Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

They’d never come up with good answers before. Why should it be any different now that what-if had become, Oh, shit ?

‘‘She doesn’t remember you?’’ Red-Boar asked.

‘‘You did a good job,’’ Strike answered, hating that it had been necessary. Why had she been in his dreams if she wasn’t going to be in his life? Only half joking, he said, ‘‘You want to wipe my mind now, and we can pretend none of it happened?’’

‘‘Mind-wipe doesn’t work on Nightkeepers.’’

‘‘Right. I knew that.’’ Strike sighed and dropped onto the bench. ‘‘What now?’’

Jox gestured to the garden. ‘‘Did you look around on the way in?’’

Strike shrugged. ‘‘Yeah. Too fussy for my taste, and the staff salary’s got to be a killer, but whatever works for you, I guess.’’

‘‘It’s gorgeous,’’ Jox said, more ignoring him than disagreeing.

Strike said, ‘‘And this is relevant why?’’

But he stood and joined the winikin in the Grotto doorway, so they stood shoulder-to-shoulder looking out at the gardens and the fussy mansion beyond, with its pale stone, ornate ironwork, and yellow and blue-striped awnings. Figures moved on the east terrace, setting out chairs and bunting for some sort of event later in the day.

‘‘What do you see?’’ Jox said quietly.

The quick answer died on Strike’s tongue. After a moment, he said, ‘‘Shit. People. Mankind. The things we’ve built.’’

It shamed him, which had no doubt been Jox’s intention. He’d been so caught up in being pissed off about Leah, the barrier reopening, and the ajaw-makol getting away, so worried about the visions and what they might mean, so conflicted about the return of the magic and finally being able to jack in . . . that he’d lost track of what the hell this was all about.

It was about saving the world.

‘‘There’s just me and Red-Boar left,’’ Strike said, his heart heavy with the knowledge that they’d failed before they’d even begun. ‘‘Anna’s gone, and all of the others are dead.’’

There was a long moment of silence. Then Jox said, ‘‘That’s not exactly true.’’

The world went very, very still.

Strike’s breath left him in a long, slow hiss. ‘‘Meaning what?’’

Red-Boar’s head came up. His eyes fixed on Jox.

‘‘There are others out there, hidden. Raised in secret.’’ The winikin said it fast, not looking at Strike or Red-Boar.

Strike wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react, wasn’t sure how he felt, wasn’t sure he’d even heard it correctly. Somehow the words had gotten stuck between his ears and his brain, jamming him up, making his brain buzz.

Other Nightkeepers. Raised in secret. Gods .

After a lifetime of thinking he was the only male full-blood of his generation, the concept just didn’t compute.

Red-Boar rose, his face gone gray. ‘‘ Winikin, what have you done?’’

‘‘My duty. Always my duty.’’ That was said with a hint of self-directed anger, as Jox pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and offered it to Strike. ‘‘I protected the bloodlines from their enemies.’’ The look he shot at Red-Boar suggested he wasn’t just talking about the underworld, either, but Strike let that pass as he took the folded paper and opened it with fingers that trembled faintly.

It was a computer printout of names. Not just any names, though. The words Owl and Iguana leaped out at him, seeming to burn his eyeballs.

A bolt of something that might’ve been excitement, might’ve been dread, hit him square in the midsection and fired through his veins. Behind him, Red-Boar dropped down to one of the benches as though his legs had given out.

‘‘Jesus,’’ Strike said. He looked at Jox. ‘‘How?’’

‘‘That night . . .’’ The winikin swallowed hard before continuing, as though he, too, still saw the bloody images of the massacre in his sleep. ‘‘The boluntiku smelled the magic. Any connection to the barrier was a way for them to track the children. But there were a few they couldn’t chase down, a few who got away.’’

‘‘The babies,’’ Red-Boar rasped. ‘‘They didn’t have their bloodline marks yet. The monsters couldn’t see them.’’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘‘Gods. How did I not know?’’

‘‘The babies,’’ Strike repeated, thinking of the crèche in its soundproof globe. Excitement kindled. ‘‘You’re fucking kidding me.’’ They’d be what—twenty-five, twenty-six now?

And they’d be full-bloods. Nightkeepers. Magi.

The world took a long, lazy spin around him. This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be real. Could it?

‘‘How many?’’ he whispered, almost afraid to ask, because if they were going to pull this off he was going to need a whole fucking army. The sheet of paper suddenly seemed heavy, like it carried the weight of the world. ‘‘How many survived?’’

‘‘Ten, along with their winikin .’’ Jox paused. ‘‘With you two and Rabbit or Anna, that makes thirteen. A powerful number.’’

Strike drew his finger down the list, pausing where two names sat beside the name of a single winikin . ‘‘Siblings?’’

‘‘Twins,’’ Jox said, and there was a wealth of meaning in the single word. The Hero Twins were the saviors in countless Mayan legends, reflecting the fact that twins were a powerful force in Nightkeeper magic. Siblings could boost each other’s magic through the bloodline connection, mates through the emotional link. The twin link was ten times stronger than either.

‘‘Gods.’’ Strike looked at Jox—the man who’d saved him, the man who’d raised him. ‘‘They don’t know who they are? They don’t know the magic?’’

‘‘They can learn,’’ Jox said with quiet authority. ‘‘Each of them was raised by a winikin . They know the stories by heart. They can learn the rest.’’

In the silence that followed, the winikin ’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from his back pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and frowned. ‘‘Police?’’

Everything inside Strike went on red alert in an instant, and he nearly lunged across and grabbed the phone before he stopped himself. The protection spell hadn’t given him the slightest quiver, and besides, Leah and Jox hadn’t swapped cell numbers. There was no reason she or anyone else at the MDPD would be calling.

‘‘Hello?’’ Jox answered. ‘‘Yes, this is he.’’ He listened, stiffened, and his face went blank, then flushed a dull red. After a moment, he said, ‘‘His father is part owner in the business.’’

Strike winced. Oh, hell. What’d Rabbit done this time?

The conversation went on for a few minutes, with Jox giving nothing but an occasional, ‘‘Yes, of course,’’ and, ‘‘Uh-huh,’’ his voice going thicker each time, his complexion going paler. Finally, he said, ‘‘Yes, please put him on.’’

‘‘What’d he do?’’ Strike hissed.

The winikin held up a wait a minute finger and said, ‘‘Rabbit? It’s Jox. Are you okay?’’ He listened for a moment, and Strike caught the rise and fall of the teen’s voice, sounding younger than usual, and atypically high, like he was on the verge of losing it.

Strike’s irritation morphed to worry. Had the kid actually hurt himself this time? Worse, had he hurt someone else?

‘‘It’s okay, son. It’s okay. We’ll get through this, I promise. I need you to listen to me. Rabbit, are you listening? Good. It was an accident. There were candles and alcohol, and that’s all the cops need to know.’’