Dawnkeepers

for tours and hotels, she frowned. “It’s a tourist attraction?” That didn’t play with her visions.

Jade gave a yes/no hand-wiggle. “Not on the level of Yucatan sites like Chichen Itza and Tulum, that’s for sure. Belize is sparsely populated, and has maybe a half dozen paved airstrips for the entire country. Not exactly a destination for the average tourist.” She tapped the screen, her fingertip hitting a picture of a calcified human skeleton. “The ATM cave system is a stiff three-mile hike in from the nearest road. Unlike the Yucatan, Belize has aboveground waterways; there are three river crossings between the road and the cave system, and when you get there you’ve got to swim in. Because of all that hassle, though, the complex still has most of its original artifacts in place. Access to the cave system is tightly regulated; only a couple of groups have permission to bring tours through, and those cost.”

“So you’ve gotta really want it,” Alexis said. She looked at the pictures, then shook her head slightly. “I’m not sure. This looks similar to the dream-visions, but I’m not seeing an exact match.”

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the picture of the skeleton, though, couldn’t help thinking the feeling she got from the photographs resonated too much to be a coincidence.

“This is your cave; I’m sure of it.” Jade slid a bound book across to Alexis, then clicked on one of the Web site buttons, bringing up a cartoon map of the cave system on the laptop. “Have a look.”

The book was open to an age-yellowed map that bore a strong resemblance to the one on the computer screen, except that the hard-copy map, dated 1873, showed several additional chambers off by themselves, connected to the others only by blue water trails rather than brown-marked pathways or gray-shaded tunnels.

The farthest chamber was a narrow rectangle with a serpent-and-rainbow altar sketched in at the far end, with a strange, looping figure extending away from it. The altar looked like a good enough match that Alexis felt the click she’d needed, followed by a burst of excitement mingled with unease. “Yeah.

I think you found it.” She traced the blue waterways leading in. “We’re going to have to swim in through a submerged tunnel?” She shuddered a little, but there was no question that she had to go.

“It doesn’t look too far. Or at least it wasn’t in the late eighteen hundreds. Jade paused. “There are two things you need to know before you decide you’re definitely going, though.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Alexis leaned back in her chair and gave the archivist her full attention.

Jade tapped the date at the top of the page. “Does the map date ring any bells?”

Alexis frowned and shook her head. “Sorry. You’re better at the history stuff than I—” She broke off, realizing why it should’ve connected. “Shit, that was when Painted-Jaguar’s expedition went south. You’re telling me this is the cache site?”

After the Civil War, with “civilization” encroaching westward and the various Native American cultures being squeezed into smaller and smaller settlements, the Nightkeepers had once again been subject to the pressures acting on their hosts—in this case the Hopi. By the 1870s, the Nightkeepers had numbered less than a hundred, and the survivors were starving. Times were grim, prospects dim, until an itza’at seer had envisioned a fabulously wealthy cache of Mayan-era artifacts secreted away in a Nightkeeper temple far to the south. A small group of the strongest remaining magi traveled through the hostile Mexican territories, eventually finding the temple and the artifacts within. The journey had been harsh, though, the trip back even worse, and only two of the original twenty Nightkeepers had returned, bearing the recovered riches of their ancestors.

They had sold off some of the artifacts immediately, and the proceeds had allowed the Nightkeepers to integrate into society. Their children were educated in human trades as well as Nightkeeper magic, and judicious investments, funded with artifact sales, kept them going for the next fifty years or so, while their numbers increased. In the twenties and thirties they’d liquidated the remainder of the artifacts—including those bearing the demon prophecies—to fund the construction of Skywatch.

“This was the cache site,” Jade confirmed. “Meaning that just because your dream-vision showed the statuette fragment in that hidden alcove, that doesn’t guarantee it’s still there. For all we know, your vision showed where it was before Painted-Jaguar discovered the cache.”

