There was no blood spatter, no sign of a struggle. That wasn’t why he’d stopped. His attention was locked on a framed photograph that sat beside the radio.
In it, the foursome had been caught midpicnic, laughing, with sandwiches and drinks spread haphazardly on a wooden table. Hannah’s hair was shorter and had more highlights, but the purple pirate’s bandanna and the lively sparkle in her good eye were the same. Woody’s hair might’ve gained more threads of gray, but his casual dress and easygoing smile were unchanged. The boys were tall and lean for their age, with Brandt’s intensity in eyes the color of her own. Braden, handsome and perfectly groomed, stared directly into the camera with a charmer’s smile, while Harry looked into the distance with a dreamy smile, his clothing faintly rumpled, his hair sticking up over his ears.
“They’re growing up.” Brandt’s voice broke. “And the winikin . . . gods, I miss them. I want them back, not just safe, but with us. For good.”
Before, she would’ve given anything to hear him admit that, to know that he felt it too.
Now, she moved up beside him, leaned on him briefly, and pressed her cheek to his shoulder.
“We’re in this together,” she said, meaning not just the two of them but the entire team.
His fingers brushed hers, caught, and held. He squeezed, then let go and nodded once, a short, businesslike chin jerk. “Let’s do this.”
The magi fanned through the house. Patience and Brandt took the upstairs, first checking the big, brightly painted master that held an odd mix of neatness and jumble that reflected the twins’ personalities. She wanted to sit there and inhale the fragrance of crayons and the well-oiled baseball gloves that sat on a shelf, one splayed flat, the other with a ball carefully fitted into the pocket.
Instead, she kept moving, touching Brandt’s hand on the way by.
On the other side of the hall, the winikin had separate rooms, which messed with her mental picture of the four of them as a tightly knit nuclear family.
Standing just inside a neat room done in masculine neutrals but with Wood’s distinctive flare in the velvet Elvis on the wall, she murmured, “Did something go wrong between you two, or does Woody snore like a chain saw?”
She hoped it was the latter. She wanted to believe they were happy.
“Maybe he couldn’t sleep with all the purple,” Brandt suggested from the next doorway down.
Patience joined him and glanced in. Oh, Hannah, she thought, her throat closing at the sight of purple and more purple—it was in the curtains, the bedclothes, and a small herd of stuffed dragons and dinosaurs on the bed, a profusion that went beyond garish to playful, and made her smile through a mist of tears.
“We should go.” But although his voice was clipped, his eyes were dark with strain and grief, and he lingered for a last look in the boys’ room, his shoulders bowed.
The team regrouped downstairs in the main room, where the TV was on, glasses of juice sat half-
finished on a coffee table, and a remote-controlled robot marched listlessly in a corner, going nowhere, its batteries wearing down. There, as elsewhere in the house, there was no sign of a struggle, no hint of the makol having been there.
Brandt crouched down to turn off the robot, his big hands lingering on the remote, touching something his sons had been playing with—what, two hours earlier? Less?
Leah shook her head, frustrated. “Nothing. It’s like they were ghosts.”
Ghosts. Patience glanced at Brandt as the word sent a cool shiver through her, a reminder that Iago wasn’t their only enemy and the first-fire ceremony wasn’t the only threat. Time was running out on the Akbal oath.
He looked up at her, jaw set. “They’ll be okay,” he grated.
But the gold was gone from his eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
December 21 Winter solstice-eclipse Skywatch For Brandt, the night passed in a gut-gnawing blur of fruitless research and burning frustration. He wanted to fucking do something.
But Lucius and Jade hadn’t been able to find a way for him to renegotiate the Akbal oath, and the list of possible Xibalban bunkers was still too long, so the plans had shifted to staking out the dark-
magic entrance and grabbing Iago and his prisoners on the way in. And in order to do that, they had to find the dark-magic entrance.
It had been Patience’s idea for Rabbit to mind-link with Jade and attempt to blend her de-cloaking talent with his dark magic, in order to search for the second doorway. Brandt had been proud of her for the potential breakthrough . . . but he hadn’t told her so.
In fact, he’d been avoiding her, because he didn’t want to fight about the Akbal oath anymore.
He got her logic—of course he did. The Triad magic could hold the key to defeating not just Cabrakan but Iago as well. But the sticking point remained: He owed the gods a life. Her life.
She had argued that it was like the village elder had said: The gods made their choices as they saw fit. They didn’t need his permission to take her. Which was true. But the Akbal oath was his burden . .
. and his decision.
He wished Woody were there. He wanted to talk to the winikin, wanted his fucking family back together, wanted things the way they used to be. But the gods didn’t give a shit what he wanted, did they? That much was patently clear.
Have faith. The whisper came in Wood’s voice, shaming him.
Which was why, as the clock ran down into the last couple of hours before they would begin their stakeout of El Rey, he wound up in the mansion’s circular ceremonial chamber, on his knees in front of the chac-mool.
The sun shone down through the glass roof, casting diminishing shadows on the stone-tiled floor and warming the fabric of his black tee and cargo pants as he scored both palms and let a few drops of blood fall into the shallow bowl atop the altar. Then, settling back on his heels, he folded his bloodstained hands together and tried to remember how to pray.
Gods help me, he thought, but instead of leaving him and heading for the sky, the words stayed trapped inside him, banging around in his skull. Frustration flared, but he tamped it down and tried again. “Gods help me.” He said it aloud that time, so it couldn’t stay stuck inside, but he didn’t feel the bond he’d once felt, the click that told him the gods were listening. Because they weren’t. Not to him, anyway.
Heart heavy, he cleaned off his knife and hands, rose to his feet, and turned for the door.
Patience stood just inside it.
Like him, she was dressed in combat gear. But where before he’d occasionally thought she made the outfit look like coed-goes-goth, the woman who faced him now looked capable, deadly, and determined. Which drove home something he had realized while arguing with her over the Akbal oath: She hadn’t just gotten stronger as a person; she’d grown as a warrior. And that scared the shit out of him.
He wanted to ask her to stay behind, but couldn’t. So he said simply, “Time to go?”
“Almost.” She looked beyond him to the altar. “Any luck?”
He shook his head.
“I’ve been doing some more thinking about the Mexico City earthquake back in the eighties,” she said, which was no surprise. She had spent a good chunk of the previous evening obsessing over the killer quake and the toll Cabrakan could take on mankind.
He knew it was her way of coping, just like the oracle cards had started out as a way for her to beat her depression. But he didn’t want to talk about the earthquake anymore. If Cabrakan got through the barrier, people were going to die. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—sacrifice her.