Demonkeepers

She touched his arm. “I think it’s okay. Remember, they defended me before.”

“Now I’m defending you.”

“I know.”

He glanced back at her, saw the decision in her eyes, and grabbed her arm before she could do something impulsive. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

“They came from Xibalba,” she pointed out. “They must have come through the hellmouth. Maybe they can lead us back there. If it’s still closed, I might be able to manipulate the magic hiding it, like I did with Vennie’s cave.”

The other magi were gathered close in support, but he saw only her, feared only for her. “Jade—” he began.

She touched his mouth, silencing him. “Shh. We’ll talk about it later,” she said. And this time, the

“later” was a promise.

Lucius knew he didn’t have a choice. She was a warrior, with or without the mark, and she needed to do what the gods intended, both for the Nightkeepers and for herself. He stepped slowly back and gestured for her to do her thing.

The moment she started forward, the dogs whirled and plunged into the undergrowth. Without looking back or hesitating, she plunged after them, with Lucius right on her heels. If anything bad wanted to get at her, it was going to have to go through him to do it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jade’s nerves revved high as she followed the companions, who were moving fast through the dying cloud forest, their heads and tails low as though they were on a mission. Which she supposed they were: Save Kinich Ahau, and get him back in the sky where he belonged.

One thing at a time, she reminded herself. First we need to find the hellmouth. As she chased after the long-legged black hellhounds, she sought the magic, called it to her, but nothing happened. Panic flickered. Don’t you dare quit on me now.

But it wasn’t that the magic had quit on her, she knew. She’d quit on it. Or rather, she was blocking the hell out of it.

Damn it, Lucius, she thought, but even as she did, she knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, or hers. They had both screwed things up the night before. She should’ve told him about her theory of the connection between their emotions and their magic, and she should’ve come clean to him that she was falling hard and fast for him despite all her best intentions. Even admitting it to her inner self brought a lick of panic. He’d turned her down, said that wasn’t what he wanted, she wasn’t what he wanted.

Granted, his behavior on the ball court and the way he’d worn her scarf as a knight’s Dark Age favor suggested he’d been doing some rethinking too, and the way he was following close behind her now had all the hallmarks of a male warrior- mage protecting his mate. But they hadn’t said the words, hadn’t had the conversation.

More talking? she asked herself, irritation spiking. Therapy might be a two-way conversation, but she was getting sick of it. She was tired of talking herself into trouble; she wanted to act, to react, to make a difference, damn it.

Up ahead, the big black creatures crossed a wide clearing and then stopped dead, standing shoulder-

to-shoulder, facing nothing in particular. Then they sat, still staring at that same nothingness. Only it wasn’t nothing, Jade knew. It was the hellmouth . . . or it would be if she could figure out the magic.

Lucius moved up beside her while the other magi fanned out, waiting for her to do her thing. None of their talents was compatible with the task—fire could level the forest but it couldn’t uncover what had been hidden; a shape-shifted hawk could fly a search pattern, but the Volatile could see only what was visible. Mind-bending wouldn’t help; Strike couldn’t ’port blind; and invisibility wasn’t their problem—visibility was.

“It’s all yours,” Lucius said, his thoughts paralleling hers. He took her hand, squeezed it. “You can do it. I have faith in you.”

That jarred against his recent behavior. “Maybe,” she said softly, “but what if I’m not strong enough?”

He looked down at her, his eyes intense. “The harvesters believed in the importance of their work; Shandi believed in the value of the harvesters. The stars believed in the prophecies, Vennie in her own brilliance. You’re a part of each of them. What do you believe in?”

She didn’t answer right away. She knew that the clock was ticking, that everyone was waiting for her. But she was stuck on Lucius’s question. What did she believe in? She believed in the magic, in the Nightkeepers and the war. She believed that she was stronger than she used to think she was, and that she and Lucius . . . what? Did she believe they could make each other happy in the long run?

That was the problem, she realized suddenly, or one of them. She’d seen the end of so many relationships that she entered each new affair preparing for its end, creating a self- fulfilling prophecy that made it easier, safer, and less dramatic to not bother trying to keep it going. What would happen if she threw herself into it heart and soul?

She might be crushed, she realized. But she might also succeed.

“I believe,” she said slowly, “that inner peace is highly overrated.” While he was trying to puzzle that one out, she stepped into him and kissed him, hard. What was more, she opened herself fully to her own emotions and damned the consequences.

The magic shimmered within her, in the air around them, and a hidden door opened inside her, letting in the power of the solstice, and the power that was hers alone. She stepped away from Lucius, taking her place directly between the companions, facing nothing.

Only it wasn’t nothing, she saw now. It was everything.

The bright sparks she’d seen as part of the shifting pattern of power in Rabbit’s sublet had come from sex or emotion, maybe both; the fluid magic she’d sensed covering the hidden tunnel at Skywatch had been an ancient spell imbued with modern hopes and fears. But seeing those things was just half of her magic. The other half was in the spell words themselves, and her ability to morph them from one thing to another. She had created ice magic, it was true, but she hadn’t been able to use that part of her talent since.

Now, as she laid herself open to the magic, to the possibilities, she saw it. In front of her, rising from the dried-up cloud forest floor to the wilted canopy above, stretching the width of the clearing in either direction, was a wall of magic. It was bright sparks and flowing power. It was the code beneath the chatter, the structure underlying the fabric of the earth. At the same time, glyph strings crawled across the undulating surface of the spell, morphing and mutating as she watched. How in the hell was she supposed to alter a spell that was altering almost faster than she could follow it?

Gods, she thought, stomach twisting. It was too complex, too mutable. She could see the structure but she couldn’t get a grip on it. The spell was a slippery ball of power, sliding through her grasp each time she thought she had it.

She stared at the nothingness, sweat prickling on her brow.

“Jade.” It was Lucius’s voice, low in warning. On either side of her, the companions were growling, their shoulder fur ruffling.

“They won’t hurt me. I think they’re worried. The magic of the game brought them through, and now they can’t get back to him. Unless . . .” She trailed off as a glyph glinted in the flowing string. It glowed, floated off the spell surface, and locked itself into a single pictograph. As she watched, a second followed. Then another. Her magic churned and spun, but she wasn’t quite there yet. The magic wasn’t quite there.

Without another thought or hesitation, she opened herself to the task, to the power and the potential for failure and drama. Take what you need . Something shifted inside her, a sharp lurch beneath her heart, and she gasped. Then it was there: The counterspell flared in front of her, burning itself into her mind’s eye.

She reached back for Lucius’s hand, felt their fingers twine and link. Whispering a small prayer in her heart, she recited the counterspell.