Demonkeepers

“Family is the luck of the draw. It might not seem fair that your winikin is less than warm and fuzzy, or that after all this time you find out that your parents were younger than you thought, and your mother made some decisions that don’t seem compatible with the responsibilities of a mother, though that might depend on your interpretation of the writs. But fair or not, that’s the family—or at least the family history— that you’ve got. Question is, what are you going to do about it?”

She broke eye contact. “I don’t know. Do I have to do anything? I am who I am, you know?

Learning all that stuff about my mother doesn’t change the fact that I’m a harvester who wears the scribe’s mark but doesn’t have the talent to go with it. Except . . .” She brought her eyes back up to his. “As I came out of the barrier, it was like I could see the magic, the layers of it, and the inner structure of the spell. But I haven’t been able to access the power since then. I’m sure the nahwal did something to help me find a piece of my talent . . . but what if the sex magic was part of it too?”

His eyes darkened. “I hate knowing that you got pulled into the barrier like that.”

“If we can make it happen again, I can ask her about the library.” Though the prospect was more than a little unnerving. Like meeting her mother again for the first time. What should she say? What would the nahwal do? Could she even find her way back there? Would it be worth it?

For the ability to do magic like the glimpse she’d been shown . . . yes.

“I don’t want any of it to happen again,” Lucius rasped, but they both knew that wasn’t the right and proper answer. “Damn it,” he muttered. “This should be easier.”

“We can make it be,” she said firmly, though she wasn’t quite so sure about that anymore.

His expression flattened for a moment, but then he nodded and rose to his feet, drawing her up with him and then stepping away. When they were standing facing each other, he held out his hand, turning it so his palm was painted bloodred by the dusk, slashed through with a shadow-scar. “Come home with me tonight?” he asked softly.

On one level, she wanted him to say something about wanting her outside of the magic and the greater good, that what was between them was real and not a by-product of the situation and the need.

On another level, she was relieved that he didn’t, because she wanted it too much.

She took his hand and said simply, “Yes.”

Her blood burned as he led her out into the night, went to flame as they undressed each other in his cottage, staying out in the main room because bedrooms were too intimate. They left the lights off and came together in the red darkness, in a clash of lips and tongues, inciting caresses and hard, hot bodies slicked with sweat.

The sex was fast and greedy, almost animalistic. It left her limp and wrung-out, and filled with inner fire as she clung to him and tried not to need. It was amazing, staggering, mind-blowing . . . but it wasn’t magic.

CHAPTER TWELVE

June 15 Two years, six months, and six days to the zero date Patience didn’t hear the king coming. Walking soft-footed on the rope sandals many of the male magi favored for at-home wear, he appeared around the corner, headed full-steam along the hallway leading to the royal quarters.

When he saw her, he stopped. “Were you looking for me?” But although his words were neutral enough, his expression was wary. He knew why she was there, all right. But how could he blame her?

She wasn’t just a mage. She was a mother too.

“I need to see Harry and Braden,” she said without preamble. “I’ll take whatever blood vows you demand. I’ll make myself invisible; they won’t even know I’m there. I just . . . I have to see them.”

The king didn’t answer for a moment, just stared into her eyes, and she fleetingly wondered whether he’d somehow gained the powers of a mind-bender, because it was almost as if he were trying to see inside her, and find . . . what? She would’ve given it to him if she knew what he was looking for. She’d give anything to see her babies.

“Why?” he finally asked, then clarified, “I mean, I know why you want to see them: You’re their mom, and it’s been more than a year, and the situation sucks royal donkey dick. I get that. I mean why now, specifically? Has something happened?”

For a half second, she wondered whether he was asking her to give him an excuse to ignore his better judgment and the council’s recommendation. He’d gone against the thirteenth prophecy by taking Leah as his queen rather than sacrificing her to the gods, based on having seen her in his dreams. He believed in the power of visions, even when the mage having them wasn’t a seer. If she told him she’d dreamed of the boys, and sold it hard enough, he’d give her what she wanted.

It would be a lie, though. She’d dreamed of them—of course she had; she was their mother, damn it.

But the dreams were always normal, garden- variety agglomerations of daily experiences, vague fears, and the grind of a life that had seemed so exciting when she’d first arrived at Skywatch, but over time had become rote, routine, and so very lonely. She missed her boys, missed her winikin, Hannah. And she missed the man Brandt had been when his winikin, Woody, had been around to keep him from taking himself too seriously. Without the boys and winikin, she and Brandt had drifted, badly. But none of that, she knew, would be enough to sway the king.

“I’m miserable,” she said simply. “I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating, and I feel like crap. Worse, my magic is for shit. I can hardly boost Brandt past a trickle anymore, and vice versa.” She paused hopefully, but Strike’s face had gone neutral. She continued. “I tried antidepressants, but they killed what was left of my powers, which is no good. I’ve talked to Jade in therapist mode; I changed my diet, worked out, used the shooting range, practiced a shit-ton of hand-to-hand, had sex with my husband . . . all the tricks she suggested to break out of depression. And maybe they helped for a little bit, but not long. I want, I need, to see my boys. Please. I’m begging you. Just tell me where they are, or have Hannah and Woody bring them someplace random, where nobody would think to look. I just want to see them. Then I’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.”

The king didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he said simply, “Is your own happiness worth their lives?”

The oxygen vacated Patience’s lungs, leaving her trying to breathe around an empty space in her chest. She’d thought she’d braced herself for the question. She’d been wrong. Somehow, hearing it in Brandt’s too- reasonable, too-serious tones had just put her back up and made her think, You’re wrong; it’s not like that. It’s not an either/or question. But somehow, facing her king, she couldn’t be so sure.

Still, she pushed onward. “There’s been no sign of Iago in months; he’s either dead or he’s trying to assimilate Moctezuma’s spirit. With him out of commission, the Xibalbans haven’t done a damn thing. For all we know, all of the red-robes died in Paxil Mountain when Michael unleashed his death magic. If that’s the case, then it’s a good bet the gray-robes have disbanded, or at the very least that they’re disorganized and blind without their magic users. Given that, don’t you think we could come up with a safe way for me to see the twins?” Or, even better, bring them home ? She didn’t say that last part, though. One important lesson she’d learned over the past two years was that in some wars it was possible to fight only one battle at a time. Looking at the whole thing at once was too damned daunting.

“Even if Iago and the Xibalbans are out of the picture for the moment—and I’m not convinced they are— then we still have the Banol Kax to consider,” Strike pointed out.

Her pulse sped up a notch. “I am considering them. That’s why I need to do this now. The Banol Kax haven’t been able to reach the earth plane recently because Iago closed the hellroad and hid it in the barrier, right? That should mean they can’t perceive us up here, that they don’t know what’s going on. If Lucius manages to find the hellroad and we get it open to rescue the sun god, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to close it again. So I need to do this now, before we make any sort of move on the hellmouth.”

“Damn it, Patience.” The angry words came not from the king, but from behind her. In her husband’s voice. “I thought we agreed to wait on this . . . and to put it in front of the royal council, officially, and together.”