by Kim Curran
“So, you guys go have fun,” Tom said.
Milly thought she knew what was going on. Tom was trying to force her and JD to spend some time together so they would learn to get along. She didn’t think it was going to work but she didn’t want to argue with anyone.
“Come on, let’s get it over with.” She slumped off the bus with JD following her.
“Bring us back a doughnut,” Connor said as they left.
JD pulled his beanie hat down low as he and Milly walked down the wide sidewalk leading to the anthropology department.
JD had always hated school and, as far as he could tell, university looked the same, only bigger. At least school wasn’t something he had to worry about now. Gail home-schooled them all – well, bus-schooled them. And without the scowling teachers and teasing kids, he’d found he liked learning. Although a lot of their lessons weren’t exactly on subjects that would come up in exams.
He assumed Milly would feel right at home here, but when he looked across at her he wasn’t so sure. She looked uneasy too. They really had to find her some new clothes – she was getting stares in Tom’s baggy jeans and retro gamer T-shirt.
“Cool tee,” one girl said, pointing at the lurid rainbow colours.
“Oh, thanks,” Milly replied, looking down at her shirt. “I’ve never had anyone compliment my outfit before,” she said to JD. “Maybe I should let Tom pick all of my clothes in future.”
Future, JD thought. Did Milly really have a future with them? At first, he had wanted her out of their lives as quickly as possible, but now he wasn’t so sure. The way she’d found out about Big T and Mourdant was impressive and the other boys seemed to like having her around. He didn’t want to admit it, but she was growing on him. Not that he’d ever tell her that.
The silence between them was becoming heavy. Milly kept making small noises as if she was about to speak, but then would quickly close her mouth again. It was starting to grate on his nerves.
“You don’t have to pretend, you know,” he said, to break the tension.
Milly blinked at him, her brow furrowed. “Pretend what?”
“That it’s not hurting. I get it, believe me. But it doesn’t help.”
“Oh, right, thanks,” Milly said, her voice sharp with sarcasm. “So I’m supposed to do what exactly? Curl up in a ball and cry?”
JD shrugged. “That’s pretty much what I did when my aunt died. And I didn’t even like her much.”
“And did that help?”
JD stopped walking and considered this for a moment. “Not really. I mean the pain never quite goes away. But you do get used to it. It becomes, I don’t know, a part of you, I guess.”
“How do you deal with it?” Milly looked up at him, and JD felt her eyes scanning his, as if looking for an answer.
“By punching things.” He smiled. For years before Gail found him he’d been getting in trouble for fighting, for being angry all the time. Now, it was his anger that made him so good at what he did.
“Punch therapy. I should have given that a go when my father died.”
JD had forgotten about Milly’s dad. Here he’d been telling her all about loss, when she was more than familiar with it already.
“What was he like?” he asked.
“The best.” Milly looked down at her feet. “Kind, patient, everything my mother wasn’t.”
“I hardly knew my dad. He was locked up in prison before I was born,” JD said, surprising himself. He never spoke about his past, but somehow it seemed natural with Milly. “Mum took me to see him once or twice, but I used to cry so much that she stopped. After she dumped me with her sister, I never heard from either of them again. I got his name and her hair and that was it.”
“His name?”
“Joshua Deacon. But I hated him so much I decided to go by JD.”
“So that’s what it stands for? I wondered.”
They walked in silence for a bit longer, before rounding a corner into a large, grass-covered quad. Students lay sunbathing. Others played frisbee. They didn’t have a care in the world while he and the rest of Slay fought to keep them safe. Sometimes he wished he could be more like them.
“Oh! My! God!” a girl’s voice screamed.
JD winced; he knew what was coming next. The baggy hat hadn’t been enough to stop him being recognized. He grabbed Milly’s hand. “Run!”
But it was too late. He looked back over his shoulder to see a group of girls chasing after them.
“It’s JD! It’s JD!”
“Does this happen all the time?” Milly said, struggling to keep up as JD dragged her around a building.
“Pretty much. Quick, in here.”
He yanked open a door, pushing Milly inside the small dark room beyond, then slammed it shut behind them. The lock was broken, so he pressed his body against the door, hoping the girls hadn’t seen him duck in here. He heard footsteps and people calling out his name.
“Why are we hiding in a toilet, JD?” Milly whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
JD looked down at the cracked tiles under his feet. He was standing in a suspiciously yellow puddle of liquid. “We’re hiding from fans,” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.
“You are kidding me?” Milly said, laughing. “You run straight into fights with demons, but you run away from a bunch of your…your fans?” Milly laughed so hard, she could hardly breathe.
JD felt her body shaking against his back. “Shut up,” he hissed. “They’ll hear us.”
“And what? Fan…you to death?”
Milly sounded like Gail. His manager would have told him to get his butt out there and smile. To let them take their selfies and thank them for their support. But he just didn’t have the strength for it right now. He twisted around to face Milly. Their bodies were only a handful of centimetres apart. A tear of laughter rolled down her cheekbone.
“It just freaks me out. All these people I’ve never met, grabbing me and poking me, wanting pictures with me. Sometimes it gets too much.”
