A noise from the far side of the great room jerked her from self-recrimination.
Jox stood white-faced in the arched doorway leading to the
Strike bolted to his feet. “What’s wrong? Is it Anna?”
“There’s been an earthquake in Mexico City. I’m not sure how bad—it just hit the CNN crawl.”
The room went dead silent.
The audio came on first, in Spanish. Patience had to wait for the image to clarify and the closed-
captioning to come online. The picture steadied first; it showed people thronging a street, milling and gesturing.
Moments later, words scrolled along the bottom of the screen:
They watched for a few more minutes, the tension in the room leveling off as it became obvious that the quake could have been far worse.
Finally, Strike killed the volume and tossed the remote. “Cabrakan’s letting us know that he’s coming for us.”
But Brandt frowned. “If that’s the case, why hit Mexico City? That was Aztec territory. Why not aim for a Nightkeeper site?”
“Mexico City is built over Moctezuma’s capital city, Tenochtitlan,” Lucius pointed out. “Maybe it’s a message for Iago, not us.” He paused. “It’s not like Iago and the
We’ve got a three-way fight shaping up: Iago wants to finish the conquest Moctezuma began in the fifteen hundreds, the
Patience was only partway paying attention; she was focused on the closed-captioning and the images that flashed on the TV screen, partly because she was numb and heartsore over Brandt’s withdrawal, partly because of what was showing on the screen.
In the absence of any real damage from the current quake, the new ghouls were rehashing the earlier quake atop a montage of film and still shots showing rescue efforts, stadiums turned into morgues, and tent cities of dispossessed survivors.
“Ten thousand dead,” she said to herself, not really realizing she’d said it aloud until the others fell silent.
Jox, who had taken a seat near Strike, said, “Some of the upper estimates were over fifty thousand fatalities. The Mexican government ordered a news blackout after the quake, so there’s no real confirmed number. Internationally, the general sense was that ten thousand was a low-end estimate.”
She couldn’t conceive of those numbers. Or rather, she could, and the thought of it tightened a fist around her heart. “We can’t let the next earthquake come,” she whispered. “People are going to die.
Lots of people.” Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. She looked at Brandt. “We have to stop it.”
He grimaced. “You said it yourself: The
Despair pricked, but she didn’t let herself give in to it. Instead, she reached into a pocket and pulled out the small, well-worn star deck. “These led me to the
Realizing that the room had gone silent and she had become the center of attention, she looked around, flushing slightly. “Sorry. I’ll go—”
“Stay.” Lucius shoved a coffee table across to bump against her knees, making Jox wince at the scraping noise the hardwood made. “Show us how it works.”
“No, really. I’ll just—” She stopped herself. “Scratch that. Sure, I’ll show you.”
Knowing that her focus was scattered, she began with a prayer that defined the reading.
She shuffled the cards until they slid freely, then cut the deck three times—once for the past, once for the present, once for the future.
Setting the deck on the coffee table, then said, “Given the nature of the
dimensional pyramid. Then she tapped the lower left card. “This one is called the smoky mirror. It represents the shadow darkening my present state of being, making things unclear or asking to be revealed. The one next to it”—she touched the lower right card—“is the clear mirror. It offers truth, guidance, and vision. Finally, the card at the top shows me how to step through the mirror into self-
awareness and reach an answer.”
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, centered herself, and tapped into her magic, which responded sluggishly. She kept working at it, though, seeking added power. Hearing the rustle of movement, she assumed the crowd was thinning. So she was startled when a hand touched her shoulder and her magic surged. She opened her eyes to find the magi gathered around the couch where she and Brandt were sitting. Sasha was touching her shoulder; she was connected to each of the others by a touch, forming a linked circle all the way around to Brandt.
He waited until she looked at him, until their eyes met. Then he extended his hand across the short gap separating them. His expression was all warrior, but she told herself that was the way it should be.
This wasn’t about them; it was about the Triad magic and the war.
Still, her heart ached.
Nodding as much to herself as to any of the others, she took his hand and felt the team’s joined power swell through her. Without blood sacrifice it was a gentler magic, one that warmed rather than energized, centering her rather than pushing her beyond her normal limits.
“Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “Here we go.” She flipped the lower left card. A sense of inevitability skimmed through her at the sight of a burgundy and black glyph against a yellow sun sign. “This is Imix, the Primordial Mother. It’s the card I almost always draw in positions representing my needs.”
“Which means that the magic’s working,” Jade offered.
“I think so. The question is going to be whether I can correctly interpret the cards I pull. Getting Imix in the smoky-mirror position suggests that I need to reveal myself, or that in the past I’ve been my own worst enemy.”
“Which could apply to most of us,” Brandt pointed out.
Trying not to read too far into that, she turned over the card on the lower right, and jolted at the sight of a deep blue-black design with a starscape in the center and the sun behind it. “Lamat. Wow.”
“What is it?” Lucius pressed, seeming fascinated.
“I drew the same two cards in the same order the other day. That can’t be an accident.” Exhaling to settle the sudden churn of her stomach, she continued: “I think of Lamat as Brandt’s card.” She didn’t elaborate; there was no need to broadcast that it was his card because its shadow aspect was disconnection and a rigid adherence to dogma. “For his card to appear in the clear-mirror position means that he holds the answer we’re looking for.
