“No,” Alexis said automatically. Then she paused, remembering the multitonal voice that had shouted at the end. “At least, I don’t think I did.”
The nahwals were sexless, desiccated entities that existed only within the barrier. They embodied the collective wisdom of each bloodline, and could choose to share that wisdom or not, depending on the circumstances. They never lied, but Jade’s research suggested they sometimes gave only partial answers, and that they seemed to have an agenda that even the earlier generations of Nightkeepers hadn’t understood. One thing was for sure: They spoke with two or more voices combined in harmonic descant.
“You don’t seem certain,” Nate said, turning back to look at her intently. “What did you see?”
“It wasn’t what I saw,” she evaded, “but what I heard. Just as I was coming back here, a voice said something about finding something volatile.” She turned to Jade, who as usual stood at the edge of the group. “Was Ixchel an air goddess?”
The archivist shook her head. “She was—or, rather, is—the goddess of rainbows, fertility, and weaving.” She paused, looking troubled. “I’m sure I’ve seen the term volatile recently, though, and not in a good way. Let me check into it.”
Alexis looked down at the statuette, but didn’t touch it. “You think that’s what’s written in the starscript? Something about this volatile? Maybe we need whatever it is to hold back Camazotz.”
Strike hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ll call Anna and see if she can come out a few days early, to translate.”
The king’s sister, a Mayan studies expert at UT Austin, was staying as far away from the Nightkeepers as possible, coming to Skywatch only during the cardinal days and major ceremonies, and then only because she’d promised to do so in exchange for Red-Boar saving the life of her grad student. Anna made no secret that she wanted nothing to do with the culture and magic she’d been born to, nothing to do with her own destiny.
Sometimes, Alexis thought on a sinking sense of disappointment, the gods get it wrong. Which she knew was blasphemy and illogical. But at the same time, how did it make sense to pair up a mismatch like her and Nate, or force someone like Anna to be something she didn’t want to be?
CHAPTER FOUR
“A volatile?” Anna frowned at her brother’s question, then took a quick look through the cracked-open doorway of her office, making sure she was alone. She didn’t want anyone at the university to hear her talking about Mayan myths and demons as though they were real, even if they were. Some divisions of the art history department might encourage funkiness, but not hers. Mayan epigraphy—the study and translation of the ancient glyphs and the legends they told—was serious science. Which, for better or worse, made her the logical person for her brother to call. Damn it. “Well,” she continued, hoping info was all he wanted for a change, “the volatiles are the thirteen symbols connected with the hours of the day and the thirteen levels of the sky. But they’re just symbols, not things or spells. I don’t see how they’d help if you’re looking to block the death bats.”
“The what?”
Anna winced at the knowledge gap. “Camazotz is the ruler of the death bats, which are linked, as you might suspect, with death and sacrifice. You need a better researcher. Seriously. She’s missing basic stuff your average Google search is going to pull up.”
“She’s a therapist.” There was a bite in Strike’s tone now. “And she’s practically killing herself trying to catalog the archive, never mind looking up the things we need her to.” He didn’t add, And we have a better researcher . . . or we would if you’d get your ass back here where you belong , but they both knew that was what he was thinking.
Anna, though, was standing firm. She had a husband and a life in the real world, and didn’t intend to buy back into the universe that’d killed their parents, into the mythology that would eventually kill them all. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the end-time. It was that she didn’t believe a dozen or so half-trained magi were going to make a damned bit of difference determining whether it came or not, or that she could help save the world. Better that she live the next four years the best she could, and pray to the gods for forgiveness when the end came.
Still, though, she owed Strike something. Family mattered, regardless of how dysfunctional. “I’ll send Jade some Web links that should help her get up to speed on Camazotz.”
“Not good enough. I need you to come out early and read the starscript for us. I need to know what’s on the statuette ASAP, in case it’s something we can use in the eclipse ceremony,” Strike persisted, once again trying to draw Anna back to the world they’d both been born into. She wanted to tell him no, to tell him to call someone else. But like it or not—and she didn’t like it one bit—she was the only translator the Nightkeepers could trust.
She touched the yellow, skull-shaped quartz effigy that she wore beneath her shirt even though her seer’s powers hadn’t so much as twitched since the autumnal equinox. “Fine. I’ll move my flight up and try to leave early tomorrow.” She hated the thought of being at Skywatch longer than absolutely necessary, but she’d already been planning on being there for the penumbral lunar eclipse, which was a time of great barrier power that the Nightkeepers would try to use for one or more of the bigger spells. A couple of extra days wouldn’t kill her.
Strike sighed, the sound coming from deep within his chest. “Thank you.” He paused, then said in a different, more tentative tone, “So, are you okay?”
They hadn’t talked much since the equinox. She’d flown home immediately after their return from the intersection. She hadn’t even stayed for Red-Boar’s funeral, hadn’t been able to. Not after he’d bled out in her arms and died with his eyes locked onto hers. The experience had changed her, though, made her more aware of what mattered. She’d gone straight from the airport to her husband’s on-
campus office in the economics building, shut the door at her back, and had the conversation they’d both been avoiding for months, i.e., the one that started with an accusation and ended with an ultimatum: Ditch the other woman, whoever the hell she is.
It hadn’t been as easy as that, of course, because Anna had earned her fair share of the blame for the shambles their marriage had become. She’d wanted a baby, because that was what marriage and family was about. Then, when months of not using birth control had stretched to years with no baby and even their first expensive try at in vitro had failed, she’d gotten wrapped up in the failure. As many times as she’d said she didn’t blame him, she knew he didn’t believe her, knew she hadn’t given him reason to believe. So they’d drifted, her to her work, him to his own pursuits. At first it’d been golf and hanging out at the faculty club. After a while she’d realized those were excuses, that he was actually having an affair. And the worst part was she’d been willing to go on that way, telling herself that it was okay their relationship had changed.
Her parents had died when she was fourteen, and her fledgling powers, those of an itza’at seer, had forced her to live through the experience with them. She’d relived it over and over in her dreams for years thereafter, until the day she’d left Strike and Jox, moving away to college at the age of twenty, after sticking it out for as long as she’d been able. She’d known even then that she was gone for good.
As far as any of them had known back then, the magical backlash of the Solstice Massacre had sealed the barrier for good, averting the 2012 doomsday. She’d thought she was free to live a normal life, and had thrown herself with abandon into doing just that, meeting friends and lovers, and enjoying college, then grad school.