Skykeepers (22 page)

She tried not to let it matter, but warmth curled around her weak, needy heart. “Fine. He doesn’t
want
to be interested, which in my experience is worse than disinterest, and drags on a lot longer.” She fell silent, concentrated on the feel of potting soil between her fingers. She told herself not to ask, but asked anyway. “What’s the deal with him and Jade?” Might as well get it out there.

This time there was no hesitation, as though the
winikin
had known it was coming. “They were lovers for a couple of months right after the barrier reactivated. It was during the gap between their bloodline and talent ceremonies, when their hormones were raging. It ended after the talent ceremony, and they’ve been friendly since.”

The
winikin
didn’t say how friendly, and Sasha didn’t ask. And although she could’ve guessed they had been lovers, the sex-magic parallel brought a wince. He’d become Jade’s lover to defuse the pretalent hornies. He’d become Sasha’s lover to fuel the chameleon shield. Although she wanted to think it had been more than that, his actions since said otherwise.

Jox glanced at her workstation. “You potting or plotzing?”

“A little of both.” She got back to work, but stayed pensive. The more she learned about the situation, the more she realized how little she actually knew. “If I could go back to when Ambrose was alive, and talk to him about what’s going on now . . .” She stopped, shook her head. “You know what? That’s a lie. I don’t want him back.” It felt good to say that, she realized. She didn’t have to forgive everything just because he’d been telling the truth about the Nightkeepers.

Jox shoved another flat across the table to her, a different kind of seedling. “Keep transplanting. It helps.”

Their eyes met over the furry, optimistic greens. She saw sadness in his eyes, but didn’t think he’d thank her for bringing it up. So instead, she said, “You said you thought I’d come here. Why?”

“Because growing and cooking are inextricably intertwined,” he said. “Along with healing.”

“I’m no healer.” But she passed a hand over the soft leaves, drawn to them. “What are they?”

“Cacao.”

Her lips curved. “Chocolate. My favorite.”

“I had a feeling.”

Letting that one pass, she commented, “You’re ambitious. I didn’t think cacao grew well in greenhouses, or at all in areas like this.”

“Neither do ceiba trees like the one out in the court-yard.” Jox returned his attention to the other seedlings, which had the round, waxy leaves of a member of the squash family. “The cacao can be your project, if you like.”

Suddenly, she couldn’t think of anything better. “I’d like that. Thanks.” And as she started with the seedlings, working side by side with Jox in a comfortable silence, she realized that she’d found her little bit of peace, after all.

Blood sparking with magic despite the mental filters that prevented him from using his powers outside of Skywatch, Rabbit stalked across campus, pissed that Anna wanted him and Myrinne to stay at her place in Austin, with her dull-assed human husband, for the whole Thanksgiving break. Worse, when he’d challenged her on it, Strike had made it a royal order. A royal pain in the ass was what it was.

Rabbit wanted to be back at Skywatch, where he could use the magic that was as much a part of him as his own blood and bones. He was trying to make good on his screwups . . . but how the fuck was he supposed to figure out how to call up a new three-question
nahwal
from his godsdamned dorm room?

The three-question
nahwal
was—or had been—an oracle bound to answer three questions per Nightkeeper lifetime. He hadn’t meant to kill it; he’d wanted only to ask his questions, but the thing had attacked him and it’d come down to kill or be killed, leaving the Nightkeepers in dire need of an oracle of some sort. The answer was obvious—to him, anyway. He had to get his ass back into the barrier and see about summoning a new
nahwal
. Except Strike wouldn’t let him until he had the right spell. To find the spell, they needed the library. To find the library, they needed the three-question
nahwal
.

Was he the only one who saw the disconnect here?

His mood must’ve shown in his face, because he saw a guy from his calc class start to lift a hand in greeting, then abort the motion and get real interested in the contents of his knapsack. Rabbit didn’t give a crap, though. Calculus was small stuff. Hell,
college
was small stuff.

