamed in her ears. And the bottom dropped out of her world.

Leah shrieked as she jolted down, then sideways, and the world went gray-green. She zapped in a few feet off the ground, several yards away from Strike, and fell face-first into a sea of mist, landing on something soft and squishy and vaguely mudlike.

Heart hammering, she rolled onto her back and concentrated on breathing. ‘‘Guess we made it.’’ The relief was so sharp it was almost painful.

‘‘This far, at least.’’ Strike grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. Once she was steady, he stripped off the headdress and set it aside, then reached inside his robe and withdrew a pair of stingray spines. ‘‘Now for stage two.’’

She took the spine. Tested the point with her fingertip. ‘‘Not very sharp.’’

‘‘That’s what makes it fun. Not.’’ He paused. ‘‘You ready?’’

She took a breath and nodded. At his signal, she opened her mouth and jammed the spine into her tongue, then yanked it out again. Pain was a quick slap and a longer burn, but she held herself still as blood filled her mouth and then overflowed, spilling down her chin and splashing on the blue robe.

Then, for the first time since the aphelion, she felt something. Sudden power bloomed on her skin, in her core. She smiled through the pain of her torn tongue. ‘‘I feel it!’’

‘‘Good. Say the words.’’

She began the chant, words she’d memorized phonetically but hadn’t really thought she’d use. Strike took position at her side, holding her right hand in his, joining their blood, boosting her power with his own. At first she was afraid the spell wouldn’t work. Then, as the mist thickened nearby and a human figure took shape, she was afraid it would work. Somehow, in that moment, getting the answers to the questions that’d dogged her the past few months seemed more frightening than not knowing the answers.

‘‘Steady,’’ Strike murmured at her side. ‘‘I’m here.’’

She leaned into him as the mists parted and the three-question nahwal approached, stopping a short distance away. It was a sexless humanoid figure with dead black eyes and no forearm marks or other distinguishing features, no expression on its desiccated face. Its tanned, leathery skin was pulled tight across its bones, and it made no sound when it moved.

‘‘Ask your first question,’’ it said in a toneless voice that seemed to be made of two voices, one high, one low, speaking in synchrony.

Oh, holy freak show, Leah thought, gripping Strike’s hand even tighter than before. Drawing strength from that solid contact, she took a deep breath and said, ‘‘What is the nature of my magical power?’’

Strike, Red-Boar, and Jox had confabbed on the question, going for something broad enough to get more than a yes/no answer, yet specific enough to give them something they could use. In theory, anyway.

The nahwal tilted its head and was silent for nearly a minute, unmoving, as though carrying on an inner dialogue. Then it said to Leah, ‘‘You are the light half of the god Kulkulkan. Your brother was to be the darkness. Together, you were to be the Godkeeper, able to wield the might to oppose the crocodile lord.’’

Shock hammered through Leah. Grief. She tightened her fingers on Strike’s hand, where their cut palms channeled his power into her. Kulkulkan is a dual god, Strike said through the blood link. Light and dark halves. Since you’re human, you can’t take all his powers. He must’ve tried to split himself into two blood-linked humans—you and your brother—figuring to unite you into a single Godkeeper.

But how is that possible when Matty died long before the barrier reactivated? Leah shot back, head spinning. And where does that leave me now?

‘‘Will you ask your second question?’’ the nahwal queried.

Leah thought fast. ‘‘How can I bring the darkness into myself and become the Godkeeper alone?’’

‘‘You cannot,’’ the creature replied in its two-toned voice.

Shit. Ask where the god is now, Strike prompted.

When Leah parroted the question, the nahwal replied, ‘‘Kulkulkan’s link to you keeps him trapped between heaven and earth, within the skyroad. There, his energy fades.’’

Which is why my powers are getting weaker over time rather than stronger, she