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She couldn’t be a ic user--she had all the physical hall and eyes, and the Nightkeepers always bred true No way they would mix their precious blood

But the evidence was there He couldn’t deny the scar And the skullWhat the hell were they going to do about the skull? More, as he going to do about her? Whatever her bloodlines, whatever her powers, she didn’t have the right training to stay here and fight Not toto throw herself headlong into danger

But he couldn’t just chase her off, not now that she knew that she, too, had a connection to this chunk of godsforsaken forest And not now that he knew there were ed fuckers had so the alarms What else could they do now?

He was all too aware that it was almost dawn The day of the equinox

Gods help the "What can it do?"

Nothing without a Nightkeeper, he thought But he didn’t say it, because suddenly that didn’t seehtkeepers’ long-ago ancestors used the barrier to trap the demons in the underworld, they created thirteen life-size crystal skulls that together balanced the energy flow across the planes They hid four of them on earth, sent four to the underworld, and sacrificed four to the sky gods They kept the last one, and used ic to divide it into thirteen siven to a female seer in each of the major bloodlines They became the itza’at seers

The visionaries"

She exhaled softly "The skull can tell the future?"

"When wielded by a fully trained itza’at ht"

"If that’s true, then why did you haul ass out there? And why did the ca they had moved past the point of convenient lies, he said, "When a skull is separated froht it up out of the temple, any creature with a link to the barrier would have been able to zero in on it" His gut tightened "The zotz that attacked you was probably co after the skull, but once it saw you, it decided to have a snack first, add soory details sink in

"As for why they took it, power is power Destroying it in an equinox ritual could fuel so it? No No way We can’t let that happen We have to get it back"

"Natalie--"

"Don’t ’Natalie’ me, JT If I’ht? And if we’re free, then that et to pick ant to protect You chose your village I’s toto your bloodline," he gritted between clenched teeth

"It does if all of the i are dead," she countered neatly "Why else would I have been the one to pick up its signal?"

"I--" He broke off "Daht And it was a plausible explanation for why she looked like a winikin but seeic In the absence of a better option, the poas reaching out to the D-list

Only in this case, D stood for danger

"The caht it to their hellshe didn’t have a point "That’s the hole in the barrier where they’re coet open Theoretically, it should be inside a big-ass temple, but I’ll be daed to track it down in seven years of searching, there’s no way you’re going to find it in less than a day"

She just looked at hi "I told you I can sense the skull I can lead us to where it’s gone" In that instant, her certainty re had looked as he stood at the front of theabout his plans to attack the barrier

JT’s blood chilled "Natalie, for gods’ sake"

"Tell et into Xibalba?"

"That’s not funny"

"It wasn’t a joke"