Anna had never supported his research on the Nightkeepers. Was she his priority, or was the research?
The Dragon Lady continued, “Tell Anna you need some time off to figure things out. I’ll fund your travel as necessary, and you’ll report directly to me.”
“I won’t do it,” he said, but it sounded weak even to him.
“There have to be things you’ve wanted to try, but couldn’t because she wouldn’t sign off on them, things you figured you’d do once you had your own grant money.” She paused. “What if you could do them now?”
I can’t, he repeated, only what came out of his mouth sounded an awful lot like, “I shouldn’t.”
“Come on; name it. If you had to pick one line of evidence to follow, and you had decent travel money, where would you go first . . . Belize?” That was where the Nightkeepers who’d survived Akhenaton’s religious “purification” had supposedly wound up, where they had—again supposedly—hooked up with the Olmec, who had just begun to develop a cultural identity that would become, with the Nightkeepers’ help, the Mayan Empire.
In theory.
But Lucius shook his head. “No, actually. I’d start in Boston. There’s this girl—” He broke off, afraid that he’d come off sounding like an idiot, like he was crushing on someone he’d talked to on the phone for, like, twenty seconds, just long enough to take a message. A girl who hadn’t returned any of his calls in the months since.
But Desiree—she’d gone from Dragon Lady to first name in his head all of a sudden—said only, “What about her?”
He let out the breath he hadn’t consciously known he’d been holding. Which made him he realize something else, too. He was actually considering taking her up on the offer.
It was disloyal as hell, yes, and he owed Anna better. But really, that low, mean voice inside him said, how much do you owe her? She’d shut him out, withdrawn, left him behind. It’d been her fault they’d had to reschedule his defense; if he’d turned in his thesis last fall, on schedule, he would’ve sailed through. But he’d been forced to reschedule because she’d done her little disappearing act, leaving for a few weeks at the start of the fall semester and returning a pale, strange version of herself. If she’d stayed put and soldiered on, he’d have his Ph.D. and probably some new funding by now, enough to follow the clues that Anna pooh-poohed at best, derided at worst. She’d never wanted to even entertain the possibility that the Nightkeepers had existed, never mind discussing whether they still did, and what it might mean on the zero date. And it wasn’t just a closed discussion in her book; it’d never been a discussion at all. To her, the Nightkeepers were nothing more than a bedtime story.
But that doesn’t make it okay to go behind her back, he told himself, feeling as though there were two sets of feelings at war within his head: one that said he should trust that Anna would appeal Desiree’s ruling on his thesis, and another that said he hadn’t been able to trust Anna to do anything for him ever since she’d turned away from him, cut him adrift.
Rubbing a thumb across the raised knot of flesh on his opposite palm in a gesture that’d become habitual since he’d acquired the scar in a night of drunken stupidity, he told himself that friendships waxed and waned, that it was only natural for Anna to pull away from a relationship that’d perhaps gotten closer than she was comfortable with once she and the Dick had reconciled. The only relationship she really owed him was one of thesis adviser to student, and she’d never shirked that duty. Or had she? She’d steered him safely through his project, true, but had she kept him too safe? Desiree was right that the person who proved that the Nightkeepers truly had existed would be able to write his own ticket.
As the scar began to ache with the beat of his heart and the sluggish pound of anger through his veins, Lucius started to think Anna hadn’t been helping him at all. She’d been holding him back.
“The girl in Boston?” Desiree prompted, and the victorious glint in her eyes said she knew she had him.
“Sasha Ledbetter,” Lucius answered. “She’s the daughter of a Mayanist named Ambrose Ledbetter. Back in the mid-eighties he wrote a few papers on the end-time, one of which included a description of a Mayan shrine that nobody’s ever seen except him.” He took a breath, held it. And took the leap straight onto Woo-Woo Avenue. “I think it was a Nightkeeper temple. If I can get a look at it, if I can translate the hieroglyphs, I can prove the Nightkeepers existed. I’m sure of it.”
