She opened her eyes to find herself in the master bedroom, lying beside Brandt as the yellow morning sun came in through the window to warm the cool blue room. But that was where the parallels stopped. She wasn’t wrapped in Brandt’s arms, and he sure as hell wasn’t making love to her.
He hadn’t for longer than she wanted to count. Yet arousal ran through her, making her shiver hot and cold, and wish she had stayed asleep a few minutes longer.
“Damn it. That wasn’t fair.” She didn’t know who or what she was pissed at, just that she was pissed. Frustrated. Sad. Depressed.
No. Not going back there.
Forcing herself to get moving, she headed for the connecting bath, then through to the boys’ room, where she usually slept. There, she changed into clean jeans and a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, and dragged her long hair into a ponytail. Every few minutes, she looked through the bathroom to the master bedroom, where Brandt lay unchanged, looking as isolated as she felt.
Outside the bedroom window, the sun shone brightly, warming her chilled skin when she pressed her palms against the glass and rested her forehead for a moment. “I could use some help here, gods. I need more to go on than just ‘make him remember.’” She waited a long moment, hoping for a sign. A clue. Something. Anything.
Nothing.
Exhaling, she turned away from the window and headed through the suite, intending to grab some breakfast, check with the winikin to see how things were going in the outside world, and see if Jade and Lucius had gotten any further with the library research. But as she was passing through the main room, a flash of purple on the coffee table caught her eye and made her hesitate.
It was her first deck of oracle cards, part of a boxed set that she’d bought off Amazon on a whim, and maybe a bit of rebellion against the traditions that dictated too much of her life at Skywatch.
Mayan astronomy wasn’t part of the old ways; hell, as far as she could tell, most of the shtick had been lifted straight from tarot readings, glossed over with a veneer of Mayan glyphs and concepts designed to appeal to the human world, where there was a growing awareness that December 21, 2012, might be more than just some hype and a couple of loud movies.
Over the past few months, though, she’d realized that just because the codices didn’t mention the oracle, that didn’t make it bullshit. More and more often, she was turning over cards that related to—
or even predicted—what was going on in her life. In fact, she was starting to think that the oracle could tap into some type of magic, whether or not the others wanted to accept it. Which was why she didn’t brush off the instinct that told her to cut the deck now.
She crossed to the low table and chose a card at random, without even shuffling. When she flipped it, she froze at the sight of a jagged “X” formed of two step-sided pyramid outlines, joined at their crowns.
It was the mirror glyph, etznab.
Again.
A shiver worked its way down her spine, and her heart picked up a beat. What were the odds she would cut the same card twice in a row from two different decks?
Glancing at the sliders, at the shining sun and the blue sky around it, she said, “I get it. Brandt and I have unfinished business. And apparently he has some with his ancestors too. But I don’t know what else I’m supposed to take from this.” She reached for the dog-eared book that went with the deck, figuring she should reread the entire entry on the etznab oracle.
But then she hesitated, staring at the card.
What if it wasn’t signifying unfinished business? What if it was telling her something far more obvious?
“Mirrors,” she whispered. “Holy shit.”
The ancestors had held mirrors as sacred, believing they were doorways into the soul . . . and into memory.
Her hands shook as she fumbled out her phone and called the library. Thanks to a private cell covering the compound—Jox’s doing—the call went through immediately, though canyon country itself was a dead zone. “Hey there,” Jade said in answer. “Any news?”
“Brandt is the same.”
“I’m sorry. Anna’s in bad shape too.” Jade’s voice echoed with concern for her friend. “Strike and the others are at the hospital now.”
“Gods.” Patience closed her eyes and sent a quick prayer. She didn’t know Anna well, but she was a teammate, estranged or not. And, apparently, a Triad mage. She had collapsed within minutes of the Triad spell being triggered, and had wound up rushed to the ER with an intracranial bleed.
Jade continued, forcing a businesslike tone into her voice. “And in the ‘not sounding good’ department, Mendez’s winikin disappeared out of his locked mental ward yesterday right after Mendez dropped out of sight. Nate, Sven, and Alexis are up there now, looking for both of them.” She paused.
“But I’m guessing you didn’t call for an update.”
“No.” Patience let out a slow breath and crossed her fingers that this was going to work. “Did Lucius’s search for memory enhancers pull up anything related to mirrors, like a mirrored artifact or a spell that uses one?”
There was a beat of silence on the other end. Then Jade said, “There’s a mirror-bottomed pot on the
‘to be translated’ pile. The magic led Lucius to it, but we moved it down on the priority list because a rough translation of the first few glyphs suggested that it’s more aimed at breaking mental blocks than recovering actual memories.”
Patience’s heart drummed in her ears. “Translate it now. Please. I think it’s the one I need.”
CHAPTER FOUR
While she waited, Patience downed a couple of energy bars and a cup of coffee, and skirted gingerly around the coffee table, where the etznab card lay faceup.
She had defended her new hobby, but now she realized that she hadn’t really believed—not deep down inside—that the cards had any true power. Now, though . . . she hesitated to pull another, fearing that she would turn over something way darker than etznab. When a tap came at the hallway door, she flinched.
“It’s open,” she called. But then, unable to sit still, she stood and crossed to the door as it swung inward. She stopped dead at the sight of Rabbit. He was carrying a brightly painted, three-legged clay pot, and had a plastic bag and a manila folder tucked under one elbow. And he hadn’t been in the suite in a long, long time.
For a few seconds, the past and present ricocheted off each other, making her yearn.
“I volunteered to bring this stuff over and see if you want help with the spell,” he said conversationally, like they were picking up in the middle of a discussion they’d been having only moments earlier, rather than the year-plus it had been since the last time they had hung out together.
His blue-gray eyes, though, were wary.
It was the same expression he’d worn early on, when he’d watched the world from behind the insulation of an iPod and a teenager’s sulkiness. Back then, his father had given him good reason to anticipate trouble. Now she didn’t like knowing she had put that look in his eyes.
She reached out impulsively to grip his forearm. “I was just thinking about you.”
He went very still. He didn’t pull away, though, and when he met her eyes, he saw an echo of her own regrets. “I’m sorry about Brandt. If I didn’t have the hellmark—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Patience interrupted, tightening her grip. “Not even you can control the gods.
And besides, I wasn’t thinking about what happened today. . . . I was thinking about the breakfasts we used to have in here, the whole gang of us together.”