remember.
Swallowing back a ball of tears that came out of nowhere, she put her hand in his and let him pull her up. They didn’t speak as they ditched their knapsacks and pony bottles in a pile, then pulled out the flashlights, which were strong enough to illuminate the entire arcade. The artificial light seemed cold and wrong when Alexis’s memory said it should’ve been torchlight, magic, and the twining colors of love. But maybe this was better. In the harsher light she’d be less tempted to confuse the vision with reality.
In the vision there had been love. In reality there was a job to do.
She waved Nate toward the altar. “Stand over there, facing me.”
He moved as she directed, but said, “Why?”
“Because that was where your father was standing.” The words were out before she thought how he might take them, given that he was just beginning to even admit that he’d had parents who’d lived and breathed back at Skywatch, and had been a part of the life he was living now.
But Nate said nothing. He simply took his place, stone-faced.
“Gray-Smoke was standing here.” Alexis moved to her mother’s place, but felt nothing. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to feel—some sort of resonance, maybe, or an echo of bloodline power.
Instead she was aware only of the press of stone against the bottoms of her feet and the damnable pull that kindled whenever she was near Nate, a combination of chemistry and the goddess’s power. “I wish I’d heard the spell they were using,” she said, then frowned. “Which brings up the question of why they were here in the first place.” She’d been trying to figure that one out since her latest dream, and hadn’t gotten anywhere. “I asked Izzy, but she couldn’t even be sure when they went off together.”
She looked around. “Why here?”
It was more of a rhetorical question than anything, given that Nate was the antihistory buff. But he surprised her by saying, “They were trying to work a spell that would tell them whether or not Scarred-Jaguar’s visions were real, and whether the gods truly meant for them to attack the intersection during the summer solstice of ’eighty-four.”
For a second Alexis just stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“Carlos told me back when I first arrived, before he gave up trying to spoon-feed me the history.”
Alexis tipped her head, considering. “What did he say exactly?”
“I was trying to ignore him, remember?” When she just waited him out, he lifted a shoulder. “He said the two of them went away for a few days right before the summer solstice. Said they were going to get proof, one way or the other. When they came back they were barely speaking to each other, acting really weird. They said the augury spell they tried didn’t work.”
“Or maybe it did, but it didn’t answer the question they thought they were asking.”
“None of which is really relevant at the moment,” he pointed out. “We’re here to get the statuette.
In your vision, where was it?”
She stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide whether it’d be worth having the fight, and in the end deciding probably not, because she’d never get him to admit that studying the past informed the present. Letting out a long breath, she said, “Here.” She turned and touched one of the limestone columns, a rainbow carved between two snakes. “It is—or was—behind here.” But there was no seam in the carved stone, no pressure pad to open a hidden compartment.
“Blood,” Nate said succinctly, and handed over his own knife.
The haft was warm from his body heat, the feel of it far more intimate than it should’ve been. She nicked her palm, pressed it to the carved column, and whispered,
She jerked her hand back, shocked when, just that easily, the stone puffed to vapor beneath her hand, revealing the alcove she’d seen in her vision . . . and the carving that would complete the statuette of Ixchel. Holding her breath, halfway afraid it too would puff to mist when she touched it, she reached into the hidden niche and grasped the stone fragment, which looked to be another chunk of the basket the carved goddess sat atop.
She exhaled a sigh of relief when it stayed solid, heavy and warm in her hand.
“Got it?” Nate asked, his voice suddenly sounding too loud in the echoing chamber.
“Got it, thank the gods.” She withdrew the carving. The moment it was clear of the alcove, the stone pillar puffed back into existence and went solid. “Whoa.” She touched the spot and felt stone where an empty space had been only seconds earlier. “That was pretty cool.”
“Agreed.” Nate dug into his knapsack and held out a T-shirt and a padded, collapsible cooler about the size of a six-pack. When she raised an eyebrow, he lifted a shoulder. “Figured we’d need something to protect it for the trip back.”
The small gesture shouldn’t have touched her. Because it did, she avoided meeting his eyes as she wrapped the carving in his shirt and tucked it inside the cooler, which she zipped up and held out to him. “You want to carry it?”
“Sure.” Their fingers brushed as he took the cooler, sending a frisson of heat up her arm. From the sudden lock of his eyes on hers, she knew he’d felt it too. The sensual buzz between them kicked up a notch, and they both stood there, each, she suspected, waiting for the other to make the first move either toward or away.
Sudden urgency beat within her. She wanted him, wanted to take him inside her, wanted to couple with him in the water, braced against the limestone pillars while the slap of wetness and flesh drove them both higher, drove them beyond reason. But the man in her vision wasn’t the one who stood opposite her now. The man in the vision had wanted her for herself. In reality, Nate didn’t know what he wanted, except his freedom from everything and everyone . . . which was incompatible with her concept of family, never mind their responsibilities to the Nightkeepers.
Very deliberately, she let go of the cooler and stepped back. “Thanks. For taking the carving.”
Eyes still locked on hers, he nodded slightly. “No problem.”
And in that short exchange, far more was said than the actual words.
“Let’s go.” Working side by side, they repacked their flashlights and knapsacks and checked their pony bottles, which were still mostly full. Then they dropped into the water, clutching their packs, and headed out the way they’d come in. As Alexis submerged and kicked for the tunnel, once again following in Nate’s wake, she had to brace herself against a sting of disappointment and a sense of failure.
They’d gotten what they’d come for, it was true. But she had the strangest feeling that she’d left something behind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By the morning of day six of his incarceration, Lucius was seriously worried. He hadn’t seen Anna in days. The only human interaction he’d had was with the
Granted, it wasn’t as though he were being tortured or anything—they’d upgraded his accommodations to a three-room suite on day two. The rooms had new-looking bars on the windows, an empty phone jack, and a sturdy lock on the door, but it had a bathroom and a small kitchenette, and comfortwise beat the hell out of his apartment back in Austin. But still, it was a prison.
He’d watched as much bad satellite TV as he could stand, and had fiddled with the gaming console and cartridges Jox had brought him. But he’d never been huge on TV, and he’d sort of burned out on gaming a couple of years earlier, so neither of those distractions held much in the way of appeal. Or, more accurately, what was outside the suite held so much more.
His window overlooked a freaking Mayan ball court. How could he not want to be out there? Ball courts were his all-time favorite type of ruin. Only this was no ruin; it looked like fairly new construction, like the Nightkeepers still played the traditional game after all these years.
Two twenty-foot-tall stone walls ran parallel to each other, and were open at both ends. The walls were intricately carved, and although he couldn’t see the murals from his vantage point, he could guess what they
