Demonkeepers

Her flinch was almost imperceptible, but it was there. And her voice was sharply defensive when she said, “That’s not the point. The point is that we can’t live for our parents’ goals. Sometimes we have to define our own. You guys understand that; I know you do.”

Jade nodded. “Sure. But this isn’t about your father. It’s about you being able to help save the world.”

Anna lifted her chin in a gesture he recognized as a member of the jaguar bloodline getting her stubborn on. “Not anymore it’s not.”

Lucius could see he wasn’t going to win this one. But who among them could? Strike, he thought.

Maybe Jox. “We’re not going to tell the others that you’re quitting.” He indicated the polished crystal skull, gleaming softly amber on the desktop. “That’s what you’re saying by returning this, isn’t it?

That you’re not coming back to Skywatch. Not ever.” Leaning in, he dropped his voice. “Think about it for a moment; really think about it. And trust me: From someone who’s been on the outside most of his life, it’s not a comfortable place to live.”

“It is if you’ve chosen it,” she fired back.

“Fine, then. Come back with us and tell them yourself.”

Her lips turned up at the corners in an utterly humorless smile, as though they’d finally gotten to the meat of things. Nudging the pendant a few centimeters closer to him on the desk, she said, “You owe me, Lucius.”

There it was, he realized. And the bitch of it was that he couldn’t say she was wrong. He owed her.

Big-time. “You’re calling it all in . . . on this?”

“I am. I won’t be square with Strike and the others, I know. But I can at least leave things even between the two of us.” She rose and moved out from behind the desk, then reached down, grabbed his hands, and hauled him to his feet as she might have done before, in order to kick him back to his own office or out to the lab. Now, though, he towered over her, dwarfed her. And she kept hold of one of his hands once he was up, and stayed standing inside his personal space. Jade remained seated, watching with her counselor’s calm wrapped around her and faint panic at the back of her eyes.

Anna palmed a Swiss army knife, seemingly from nowhere. Lucius didn’t move, didn’t flinch as she scored a sharp stripe across his palm. Pain pinched and blood welled, but he didn’t feel any magic. All he felt was failure— his and hers.

“We don’t have to swear on blood,” he said. The ache spread through him as she blooded her own palm and he got that she really meant it. She wanted to leave the Nightkeepers behind. Or she wanted them to leave her behind; he wasn’t sure which was more accurate.

“We’re not swearing. I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago.” Clasping his bleeding hand in hers, she recited a string of words.

He caught a few, missed a few; he was far more used to working with glyphs than with speaking a language that had been dead for centuries. More, as she spoke, his head started spinning: a mad whirl of thoughts and blurred sight. He heard the words, glimpsed the fake antiquities, but they glommed together, tumbling around one another in a major Auntie Em moment. Pain slashed in his forearm—a wrenching sizzle that started at his marks and zigzagged up to his chest with a ripping, tearing sensation that left him hollow when it ended.

Jade lunged to her feet, reaching for him, but he held her off with an upraised palm, suddenly grokking what was going on. He yanked his hand away from Anna’s. “No,” he started. “Don’t—” But then he stopped, because he knew it was already done. “Fuck.” The world settled down around him, his vision coming clear as he flipped his arm and confirmed that the black slave mark was gone. He wasn’t bound to her anymore. Technically, he wasn’t bound to the Nightkeepers anymore, either. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did.”

His forearm now bore only the red hellmark, startling in its geometry, deadly in its coloration. “The quatrefoil’s not balanced anymore.” His heart thudded in his chest; his thoughts played demolition derby inside his head. What was this going to mean for his ability to tap the library? Something?

Nothing? Was it an entirely moot point?

Jade moved up beside him, so they were facing Anna as a couple. No, he thought, not a couple. As partners. A team. She snapped, “That was a rotten thing to do without talking it through. For all we know, that was his only link to the magic. And you just took it.” She was so angry she was practically vibrating.

“It was mine to take.” Anna turned her palms up, not to indicate the gods, but rather saying, Not my problem . In doing that, she bared her right palm, where the sacrificial slice had already closed to a thin scab. Lucius’s palm, in contrast, still bled sluggishly.

“That sucks,” Jade snapped.

“That’s life.”

Lucius followed the exchange as if from a distance, through a cool numbness that began where the slave mark had been and spread throughout his body. Anna was a Nightkeeper who didn’t want the magic. He was a human who did. “The gods have a strange sense of balance,” he muttered.

“The gods are gone.” Anna held out her hand to shake, human-style. “And as of today, so am I.”

Knowing it was futile to argue further, that he didn’t have the strength to shift an entrenched jaguar on his own, he finally nodded. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Have it your way.” He moved to scoop up the effigy.

“No, wait,” Anna said. He paused, hopeful. But she gestured to Jade. “That’s why I asked you to be here. I want you to wear it back to Skywatch. If it’s not being carried by a member of the jaguar bloodline, it’s enough that it’s being worn by a mage I consider a friend.” Her voice caught on the last word.

Lips pressed tightly together, Jade merely scooped up the effigy, draped the chain over her head, and tucked the sacred skull beneath her yellow polo, doing up the lower two buttons to conceal the priceless artifact. Taking her hand, Lucius headed for the door, aching with the knowledge that, unless Strike and Jox worked some major magic, it would probably be the last time he’d see Anna, who’d been a big part of his life for so long. When he had the panel open, his eye caught the laminated sign.

What have you got to lose? When had the answer become “Everything”?

“Lucius,” Anna said.

He glanced back. “Yeah?”

“Good luck.” Her eyes shifted to Jade. “And to you. I wish . . . I wish I could be as brave and strong as you’re learning to be. Gods keep you both.”

Jade didn’t answer, but her eyes glittered with unshed tears. Lucius tipped his head. “Good-bye, Professor Catori.”

Out in the hallway, he tried to breathe through the numbness and the sense that the squat, dark building was collapsing inward around him. Jade’s eyes were stark, her face pale, but she said only, “Do you want to grab any of the stuff from your old office? She boxed most of the things you left behind.”

“Leave it,” he said curtly. “There’s nothing here I need.”

“You up for tracking down Rabbit?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” In a way, he hoped the kid was up to something. Knowing Rabbit, it’d be guaranteed to take his mind off Anna’s defection, and the fact that Jade was wearing the crystal skull.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Jade couldn’t get either Rabbit or Myrinne on her cell, she and Lucius headed over to their summer sublet. The apartment proved to be the top floor of a detached garage. The main house was a good-size, brick- faced residential house with freshly painted white trim, ruthlessly shaped shrubs, and a perfectly trimmed lawn.

“Huh,” Lucius said. “Doesn’t look like either of their styles.” It was the first thing he’d said since they left the art history building. He’d just walked beside her, grim faced and stone silent.

Jade slid a glance over at him. The fierce tension that had gripped his body seemed to have eased slightly, but his expression still had all sorts of Keep Out signs plastered across it. She didn’t blame him; the past half hour