Granted, it wasn’t nearly as bad as high school had been—at least he wasn’t still a ninety-pound weakling who regularly got his shit knocked loose. But he was frustrated by the day-to-day grind of classes when he could be—should be—doing much more important things. The Nightkeepers needed all the power they could get. So why in the hell was he stuck in Austin? Okay, so it’d been blatantly obvious that part of the whole “let’s send Rabbit and Myrinne off to college” thing had been intended to split them up by getting them out of Skywatch, where they’d been flat-out living together in his old man’s cottage out behind the main mansion. But that hadn’t worked, had it? They were still a couple. And if there was a small frisson of doubt deep within him on that last point, he was sure as hell going to ignore it, because when Myrinne had come to live with him, he’d made three promises: He’d promised her he’d protect her from the other Nightkeepers, some of whom were dubious about having her around. He’d promised her that he’d be the only one who ever worked magic on her. And he’d promised himself, on his own blood, to do whatever it took to keep her with him. No matter what.

He headed straight for her door and knocked softly. When Myrinne’s voice called, “Go away, I gave at the office,” he grinned and let himself in.

Unlike his room across the hall, which was haphazardly organized at best, Myrinne’s space was neat and fresh. Although Rabbit had urged her to spend what she wanted out of the Nightkeeper Fund—gods knew there was plenty in there—she was acutely conscious of her status as, in her words, a charity case of the magi. So she’d bought only a simple, neutral rug and bedclothes a few shades deeper, then accented the space with the things she and Rabbit had recovered from the New Or-leans tea shop where she’d spent most of her life. The end result was an eclectic mix of voodoo kitsch and halfway decent crystals that somehow suited her perfectly.

Myrinne herself stood at her desk, bent over her laptop, banging off a quick note or IM or something, which gave him an excellent perspective on her ass. She glanced back and grinned at him, her straight dark hair hanging off to one side, her dark brown eyes gleaming with mischief. “Hey. Where’ve you been?”

Something loosened in his chest at the warmth in her tone and the sparkle in her eyes. Those hints, coupled with the rear view he suspected wasn’t an accident, told him she was in one of her good moods, and gave him an idea of how they could spend the next couple of hours. She was wearing low-riding jeans and a formfitting cropped sweatshirt that had ridden up to show off the curve of her waist. He couldn’t see the tattoo that traced around her navel, but knowing it was there, knowing that—gods willing—he’d be getting up close and personal with it soon, was a huge turn-on.

Given that her mood had been seriously up-and-down over the past few days, he was grateful as hell to find her on an upswing, especially with the buzz of frustration humming in his veins, looking for an outlet.

“I was talking to Anna,” he said in answer to her question. “It’s a no-go on getting back to Skywatch over Thanksgiving break.” He glossed over his own frustration because it morphed into another kind of heat as he moved up behind her, cupped her strong, slim waist, and slid his hands along her smooth skin.

There were still times he halfway expected her to haul off and smack him for touching the goods. Chicks like Myrinne had never been interested in him before, and despite his growth spurts and the added confidence the magic had given him, he still sometimes had trouble believing she was actually with him. Actually wanted him.

She turned, smiling, slid her arms around his neck, and rose up on her tiptoes to press her lips to his. Rabbit leaned into the kiss. Despite the filters, power flowed through him, hot and hard, and he was instantly ready for battle, for sex, for anything and everything.

“Did you tell her why you wanted to go back?” Myrinne whispered against his mouth, as her hands slid up beneath his sweatshirt and his body temp headed for nuclear-meltdown territory.

“Huh?” It took him a moment to process the question, struggling to put the words together when he would’ve much rather been concentrating on the feel of her fingers on his belt, the taste of her mouth and throat, the softness of her breasts in his hands. “Um. No, I didn’t. She’d just tell me not to worry about it, that they’re working on it.”

“What are you going to do next?” she asked in between kisses.

“Dunno,” he said, trying to get her bra undone with some semblance of grace.

