He’d done that with the help of a social worker whose hide had proven tougher than his. Not the Nightkeepers, not the winikin, and not the gods. It’d been his choice to straighten out, his choice to succeed.
“Why don’t you ever ask about them?” Carlos asked softly, and there was an aha look in his eyes that made Nate wish he’d kept the medallion where it belonged: out of sight and mind.
“Because they didn’t make me what I am. I did that.”
“Are you so sure?”
“That’ll be all for tonight,” Nate said, his voice clipped with anger, which was pretty much how all of their convos eventually ended. But when the winikin turned and headed for the door, Nate cursed himself and said, “Carlos?”
The winikin turned and raised an eyebrow.
“Have you guys asked Alexis exactly what she saw?”
“Isabella is doing that right now,” Carlos said, but with a look that suggested he would’ve rather had anyone else in the world be doing the asking. Which Nate could understand, sort of, because if Alexis sometimes acted like an overambitious brownnose, it was largely because that was what her winikin had raised her to be.
Which, Nate realized, glancing at his laptop as Carlos left the room, was one of the fundamental differences between Alexis and Hera: Alexis had a winikin, while Hera had grown up on her own. Just like he had.
CHAPTER FIVE
Vibrating with excess energy after a good meal and a short postmagic nap, Alexis headed for the pool an hour or so after dinner, intending to work off her frustrations. She could’ve used the gym that took up a good chunk of the lower level of the mansion, but that was where she and Nate had initially hooked up, the night after they’d each jacked into the barrier for the first time, gaining their bloodline marks and a serious case of the hornies. Which meant the gym and its ghosts were out.
Besides, she realized as she shucked out of her yoga pants and zippered hoodie and dumped them on a pool chair, baring her body in a decent one-piece, swimming a few hundred laps or so would not only wash away the nonexistent evidence of the sexual encounter she and Nate hadn’t had, it would give her an excuse for the uncharacteristic aches in her inner thighs and the hollowness in her core.
The heated pool water was warmer than the air, and steam rose softly from the surface, making her think of the barrier mists, and Nate’s insistence that nothing had happened.
“And you so need to get out of your own head,” she said aloud, then dove in cleanly. After growing up very near the Newport beaches, with friends who’d brought her along to the country clubs as their guest, she was nearly as at home in the water as on land, and quickly fell into the rhythm of laps.
The pool was located at the back of the mansion in a rectangular alcove flanked on either side by the residential and archive wings, and fronted by the big glass doors of the sunken great room. The open side looked over the ball court, with the ceiba tree and training hall off to one side, the small cottages where the Nightkeeper families used to live off to the other. In the distance, lost in the darkness, the canyon walls were studded with Pueblo ruins she’d visited only once, staying away thereafter because the place gave her the creeps.
Nightkeeper traditions were one thing. Indian burial mounds were another. Besides, the pueblo was Rabbit’s territory, and most of the Nightkeepers left the kid more or less alone, not because they didn’t like him, but because he seemed to prefer solitude.
Relieved to let her mind skip from one thought to the next, as long as none of them were dark haired and amber eyed, Alexis was on lap number twenty when she heard Izzy call her name.
A large part of her wanted to keep swimming—or maybe dive down and hold her breath for a while, and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. She just wasn’t in the mood for conversation. But duty to—and love for—the woman who’d raised her had Alexis stopping to tread water. “Hey,” she called softly to her winikin, who stood by the edge of the pool holding her robe and a towel. “You need me?”
Izzy nodded. “I thought we should talk.”
The winikin was petite and ultrafeminine, with long dark hair caught back in a French braid that was as elegant as it was practical. Wearing trim slacks and a soft button-down that was about as casual as she ever got, Izzy looked put-together and in control.
In contrast, Alexis was a scattered mess. “I know,” she said, but what she really meant was damn it.
