Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

When she saw Nate, Alexis locked onto him and mouthed, Stop him!

They might have their differences when it came to matters of state, but there was no arguing the fear in her face, so Nate put himself between Strike and the front door of Skywatch and said, “Nochem.”

The word was meant to remind Strike that he couldn’t think like a man when he was king. For a second Nate thought the other man was going to ignore him, blow right through him, but then it seemed to penetrate. Strike’s head came up and he locked onto Nate, fury and annoyance hardening his cobalt blue eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way, Blackhawk.”

“I will. In thirty seconds, once you’ve thought this through.” Nate glanced at Rabbit, wincing at how thin the teen had gotten, how ragged. “Where are you taking him?”

“To his cottage,” Strike said, his voice a low growl. “And if you don’t stand aside, I’m going through you.” The grief in his expression was that of a father or an older brother who’d almost lost family, or a winikin who had failed in his duty. Nate knew that Rabbit’s disappearance had dragged on the king, tormented him. And because of that, he knew he had to be careful or Strike would go through him, losing caution to emotion.

“Think it through,” Nate said, picking his words carefully. “Be rational.”

The king bared his teeth. “Fuck rationality. I want him back where he belongs, where he should’ve been all along.”

“Wait,” said a soft voice, one that didn’t belong to any of the compound’s residents. The girl, who was in her late teens, dark-haired and pretty, and equally as rough-looking as Rabbit, if not more so, pushed ahead and put herself in front of the king. “When he knew he was going to pass out before you guys got to us, he gave me a message for you.” She paused. “You’re Strike-out, right?”

Pain flashed on the king’s face, along with wary hope at her use of Rabbit’s old, jeering nickname for him. “Yeah.”

“He told me to give you this.” She pulled a knife, but before anybody could take her down and protect their king, she flipped it in a practiced move and held it out to Strike, haft-first.

There was a ripple of surprise from the gathered crowd, one that mimicked the clutch in Nate’s gut when he recognized the knife they’d lost to Iago back in Boston. Which meant Rabbit, at least, had been in contact with the Xibalban.

It also meant they had the Volatile’s prophecy back in their hands.

“Thank you.” Strike accepted the knife without comment or ceremony, and Nate had to force himself not to snatch it from him. As before, the knife called to him, made him want to touch it, to hold it.

The girl continued, “I’m also supposed to tell you to lock us both up and ward the shit out of the room, and that he’ll explain the rest when he wakes up.”

Which was so not good news, Nate knew, because it meant Rabbit believed the Nightkeepers had something to fear from him or the girl, or both. Shit.

Strike’s expression went bleak, and he had to clear his throat before he said, “Was there anything else?”

She nodded. “I’m supposed to tell Jox not to burn the eggs.”

Both the king and his winikin relaxed at that, letting Nate know that it was a safe word or something, a cue that the message was genuine and unforced. “Okay,” Strike finally said. “Okay. We do what Myrinne says.”

The girl looked startled. “How’d you know my name?”

“Lucky guess. Come on.” The king led the way, with Jox at his side and Leah shepherding the girl.

Myrinne. As he strode through the main door, the king called, “I want all magic users downstairs near the storerooms in five minutes to help me set the wards.” Which was something of a relief, because it meant he was taking Rabbit’s warning to heart and setting some serious magic.

Nate stayed back until Alexis joined him, and had a feeling his own expression mirrored the worry on her face. “What do you think?” he asked.

She glanced at the starscape overhead, which was dimmed some by the front lights of Skywatch. “I think it’s going to be a long night. What do you think?”

“That we’re going to run out of storerooms if this keeps up.” They’d wound up locking Lucius back down in the room he’d occupied his first couple of days at Skywatch, on the theory that the single room was easier to ward, and the sturdy walls and the lack of windows made physical locks more practical and efficient.

She nodded. “Won’t argue with you on that.”

“That’s a first.”

“Not my fault you’ve got warped ideas of logic.” But she held out a hand to him. “Come on, royal adviser. We’ve got some work to do.”

Surprisingly, though, once they had the wards up and the royal council had convened in the kitchen over chips and salsa, the king didn’t fight them on the idea of major security measures.

“Look,” he finally said, “I’m not stupid. We’ve already had a taste of what happened when Iago got someone inside, and for crap’s sake, I’m one of the few people here old enough to remember the massacre. It’s not like I’m looking to throw the doors open and invite what-the-fuck inside.”

But he was still reacting as much with emotion as logic, and history said that when the jaguar kings started thinking like men and fathers rather than kings, bad things happened. Nate might not buy into the whole cycle-of-time thing, but he believed in basic psychology, which said that Strike needed their help. The fact that Nate and Alexis were pretty united in their recommendations was a huge swing in their favor, forcing Strike to finally agree—albeit reluctantly—to having Jox set up additional surveillance in each of the storerooms. Granted, the motion detectors and infrareds couldn’t detect

’port magic—and it wasn’t yet clear whether Rabbit had added that to his arsenal too, though how’d he get home otherwise?—but the gadgets couldn’t be influenced by a mind-bender, either.

After that, they waited to hear back from Leah, who had taken Myrinne to the kitchen for some food with a side of interrogation, or Anna, who’d taken the knife so she could translate the normal script as well as the starscript.

Leah arrived first. “Iago has had him for just over a week,” she announced without preamble, then went on to sketch out a summary of the teens’ imprisonment, and what little Myrinne knew about the Xibalban, which wasn’t anything they hadn’t already figured out.

While she was talking, Strike rose and started pacing the length of the royal suite’s sitting area. By the time she was finished, he looked like he wanted to put his fist—or a fireball—through the wall. He held himself back, but Nate almost wished he’d let fly and burn off some of the emotion before it made him do something stupid.

“Gods damn it,” the king finally said. “We should’ve fucking gone after Iago weeks ago.”

“We couldn’t find him,” Leah pointed out, “just like we couldn’t find Rabbit.”

That brought Alexis’s head up. “Can you lock onto Rabbit now?” she asked the king.

He stopped pacing for a second, then frowned and shook his head. “No. I can’t. Which means we were right; Iago knows how to make people invisible to ’port magic. He must’ve blocked Rabbit’s

’port lock right there at the museum, then let him go—I don’t know . . . so he could watch him, maybe. Wait until he got into enough trouble that he needed rescuing, and might be desperate enough, lonely enough to join Iago’s team.” His voice went ragged when he said, “Did you see the kid’s arm?

He’s wearing the goddamned hellmouth.” He stopped, facing a wall, but instead of putting his fist through it, he leaned his forehead against the painted plaster and said in a low, hollow voice, repeating what Leah had just told them, “Iago was going to sacrifice them, during the equinox. Another two days and he would’ve been dead.”