Milly sucked on her bottom lip, buttoning down the laughter. “I’m sorry, but from the outside it just seems so glamorous.”
“Well, it’s not.”
“Yeah, I see that now,” Milly said, giving their less than salubrious surroundings a meaningful look.
JD sighed. “I didn’t get into this for the fame or the money or the girls…” As he said that he felt acutely aware of how close he and Milly were. Acutely aware of a lock of her dark hair brushing the tip of her small nose. He looked quickly up at the ceiling. There was a damp patch that looked like a mushroom. “I did it for…”
“For the music?” Milly said.
JD snorted at that. And after a while, both of them were hissing with barely suppressed laughter.
“You’re okay, you know?” Milly said when the laughter had passed. “Like, deep, deep down.” She poked him in the chest three times, indicating where his heart should be. “And I get why you’ve been such a jerk to me – I wouldn’t want me tagging along either.”
“It’s not that, I promise, it’s just…” Milly looked up at him, her large dark eyes shining in the dim light of the toilet. He sighed. “I’ve been a jerk, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not good with new people.”
“Me neither. I’ve only really got one friend, and we only became close because we were weirdos together.” She shifted away a little, trying to put space between them, but it was difficult with the toilet and sink in the way.
“I never had any friends before Tom and the others,” JD said, leaning against the tiled wall and then instantly regretting it when he felt something damp against his skin. “And they only put up with me because we’re stuck on a tour bus together. And because Gail makes them.”
“Nah, you guys love each other,” Milly said. “It’s clear. Especially you and Tom.”
“Well, Tom’s like a brother to me. They all are really.”
“It must be nice.”
JD t
hought about the way he and the boys were with each other and realized Milly was right. They were like a family – they’d bicker and fall out, but they never stopped caring for each other. He felt worse than ever about how he’d been treating Milly. She didn’t have anyone at all. He promised himself that he was going to work harder at making her feel welcome. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible if she had to stick around for a little longer.
“I guess I have one more friend now.”
He reached out his hand, awkward in the tight space. Milly took it and they shook. Her hand felt cool in his damp one, her eyes looked even bigger in the low light. She really was very pretty, but more than that, she was smart and able to handle herself. The handshake went on for a moment too long and when they finally pulled away JD felt hot and sweaty. It was getting stuffy in here.
He pressed his ear against the door and heard nothing from the other side. “Come on, I think it’s safe.”
They made it to the anthropology department without any further drama and were directed towards Professor Diaz’s office by a grumpy old man wearing a jacket with leather elbow patches.
“Watch yourself though,” the man said, his voice muffled by the bushiest beard JD had ever seen. “That one is loco.” He further emphasized his opinion by making a corkscrew motion next to his head.
JD hesitated before knocking.
“What are you waiting for?” Milly asked.
“Look, I think you should let me do the talking, okay? There are rules with this kind of thing so…just follow my lead?”
Milly rolled her eyes and knocked before JD could stop her.
“My visiting hours are 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. on Saturday,” a heavily accented voice called out from inside.
JD checked his watch. “It’s 10.35.”
The door flew open. “Is it?”
JD didn’t know what he’d been expecting of Professor Diaz. What he certainly had not been expecting was the person who greeted them. She had light brown skin and curly black hair piled up on her head, held precariously in place with a pair of scissors. Propped on top were not one but two pairs of glasses.
“Diaz?” JD said. “Professor Diaz?”
“I wonder,” she said, looking up to the sky, “just how old I need to get before people stop looking at me like that? Thirty? Forty? Maybe when I am dead and buried finally they will believe the words carved on my headstone. Yes, I am a professor. Yes, I am young. And yes, I am a woman. Are we done? Good, now come.” She gestured them inside.
There was hardly any room for the three of them what with the piles of books, papers and mysterious boxes everywhere. Gail would love it here, JD thought, scanning the leather-bound books on history, religion and mythology. The professor threw herself into a creaking chair and put her feet up on a pile of papers on her desk. She wore a pair of tattered white trainers with tweed trousers and a mismatched waistcoat, under which was a faded grey T-shirt with three red Xs across it. She looked from JD to Milly. The office was hot and stuffy and smelled of damp books and dust.
“Well?”
“We need your help.”
“I gathered as much when you knocked on my door. If it’s about admissions, you must speak to the dean and if it’s about what happened in Belize, well as I told the police it was all a mis—”
“It’s about Tezcatlipoca,” JD said, pleased with himself for getting the name right.
Diaz pursed her lips. “What do you know about Tezcatlipoca?”
“Not much. That he was an Aztec god,” said Milly.
“Not just a god,” Diaz replied. “Probably the god. A god of destruction, the bringer of death, the god of the night sky. Western thinking would label him evil, but the Aztec people understood there is no true good or evil, simply opposing sides in an eternal battle. Worship of Tezcatlipoca died out with the Aztecs.”
“Can you tell us anything about this?” JD said, pulling Mourdant’s diary out of his back pocket. He handed it over open on the page they had been unable to read.
Diaz squinted at the page, then held it up to the light. “Gah! Where are my glasses?”
Milly pointed. “On your head?”
Diaz patted her hair and pulled the first pair of glasses down into place.
