Anna faced her palms to the sky in a “who knows?” gesture, then turned expectantly to Sasha. Strike did the same, so they were both looking at her, waiting for a miracle.
Sasha’s heart lumped in her throat. “I can’t promise anything.”
“Just do your best,” Strike said softly. “That’s all any of us can do.”
Nodding and taking a deep breath that did jack shit to settle her nerves, Sasha moved to the side of the bed. Rabbit looked like he could’ve been any of the young guys, more balls than brains, that she’d worked with in a dozen kitchens. Yet according to the stories, he was the most powerful of the magi, an unpredictable half-blood with a good heart and bad luck.
Gods, she thought, for the first time sending her thoughts outward, winging toward the sky, hoping that somehow, somewhere, someone—or some thing—was listening. Help me help this kid. When that didn’t seem like nearly enough, she went a layer deeper. Help me help the Nightkeepers. And at that, she thought she felt a shimmer within, a faint hint of heat, a stir of echoes. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Steeling herself, she touched Rabbit’s wrist, where the hellmark stood out in violent bloodred while the marks of the peccary, the warrior, and the fire starter were done in reassuring Nightkeeper black.
When she opened herself up to the world around her, she felt . . . nothing special. His arm was just an arm, a little cooler than it maybe should’ve been, and faintly clammy. But beyond that? Not a damn thing. Remembering something she’d seen one of the village elders do as part of asking the gods to heal a dying woman, she said, “Is there any chorote left?”
“I’ll go get it,” Strike volunteered, and bolted. He returned a couple of minutes later with not just the sacred drink, but Michael and Jox, as well, making the room suddenly feel far more crowded than it had before, filled with Michael’s presence, and her deep desire not to have to deal with him just then.
But that was the coward’s way, she knew, and whatever her father had raised her to be, it wasn’t a wimp. So she watched him come through the door, forcibly banking the chemical reaction that had heat spiraling inside her at the sight of his broad shoulders and wide chest, which were draped now with a silky white button-down that he wore unbuttoned, showing a strip of ripped torso beneath.
Bracing herself, she looked up and met his eyes. To her surprise—and faint disquiet—there was no sign of the wild violence that had blazed in him down at the ball court. There was only the man she’d come to know there at Skywatch, the one who’d found Ada for her, the one who’d followed her into the nahwal’s vision and saved her life a second time. This was the man she wanted, she realized, not that other, angrier part of him, the part he kept so well hidden most of the time. But what good did it do her to want only half of the man? It was impossible to take the good and ignore the bad. She’d learned that the hard way. Never mind the question of what, exactly, that anger meant.
He moved up beside her and looked down at her, eyes intent and shadowed with regret. “I’m sorry about before,” he said quietly, while the others pretended not to hear. “I should’ve—”
“We’ve been over this,” she interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it again. What I want is for you to shut up and bleed.”
His eyes flickered with surprise, and maybe a gleam of appreciation, but he said nothing, simply palmed his knife from his ankle sheath and held out the blade to her. She cut her palms and handed it back, and waited while he, Strike, and Anna all followed suit. Then Strike passed around the small thermos of chorote he’d snagged from the mansion, and they each took a sip. Sasha wasn’t sure when the magic started; one moment it was just there, humming at the back of her brain, sounding almost like a song, like the voice of the lover she wished Michael could have been for her.
Mimicking the ritual she’d watched the village healer perform, she let her blood fall into the half-
full flask to mix with the remaining chorote. Then she uncovered Rabbit, who was clothed in only a pair of blue bike shorts. Even though he was a young man, his body showed the development of a Nightkeeper male, big and muscular. Sasha let drops of the blood-and- chorote mixture fall on his neck, and then on each of his shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles, the spots that made up the thirteen points of health in Mayan spiritual medicine.
Aware that Strike and Anna had already joined hands and uplinked, she held out her free hand, bleeding palm up. Strike took her hand, blood-to-blood.
The contact rocketed through her, a potent combination of heat and power, and a warm sense of something that she didn’t recognize. Something that might’ve been family. She heard their songs playing through the contact: Strike was a trumpet fanfare; Anna was strings and a woman singing softly in an unfamiliar language. Theme songs, she realized. Somehow, her brain was translating their ch’ul into song.
“Easy,” Strike said, his voice soothing. “We’ve got you.”
And they did, Sasha realized, feeling how Strike— my brother, she corrected inwardly, trying to get used to the idea—was regulating the power flow, buffering her from overloading with too much, too soon. She nodded her thanks.
Within the small, crowded room, Jox had faded into the shadows, standing apart from the magic, but ready to help if needed. Myrinne had given up all pretense of sleep; she was still curled in a protective ball, but her eyes were wide open, and fixed on Sasha. When their gazes connected, Sasha saw a mute plea beneath the sullen mistrust. Help him, the girl’s eyes said. Don’t let him leave me here alone. And damned if that didn’t resonate.
Sasha nodded again, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was agreeing to. Without looking at Michael, she said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He moved up behind her, bracketing her body with his much larger one as he reached around her and placed his hands atop hers, one where she touched Rabbit, the other where she was linked with her brother and sister. Despite what had happened between them earlier, she had to force herself not to lean back into Michael’s reassuring warmth and solidity. For a moment, she felt nothing from him.
Then a small shudder ran through his big frame, and the red-gold power flowed into her from him, sparking the kernel of magic at the back of her skull to a flame. Feeling self-conscious, she murmured, “Pasaj och,” gaining another layer of power from the barrier itself. For a moment the magic filled her up, threatened to spill over. She felt larger than herself, as though the skin stretched over her flesh and bones; it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation—it was just full.
She heard Strike’s and Anna’s music, heard the martial theme she’d begun to suspect was her own, though it didn’t seem to suit her, wasn’t what she would’ve picked for herself. She heard nothing from Michael, which was strange because she’d caught something off him earlier, back at the ball court. A creepy-crawly tracked down her spine when she remembered that had been when his eye were strange, the anger at its worst. Not wanting to analyze that any further, she focused on Rabbit, seeking to forge with him the same sort of link she shared with Strike and Anna, that of energy and music, and the reciprocal flow of what she thought might be ch’ul.
She got nothing. Rabbit was a blank. She got no music from him, no power. No energy flow.
Nothing. It was like she was touching a piece of furniture. Or a corpse, she thought, shivering a little.