She nodded. “So why not call him directly?”
“He disappeared last summer while doing fieldwork in the highlands. At this point he’s presumed dead.”
Desiree’s expression sharpened. “And you think you can get his notes from the daughter?”
“I think it’s a good place to start,” Lucius answered, not willing to tell the Dragon Lady that he couldn’t explain why; he just knew he had to see Sasha. When he’d heard her voice on the phone, something had shifted inside him. He didn’t know why or what it meant. He knew only that he had to find her, had to see her.
Desiree said nothing, simply opened her center desk drawer, pulled out a black plastic square, and slid it across the desk toward him. “Then go.”
He stared at the credit card, at his own name imprinted on it. “Since when does the university hand out no-limit AmEx cards?”
“It’s drawn on one of my private grants,” she replied, in a voice that said, Don’t ask.
Apprehension shivered through Lucius. The part of him he recognized as himself knew he should stand up, walk away, and never look back. But that darker part of him, the part that said nobody had ever given him a major break before, that he deserved this one now, told him to take the card and book the flight.
A thin whine started up in his ears, making his jaw hurt, and the world went a little fuzzy around the edges. What was he supposed to be worrying about? Oh, right. Betraying Anna by accepting Desiree’s offer of some grant money. But really, could Anna honestly object to his taking on a side project? It wasn’t as though she’d been using him lately. Anna hadn’t been doing much of anything in the way of research ever since Neenee took off. And, come to think of it, that lack of academic production probably hadn’t helped his thesis defense any.
When he came right down to it, Desiree’s offer might be his best chance of cutting his losses and moving on—a logic that felt both right and wrong, depending on which part of himself he listened to.
“I’ll do it.” He picked up the card and balanced it on his palm for a moment, then closed his fingers. On some level, a level far away from the man he’d once been, he was unsurprised to feel the plastic slice into his scarred palm, bringing blood to the surface. Not pausing to tend to the cut, he held out his bleeding hand to Desiree. “You can count on me.”
When she shook his hand, the silver cuff she habitually wore on her right wrist slipped back, and he saw the edge of a bloodred tattoo that looked oddly familiar.
CHAPTER SIX
Nate had never spent much one-on-one time with Rabbit before. Not because he had anything major against the kid, but more because he’d been spending most of his downtime wrestling with the story line for VW6. He’d hung with Rabbit as part of a group, sure, and shot a game or two of nine-ball, but there’d always been other people around to blunt the kid’s ’tude. Which was why, when Strike had told him the teen was flying to New Orleans with him and Alexis, Nate hadn’t thought much about it. Heck, he’d been relieved that there would be a buffer between him and Alexis, a third wheel to keep him from doing something really stupid, like acting on the edgy sense of possessiveness that’d been riding him since the day before. He kept telling himself it was a delayed reaction to having rescued her from the enemy mage, and again when the statuette kicked her into the barrier. He was bound to feel protective after that—it wasn’t as if they could afford to lose any of the magi. It was only natural that he’d want to keep her safe. It didn’t mean he wanted to start up again with something that hadn’t fit right before.
> So he told himself to ignore the way his skin kept tightening every time he came within a yard of her, and the way the memories of the two of them together were suddenly too close to the surface of his mind, far more so than they had been in the months they’d been broken up. He swore he could taste her, and feel her skin beneath his fingertips, feel the weight of her breasts against his chest, and hear her cries as she came apart around him.
It’s just the eclipse, he told himself as he followed her onto the plane. Carlos had warned him that his hormones would flare when the barrier thinned, and eclipses were among the most powerful astrological events in the Nightkeeper calendar. Sure, the lunar eclipse was still a few days away, but damned if he couldn’t feel the hum of sex and magic in his blood. It made him think of Alexis when he should’ve been thinking about the mission ahead, made his nostrils flare when he caught the light hint of her scent on the recirculated airplane air, made his flesh tighten when she glanced back at him and he saw the curve of her jaw, the soft swing of her hair. He wanted to find someplace where it was just the two of them, wanted to bury himself in her, lose himself with her—
And he so wasn’t going back there.