She’d wanted to avoid this convo, at least until after she’d gotten a good night’s sleep, and preferably after she’d made the trip to New Orleans and acquired the sacred relic from the witch. Not only because they needed the artifact and the demon prophecy, but because she was hoping that spending the day alone with Nate would remind her why the two of them didn’t work as a couple, namely that he was an arrogant, detached, egotistical jerk who didn’t want any of the same things she did, didn’t believe in the things she believed.
“Come on out. You’ll shrivel.” Izzy held up the robe and towel, her voice making it more of an order than a suggestion.
Alexis sighed and obeyed her winikin, mostly because there was no point in picking a fight just to blow off some steam. Her sense of peace was gone, her hope of burning through the restless, edgy energy pretty much shot. She might as well dry off and deal with Izzy.
The very thought gave her pause. Since when did she “deal” with Izzy? The two of them were closer than most mother-daughter pairs, and had stayed good friends through the ups and downs of teenagerdom and life thereafter. They’d dealt with things together, not one against the other, even after Izzy had revealed the truth about Alexis’s parents and her role as protector and conscience, not just godmother.
But as Alexis climbed out of the pool, shivering as the crisp February air rapidly chilled the water on her skin, she realized that she and her winikin were back on opposite sides of one of their few true disagreements, a battle they’d thought had turned into a moot point months ago: the issue of Nate Blackhawk.
“Thanks.” Alexis took the towel and dried off, then pulled on the robe, which was a thick terry-cloth indulgence with a pleasing nap and drape. Belting it securely at her waist and pulling the lapels close across her chest, needing the sense of being clothed, of being armored, she sat in one of the plastic chairs that was set around the long poolside table that served the Nightkeepers for everything from picnics to councils of war.
Izzy sat opposite her, folding her hands one atop the other. “Okay, no more evasions. What did you really see when you touched the statuette?”
Alexis thought about continuing to avoid the question, but knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to hold out very long. Izzy wasn’t just gorgeous and graceful; she had a sort of sixth sense when it came to her charge, an almost preternatural ability to tell when something was—or soon would be—bothering her. So instead of ducking, Alexis said, “Were Gray-Smoke and Two-Hawk lovers?”
There was a beat of shocked silence before Izzy said, “Absolutely not—they could barely stand each other, and she loved your father. Why in the gods’ names would you even think something like that?”
Because when I dream, I can’t tell if I’m myself, my mother, or someone else, some sort of me existing in a parallel reality where I grew up so much better than I did in this one, Alexis thought, but didn’t say, because she didn’t want to get into the dreams. Hell, she didn’t really want to get into what’d happened earlier in the day. Gods knew, she hadn’t fully processed it herself. But because she depended on Izzy for perspective, even when she didn’t agree with the other woman’s opinion, she said, “I’ve been getting . . . I guess you could call them flashes of a man and woman together.
Sometimes I think it’s me and Nate, but other times it’s different, like it’s us but not.”
The winikin’s eyes sharpened. “These flashes are sexual in nature?”
“Um. Yeah.” Quickly, feeling beyond awkward, Alexis sketched out the scene she’d found herself in earlier that d
ay, describing the stone chamber and the water, skimming over the sexual details for both their sakes.
Izzy frowned. “Maybe it wasn’t Blackhawk. Maybe it was someone else and your brain filled in the last man you were with.”
“Meaning if I hadn’t slept with Nate, it would’ve been Aaron?” Alexis thought of the charming prick she’d dumped just before Izzy revealed to her that she was a Nightkeeper. She tried to picture Aaron Worth, heir, philanderer, and world traveler, in the vision she’d had while touching the statuette of Ixchel, and failed miserably. “Maybe,” she said, but she wasn’t buying it.
A new gleam had entered Izzy’s eyes. “You should have Jade pull some of the itza’at spells for you.
Your aunt and a couple of cousins had the sight.”
“I’m not a seer. I don’t have a talent beyond the warrior’s mark.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“If I’m an itza’at, then it wasn’t a case of my brain plugging in my latest lover,” Alexis countered, fixing her winikin with a look. “Which probably isn’t what you wanted to hear.”
