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So, of course that was the one we went through.

We landed in a big room with a window overlooking some kind of massive stadium. All the seats outside were filled, but I couldn’t hear the crowd at all. “Where are we?”

“Hellhound

races,” Quinn said. “This is Ixtab’s skybox, and that’s a one-way mirror, so no one can see you. Oh, and it’s also soundproof, so no one can hear you scream.”

“Great,” I muttered as I looked around. The room was decorated like the goddess’s private chamber, where she had once revealed to me that she’d tricked the Maya gods into thinking I was dead. There were black leather wingback chairs and gray velvet sofas with fluffy pillows. The walls were covered in gold wallpaper, but unlike in her chamber, there were half a dozen painted portraits of hellhounds. I held my breath, looking for Rosie’s face. Thankfully, she wasn’t among them.

“Okay, my job is done,” Quinn said. “See ya.”

“Wait!” I clutched Fuego. “Why are you leaving?”

She glared at me. “Because I am a warrior of the White Sparkstriker tribe. I am too valuable to serve as your escort to the underworld. And I don’t want to be here when you tell Ixtab all the clues you missed on your little godborn tour.”

Here’s the thing about Quinn. She’s like a pot of water. She can be cool and still, or hot and bubbling. I got the feeling that if I pressed her further, she would boil over and scald me.

After she left, I stood there alone. You have no idea how awful it is to hang out in Ixtab’s underworld chambers waiting for her to arrive. It’s a gazillion times worse than sitting in the principal’s office, knowing she’s going to waltz in any second with an exasperated attitude and a million detention slips.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

Slowly, I turned to find Ixtab standing a couple of feet behind me. She looked taller, probably because she had on white platform sneakers—like fresh-out-of-the-box white. She wore red skinny leather pants and a white silk blouse with tiny skulls embroidered on the collar. Her gold earrings dangled low enough to touch the skulls.

“Hey,” I managed.

She stared at me, unblinking.

Was I supposed to say something else? How’s the weather in the underworld this time of year? How have you been? How do you keep your sneakers so clean?

She eyed me up and down so hard I swear my skin was going to burn off any second. My hands started to sweat.

“You’re taller,” she finally said with a glower that could shrink a dinosaur to the size of an ant. “And extremely unkempt.”

I wanted to say, And you look supremely angry/bitter/hostile, which means you’re probably going to skin me alive for something I don’t even know I did, and couldn’t you have come to talk to me on the beach, because I’d much rather die in the sun than in hell. Instead, I word-vomited all over the plush rug.

“I didn’t know Ik was a rat. I don’t know when she was turned or who turned her. She never let on—I mean, there weren’t any signs or clues, other than the whole thing about the Statue of Liberty being made by a demon, but by then it was too late, and she just turned on me, almost killed me.” I was hoping that last bit would get me an ounce of sympathy.

To my right, a big TV screen dropped from the ceiling and blinked awake with an image of the racetrack below.

“Welcome to the two thousandth anniversary of Xib’alb’a’s hellhound races,” an announcer boomed. “Plague, Misery, and Scab Face are the front-runners, so place your bets, beg fortune to smile on you, and—”

With the wave of her hand, Ixtab muted the voice. The goddess waltzed over to the sofa, plunked down, and began flipping through a home design magazine. “Tell me about the godborns.”

“Uh, well, we found them all, and they all agreed to go to the World Tree.” I forced a smile, thinking that must count for something. “Sixty-five in total, and—”

“I am completely uninterested in one through sixty-three.” She looked up. “Tell me about the last two.”

“Oh, Adrik and Alana?”

“Really, Zane. Do you always have to state the obvious?” Ixtab stood and, with a perfectly manicured hand, motioned for me to continue.

I felt myself start to loosen up a little as I told her every detail, including how the twins had stolen something from the antiques shop. I kept my eyes on the screen as half a dozen red-eyed hellhounds took their places at the starting gate. Man, they looked gigantic and fierce and out for blood.

Ixtab came closer, so close I could smell her perfume, which was clean and spicy and made me think of oranges. “Did they exhibit any godborn gifts?”

I thought about the answer before I spoke, just to make sure I didn’t give her even a speck of false information. “Uh…” My brain froze up. “It was dark.”

“And you see perfectly well in the dark.”


Tags: J.C. Cervantes, Jennifer Cervantes The Storm Runner Fantasy