“Not them. My reading glasses!”
“Still on your head,” JD said. The old guy had been right, she was a bit unbalanced.
With the correct pair of glasses on, Diaz scanned the writing, and went pale. “This can’t be…”
“What is it?”
“It’s an obscure Aztec script. Hand me that book behind you. The green one.”
JD turned and was faced with a wall of books. More than half of them were green.
“The one on the bottom left.”
“This one?” He pulled a huge tome out from the shelf, coughing as it kicked up a cloud of dust.
“Yes, here, here.” Diaz pushed papers off her desk to make room for the book. She hefted it open and flicked through stained pages till she found what she was looking for. “Yes, here is the codex I was after.”
After about ten minutes of scanning from the diary to the book, and plenty of muttering, she pushed her glasses back up on her head and let out a long whistle.
“What does it say?” JD said.
She said something to herself in Spanish, then looked up at them as though she’d forgotten they were there. “I have read something…similar before, only this is not good.”
“So…what does it say?” he asked again.
“Have you ever heard of the Toxcatl Massacre? Why am I even asking? Of course you haven’t,” Diaz said. “Toxcatl was the Aztec festival in honour of Tezcatlipoca, held at the end of the fifth month. The festivities ended with a sacrifice to the god. Before sunrise, a young man would walk up the steps of the pyramid and surrender his body to the priests. Sacred songs were sung and the man’s heart carved out and offered up to the god of darkness. In one of my books, I compare the sacrifice ritual to the Christian Easter. Anyway, on the twenty-second of May 1520, Spaniards had conquered the Aztec capital in Mexico, but the Aztec king, Montezuma, asked permission to celebrate Toxcatl in the usual fashion of his people. Permission was granted. However, after the festivities started the Spaniards interrupted the celebration, killing almost everyone there. Men, women and children alike. Here, let me read you part of the Aztec report.” She yanked out a book that had been propping up a table leg, and the table lurched forwards. JD noticed that Diaz’s photo was on the back cover of the book.
The professor flicked to a page and began to read. “The celebration was at its height. Voices were raised in song, hands held in dance. Then, as the sun hit the altar, that was when the Spaniards attacked.” She closed the book. “It was reported that they even killed the head priestess, Zyanya.”
Milly gasped and JD quickly placed his finger to his lips. There was only so much they could give away. But Diaz was so absorbed in her story she didn’t seem to notice.
“The chances of this diary coming to me now are…well. Coincidence doesn’t cover it.”
“What do you mean?” Milly said.
“I have made the study of Aztec rituals my life’s work and what you have here,” Diaz said, tapping the pages of the diary, “is the first new evidence regarding the Toxcatl ritual in over a decade. Of course, I’d have to authenticate it, consult with some of my colleagues…”
“WHAT DOES IT SAY?” JD said, finally losing his temper.
Diaz looked completely nonplussed that a young man had just shouted at her in her own office. She smiled. “What it says is that Zyanya wasn’t killed, only terribly wounded. Near death, she escaped with a group of elite Aztec holy warriors called Jaguar Warriors, and travelled to an abandoned temple in the east determined to complete the ritual. Only…”
“Only what?”
“Only she wasn’t content with just a sacrifice to appease the god. She wanted revenge. With her dying breath she wanted to bring down the wrath of Tezcatlipoca on all h
er enemies. The ritual described here isn’t a sacrifice,” Diaz said, laying her hand over the diary. “It’s a summoning. She was going to summon her god.”
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know. There are pages missing, see? Torn out of the back.”
JD looked at some ragged edges left at the back of the diary. He hadn’t noticed that earlier.
“We don’t know where the person who wrote this account got their information from, but if it’s true one can only assume Zyanya’s ritual was unsuccessful. Maybe she died before she was able to finish it? Or maybe it was just ghost stories told to scare the conquistadors?”
“Does it say anything about a blade? A blade of shadows?” Milly asked.
JD rolled his eyes. What was Milly doing, giving up that information? He shouldn’t have brought her with him. She didn’t know the first thing about investigations.
Diaz’s eyes tightened. “How do you know about that? What is this? Are you spies from the Field Museum? Get out!” She stood up and jabbed a finger towards the door.
“No, no,” JD said, raising his hands in a calming gesture. “We, um, we just…” He racked his brain, trying to think of a way out of the mess Milly had dropped them in.
But before he could, Milly made it even worse. “The priestess Zyanya is back! She’s possessed my mother’s body and we think she’s going to try and bring back Tezcatlipoca and she needs the Blade of Shadows to do it.”
JD gasped. He couldn’t believe Milly. There were rules. Rules to keep them and civilians safe. And Milly had broken the most important one: keep the existence of demons secret.
Diaz fell back in her chair, stunned. “Dios mío,” she said.
Nobody said anything for the longest time. JD wanted to run out of there, but he knew he’d have to come up with some excuse. Say the girl was mad. That it had all been a joke. This was what Zek was best at. That boy could talk his way out of any situation. Or Tom, Tom could use his hypnotic skills and make anyone forget anything, even a whip-smart professor like this one. JD was no good at talking people round, but he was going to have to give it a go.
