Skykeepers

thought were legends.

Nightkeepers and winikin, she thought, a bubble of mild hysteria pressing at her throat, threatening to cut off her oxygen. Gods.

It took her a couple of seconds to realize she’d used the plural of her childhood rather than the singular God she’d consciously clung to as an adult. When she did, her heart started a long, slow descent to her toes. “Oh, shit. I’m in serious trouble here.”

She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud until Michael’s fingers tightened on her arm, and he said in an undertone, “Do me a favor and don’t make decisions right now. Just suspend disbelief and listen for a bit, okay?”

“I think my disbelief is pretty much shot to shit at this point,” she answered, feeling her stomach churn in reaction. “That hawk wasn’t a special effect.”

“Nope.”

“Your king just teleported all of us back here.” Her knees threatened to buckle.

“Yep.”

“And what happened yesterday was—”

“Turn it off for a little bit, okay?” he interrupted, and she thought his grip tightened in warning before he let her go and moved away. “Let me do some intros first.” He gestured to the hawk-man and his mate, who stood hip-to-hip near a long sofa. “You’ve already met Nate and Alexis. Next to them is our king, as you correctly ID’d. Striking-Jaguar.”

The tall, black-haired man with the vivid blue eyes gave her a nod and turned both palms up in a conciliatory gesture. “Call me Strike, please. The old-school names are tough to work with these days.

I’m sorry if the ’port scared you too badly. We wanted to make our point.”

“Consider it made,” Sasha said, her voice gone thin though she stood on her own, keeping herself as strong as she could in the face of incontrovertible evidence she didn’t want to believe. The man was a teleport. He’d instantaneously moved the four of them from the desert to the mansion. It should’ve been impossible, but she couldn’t deny what she’d just experienced. And she couldn’t pass this off as drugs or stress anymore. It wasn’t a dream, wasn’t a hallucination. All this was really happening.

Her father might not have been entirely sane, but he hadn’t been nearly as crazy as she’d thought.

Oh, Ambrose, she thought on a burst of aching, awful guilt. Learning the truth didn’t make right what he’d done to her. But it sure as hell explained why he’d done some of it. In the end he’d been failed by the magic itself. If she accepted this new reality, then, according to Michael’s story, the barrier had been closed off throughout her childhood, explaining why his magic—and potentially her own—had never worked.

“This is Leah,” Strike continued, dropping a light hand on the shoulder of the woman who stood beside him, and his arresting eyes glinted with satisfied possessiveness as he elaborated, “My mate and queen.”

The woman—an edgy-looking white-blonde who was smaller than the others, but still looked fighting tough in the extreme—sent him an affectionate eye roll, then sketched a wave in Sasha’s direction. “Leah Daniels, formerly of the Miami PD. I’m fully human, and got dropped into this a bit like you did. If you want to scream, or vent, or shoot something, whatever—I’m available.”

That seemed to require a response, so Sasha wet her lips and managed a weak, “Thanks. I’ll . . .

Thanks.”

“Patience and Brandt White-Eagle,” Michael said, continuing the intros by indicating a porcelain-

skinned woman, also blond, sitting on a love seat beside a square-featured man with dark brown hair.

“Patience used to run a dojo. She can make herself invisible, and she and Brandt have a pair of four-

year-old twins, Harry and Braden.They’re off property, in hiding with their winikin, Hannah and Woody.” Without giving Sasha time to process that, he moved on to the other sofa, where a tanned guy with bright, interested blue eyes and a stubby blond ponytail was sprawled akimbo. “That’s Coyote-Seven, aka Sven. He used to be a marine treasure hunter. Now he moves things from point A to point B with his mind.” There was something else in Michael’s voice, but before Sasha could think to wonder, he’d turned to the last of the Nightkeepers gathered on the lower level. “And this is our archivist, Jade.” The lovely brunette had arresting pale green eyes and seemed wrapped in a layer of serenity Sasha badly envied.

“I was a counselor in the outside world,” Jade offered. “I know Rabbit did some work on you, but if you ever want someone to talk to, I’d be honored.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow at Michael. “Rabbit?”

“He’s one of two other magi who aren’t here,” he answered without really answering. “Strike’s sister, Anna, is a Mayanist at UT Austin. Our resident juvie, Rabbit, is in school there with his human girlfriend, Myrinne, under Anna’s supervision, gods help her.” When she just stood there, waiting, he finished, “Rabbit’s a mind-bender. He put some mental filters into your head to help you deal with what Iago did to you.”

The admission didn’t surprise her nearly as much as it probably should have. She touched her temple briefly, finding a fragment of memory she hadn’t been aware of before. “He interrogated me.”

“He tried to. You blocked him.” Sending her a look that she interpreted as, Later, Michael moved on to the group near the kitchen, introducing the others, who were, as she had deduced earlier, the winikin. Jox—a wiry, gray-haired man with kind eyes and several small marks on his inner forearm—

was the royal winikin, meaning that he looked after Strike and his sister, and had leadership rights over the other winikin. Hangdog Tomas was Michael’s winikin, and didn’t look particularly happy about the fact. The two women, Izzy and Shandi, looked after Alexis and Jade, respectively, and the remaining man, a stocky bulldog named Carlos, watched after both Nate and Sven.

The names, bloodlines, and marks piled up in Sasha’s head, bringing to life the childhood stories she’d been raised on, making her head spin with wonder, fear, and terrible, dragging guilt. The very air seemed to press in on her, but she tried not to let herself sway, tried not to let the impending panic show. The people gathered in the big room weren’t her enemies, she was coming to realize. But she sure as hell wasn’t ready to deal with what they might be, what it might all mean.

“Do you want to sit down?” Michael asked.

She shook her head. “What I really want is to get out of here.” She didn’t think there was a rat’s chance of that, though. The last time she’d set foot outside, she’d done her damnedest to escape.

So she was caught off guard when Strike nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know how that feels.”

Michael said, “I’ll give her the grand tour.” He and Strike traded a look that seemed to mean far more than had been said aloud, but then Michael simply touched her arm, urging her toward the sliders leading out to the pool deck. “Come on. I could use some air too.”

She exhaled. “Thanks.” Casting a look across the assembled group, she found a thin smile that felt more than a little panicky. “I’ll . . . um. It was nice to meet you all.”

Gulping air, she turned and headed for the sliders. She had to force herself not to run as she pushed them open, and it took a conscious effort for her not to weep as she stepped through and the world opened up around her, big and beautiful, and full of possibilities that hadn’t been hers for so long.

“Wait,” Michael said. She turned back to find him holding out a pair of pink flip-flops. “Here.”

Tears fogging her vision at the small, kind gesture, she nodded mutely, stuck the silly foam sandals on her feet, and headed across the pool deck and through a small gate. Once she was on the hard-

packed earth, she struck out at random.

Michael paced her without comment, for which she was pathetically grateful. They walked in silence for a few minutes, past the out-of-place tree and the big metal building it shaded. When they reached the end of the steel span, Michael urged her along a narrow track. “This goes past the firing range and loops back through the ball court and the cottages.”

“Fine,” she said, though she didn’t care where they went as long as she kept moving. Somewhere deep inside, she was afraid that if she stopped, everything would catch up with her, all the fears and confusion, and the terrible, awful guilt that had taken root and was building by the second, telling her that she’d owed Ambrose so much better than she’d given him.

At first she power-walked, trying to burn off the restless, edgy energy and outpace her own thoughts. But