Izzy looked away, refusing to comment. In the distance a coyote howled, sounding mournful and alone.
“You ready to tell me what you’ve got against Blackhawk?” Alexis pressed, though she’d never gotten far with the question before. “You raised me to want to be the best at everything, right? So why wouldn’t you want me allied with another Nightkeeper? Gods know my magic could use some help.”
“He’s untrustworthy,” Izzy said, though Alexis got the distinct feeling there was more to it than that. “He already tossed you over once. Why would you go back there?”
“Lack of options?” Alexis said wryly, though she didn’t mean it, not really. What was—or rather had been—between her and Nate had always been way more complicated than simple chemistry.
She’d known his medallion before she’d ever met him, and had a feeling he’d recognized her on some level, though she’d never gotten him to admit it. And while their temperaments and priorities were very different, the sex had been easy . . . and phenomenal. Why shouldn’t she wonder whether it was worth another try, especially after her vision?
But Izzy wagged a finger at her. “Don’t settle.”
“But the magic—”
“I taught you better,” the winikin interrupted. “Find your own magic. Don’t put that on a mate, or you’ll only be disappointed.”
For a second Alexis thought she saw something in the other woman’s expression. “You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience. Would that be you or my mother?” When the winikin said nothing, Alexis knew she’d hit a chord. Pressing, she said, “Is this about my father?”
She bore her mother’s bloodline name and glyph, not her father’s, which was highly unusual, and Izzy always avoided mentioning the man who’d sired her, except to say that her parents had loved each other. All Alexis really knew about her father was that he’d been a mage of the star bloodline, and he’d died a few months before the massacre.
“He has nothing to do with this or you,” Izzy said, her expression going grim. “He was a good man who wanted only the best for you and your mother.” But then her face softened and she reached across the picnic table to grip Alexis’s hands in her own. “Just please promise me you won’t act based on any of these visions until you’ve talked to somebody about them.”
“Like who? In case you haven’t noticed, part of the reason we’re having trouble figuring out what the hell happened today is because we don’t have a seer. Which means I can’t exactly ask a seer.”
“The eclipse ceremony is in a couple of days. Anna will be here. Talk to her.”
Anna was an itza’at; it was true. But she couldn’t control her visions, and really, really didn’t like talking about magic. Not exactly a primo source of info. But Alexis nodded, mostly to appease her winikin. “Fine. I’ll talk to her.”
“And you won’t make any decisions until then?”
Alexis snorted. “Nate and I are headed to New Orleans tomorrow to buy a knife from a wannabe witch who calls herself Mistress Truth. We’ll be lucky if we don’t kill each other on the plane ride, never mind finding time for some one-on-one.” Still, she felt a kick of excitement at the prospect of the trip, and the thought of Nate seeing her at her best—negotiating a purchase. Which just went to show that she so wasn’t over him, despite what she kept telling herself.
“Promise me,” Izzy said, her voice low.
“Fine, I promise I won’t do anything about the vision,” Alexis said, tempering it with a mental, for now, anyway.
Since her swimming mojo had been thoroughly disrupted, she exchanged good-nights with Izzy and headed back to her room to read over the references Jade had found to the Order of Xibalba. Sitting on the elegant gray sofa she’d had shipped down from the city, Alexis started reading the summary report Jade had pulled together.
Strike seemed to think the enemy mage might have something to do with the Xibalbans, while Jox kept insisting the order was nothing more than a bogeyman legend the Nightkeepers and winikin had used to scare the crap out of their kids and keep them more or less behaving. But eventually Jox had admitted that the legend, like so many others, was rooted in fact. The Order of Xibalba had existed, and its members had been seriously bad news.
More important, they’d been marked with a quatrefoil glyph that represented the entrance to hell.
Which meant . . . what? Was the guy she’d gone up against a surviving member of the original order, or someone who’d gotten hold of their magic, maybe through a spell book or something? And if it was one of those things, what the hell did it mean for the Nightkeepers?
