Dawnkeepers by Jessica Andersen Page B

when Nate jammed his hip against her shoulder and shoved her back into her chair. He was still hanging on to her wrist. Somehow he’d gotten out and dragged her with him.

    “Oh, gods.” Alexis sagged against him, clung to him, her fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his forearm, over the stark black of his marks. “Oh, holy hell.” She looked up at him. “What did you—”

    She broke off, seeing in his eyes all of his usual intensity, along with the irritation she alone seemed to bring out. But that was it. She saw nothing of what they’d just done together.

    He detached himself from her and stepped away. “What did I . . . what?” he prompted.

    Izzy shouldered him aside and started fussing, checking Alexis’s color, her pulse, making Alexis acutely aware that they weren’t alone, that the other Nightkeepers and their winikin were still there in the great room, gathered around her and Nate and the suitcase containing the statuette of Ixchel. There was no temple, no torchlight. No lovemaking.

    She swallowed hard. “What did you see?” Which wasn’t even close to what she’d been about to say before. “You were in there with me, right? You were there the whole time?”

    He frowned. “What whole time?” He looked at Strike. “It was only a few seconds, right?”

    The king nodded, but said, “Doesn’t mean she didn’t experience something that seemed longer, though. Time acts funny in the barrier.” He cut his eyes to Alexis. “That was where you wound up, right? In the barrier?”

    Her defenses snapped up, born of the insecurities that had ruled too much of her life, and she nodded quickly. “Right. The barrier.”

    Strike glanced at Nate, who’d jammed his hands in his pockets and was staring over her head, as though determined to distance himself from the convo. “You, too?”

    “Maybe for a few seconds,” Nate allowed. “Then I got kicked back here, and she followed. Nothing complicated.”

    Only it was very, very complicated, Alexis thought, staring down at the statuette, sure now that the woman’s face was buried in her hands because she was weeping with heartache . . . and the gut-punching frustration of dealing with magic and men. The artifact had taken her to the barrier, yes, but it’d also taken her someplace else, someplace where she’d met and made love to a man who’d looked and acted like Nate, had made love like Nate, yet somehow wasn’t him.

    Her hair was dry, and she was wearing the jeans and loose shirt she’d put on before the meeting, not combat gear or wet skin. Yet her body echoed with the effects of having made love. More important, it echoed with having made love with him . As much as she’d wanted to hate him in the aftermath of their belly flop of a relationship, she’d been unable to forget that with him sex felt different, echoed different.

    Yet it’d either really, truly been a dream that belonged only to her . . . or for some reason he’d blocked it from his conscious mind. He wouldn’t lie about something that important. Hell, she was pretty sure he didn’t lie about anything; he was scrupulously honest, even when she hated hearing what he had to say.

    Which explained absolutely nothing.

    “What did you see?” Strike pressed her. “Did you speak with a nahwal ?”

    “No,” Alexis said automatically. Then she paused, remembering the multitonal voice that had shouted at the end. “At least, I don’t think I did.”

    The nahwals were sexless, desiccated entities that existed only within the barrier. They embodied the collective wisdom of each bloodline, and could choose to share that wisdom or not, depending on the circumstances. They never lied, but Jade’s research suggested they sometimes gave only partial answers, and that they seemed to have an agenda that even the earlier generations of Nightkeepers hadn’t understood. One thing was for sure: They spoke with two or more voices combined in harmonic descant.

    “You don’t