Demonkeepers Read Free Page B

brushing across the hunab ku mark that denoted his gods-validated kingship, Jade filled her lungs with moisture-laden air that seemed more appropriate to the lowlands of the Yucatan than a box canyon in New Mex. The air smelled faintly wrong, though she couldn’t immediately place the odor, which clung to her nasal passages and made her want to sneeze. She glanced at Strike, who was a dark shadow in the rapidly dimming light. “Did you guys install a giant Glade air nonfreshener while I was gone?”
    “I wish. At least then we’d know what we’re dealing with . . . and it’d presumably come with an ‘off’ button.” His deep voice was edged with frustration. “We seem to be going from desert to tropics, and it’s not just the ceiba tree growing out of place now, or even the cacao. There are patches of slimy green crap—like dry-land algae or something—growing all over the area, though it’s worse down here. Sasha says it’s only partly her talent that’s promoting the growth; mostly it’s the funky sun.”
    Jade glanced at the horizon just as the last sliver of orange light disappeared. The gas giant had been off-color worldwide since the previous fall, when humanity had awakened one day to a sun that had turned from white light to blood-tinged orange overnight.
    The amount of solar energy reaching the earth had dropped precipitously even though the earth’s atmosphere was its same ragged, ozone-depleted self. Scientists worldwide had various theories—no big surprise there—but the consensus seemed to be: Beats the living hell out of us . The astrophysicists were testing whether a cosmic dust cloud or something was blocking things between the earth and sun; the ecologists were freaking about issues of climate change, crop losses, and killer red tides; and the threat of mob stampede was growing as food prices skyrocketed and microclimates shifted over the course of weeks or even days. And all the while, people were asking, Why is this happening? How?
    Unbeknownst to most of humanity, the answers that came the closest to reality were those of the supposed crackpots who blamed it on aliens . . . or, rather, demons and the approach of a doomsday predicted by the calendar of the ancient Maya. In depicting the end-date, the Dresden Codex, one of only four Mayan codices to survive the conquistadors’ book burnings of the fifteen hundreds, showed a terrible horned god standing in the sky, tipping a jug that poured fire onto the earth. Although most human scholars assumed that meant the Maya believed that the world would be demolished by a fiery apocalypse, Jade had dug up information from the archive suggesting that the solar fire would be part of the gods’ efforts to help the Nightkeepers during the final battle, which was good news. . . . Or it had been until the sun got sick.
    Unfortunately, in the absence of a reliable oracle—aka the Prophet—there was no way for the Nightkeepers to ask what the hell was going on or how to fix it.
    Shivering, Jade scrubbed at sudden gooseflesh. “Maybe there’ll be something in the library,” she said, voicing the sentiment that had grown to a refrain over the past six months. “Which is my cue to get down to business.”
    But when she turned toward the mansion, which was a darkly solid, reassuring silhouette in the gathering dusk, Strike caught her arm and one-eightied her in the direction of a nearly invisible path leading away from the main house. “Lucius moved into one of the cottages a few months back. Said the mansion made him feel claustrophobic after being trapped inside his own head for so long.”
    “Oh.” She tried not to let the change unsettle her, though when she’d pictured the pending booty duty, she and Lucius had always been in his suite, which was a few doors down from her own and nearly identical in floor plan and bland decor. Not a big deal , she told herself. It’s just a shift of scenery . Experience had taught her that people didn’t