“True,” Alexis said, drawing out the word. “But I saw my mother and Two-Hawk with the statuette fragment, which would’ve made it sometime in the nineteen seventies or early eighties.”

Jade countered, “Right, but we’re not sure how the visions work, and whether they’re going to prove fully accurate. What if your dream . . . I don’t know . . . folded time or something, showing you parts of two different scenes in the same temple?”

“It’s still worth looking.”

Jade grimaced. “Which brings us to numero duo of the things I think you should know before you decide to ’port.” She tapped the paper map, indicating the loop that extended beyond the temple chamber, and the unfamiliar glyph below it. “This seems to indicate that there’s a loop of tunnel extending beyond the temple, under the waterline. The glyph is och ja-ja, which according to Anna has two translations: One is ‘enter the water,’ which is pretty benign, but the other translation is ‘death,’ which was often associated with entering a watery tunnel on the way to hell, sort of a reverse of the birth process.”

Alexis fought a little shiver as she looked down at the glyph and the map. “As in ‘you die if you enter the water’?”

“I’m thinking it’s something like that. Booby traps, maybe?”

“Well, that’s just great.” Alexis fought the shimmy in her gut. “Note to self: Don’t go into the tunnels beyond the temple room.” Fortunately, she didn’t see why she’d want or need to.

“You could call it off,” Jade urged.

“And do what?” Alexis asked, faintly irritated. “It’s not like I wouldn’t rather be doing something else, you know.”

“I know, that wasn’t very helpful, was it? I’m sorry.” Jade rolled her shoulders. “I’ve been in a mood lately. I’m just . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Frustrated. Sick of working in here by myself, pretty much functioning as a human Google.” She flicked the side of her laptop. “I can’t wait to finish scanning the last of the books into this thing and get the computerized system going. Then it’ll be up to you guys to query and find your own spells and stuff.” She paused. “Then again, once you can, I’ll be pretty much useless, won’t I?”

“No,” Alexis said quickly. “You’ll have more time to concentrate on developing your magic.”

“What magic?” Jade looked at her forearm, where she had her bloodline and talent marks, but no warrior’s glyph. “The scribe’s glyph is supposed to mean I can create new spells, but it’s not like there’s an instruction manual. I don’t even know where to start!”

Seeing the opening, Alexis said, “What about, um, boosting your power? You know, try some autoletting, or . . . something else.” Like sex.

Jade’s lips twitched. “Don’t worry, I already heard you all but propositioned Mike last night. It’s fine. Honest.” She even sounded like she meant it.

“Are you positive?” Alexis pressed, feeling like total crap. Theirs was too small a community for her to be making waves. What was she doing?

Getting away from a man who wants a woman who looks like you, but doesn’t act like you, thought her rational self, the one that’d suggested she switch partners in the first place.

“I’m positive,” Jade said firmly. She took Alexis’s hand and pressed her fingers. “Truly. Mike and I aren’t a good fit—he wants the magic, and I . . . don’t. I really, really don’t.” She looked almost surprised to have said the last part, but added, “I’m not even sure I want to stay here.”

“Wow.” Alexis rocked back, stunned. “What does Shandi think about that?” Shandi, Jade’s winikin, was quiet and ultratraditional; Izzy held her in high regard, which pretty much said everything that needed to be said.

Jade blanched. “I haven’t told her, and you can’t either. Promise? I’m just thinking aloud. I don’t really mean it.” But that last part sounded more like rote than reality.

“I won’t say anything,” Alexis promised, but her brain spun while she gathered the references Jade had pulled together on Belize and the ATM caves.

As she headed back to her rooms, concern dogged her footsteps. What was happening to the Nightkeepers? They’d been a team during the equinox battle. Now, only five months later, they were bickering and scattered. How were they supposed to build an effective defense against Iago if they couldn’t manage to get along on a day-to-day basis?

Complete the statuette, a voice whispered at the back of her brain. Alexis didn’t