Blood Spells

“Yeah, it was the night of the solstice. But . . . I didn’t remember that until you asked, just like I never thought about the accident.”

Patience’s thoughts raced. “Werigo’s spell blocked us from remembering that the magic works. If the gods intervened that night and something happened to create a debt and make them turn against you, the spell would’ve blocked all of it.”

And deep down inside her, a new thought exploded through her mind: What if Werigo’s magic had also messed with their mated bond? It wouldn’t have bothered them out in the human world . . . but the effects could have manifested once she and Brandt were bound to the magic and started functioning as mates within the Nightkeeper milieu. Which was exactly when things had started going wrong between them.

Question was, would that change now that they had broken at least part of the spell? Gods, she hoped so.

“Regardless, the central issue remains,” Brandt said. “I can’t fix the problem until we know what I did wrong.”

Patience caught the bleakness at the back of his eyes. She touched his hand. “The gods didn’t shut you off because you somehow sacrificed your friends to save yourself. That’s not what happened.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you,” she said firmly.

“Michael’s magic got screwed up because he came into his powers with too much of a sin burden on his soul. The same thing could be happening to me.”

“There’s a fundamental difference between being in an accident and being an assassin.” She didn’t think she would’ve had the guts to put it quite that bluntly if Michael had been there.

For a second she thought he was going to pull away from her. But he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “I hope to hell you’re right. But hoping and theorizing aren’t going to be enough here. I need to see the rest of that vision.”

Sharp relief kicked through Patience when he didn’t go back into shutdown mode on her. But it didn’t count until they managed to keep things working back at Skywatch, where loving each other wasn’t nearly so easy.

Telling herself to deal with one crisis at a time, she said, “It seems to me that the etznab spell doesn’t just need the words and props; it also needs the right atmosphere. I don’t think it’ll work again here at the hotel.”

“Maybe not. But what about our cave?”

At the thought of going back down there—with him—her stomach tightened. “That might work.”

He stood and offered her his hand. “Then let’s see if we can find the way in.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As the others headed out of the restaurant, Rabbit hung back and signaled for Strike to wait up.

Myrinne stalled too, so the three of them wound up alone just outside a pair of restroom doors bearing sombrero-wearing stick figures of either sex, and labeled SE-NORS and SENORITAS in case the pictures weren’t obvious enough. Duh.

“Problem?” Strike asked, cutting a look between them.

Rabbit hesitated, but then went ahead and said it: “I’ve been feeling funky ever since we touched down here, kind of itchy, or like I’m coming down with something.” That wasn’t likely, though; the magi didn’t get sick, at least not from germs.

Strike stilled. “You didn’t feel it when you were here two days ago?”

“No. Just this time. I wasn’t even going to say anything, just figured I was tired from all the running around.” After leaving Oc Ajal, he and Myrinne had driven to three different ruins that had included sacrificial skull platforms— tzomplanti—dedicated to Cabrakan, but had come up dry in the clue department. Since they’d needed to do the two-day trip in one, in order to make up for the time they’d spent up in the mountains, they were both pretty short on sleep. “But between Brandt saying that this place buzzes different for him and Patience, and then us figuring out that there might be a dark-magic intersection entrance somewhere in the area, I figured you should know.”

“Does it feel like dark magic?”

Rabbit glanced at his forearm, at the scarlet quatrefoil above the black glyphs. “It doesn’t feel light or dark, really.”

“Please tell me it’s not muk.”

“Nah. I’m not even sure it’s magic. It’s more like—I don’t know, an itch between my shoulder blades, maybe. Like something’s going to happen soon.”

“You’re not going prescient on me, are you?” Strike tried to play it like he was kidding, but they both knew he wasn’t.

Nightkeeper males occasionally envisioned their destined mates before meeting them, but that was where Y-chromosome foretelling left off. What was more, precognition tended to have nasty-assed repercussions within the magic. So while the approach of the end date continued to increase the scope of the Nightkeepers’ powers— for example, allowing the warriors to cast shield spells at greater distances for longer times—there were some talents, like prescience, that they were hoping wouldn’t go on the rise.

Forcing aside the memory of the things he’d seen the night Myrinne had tried her foretelling spell on him, Rabbit shook his head. “It’s not prescience. It’s just . . . I don’t know. An itch.” The more he talked about it, the dumber it sounded. He wouldn’t even have said anything, but didn’t want to jeopardize the team by being a dumbass and keeping quiet about something that was probably nothing.

Strike thought for a minute. “Could you be sensing the solstice-eclipse ahead of the rest of us?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m getting paranoid because my ass is dragging.” Myrinne had pointed out—

rather acerbically—that fatigue sometimes triggered his old patterns. And gods knew the whole “the world is out to get me” thing used to be one of his fallback modes.

“How are your blocks?”

“My head’s locked down tight.” He’d made damn sure of it after they left Oc Ajal, and again this morning. No way he wanted Iago breaking back through. “And I’m not trying to bag out on you.

Myrinne almost never gets to see me do my thing, and I’m totally jonesing to get inside the pyramid.”

At the thought, the itch between his shoulder blades got worse. “I just thought it should be your call whether I stayed behind or not.”

“Yeah. It should be.” Strike didn’t seem as grateful as Rabbit would’ve expected, though. If anything, he looked more annoyed than before, though that sort of seemed to have become his fallback recently. Finally, after a long enough pause that Rabbit’s stomach had started to think about sinking, the king said, “I have a feeling we’re going to need your oomph to get this doorway open. But”—he shot Rabbit an “I’m way fucking serious” look—“if the itch gets worse or anything else changes, you pull out of the link immediately, and tell me what’s going on.” Before Rabbit could nod, Strike transferred his glare to Myrinne. “Same goes for you. If you see him doing anything you don’t like, you tell me. Got it?”

She played it cool, nodding and saying, “Will do.”

Inwardly, though, Rabbit knew she was doing a boogie-woogie victory dance. She was grateful to the magi for taking her in—on Rabbit’s say-so and with Anna’s support—even though she had been raised by one of Iago’s allies. Strike had given her a place to stay, spending money, an education, and some small jobs within Skywatch. But being grateful didn’t stop her from wanting more—not financially, but in terms of getting in on the action. She was dying to be out on the front lines with the other warriors.

Rabbit sure as shit knew how that felt; he’d been there, done that, and eventually earned the king’s trust. Now it was her turn . . . he hoped.

“Was there anything else?” Strike asked.

Rabbit shook his head. “I’m good if you are.”

“Then let’s go.”

They met the others outside the hotel and headed for El Rey. There, they all went in through the m ai n