Jade pushed through the keypadded archive door near midafternoon. Although she had headed for the archive intending to run some additional searches on the star bloodline, once she was there, she found that she wasn’t in the mood for research. She was restless and churned up. Edgy. Unsatisfied.
She prowled the outer room of the three-room archive, which boasted book- filled shelves on every available inch of wall space and a trio of computer workstations on one side of the open space. On the other side was a conference table where Jade—or, less frequently now, one of the others—could spread out and work. The color scheme was neutral, and the decor leaned heavily on functionality rather than beauty. The general consensus among the Nightkeepers and winikin was that the archive was boring and could use a face-lift. Jade, though, had refused to change things around. What the others found boring, she found peaceful.
At least, she usually did. Today she found it annoying.
There wasn’t even anything particularly wrong to put her in a snippy mood, either; at least, nothing new. That was the problem, though—she wanted to be somewhere new, wanted to do a different job.
But what? She didn’t want to be stuck in the archive, didn’t want to be on the front lines. The work of a spell-casting scribe would be ideal . . . if she could figure out how the heck to use her talent. Sex magic apparently wasn’t the answer. So what was?
Scowling, she picked up the spell book she thought of as the Idiot’s Guide to Nightkeeper Magic: the one the prepubescent mage children had used to learn their magic in the years between their toddler-age bloodline ceremonies and their pubertal talent ceremonies. This particular copy was worn and smudged, and as she unfolded a dog-ear, her heart ached at the thought of the mage child who had marked the page, which was at the end of the last chapter, where the kids got their intro to the most basic of talent-level spells.
Always before, she’d focused her research farther back in time, trying to understand what was happening now based on what had happened hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago. Now, though, her head filled with thoughts of the generation before hers. Had her mother touched this book?
Her father? Had they been in class together, pretended not to look at each other? She could even picture them playing eye tag now, because that morning, when she had walk-of-shamed it—though technically she supposed there was zero shame involved—back to her suite from Lucius’s cottage, she had found an envelope slipped beneath her door. She had guessed what it would contain, and had opened it knowing it would only make some things harder than they already were. Sure enough, Shandi had left photographs of her mother and father, both separate and together.
Her father, Joshua, had been tall and broad shouldered, though he hadn’t filled out yet to the brawn of the typical full- blood. His face had been soft and sweet, especially in the pictures where he and Vennie had posed together. In those photos, though, he all but disappeared into the background, eclipsed by Vennie’s bright, sharp effervescence. Jade had suffered a pang at the thought of that shining, vivid teen reduced to a desiccated corpse in the library, a nahwal in the barrier. A second pang had come when she’d reached the bottom of the stack and found several pictures that had included not just Joshua and Vennie, but also a dark-haired, scowling baby who always seemed to be waving clenched fists in the air. Oddly, Jade had felt the least connected to that baby, who looked like she was ready to fight the world.
Now, she traced a finger over the glyph string of the fireball spell and its phonetic translation below, and deliberately turned her mind away from her parents. Instead, she imagined a rawboned, overlarge puppy of a boy, poring over the spell book she held, looking for his first taste of the loud, fiery destruction that fascinated men of all ages. Or maybe it had been a girl of eleven or twelve, a little rash, a little vain, daydreaming about becoming a warrior and making a difference. The children wouldn’t have been able to actually enact the spell, of course; fireball magic was reserved for those with the warrior’s mark. But they would have practiced, just in case. Talent sometimes broke through on its own schedule, after all.
Telling herself she was just practicing her translations, Jade ignored the phonetics and read the simple spell straight from the glyph string, using the techniques Anna had taught her at the university.
Nothing happened.
It wasn’t until disappointment spun through her that she admitted she’d been hoping for . . . what?
She wasn’t a warrior. She was a scribe.
“At least, I’m supposed to be,” she muttered, dropping the book on the conference table and spinning to pace the suddenly small-feeling room. She forced herself to bypass the keypadded door that led to the second room of the archive, where the more valuable artifacts were tagged and stored under ruthless climate control, and from there to the inner archive, where the writs were displayed on the walls as a tangible reminder of a Nightkeeper’s duties and responsibilities. But it wasn’t the writs that drew her thoughts to the small sacred room. “Damn it, Lucius.” It was his fault she was so edgy, his fault she couldn’t settle to the work that usually soothed her.
Okay, that wasn’t strictly true either. He hadn’t done anything wrong; she had, or was in the process of doing so—getting in over her head when she knew better, damn it.
“You’re sleeping with him.”
For half a second, Jade thought that had come from her own subconscious, but her inner monologue had never achieved a tone of such frosty disapproval. Bracing herself against a fleeting wish that she’d locked the door, she turned and nodded to Shandi. “Good morning to you too.”
The winikin marched in, leaned back against the conference table, folded her arms, and scowled.
“Don’t change the subject. You’re sleeping with him, as in, not just the once. You stayed with him last night.”
Jade just stared at her for a second. “Do you seriously want to do this?”
The winikin waited her out.
