“I can’t find his music,” she said softly. “Where is it?”
“What music?” Strike asked.
“I think that’s how my brain translates ch’ul—as music, though gods know why, given that I can’t carry a tune in a freaking bucket. Anyway, everyone I’ve touched since coming out of the ceremony—
and a few people beforehand, as well—has given me a sense of . . . a theme song, I guess you’d call it.” She paused. “Jox’s is low and twangy; Strike’s has trumpets blowing a fanfare.” She didn’t mention the inconsistency of Michael’s theme. “I think I need to find Rabbit’s song in order to channel him our energy and call him back.”
She wasn’t sure that would make any sense, the way she’d said it, but Strike nodded. “I visualize a yellow thread connecting me to my ’port destination, and give it a mental ‘yank’ to initiate the magic.
I think our minds come up with ways to interpret the magic within a paradigm that makes sense to our brains, using our experiences. For me it’s string; for you it’s music.”
“So what am I supposed to do, sing to him?” she asked, looking down at Rabbit, who was too pale, his skin verging almost on gray.
“Just keep trying,” Anna said softly, her eyes brim ming with worry.
So she tried. And tried.
Still, nothing happened. Rabbit lay there, unchanged.
“We’re forgetting something,” Michael said suddenly. “Rabbit wasn’t able to mind-bend Sasha because he couldn’t get through the music inside her head, which is consistent with what she’s experiencing now. What if, I don’t know, their talents just aren’t compatible? He wears the hellmark, and ch’ul is a power for life and good, right? Maybe his connection to Xibalba is blocking the ch’ul magic, and vice versa.”
It made a hideous sort of sense, Sasha realized. Hideous, because there didn’t seem to be any way around it. She glanced at Strike. “Please tell me you have a plan B.”
His mouth was tight. “This was it.” As if conceding defeat, he gave her hand a last squeeze and released it. Anna, too, stepped away from their uplink, leaving Michael the only one still touching her.
After a moment, he too broke the connection and moved back.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said hollowly, failure echoing alongside grief. She hated that she hadn’t come through when her new friends and family had needed her. Did that mean she wasn’t a ch’ulel? Or was Michael right, and she and Rabbit were simply incompatible? But if that was the case, did the fact that she couldn’t hear Michael’s song mean that the two of them weren’t compatible, either?
It seemed depressingly possible.
“What now?” Strike asked. It seemed like a rhetorical question.
“Let me try,” Myrinne said unexpectedly.
“Not an option,” Strike said flatly. “You’re the one who got him into this.”
“Then I should be the one to get him out, don’t you think?” The young woman uncoiled from the chair. With her average height and dark, Gypsy-lush looks, wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that was cropped off at her hips, she would’ve come across as just another college kid if it weren’t for her eyes, which looked far older than her chronological age, and her mouth, which tipped up sensually at the corners, somehow seeming to suggest that she’d been there, done that, and no sort of depravity on earth could surprise her.
The look in her eyes nudged Sasha’s mind back to her time with Iago, pushing at the filters and making her chest ache. What in gods’ name had the girl lived through? What had happened to her?
“Maybe we should let her try,” Anna said slowly. “Her ritual put him under. Maybe she can bring him back.”
“No fucking way,” Strike said. “For all we know, the next woo-woo shit she tries on him will kill him. Besides, whatever’s going on, it’s nothing more than self-hypnosis bringing out Rabbit’s latent talents—and gods know what else he’s got hiding in there that we don’t know about yet. He’s caught in Nightkeeper magic, maybe Xibalban. The woo-woo shit doesn’t work.” Sasha didn’t think he’d thank her for pointing out that, given the existence of magic, it wasn’t logical for the Nightkeepers to claim its sole possession. But something of her thoughts must’ve shown on her face, because he fixed her with a look. “You think I should let her, don’t you?”
She started to give him a whatever you think is best answer, but then stopped herself. Maybe it was her warrior’s mark, maybe the feel of Michael’s eyes fixed on her, silently challenging her to step up into the life she’d chosen, the one that had chosen her. “I think,” she said carefully, “that unless you’ve got a viable plan C, you should give her the chance.”
“If she could’ve woken him up, she would’ve done it back on campus,” Strike countered.
“Not after he lit the dorm.” Myrinne faced the king with a scowl, looking very young and slight in comparison, but defiant as hell. “You don’t think it’s magic? That’s fine with me—let me do my self-
hypnosis shtick. Can’t hurt if that’s all it is, right?”
Caught in his own logic, Strike cursed under his breath. He glanced around the room, tallying a silent vote. Sasha and Anna had already cast their votes. Jox opened a hand, as if saying, Beats the hell out of me.
Michael held the king’s eyes for a moment, then nodded. “I say let her try. He’s fading fast.” The gray cast to his skin predominated now. “Alternatively, you could ’port him to that hospital in Albuquerque. But you’ve got to do something.”
Strike shook his head. “There’s no point giving him over to human doctors. He’s lost in his own magic.”
“Then give him a reason to come back,” Michael said bluntly. His eyes were fixed on Sasha as he said it.
Irritation flared—with him for making it seem like she mattered, and with herself for the quick buzz brought by the words. Damn hormones.
“Fuck.” Strike turned back to Myrinne. “What do you need?”
“Nothing from you,” she said sharply. She slipped from the room, returning quickly with a small metal dagger inset with crystals at its hilt. Taking the seat beside the head of the bed, she pulled the nightstand slightly away from the wall. On it was a fat red candle, halfway burned down in a saucer decorated with flying pigs. She opened the nightstand drawer wide and fished for a box of matches, smirking slightly when Strike looked away from the big box of condoms, torn open and most of the way empty.
He’s got a life that doesn’t include you, the action—and the expression—said.
“Make a circle,” she ordered. “No bloodletting, and don’t lean on your magic. Clear your heads. I don’t care if you believe in this, but keep the negative thoughts out.” Her eyes flicked to Jox, who was edging for the door. “You too.” Something in her voice said, Especially you, as if the winikin had more power here than the others combined. Which didn’t make any sense, really, because a winikin’s marks might be magic, but the winikin weren’t magic users, hadn’t ever been. At Strike’s nod, though, Jox joined hands with the others in a circle that surrounded the bed and included Rabbit, with Myrinne on one side of him, Strike on the other. Sasha ended up between Michael and Anna; she caught a buzz of sexual heat and frustrated anger from one, a trill of harps and song from the other, but suppressed both to focus on Myrinne’s ritual. As she did so, she sent a second prayer: Gods help us all.