The admission didn’t surprise her nearly as much as it probably should have. She touched her temple briefly, finding a fragment of memory she hadn’t been aware of before. “He interrogated me.”
“He tried to. You blocked him.” Sending her a look that she interpreted as, Later, Michael moved on to the group near the kitchen, introducing the others, who were, as she had deduced earlier, the winikin. Jox—a wiry, gray-haired man with kind eyes and several small marks on his inner forearm—
was the royal winikin, meaning that he looked after Strike and his sister, and had leadership rights over the other winikin. Hangdog Tomas was Michael’s winikin, and didn’t look particularly happy about the fact. The two women, Izzy and Shandi, looked after Alexis and Jade, respectively, and the remaining man, a stocky bulldog named Carlos, watched after both Nate and Sven.
The names, bloodlines, and marks piled up in Sasha’s head, bringing to life the childhood stories she’d been raised on, making her head spin with wonder, fear, and terrible, dragging guilt. The very air seemed to press in on her, but she tried not to let herself sway, tried not to let the impending panic show. The people gathered in the big room weren’t her enemies, she was coming to realize. But she sure as hell wasn’t ready to deal with what they might be, what it might all mean.
“Do you want to sit down?” Michael asked.
She shook her head. “What I really want is to get out of here.” She didn’t think there was a rat’s chance of that, though. The last time she’d set foot outside, she’d done her damnedest to escape.
So she was caught off guard when Strike nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know how that feels.”
Michael said, “I’ll give her the grand tour.” He and Strike traded a look that seemed to mean far more than had been said aloud, but then Michael simply touched her arm, urging her toward the sliders leading out to the pool deck. “Come on. I could use some air too.”
She exhaled. “Thanks.” Casting a look across the assembled group, she found a thin smile that felt more than a little panicky. “I’ll . . . um. It was nice to meet you all.”
Gulping air, she turned and headed for the sliders. She had to force herself not to run as she pushed them open, and it took a conscious effort for her not to weep as she stepped through and the world opened up around her, big and beautiful, and full of possibilities that hadn’t been hers for so long.
“Wait,” Michael said. She turned back to find him holding out a pair of pink flip-flops. “Here.”
Tears fogging her vision at the small, kind gesture, she nodded mutely, stuck the silly foam sandals on her feet, and headed across the pool deck and through a small gate. Once she was on the hard-
packed earth, she struck out at random.
Michael paced her without comment, for which she was pathetically grateful. They walked in silence for a few minutes, past the out-of-place tree and the big metal building it shaded. When they reached the end of the steel span, Michael urged her along a narrow track. “This goes past the firing range and loops back through the ball court and the cottages.”
“Fine,” she said, though she didn’t care where they went as long as she kept moving. Somewhere deep inside, she was afraid that if she stopped, everything would catch up with her, all the fears and confusion, and the terrible, awful guilt that had taken root and was building by the second, telling her that she’d owed Ambrose so much better than she’d given him.
At first she power-walked, trying to burn off the restless, edgy energy and outpace her own thoughts. But by the time they were halfway through the loop, the panic had started to drain. As it did, she became acutely aware of the big man who walked beside her, matching his strides to hers, giving her the room she’d wanted, yet providing a solid, reassuring presence she was far too tempted to rely on. Their bare arms brushed as they walked, and the contact brought a hum of energy and pleasure.
Heat shimmered between them; she almost imagined she could see it . . . then wondered whether she could.
Although Ambrose had been downright nasty to the few boys she’d tried bringing home, he’d been forthright about Nightkeeper sex magic, treating it as a natural extension of power. Now, as Sasha walked beside Michael and felt desire and temptation spin between them, those lessons broke through, perhaps explaining some of what had happened the night before.The words “power boost” and “gods-
destined mates” filtered through to her conscious mind, though she did her best to ignore them, knowing it would be far too easy to talk herself into something that would not only excuse the fact that she’d had sex with a complete stranger about ten minutes after they met, but also suggested there might be the possibility—hell, a mandate—for a future between them.
Don’t go there, she told herself. Just . . . don’t.
Still, she was jarringly, achingly conscious of his body, of the way he walked, the way his muscles played one against the next. “I didn’t believe you,” she said, feeling like it needed to be said. “I thought you were part of some elaborate, overfunded role-playing game that had somehow turned real for the people inside it.”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “In a way, it’d probably be better if that were the case.
At least then we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a three-year countdown with no fucking clue what we’re supposed to be doing.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how much of it she wanted to know, how much of it she could handle just then. So she walked. And in walking, she stared up at the sun. As she’d noticed before, it was a strange, orange-yellow color.
Michael followed her gaze. “It’s like that all over the world. Nobody knows what’s wrong with it,” he said without her having to ask. “There are theories, of course—pollution, lack of solar flares, changes in magnetism—you name it, there’s someone out there arguing in favor of it as a theory. But nobody knows for sure.”
“Is it . . .” She trailed off, not yet ready to shift her paradigm so far as to ask about the pending end of the world. “Did Iago do something, or the Banol Kax?”
“We don’t know. We need more information, and we’re out of options.” It was an indirect nudge, a subtle interrogation.
“I don’t know where the library is,” she said. But for the first time, the tightness in her chest and stomach came not from the hated question, but from a new understanding of the situation, and its urgency.
At the end of the age, the 2012 prophecy held that the magi would number in the hundreds, that they would form an army powered by the might of the gods. Instead, there were, what, ten or so of them?
And if she was reading their forearm marks correctly, only Leah—a human—and Alexis wore the marks of the Godkeep ers who were supposed to be the keys to the end-time war. In the absence of manpower, they must have gone looking for spell power, only to find their repository gone.
Ambrose, what did you do? Why? The why might not be a simple or logical answer, she knew. Even stipulating that he hadn’t been as crazy as she’d thought, he hadn’t been sane, either.
“How about you tell me what you do know,” Michael said, “and we’ll go from there.” Once again, she had to wonder if she’d really seen that flash of darkness within him. There was no sign of it now; that was certain.
“I hadn’t been close to my father in more than eight years before his death,” she answered, “so when Iago first asked me about a hidden library, it wasn’t an effort to play dumb, because honest to God—gods, whatever—I’d never heard of it. When Ambrose was in one of his manic phases, I couldn’t get him to shut up about the Nightkeeper crap.” She paused, wincing. “No offense. Anyway, if he’d known about a library back when I was still living with him, he would’ve told me. I’m sure of that much.” More, he would’ve insisted that she become involved. “At first I thought the library itself was just another part of the mythos.”