I don’t answer to you. You’re not my keeper. But that was the human viewpoint, wasn’t it? The same wasn’t strictly true within the Nightkeeper mores. The winikin didn’t just serve and protect their Nightkeeper charges; they were also responsible for their morality and service to their bloodline duties. Granted, there wasn’t any sort of formal repercussion for a Nightkeeper who ignored, disobeyed, or otherwise pissed off her winikin . . . but social pressure could be a real bitch.
Breathing through her nose to stem the knee-jerk irritation that came as much from her own frustration as from Shandi, Jade said, “Last night was an experiment. We needed to see whether the sex would trigger the Prophet’s magic.” She paused. “Either that wasn’t the actual trigger, which doesn’t make sense, given the sequence of events, or the sex magic needed the boost of the new moon we had the other night . . . which by extension would mean we can’t use sex magic to put him into the library again until the solstice, which will be too late to help Kinich Ahau.”
Shandi’s frown went from a full- on scowl to a thoughtful expression. “If we’ve worked out the time line correctly, which I think we have, then Vennie made the transition into and out of the library at least twice over the seventy-two hours leading up to the summer solstice of ’eighty-four. Those weren’t days of barrier activity, which means there’s got to be another way to trigger the magic.”
“She used her mage talent. He’s not a mage.”
Unfortunately, that brought Shandi full circle and had her eyes narrowing. “No, he’s not. Yet you’ve taken him as your lover again, despite what the nahwal told you. Have you thought about what this could do to your magic?”
What magic? Jade wanted to ask, but didn’t, because it would disrespect both of them, not to mention the harvester bloodline. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but her own that she couldn’t figure out how to be a true scribe. And besides, that wasn’t what this fight was about. “You mean because he’s human, and Vennie found that her powers dropped to match those of a harvester after she and Joshua wer
e married.” Somehow it was easier to call them by their first names. “But if you’re saying that my powers are going to drop to those of a human—i.e., none—then you’re assuming that Lucius and I will become a mated pair. Do you really believe that was the gods’ intention?”
“I don’t believe your parents were destined mates, yet they wound up wearing the jun tan, and Vennie believed that her magic had decreased to that of a harvester. Are you willing to risk losing yours entirely?”
“Lucius can’t form the jun tan; he wears the hellmark.” Which was too easy an answer, given that Sasha and Michael were clearly mates despite their lack of the formal mark. Jade exhaled, shaking her head. “We’re not lovers. We’re just enjoying each other.” But the words caught a little in her throat and she felt a stir of the panic that had driven her to the archive and had her pacing rather than working.
Last night might’ve started hard and fast on the TV room floor, but after that first time, when it had become clear that the sex magic wasn’t theirs to invoke at will, they had transitioned to the bedroom without her even realizing that the decision had been made and acted on. There, the get off and get gone sex had morphed to soft touches and sighs, and slow, easy lovemaking that had gone way further than she’d meant to let it go. Then, this morning, she’d woken up curled against him, her hand over his heart, their legs twined together beneath the earth-toned quilt. More, where she’d expected the morning-after conversation to be uncomfortable, as both of them acknowledged they’d gotten in deeper than they’d meant to, and needed to pull it back, he’d been pure relaxed, satisfied male as he burned toast and made bad coffee wearing nothing but jeans and a smile.
She’d kept waiting for him to say something about how intense things had gotten. He didn’t. He’d just given her a friendly kiss and a, “Later,” on her way out the door, like they were just friends sharing damn good sex.
It was what she had wanted, what she had insisted on. So why did it make her want to scream?
“I’ve never before seen you ‘enjoy yourself’ with a man who didn’t make sense in the context of your life,” Shandi pointed out. “This one doesn’t. He’s different.”
That startled a strangled laugh out of Jade. “Everything’s different. I’m different.”
“No, you’re not. People don’t change, not that way. You’re just confused.”
“You can say that again.” Jade realized she was back to pacing , made herself stop. Leaning back against the conference table beside her winikin, she scrubbed both hands across her face and let out a sigh. “It’s like there are two different people inside me. One wants to be a good girl, quiet and obedient, the perfect harvester. The other just wants to make noise and blow shit up.”
“It wasn’t arbitrary that some bloodlines intermingled and some didn’t. There are traits that just don’t mix well.”
“No kidding. I think I’m starting to get an idea of what Rabbit’s going through.”
“Don’t say that.” Shandi gripped Jade’s wrists and yanked her hands down from where she’d been rubbing her eyes, trying to massage the encroaching headache away. “You’re a full- blood. Be proud of that if you’re proud of nothing else the harvesters have to offer.”
Jade stared at the raw, naked emotion on the face of a woman who didn’t do emotion, and her inner counselor suddenly spoke up when it had gone silent over the time away from her old world. Here’s the way in, her instincts chimed. Follow it if you want to know her inner truth. She hesitated fractionally, wondering whether she really wanted to know, or if it would be better to let the winikin have her privacy. The Skywatch community was too small for everyone to be tangled in one another’s business. But then again, this wasn’t just business. It was her life. She and Shandi were linked, despite whether either of them was happy with the pairing.