Focus, he told himself fiercely. He needed to concentrate on the mission, on improving the Nightkeepers’ score against the enemy mage. They were even: The Nightkeepers had the Ixchel statuette, but the redhead had Edna Hopkins’s artifact. If it took Nate, Alexis, and Rabbit traveling together to make the score two to one, then so be it. They just had to get the knife and get back. No problem, right?
By the time their plane landed in New Orleans late that afternoon, though, he was seriously wishing he’d been flying solo. Alexis was barely speaking to him, answering his occasional questions with short, clipped monosyllables, and spending the rest of the time studying the report Jade had prepared on the knife, Mistress Truth, and the French Quarter. And Rabbit was in full-on punk mode, with his hoodie pulled most of the way over his face and his iPod buds jammed in his ears, making it clear he’d rather be anywhere else, with anyone else. He’d been pissy about being ordered out of Skywatch, which didn’t make much sense to Nate, who would’ve thought the kid’d be jonesing to see some action by now.
Deciding to ignore them both, Nate tossed his carry-on bag in the trunk of the first cab he saw, and made a point of sitting up front with the driver.
When he rattled off Mistress Truth’s address at the outskirts of the French Quarter, though, the driver gave him a funny look. “You sure about that?” the cabbie asked as he pulled away from the curb and headed them into the stream of vehicles exiting the airport.
Nate focused on the guy, noting the edge of a tribal tattoo at his neck, partly hidden by his shirt. “Yeah. We’ve got an appointment at the tea shop.”
The driver glanced over, and his voice was a little too casual when he said, “If’n you want your leaves read, you should go to my cousin’s place. She does palms too, and she’ll give you a break if you tell her I sent you.”
Nate tensed. “What’s wrong with Mistress Truth’s?”
The other man’s eyes slid away from his. “Nothing. Just trying to give family some business.” He reached over without looking, palmed his Motorola, and chirped home base to announce the pickup and his destination, then turned up the dance music on the radio in a clear signal that the convo was over.
Nate would’ve pressed, but from the set of the driver’s jaw he figured he wouldn’t get far. Stubborn recognized stubborn. He half turned back to look at Alexis, who lifted a shoulder as if to say, What can we do? It wasn’t like going to another tea shop was going to get them the knife. It was Mistress Truth or bust.
They traveled the rest of the way in silence broken only by the mindless syncopation coming from the radio, until the driver rolled them to a stop in front of a jazz club. “We’re here.”
Actually, they were more like four doors down, Nate saw, and tried not to wonder why the driver didn’t want to stop in front of the tea shop. If the guy was trying to give him the creeps, he’d done a pretty good job.
Nate paid the tab and added a tip. When the driver made change he included a card for his cousin’s place, but didn’t say another word, just gave a two-fingered salute and pulled back out into traffic.
“Smells funny.” Rabbit wrinkled his nose as he looked around.
“Can’t argue that,” Nate said, staring after the cab.
“You should’ve told him to wait,” Alexis said, her tone carrying a distinct edge.
Nate ignored her snippiness. It didn’t seem to be easing, which made him wonder whether it was more than delayed shock. But even if it had something to do with her vision of the day before, something to do with the two of them together, it wasn’t like he could—or would—do anything to ease the tension for either of them. So he shrugged and said, “Somehow I doubt he would’ve waited, tip or no tip. Seemed like he was in a hurry to get out of here.”
He took a long look around, trying to figure out why. The narrow street was cracked and heaved in some places, patched in others. Probably leftover hurricane damage, he figured, which might also explain the funky odor Rabbit had mentioned, which smelled like a cross between a bad air freshener and used sweat socks. The block they’d come to looked like most of the others they’d passed on the way: pieces of it old, pieces new, all of it vaguely fake-seeming, as though the contractors had tried to slap a gloss of cool over it, and missed. Mardi Gras had been a few days earlier, and confetti edged the street, lone wisps of streamers and colored dots that’d escaped the street sweepers lying now in the gutter, their once-bright colors gone drab.
