“Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing wants to eat you. I just need to draw out your life force.”
Oh. Well, that was so much better. “Whoa! That sounds bad.”
Ixtab stroked her chin. “Haven’t you learned by now that if I wanted you dead, all it would take is a simple blink? Maybe two or three, but it would be easy, especially since you’re trespassing in my kingdom. Do as I say. This is the only way to strengthen your connection to the godborns.”
“Right, thanks for the life-drain offer and all, but I think…no.”
She sighed, and a crown of blue fire floated above Ixtab’s head. The gold snakes in the boat’s frame began to hiss, and with a single wave of her hand, I was lifted off my feet and…you guessed it.
Chucked into Blood River.
The water took hold of me as if it had hands and teeth. I couldn’t move an inch. A slow panic began to wind up my feet. It climbed my legs, coiling tightly. The jade tooth seared hot against my skin, vibrating stronger than it ever had before.
Hurakan? I asked in my mind.
My lungs constricted. Air. I needed air.
Ixtab’s voice broke through. River of Blood, tell me, is he the one?
The one? I could feel my secrets (yes, you read that right) peeling away from me like sunburned skin, and there was nothing I could do to hold on to them.
Is he the one? Ixtab asked again, more forcefully this time.
The one who ditched school seventeen times? The one who busted Hondo’s taillight with his cane (total accident, BTW)? The one who stole a pack of Sour Patch Kids from the dollar store? The one who thought he could rescue his dad? The one who…I fought to keep this secret hidden, but it was like holding my breath. Eventually, I had to let it go.
The one who almost kissed Brooks last month at the bonfire?
Emphasis on almost. It didn’t happen, okay?
My heartbeat began to slow, my limbs drooped with fatigue. My storm runner leg pulsed with electrical shocks like it was fighting off death. As I slipped into nothingness, the last thing I heard was the water’s rasping voice. It spoke in a strange language I’d never heard, but somehow, I understood it.
He is the one, my queen.
* * *
When I woke up, I was back on Ixtab’s rooftop patio, lying on a lounge chair with striped orange cushions that smelled like they’d just been sprayed with that citrus-scented tire cleaner Hondo likes. The sky was dark, and strings of tiny lights hung across the jade trellis above me. I had the same bared-soul feeling I had when Mom made me go to confession to tell Father Monroe all my sins.
Ixtab sat next to me, flipping through a fashion magazine. “Really, Zane. If you’re going to pass out, save it for something big, not a simple life draining.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, then scanned my body for any traces of blood. Thankfully, there were none. “You pushed me in! That was so not cool. Those were my secrets!”
“I needed to see inside your heart and mind, and that meant I had to trick your body into thinking it was dying so it would let go of the information I requested. Don’t worry, I only examined what I needed. I left your little heart secrets intact,” she said with a knowing smile that made my cheeks blaze.
“Or you could’ve just asked me.” I swung my legs over the edge of the chair. “What time is it? I have to go.”
Ixtab tossed her magazine aside. “If my wretched watch were working, I could tell you.”
“Why did you ask ‘Is he the one?’”
She hesitated a second too long, which told me that what was about to come out of her mouth was a lie at worst, a half-truth at best. “I needed to be sure you are the right one to try to rescue the godborns. No sense sending you into a death trap.”
A terrible heat raced up my spine. “How am I supposed to rescue them if we don’t know exactly where they are? I mean, New Mexico’s a big place.”
Ixtab waved her hand through the air and a gold lipstick tube appeared. She uncapped it and put on some of the red stuff. “You’ll just have to work with the details you have. Did the image tell you anything specific?”
I considered the rolling gray-green hills with outcrops of deep-red rocks and the flecks of floating cotton. “They…they remind me of the southern part of the state.”
“That’s something,” she muttered. “We have no idea how the godborns are being treated, or what’s happening to them, so you must hurry. For all we know, they could be on death’s door.”