Jade shifted within the winikin’s grip, until they were holding hands in a rare moment of physical contact. “Listen to me, and please believe me. I’m proud of being a harvester. That’s one of my biggest problems right now. I feel like I should be doing more—my nahwal is telling me to be more, for gods’ sake—but I know that’s not the harvester way. It’s because of my respect for the bloodline, and for you, that I’m all screwed up right now.” At least in part. Great sex, a guy who was sticking to the friends-with-benefits arrangement she’d demanded, and the threat of her inner Edda weren’t helping. But the winikin’s stricken expression didn’t ease, even with the reassurance. Confused, Jade gave their joined hands a shake. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The winikin’s voice broke. “Yesterday . . . all that talk about the day of the massacre brought it back. Not that it’s ever far away, but it was suddenly right there. They were there again, beside me, inside me. They’re why I need . . . I need you to be perfect. I need to know it was worth it.”
Jade nearly recoiled from the pleading in the older woman’s face. I can’t be perfect. Nobody can!
But the counselor in her set that aside, pushed it deep beneath the shell, and said, “You need to know that what was worth it?”
Shandi’s eyes were wide and stark, not seeing the archive anymore. “Letting my husband and son die.”
“Your—” Jade’s breath left her in a rush. “Oh, Shandi.” Her heart twisted, shuddering in her chest.
“Oh, gods.” Oh, shit.
The winikin chosen for binding to Nightkeeper children typically didn’t marry or have children of their own, as their first and foremost priority had to be their charges. There had been exceptions, of course, but those families had, of necessity, been loosely knit, with the children often raised crèche-
style in extended networks of relatives. The system had evolved over generations and had been part of the fabric of Nightkeeper- winikin life. The chosen winikin focused on their charges; the unchosen fell in love, got married, and had families.
Unless an unchosen winikin was somehow picked by the gods to serve in a role she hadn’t planned for, hadn’t been prepared for. Oh, Shandi.
“Denis and little Samxel,” the winikin said, pronouncing the “x” with the “sh” sound it took in the old language. “On the night of the attack, Denny went with the king, along with all the other unchosen adults, the fighting-age magi, and their chosen winikin. I stayed behind with you. Samxel was there too, dancing with the other children in the middle of the rec room. He was ten, not old enough to fight, thank the gods. Or so I thought. In the end, it didn’t make a difference.” A tear tracked down her cheek. “They were playing a Michael Jackson song and trying to moonwalk when the first boluntiku broke through the wards and attacked the great hall. Dozens were dead within the first few seconds.
There was blood everywhere, children screaming. It was . . . it was chaos. Hell on earth.”
You don’t have to tell me if it hurts too much , Jade wanted to say, but what she would’ve really meant was, I don’t want to hear this , so she said nothing. She just held on to Shandi’s hands while the other woman broke into harsh, ugly sobs that rattled in her chest. “You were in one direction, Samxel in the other. I started to go after him; gods help me, I did. But then my marks started burning. I looked down and saw them disappearing, one after the other, doing this crazy vanishing act right in front of my eyes. The harvesters were among the last to die, of course, because they were in the rear guard. But they died. All of them, except you.”
Back in the day, each chosen winikin had worn, in addition to the aj-winikin glyph of service, row upon row of small bloodline marks denoting the individual members of their bound bloodline. The night of the massacre, the loss of those marks had warned the winikin that the attack was a disaster, the Nightkeepers dying. That warning had preceded the attack on Skywatch by mere seconds. Now, most of the surviving winikin had only the single bloodline glyph of his or her lone charge.
Shandi continued: “When I saw that, I knew Denny was gone too. He would’ve been right near the harvesters in the ranks with the other unbound winikin. I looked for
Samxel, but I couldn’t see him anymore. The children were screaming, crying. Some of the older boys were trying to get through the doors to fight, and there were boluntiku everywhere. I couldn’t see him. . . .” Her face shone now with tears. “I tried to get down there, but my legs wouldn’t work. My arm was burning. I only had one bloodline mark left, but it was flaring, throbbing, not letting me go get my baby. It was the magic, you see. It wouldn’t let me go to Samxel because you were my charge, my first and only priority. It made me go get you first.” There was bitterness now in her voice and her eyes. “So I went. You were in the nursery zone, surrounded by a sound barrier that kept the music from disturbing the youngest ones. I grabbed you and started running for the dance floor, screaming Samxel’s name. Then the next thing I knew, I was outside, headed for the garage. It was the magic again. It made me get you out rather than go back for him.” She stopped and pulled her hands from Jade’s, not in an angry gesture, but so she could mop her face with her sleeves. Her words were muffled behind the cloth as she said, “I would’ve tried to go back in, but I knew. Somehow I knew he was gone.” She lifted a shoulder. “A mother’s instincts, I guess. Or maybe I needed to believe he was dead so I could do my duty by you.”
And that was what she had always been to her winikin , Jade realized. Duty, pure and simple. More than even she’d realized, raising her had been Shandi’s job. The knowledge bit with sharp, greedy teeth, but she said only, “I’m sorry, Shandi. I’m so sorry.”
“We might have gotten away,” the winikin said softly. “Only the chosen were marked with the aj-
Demonkeepers n-4 Page 17