Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

Yes, the walls were scored with claw marks, but they were faded and worn from wind, rain, and blowing sand. Yes, wrecked cars dotted the landscape, but they were dated, rusted shells now, looking like a more appropriate setting for a junkyard dog than for fear.

Strike had worried that all he’d see was the past. Instead, he saw possibilities.

The main house was as huge as his nine-year-old self remembered, a three-story mansion of mortar-set sandstone with wings running off on either side, curving around, a swimming pool in the back. The driveway ran around the left side to the huge connected garage, and on the right a covered tunnel led to the Great Hall. At least, it had. Now the spot where the rec building had stood was nothing more than a dark stain on the canyon floor, marking the ashes of the dead children and winikin .

In the center of the rectangular impression where the hall had once stood, there was a huge tree that hadn’t been there before. Yet, oddly, it looked like it’d been there for hundreds of years, because there was no way it’d gotten that big in a couple of decades. It had to be five or six feet across at the base, probably fifty-plus feet high, with lush green leaves that seemed completely out of place amidst the arid dryness of the New Mexican landscape.

‘‘What the hell?’’ Rabbit said.

‘‘It’s a ceiba tree,’’ Strike answered, though he’d been thinking pretty much the same thing. Their ancestors had planted the sacred ‘‘world trees’’ in the center of their villages and plazas. They’d believed the ceiba’s roots ran to the underworld, and its branches held up the heavens. He turned to Jox. ‘‘Did you plant it?’’

The winikin shook his head, seeming stunned. ‘‘No. It makes a hell of a memorial, though. Wish I’d thought of it.’’

‘‘Someone did,’’ Strike said, though he couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew they were both thinking. It was one thing to jack in to a concentration of psi energy that existed at the barrier between the planes. It was another to suggest that an actual god had planted a tree in their backyard. A tree that grew exclusively in rain forests. One that shouldn’t have had leaves during the dry season, and looked like it’d been there far longer than was actually possible.

He stood there for a moment, wondering if this was the point where he woke up from the dream. Instead, he stayed exactly where he was.

After a moment, Jox looped an arm across his shoulders and hugged him close, as he had done when Strike was a boy. ‘‘Come on, kid. It’s time to call your people home.’’

But as Strike followed his winikin through the main entrance of the training compound built by his ancestors, he wasn’t thinking of the massacre and times past, or the renovations they’d need to do to get the place livable, or even of the strangers he was supposed to turn into a tiny army. He was thinking about Leah, and how she’d stood up to him, chin jutting like she was leading for a punch; how he’d watched her sleep, her face going soft and vulnerable; and how she’d looked at him after they’d been together, how she’d seen him as a man rather than something so much more complicated.

And as he stepped through the doorway into the entryway of the king’s mansion, where the past and future ran together and made his heart hurt, he wished like hell that he could’ve been just a man, could’ve been her man. But he wasn’t and couldn’t be.

He was a Nightkeeper.

PART II

APHELION

The point in the earth’s orbit when it is farthest from the sun.

CHAPTER FIVE

June 23

Alexis Gray strode toward the Fish Shack, fuming. Her long legs ate up the distance across the pier to the restaurant, which was far more elegant than the name implied, and her waist-length hair, which was streaky blond this week, crackled with static electricity. That, along with a low mutter of thunder in the distance, warned that a squall was coming in over Newport Harbor.

If I’m lucky, the storm’ll sink his damn yacht with his lying dick caught in the tiller .

Alexis glanced down the marina, where her suckfest newly ex-boyfriend, Aaron Worth—aka the Worthless Prick who’d screwed his way through the Riviera—had tethered his pride and joy front and center for everyone to admire. The yacht, that was, not his dick, though it turned out both pieces of equipment had been around the world a few more times than she’d thought. Meanwhile, she’d been holed up in her beachside office, managing the scum-sucking cheater’s portfolio for him and making him money hand over frigging fist.

Which, it turned out, had just given him less of a reason to come clean with her.

Or maybe he was right; maybe he’d tried to tell her it wasn’t working and she’d been too stubborn to listen, too determined to keep their sinking relationship afloat. God knew, Isabella called her mule-stubborn more often than not.

Smiling at the thought of the godmother who’d raised her from the age of two, Alexis shoved aside the thoughts of her ‘‘sorry about the triplets in the bedroom; how am I fixed for liquid assets?’’ jackass ex and opened the door to the Fish Shack.

The smell of garlic and fresh bread greeted her first, followed closely by the maître’d, Tony. ‘‘Your usual table, Miss Gray?’’

‘‘Not in a million years.’’ That was another of those front-and-center things dictated by Aaron, who liked to sit smack in the middle of the huge window facing the boardwalk. ‘‘I’m meeting Izzy today.’’

Tony’s smile broadened, though she wasn’t sure if it was because she was guyless for lunch, or because her godmother made pretty much everyone smile. He waved through the dining area to a covered porch that faced the sea. ‘‘She’s in the bar.’’

‘‘Perfect.’’ Alexis headed in that direction, thinking that she could always count on Izzy to know what she needed even before she did. Today, that included a drink before noon.

In the bar area, Izzy sat at the farthest table down, close to the water and the incoming storm. When she saw Alexis, her dark eyes lit and she raised an umbrella-topped glass. ‘‘Cheers. The wind just changed.’’

‘‘You have no idea.’’ Alexis hiked herself up onto the stool opposite her and waved to the bartender. ‘‘Two of whatever she’s having, along with a basket of fries and the catch of the day.’’

Izzy’s lips twitched. ‘‘Hungry, dear?’’

Dark, petite, and graceful, with a wonderfully calm way of dealing with life, Izzy was the diametric opposite of Alexis in so many ways, both physically and emotionally, that it was a wonder they got along. Then again, maybe it was because of those differences that it worked so well, even though just being near her godmother made Alexis feel huge, ungainly, and loud, like a flatulent elephant in an antiques store. She’d long ago decided she loved Izzy too much to mind, though, even if she still envied her long dark hair and olive-toned skin, and the way she never seemed to age or doubt herself.

‘‘I’m starving.’’ Alexis glanced through the clear plastic sheets the waitstaff had pulled over the screened-in porch, preparing for the squall. ‘‘Not much sea for such a heavy sky.’’

‘‘Give it ten minutes.’’ Izzy paused. ‘‘How are things?’’

‘‘Complicated,’’ Alexis said, wondering if her godmother had somehow known early that morning, when she’d called with a lunch invite, that her goddaughter’s life was going to have taken a big dump in the great cosmic toilet bowl by noon. ‘‘Let’s just say the weather’s not the only thing that’s going to be changing around here.’’