The exterior of the jazz bar was slicked with a fresh coat of paint and sported a shiny new sign, but the next two places down were boarded up. Beyond them was the tea shop, which took up the corner of the block. The star-studded sign confirmed the cabbie’s implication that the place might call itself a tea shop, but the actual tea was ancillary to fortune-telling, palmistry, and other supposed magical practices. The shop was plain-fronted, with a facade that looked older than even those of its abandoned neighbors. Instead of being shabby, though, it seemed sturdy, as though the floodwaters had passed it by.
Or not, Nate thought, mentally dope-slapping himself for buying into the mystique that’d no doubt been painted on by the same contractors who’d done the rest of the block.
“We going in or what?” Alexis asked, then moved past him and headed for the store without waiting for an answer. Rabbit slouched along in her wake, and when he looked back at Nate he had a big old smirk on his face, like he was enjoying the tension between them.
“Punk,” Nate muttered, and stalked after them both, passing them and shouldering through the door to the tea shop so he was the first one in. As he entered, he braced himself for the smell of death or the sting of dark, twisted magic.
He didn’t get either. He got a tea shop.
It was bigger inside than it’d looked from the street. Large glass display cases flanked the door and ran along a central aisle, and chairs were grouped around small round tables behind the counters, set up for readings. And tea, he supposed. He could smell it in the air, an earthy mix of herbs that bore little resemblance to the Lipton his social worker, Carol Rose, had insisted he drink whenever they met.
That memory, though, hit hard when he smelled the herbs. He’d been tough and mean, hardened by his experiences in juvie, with defenses cemented in stone by what he’d seen and done—and avoided doing—inside Greenville. But lucky for him, Carol Rose had been tougher and meaner, and had refused to be scared off. She’d been the making of him as a man, and damned if he couldn’t see her face right there in front of him, when he knew full well her pack-a-day habit had caught up with her six years earlier.
“Hey.” Alexis tapped his shoulder. “You going to stand there all day?”
“I—” He broke off, shaking his head as Carol Rose’s image disappeared in a swirl of tea-scented leaves. Seeing nobody in the small storefront, he s
tepped aside. “Yeah. Come on.”
When the door swung shut behind her and Rabbit, a bell chimed in the rear. The paneling at the front of the store was light-toned wood, and the display cases were filled with low-key arcana: decks of tarot cards, incense and burners, and mass-produced voodoo dolls aimed at the tourist market. The big windows at the front of the store let in the light, and the whole effect was pleasant enough, if bland. Beyond that, though, the room darkened to a maze of tall bookcases set at crazy angles to one another. Nate couldn’t see the back wall, but the echoes told him that there was nearly twice as much space in the darkness as in the light.
The setup made the place feel like two entirely different stores. The front was a safe zone, where tourists could do their thing and come out feeling as though they’d scraped the surface of the local occult community. The rear of the store was where it was really at, though. No doubt about it.
“Stay here,” Nate said. “I’ll be right back.” He headed toward the bookcases.
Half a second later Alexis and Rabbit followed. Big surprise. He didn’t bother to order them to wait until he’d checked things out, though, because he didn’t figure it’d work. Besides, once he was past the first row of bookcases the light dimmed significantly, and damned if it didn’t feel like the walls closed in a notch. He knew it was probably an optical illusion or the power of suggestion, but it made him think the three of them were better off sticking together, just in case.
The first two rows of cases held the usual assortment of woo-woo texts and themed day planners, exactly the sort of tourist crap he would’ve expected. The next few contained some legit-looking crystals and some crazy clay blobs. By the time he passed the fifth row of cases and realized the store was way bigger than he’d thought at first, he was into shrunken-head territory, and gut instinct had him on alert. He didn’t feel power, per se, but there was a definite sense of danger, though he wasn’t sure if it was real or if he’d talked himself into it based on the scenery.
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