I flung the fireball, letting out the searing heat inside me along with it….
It fizzled over the waves like a dying sparkler. I stared down at my hands in frustration, wondering if I’d ever master fire.
A few minutes later, Brooks landed and shifted back.
“I just flew around the island,” she said, catching her breath. “There’s definitely some kind of barrier I can’t get through, but…”
“What?”
“On the east side, I found a tiny hole…. I dragged my talon down the center, and it gave just a little.”
“Perfect!” I said. “So, we can rip through it?”
Brooks pressed her lips together. “Not exactly. It closed up instantly.”
“How…?”
My mind shuffled through all the possibilities: Ixtab put up the wall to (a) protect us, (b) keep us on the island, (c) keep the gods out, or (d) all of the above. Whatever her reason, it didn’t matter. I was getting off Isla Holbox, shadow magic or no shadow magic.
Ixtab had arranged something else, too. She’d transported a dormant volcano—my favorite, which I’d nicknamed the Beast—from where we used to live in New Mexico. She’d told me that inside it was my very own gateway to the underworld, in case of emergency. Ixtab had stressed (okay, maybe she’d threatened) emergency as in only if the gods descend and try to gouge out your eyes, so thankfully, I’d never had to use it. For half a second, I considered marching through that gateway to confront her directly, but then she’d know I was trying to leave and she might whip up even stronger magic to keep me here forever.
“Once they move Hurakan, we’ll be back to square one, and Jazz already risked so much to get this intel,” I said. “This might be my only chance to save my dad. We have to find a way off the island.”
“What about the gateway map?” Brooks’s eyes flashed with excitement.
Ms. Cab, my neighbor and a great Maya seer, had given us a magical map that revealed secret portals to other layers of the world. Correction—we’d borrowed it for our last quest, but we’d never been able to use it, because the lousy gods went and shut down all gateways.
“That’s it!” I practically shouted. “Maybe the shadow magic is only around the perimeter of the island and not any gateway!” The thought of outsma
rting Ixtab sent a thrill down my spine.
“I’ll check when we get home,” Brooks said, looking a little worried. “I just hope the shadow magic doesn’t jam the map’s frequency.”
“We’ll leave at dawn,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt.
“And if we can’t get through?”
I gritted my teeth. “Then we’ll storm hell.”
At the mention of hell, Rosie whined and danced on her paws.
“Yes, you can come, too, Rosie,” I said, patting her chest. “But you have to promise to listen. We have to work as a team. Got it?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but I wasn’t sure Rosie had ever forgiven me for letting her get turned into a hellhound. I mean, I was the one who had taken her into the volcano, where she’d been killed by a demon runner, sending her straight to the underworld. Deep down I was worried that some kind of trust had been broken between us. And that scared me.
At the same moment, Hondo called us from the back patio. “Yo, dinner’s up. I cooked, so you get dish duty, Diablo!”
I turned to the palapa-roofed house where we now lived—Brooks included, except she got the casita attached to the courtyard, because, as Mom said, Young girls need their privacy.
Mom was on the patio, setting straw place mats on the table. She smiled and waved at us. She was happy—happier than when we lived in New Mexico. She loved Isla Holbox, with its sandy streets, brightly colored cafés, open-air shops, and the fruit and vegetable market. Me? I liked the beach and the Yum Balam nature reserve (named after the Maya jaguar lord), which also happens to be where my volcano is.
Little did Mom know I was about to incinerate her happiness by taking off on a mission that could mess up everything. I told myself it would all be okay. We’d find a way off the island in the morning—rip a hole in the sky if we had to. We’d fly under the gods’ radar all the way to South Dakota, and everything would go as planned.
I was so wrong.
Brooks’s gateway map turned up nothing. Zilch. Nada. The nearest gateway was in Cancún, and that was beyond the shadow magic barrier.
I lay in bed that night with a supersize headache. I thought I’d gone through every option, but then my mind landed on another. The last one—the jade. I still had the jaguar tooth my dad had given me, hanging around my neck on a brown leather cord. The amulet was fused with the most ancient and potent magic in the universe. I could use the tooth to spirit-jump to the Empty, and also to grant any power to whoever I gave it to. That was the irony, I guess. The power came in giving it away, which, to be honest, was so ungodlike.