Unfortunately, the more she read, the worse it sounded.
Some of the references Jade had uncovered said the order had arisen from the Mayan shaman-
priests themselves, who had been astronomers and mystics in their own right, aside from their association with the Nightkeepers. Other references suggested the order arose when a group of rogue Nightkeepers split off and began to teach the Mayan priests some of the Nightkeepers’ spells, which was forbidden. When the Nightkeepers’ king had learned of the betrayal he’d gone after the rogues and their followers, who had fled into the highlands and disappeared into hiding, emerging only on the cardinal days, when they practiced their dark arts.
After that point the stories converged to agree on one major point: Around the year A.D. 950, the Xibalbans—which was how they’d come to be known by that point—had somehow breached the barrier and unleashed several of the Banol Kax onto the earth plane. The demons had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Maya, wiping out entire cities and putting the empire on the brink of collapse. The Nightkeepers had eventually managed to recapture the creatures and restore the barrier, but the damage had been done. The Mayan Empire had never recovered to the heights it’d achieved prior to the Xibalbans’ attack, soon losing ground to the vicious Inca, Aztecs, and Toltecs, who had flourished with the help of the Xibalbans until the fifteen hundreds, when the Xibalbans convinced them to welcome Cortés and his conquistadors. The Nightkeepers warned that the conquistadors should be sent away, but their counsel went unheeded. The two decades following Cortés’s landing had seen the deaths of ninety percent of the Maya, Inca, Aztec, and Toltec; the destruction of the Mayan writing system; and the slaughter of all the polytheistic priests. A few dozen Nightkeepers had escaped, and the Xibalbans had disappeared entirely from the historical record, which was largely why Jox and the others assumed they’d been wiped out.
Had they, like the Nightkeepers, hidden themselves, focusing on training for the end-time wars? Or had the order truly disappeared, meaning that the enemy mage was a new breed of danger?
Damned if I know, Alexis thought, flipping Jade’s report back to the first page and starting to reread it more carefully, in case she’d missed something critical the first time through. As she did so, though, she knew she was just avoiding thinking ab
out her convo with Izzy, and the fact that she and Nate were going to be doing the close-proximity thing the next day when they traveled to Louisiana.
They were flying commercial because Leah had long ago decreed that Strike’s teleport powers were emergency-only. Which only made sense; they didn’t know enough about the magic to predict its limitations. What if he had only so many zaps in him, and they used them up blip-ping off to get beer or something? Bad idea.
So it was Delta, first-class, nonstop, which almost made up for the fact that Alexis hadn’t been able to talk Strike out of sending Nate with her as backup. It wasn’t as though she’d been able to tell him the truth, either, because hearing about her dream-vision would’ve only increased the king’s determination to throw her together with Nate, for two major reasons: one, because gods-intended, mated Nightkeepers were so much more powerful together than an unmated Nightkeeper alone; and two, because Strike himself had dreamed about Leah long before he met her, and vice versa, even though neither male Nightkeepers nor humans were supposed to be precogs or visionaries. The king was a big believer in dreams and portents, and he’d already made it clear that he thought Nate and Alexis would make a strong pair-bond, and that a relationship between them would be an asset to the Nightkeepers in the coming war.
“So sad, too bad for him,” she muttered under her breath. “Because a happy couple we very definitely are not. Sex doesn’t make a lasting relationship if the people engaged in said sex can’t carry on a civil convo to save their lives.”
“Then I take it you won’t mind me adding a third wheel,” the king’s voice said from the doorway to her suite.
Alexis jolted, but stopped herself from an instinctive gasp and spin because she was always aware of how Strike saw her, what he thought of her, and how she could improve that impression. How she could make herself useful in an advisory capacity. He already had Jox’s long-range perspective on Nightkeeper matters, and Leah was at his side to give him the cop’s view and the female opinion. As far as Alexis figured, her best commodities were her business experience and negotiating skills. Either way, she knew she had some serious impressing left to do if she wanted to take her mother’s place at the king’s side.
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