Blood Spells

down a car and got help.”

When he paused, Patience swallowed hard, trying to ease the tightness in her throat. “What about your friends?” she said, not letting herself ask the other questions that rattled around inside her.

Questions like, Why is this the first time I’m hearing this story? And, What else aren’t you telling me?

“Searchers found their bodies a quarter mile further downstream. The pathologist said they both drowned, but even after dredgers found the car and hauled it back up, nobody could tell me whether they died getting me out.” He paused. “I think that’s what happened, though. They died saving me.

And that creates a debt.” He spread his hands. “Woody had saved up to get me started after college, in grad school or whatever. We used the money to set up a scholarship instead, in their names. I talked to their parents, tried to apologize, but they wouldn’t let me take the blame. They just kept saying it was just a terrible accident.”

“Why . . .” Patience trailed off, not sure if it was the woman or the warrior asking, or if it mattered either way. This wasn’t about the two of them, even if it felt that way to her.

“Why didn’t I tell you the whole story before now?” He shook his head. “It just . . . I don’t know.

Until last night, it wasn’t something I thought about, ever. Which, given the nahwal’s message, makes me wonder whether I’m supposed to remember something about the accident, instead.”

Patience knew it was stupid to be hurt by the possibility that they might not need to remember the rest of their first night. “According to the nahwal, you need my help. If the Triad spell dropped you straight into the river vision, then that’s not what you need to remember.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Jade shot Patience a sympathetic look before she continued. “We don’t know how the nahwal communicate with each other. We have to assume that they do communicate, given that Patience’s nahwal relayed information from Brandt’s, but if you think about it, there wasn’t much time for them to confab. Maybe once Brandt’s nahwal merged with him, his ancestors realized that they could help him access the river memory directly, without needing your help.”

Brandt frowned. “But if my nahwal knew I couldn’t use the Triad magic, then the gods should’ve known about it too. So why the hell did Kinich Ahau pick me?”

“For the same reason it picked me first,” Rabbit said. He twirled a finger next to his ear, but his eyes were serious. “Maybe its brain—do gods have brains?—got screwed up while it was being held in that Xibalban pit. Maybe the Banol Kax implanted a mind-bend, programming it to screw us over when the opportunity presented.”

“Damn it, Rabbit, that’s—” Jox broke off, paused, then exhaled before finishing, “—not the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. Entirely sacrilegious, but not the dumbest. Shit.”

As the others went back and forth trying to interpret Kinich Ahau’s actions, Patience felt her magic flicker. It wasn’t her warrior’s talent, though; it was her other talent, that of invisibility, kicking into gear as the conversation flowed past her, making it seem that she didn’t need to be there, that the others would all be fine without her.

You want to make me feel invisible? her magic seemed to say. What if I just disappeared? What would you do then?

But that was the sort of thing the old Patience would have thought and done—something self-

pitying and pointless. So instead of sitting there and stewing, she broke into the debate and said bluntly, “No offense, but we have four days to make Brandt into a Triad mage. I think we should focus on that rather than quibbling over abstracts.”

“Figuring out how I pissed off my own dead ancestors is pretty damned abstract,” Brandt pointed out, but he nodded. “But you’re right. We need to figure out what this debt is all about.” His thigh pressed more firmly against hers as he shifted to face her. “I think should try the etznab spell again.”

Her breath went thin, her blood heating with sensory memory and the mingled anticipation and unease that came with the thought of connecting with him again on that level. We won’t have to use the jun tan the next time, she reminded herself. “We could also try visiting the actual places where the visions took place, and jacking in,” she suggested.

“Good idea,” Strike said. “Get me a satellite picture or something, and I’ll ’port you two whenever you’re ready.”

Brandt turned away from her to say, “I’d rather go solo. It’s not safe out there if Iago’s awake and fully joined with Moctezuma’s demon.”

The flash of anger caught Patience by surprise. She was halfway off her stool before she was aware of moving, getting right in his face to snap, “It’s not my job to stay safe. And whether you like it or not, we’re still stronger together than apart—magically, at least.” Suddenly becoming aware that she was on the verge of causing major a scene, where before she had been careful to keep things so private between them, she lowered her voice a notch. “I’m your partner. You can give me that much, damn it.”

Their eyes locked. She sensed his anger, not through the jun tan, but in the set of his jaw and the tense lines of his body. She didn’t back down, though. Not this time.

After a few heartbeats of standoff, he exhaled. “I’m not trying to be a dick here.”

“I know.” In a way, that made it all worse, because both of them kept trying to do what they thought was right, and it kept not meshing. “But you’re not going to win on this one.”

“Yeah.” He smiled humorlessly. “I got that.” But when he met her eyes, instead of the dark frustration she expected, she glimpsed a hint of gold. More, she saw him—the man, not the warrior—

for just a second before the shields slammed back down.

Unexpectedly, energy sparked in the air between them.

Help him remember. The nahwal’s order echoed through her soul, and her pulse jumped as a new thought occurred. It was far too tempting to think that he was supposed to remember how to be her husband, her lover. She wasn’t sure what that theory had to do with debts and ancestors, but it certainly jibed with how the magic worked. The closer their emotional ties, the stronger their magic.

What if he’d had it backward all along? What if they weren’t supposed to table their marriage for the duration of the war? What if they were supposed to fix it instead?

Don’t go there, she warned herself. They had tried too many times before to patch up their relationship. She was sick of trying, sick of failing. And there was no reason to think anything had changed, really.

Unless it had.

“Given what the nahwal said and the way the etznab spell seems to work, I want the two of you teaming up on every aspect of this. Find a way to make it work,” Strike said in his “end of discussion, the jaguar king has spoken” voice.

Brandt faced front. “Like I said. I got it.”

Patience sent him an edged look, but said to the king, “We’ll do what needs to be done.”

Strike didn’t look totally satisfied by that answer, but he let it go and turned to Lucius. “Moving on.

What have you got on the two gods the nahwal mentioned?”

Lucius had been frowning over something on his laptop. At the king’s question, he looked up, blinking around at the group as though he’d forgotten they were there. “Kali and Cabrakan.” He cleared his throat. “Right. The nahwal said that if—when—Brandt becomes the Triad mage, he’ll be able to prevent Cabrakan from avenging his brother and finishing what Kali began. Which gives us two gods to work with. Starting with Kali, there’s some debate on whether he—and this god is most definitely a ‘he,’ enormous schlong and all—is allied with the sky or Xibalba. Either way, he’s the god of leadership. Nightkeeper leadership, in particular.”

“That’s why it sounded familiar,” Strike said. “The Manikin scepter is carved in Kali’s image, enormous schlong and all.” The scepter, which resided in the barrier with the jaguar nahwal, was the symbol of his rulership. “Which I suppose makes us Kali’s children, and means that Cabrakan is going to come after us.” He paused. “So who or what is Cabrakan?”