“Calm down, Zane. Drink your tea.”
So this was what shock felt like. Pure, buzzing, sucking-wind shock. I could only nod and blink. I blinked a lot, as if I were one blink away from all this being some bad nightmare I was going to wake from safe in my bed with Rosie next to me. I sipped mindlessly at the nasty tea.
Ms. Cab’s new gray eyes followed me.
Even though the tea tasted awful, it was making me feel calmer. “Your eyes still look creepy,” I said, and as soon as the words were out I could hardly believe I’d said something so rude. “Sorry. I—”
Ms. Cab adjusted the belt on her flowery dress and chuckled. “It’s a side effect of the healing tea. Makes you speak the truth. Now tell me every detail.”
My brain was all fuzzy, but I couldn’t stop the words from spilling from my mouth. I might’ve even told Ms. Cab that I thought Brooks was beautiful.
After I spat out the dreadful facts, she nodded and stood. “So it really has begun.”
I had a million and one
questions, but the only ones that mattered right now were focused on my dog. “I need to find Rosie. Why’d she disappear like that?”
Ms. Cab gave me a sad, kind smile, like she really did feel bad about Rosie. “Magic is so mercurial,” she said. “One can never fully gauge its temperament or understand its logic. But if a demon runner killed her, well, she belongs to the underworld now. Oh dear, you look green.”
The world tilted. “I don’t feel so good.” Then I tossed my cookies all over her tile floor.
She didn’t even seem to mind, simply patted me on the back. As she cleaned up the mess, she told me that the healing/truth tea makes everyone throw up.
When I was done I felt physically better but emotionally worse and more confused than ever. I sat down on the sofa and rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t get it. What do you have to do with all of this? Did you see that demon coming?” I swallowed the words I really wanted to say: And if you did, why didn’t you help me before my dog got killed?
Ms. Cab walked over to the bookcase and brought out a long scroll of yellowed paper from the shelf. “I’m a nik’ wachinel,” she said. “A Maya seer.”
Brooks had called the Great Soothsayer a seer, too….No wonder Ms. Cab worked as a psychic.
But why was I suddenly meeting all these Maya?
I thought about the prophecy: A powerful innocent with ancient blood… I’d been so focused on the word powerful, I hadn’t considered my having ancient blood. Was my dad Maya? Then I remembered the last thing Brooks said to me: You’re a supernatural, too. I didn’t even know what that meant.
My head spun as Ms. Cab continued. “It’s my job to watch over you, and… Don’t look at me like that.”
I was about to ask Like what? when she added, “So what if I don’t always see the future clearly? It’s these blasted eyes! I’m going to have to have a serious talk with my supplier.” She shook her head and her left eye drifted a little. “The point is, I came as soon as I got the vision of you fighting a demon runner. And as for how I could drive, my foresight might be compromised sometimes, but my regular eyesight is just fine, thank you very much.”
“You mean those white eyes are fake?” I couldn’t believe she’d fooled me all this time.
“I wear them in public, as a cover. Don’t want it getting around that I’m a nik’ wachinel—that could be dangerous.” She put the scroll down on the coffee table. “And they haven’t hurt me professionally. People seem to have more respect for blind psychics, for whatever reason.”
“Wait. Did you say you’re supposed to watch over me? No offense, Ms. Cab, but, um… you don’t seem like someone who could protect me.” I mean, she was almost as short as my mom, and older than her by like thirty years!
“You’re safe, aren’t you? At least for now.”
“Safe? That demon took Rosie….And it dragged me across the cave to make me set Pukeface free.”
“Yes, well, sometimes I can’t be sure if my visions are happening in real time or the distant future. It’s called a delayed response. But at least I found you when I did, or that girl would’ve had you releasing Ah-Puch into this world.”
“No.” I frowned. “Brooks was here to warn me, and to take the artifact far away. To stop the prophecy.”
“Nawals can be tricksters, Zane. They can’t be trusted.”
I thought about that. Brooks had said loyalty was in her DNA. She had helped me fight the demon runner… hadn’t she? But I still didn’t know much about her or her so-called quest. And if her quest was so important, why did she insist that we leave the cave? Had she felt so rotten about Rosie she couldn’t go on? Or was she really scared of more demon runners showing up?
Ms. Cab stuck her finger on her left eye and rolled it slightly until the iris was back in the center. “You might get sick again later, depending on how many lies are inside you,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she were describing flu symptoms.
“How many lies are in me? I haven’t lied!”