The Nightkeepers were bigger, stronger and more graceful than average humans, pumped with charisma and loaded with talent. At least most of them were. Alexis had somehow gotten the bigger and stronger part without the grace, and while she’d worked long and hard to camouflage the klutz factor, and most days managed to control her freakishly long limbs, the effort left her pretty low on charisma. So far she was decidedly average in the talent department, too, having gotten the warrior’s mark, but no inherent magical talent beyond the basics.
Ergo, her enjoyment of the occasional power trip. She liked living as large as possible. So sue her.
‘‘This might take a minute,’’ the cashier said finally, looking away from the cash to bang a few keys on his laptop, and scowling when the thing bleated at him. ‘‘The network’s being all glitchy today. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.’’
‘‘No rush.’’ She flipped the folio shut and turned away, figuring she’d use the brief delay to check in, which consisted of powering up her phone, text messaging Izzy that she had the statuette and was headed back to Skywatch, and then powering off the unit without checking her backlogged messages.
She wasn’t in the mood for the chatter, hadn’t been for a while. That was a big part of why she’d jumped on the chance to fly out to the California coast for the auction. The quick trip had given her a chance to breathe air she wasn’t sharing with the same Nightkeepers and
winikin
she’d been cheek-to-jowl with for the past half year. Besides, she could guarantee the messages on her cell were nothing critical, because she wasn’t in line for the important assignments yet. Strike had his advisers— Leah and the royal
winikin
, Jox. The three of them handled the heavy-duty stuff, and delegated the lower-impact jobs.
For now, anyway.
Alexis had her sights set higher. Her mother, Gray-Smoke, had been one of King Scarred-Jaguar’s most trusted advisers, holding political power equaled only by that of her nemesis and coadviser, Two-Hawk. That pretty much figured, because Two-Hawk’s son was Alexis’s personal nemesis, i.e., the
someone
who’d been driving her pretty much nuts over the past few months, ever since he’d dumped her ass right after the talent ceremony, and then acted like it’d been no big deal for them to go from burning up the sheets to a quick nod in passing.
Damn him. And damn her for falling right back into old habits just as she was starting her new and improved life.
‘‘Ma’am? You’re all set.’’ The cashier held out her paperwork. ‘‘I have a couple of messages for you, too. She said it was important.’’
‘‘Thanks.’’ She took the slips, glanced at them and tucked them into her pocket. Just Izzy mother-henning her. The
winikin
would’ve gotten the text message by now, so they were square.
A security guard set a metal case on the table and flipped it open so she could see the statuette and the death mask nestled side-by-side in a shockproof foam bed. At her nod, the guard shut the case and slid it across the table to her, rumbling in a basso profundo voice, ‘‘Dial the numbers to what you want, and hit this button.’’ He pointed to an inset red dot. ‘‘That’ll set your combination. If you don’t want to bother, just leave it all zeros and it’ll just act like a suitcase. Got it?’’
‘‘Got it.’’ A whim had her dialing in a string of numbers and hitting the red button, and there was something satisfying about hearing the click of the locks engaging. When they did, the readout zeroed, which she thought was a nice touch.
Once outside, she found herself under the clear blue sky of a perfect February day in NorCal, the sort that made her wish she’d opted for the convertible when she’d rented her car. But it’d been drizzling when she landed, so she’d chosen a sporty silver BMW that hugged the road like a lover. Convertible or not, the silver roadster ought to be automotive muscle enough to entertain her on the way back to LAX.
Sure enough, once she was on the road with the metal case in the passenger seat beside her, the feel of engine power and smooth leather lightened her mood, sending a victory dance through her soul. She had the statuette, and she wasn’t technically due back at Skywatch for another day. There was a sense of freedom in the thought, one that had her cranking the radio to something loud and edgy with a heavy backbeat as she pulled onto the narrow shoreline drive that led away from the lavish private estate that was being sold off piece by piece to settle the owner’s debts.
Alexis had thought it a stroke of luck that the sale had come up just as they’d started tracking down the lost artifacts, but Izzy had reminded her that there wasn’t much in the way of actual coincidence in the world. Most of what people thought of as happy accidents were the will of the gods.
The thought brought a quiver of unease.
‘‘They’re just dreams,’’ she told herself, sending the BMW whipping around a low-G curve that dropped off to the right in a steep embankment and a million-dollar view of the NorCal coast.
Still, dreams or not, she didn’t like the way the nightmares had stuck with her over the past few months, or how they kept changing, evolving, each time showing a new detail of the same scene. In it, she wasn’t sure if she was herself or the mother she’d never known, wasn’t sure if the shadowy figure of a man wearing the hawk medallion was supposed to be Nate or his father. She knew only that they were in the barrier, locked together, calling on strong, terrible magic. The dream always ended with a flash of light, and she awoke, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding as tears of loss poured down her cheeks.
‘‘I’m not a seer, damn it.’’ Needing to prove it yet again—to herself, to the gods—she unbuttoned her right sleeve and shoved it up to her elbow, baring her forearm. On the inside, just beyond her wrist, she wore two marks: the curling
b’utz
glyph representing the smoke bloodline, and three stacked blobs of the warrior’s talent mark that had given her increased reflexes and strategic thought, along with a power boost and the ability to call up shields and fireballs. ‘‘See? No
itz’aat
’s mark. I’m not a seer, and those are just dreams.’’
And if she told herself that a hundred or so more times, she thought as she yanked down her sleeve, it might even play like the truth.
‘‘Damn it,’’ she muttered, and hit the gas too hard going into the next curve, which was a blind turn arcing along a sheer cliffside drop. Easing off and shaking her head at herself for getting all tangled up when she was supposed to be enjoying the satisfaction of a job well done, she nursed the car around the corner—
And drove straight into a wall of fire.
She screamed and cranked the wheel as flames lashed at the car, slapping in through the open windows and searing the air around her. Worse was the power that crackled along her skin, feeling dark and twisted.
Ambush!
Her warrior’s instincts fired up; she fought the urge to slam on the brakes and hit the gas instead, hoping to punch through the fire, but it was already too late. The car cut loose and slid sideways, losing traction when all four tires blew.
Heart pounding, she fought the wheel, fought to not inhale. Smoke burned her eyes and throat, and the exposed skin of her wrists and face. Then she was through the fire magic and back on the open road, but it was too late to steer, too late to correct even if she could without rubber on the rims.
Alexis screamed as the BMW hit the guardrail and flipped.