“I’ve been doing some research, and I think there might be something we could do from here.”

The last thing he wanted to discuss was research. “Sure, I’m game. As long as it’s not Nightkeeper magic.” The filters allowed him to talk about it when he was alone with her, though when he was alone with her, he wasn’t usually thinking about magic. At least not of the blood-sacrifice variety.

“It’s not Nightkeeper magic,” she assured him.

“Okay. Fine.”
Whatever. Busy here
.

“Good.” Her eyes went wicked and she started walking him in the direction of her bed, which was made up in mounds of fluffy pillows and other soft, girlie things, and scented with patchouli and vanilla. “Pencil me in for the night of the full moon.”

“You can have all the nights you want,” he said, not really giving a crap what he was saying at that point, as long as they were headed for the bed. When they got there, he fell back and pulled her with him so they dropped to the mattress together, laughing and wrestling with clothing.

It was the last coherent thing either of them said for a long, long time.

The days flew and Sasha’s life accelerated to a blur, enough so that she could almost avoid thinking about the approaching bloodline ceremony. In fact, whether by virtue of the mental filters or simple denial, she found herself living almost entirely in the moment, taking in the information pertinent to her new life without really putting it into the structure of her old existence.

Little by little, she settled in. She tapped the Nightkeeper Fund and ordered some clothes, going with comfortable, functional pieces that were more feminine than the type she’d typically worn before. She didn’t know if it was backlash from her captivity or being around the in nately sexual Nightkeepers, but she was far more aware of her body than she’d been in the outside world, more conscious of the way she looked, the feel of her clothing on her skin. She stopped short of staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, but was conscious that there were changes there, as well. Her hair had grown out from its short kitchen cut, and the curls tended toward the unruly side, but aside from blunting the ends, she left it alone, deciding she liked its unpredictability. Although her weight was the same as before, her face was thinner now, her arms and legs more muscular, her hips and breasts rounder. She suspected the changes were magic-wrought, but didn’t look too closely at the underlying reasons; she could only deal with so much Nightkeeper reality at any given time.

Still, she nested, adding some personal touches to the suite she’d chosen because of the big bow window that stretched nearly the length of the kitchen nook, offering a shallow shelf where she could grow herbs. She outfitted the nook with what she considered the essentials in both cookware and ingredients. And there, when she had a free moment or two, she filled herself once again with the love of her art.

She made
recados
, the flavor pastes that formed the basis of most Mayan dishes, reminding her that no matter how hard she’d tried to reject Ambrose’s teachings, she’d constantly gravitated back toward the village-wrought flavors of her childhood. She char-grilled maize, not realizing until later that she’d automatically pricked her finger with a paring knife and let a few drops of her own blood drip onto the food, an old habit she’d picked up after a knife slip and a drop of blood had felt oddly right, yielding a meal that had far outstripped her usual efforts. She’d fought to break the habit, and managed to keep it in check when working commercially, but it occasionally crept back into her personal cooking. Now she let herself follow the dictates of her soul, recognizing the autosacrifice as a nod to the gods she was trying to let herself believe in, an acknowledgment of the inextricable link between maize and life itself.

It had been her favorite of her father’s stories, in fact: how the gods had made mankind from maize. According to the legend, when the creator gods Tepeu and Kulkulkan first raised the earth and sacred mountains from the water, they populated the lands with animals, but quickly became dissatisfied with the animals because they were unable to speak or worship. Determined to create beings that could raise their voices in praise of the gods, Tepeu and Kulkulkan then tried to build men and women out of mud, but the mud people were soft and weak, and quickly fell apart. The creators next made men from wood and women from rushes, but although these people held together okay, they didn’t understand the world around them. Frustrated, the gods sent them to live in the rain forest canopy as monkeys. Finally, Tepeu and Kulkulkan summoned maize, ground it into powder, mixed it with their own blood to form dough, and used the dough to shape the first humans. That was why the gods thereafter required sacrifices of blood and maize.