Ren patted my arm. “Zane, you have to stay focused.”
“But…” I felt my insides slowly collapsing. Rosie grunted a trail of smoke like she was telling me Ren was right. Thinking about Brooks hating me wasn’t going to help me stay clear-headed.
Ah-Puch stretched his arms in front of him and popped his creaky elbows. “That gateway took too much energy. I need to eat. Definitely no fish. Preferably, a rib eye. Extra rare.”
Rosie licked her chops and whined at the mention of steak.
That’s when I noticed the dimming sky. A giant fist got lodged in my throat. “The sun’s setting! Wasn’t it just dawn?”
“Yes, well, I had to take an under-the-radar gateway, and those can be real time sucks,” Ah-Puch said like it was no big deal that we’d lost a whole day. So now I was down to two days and the few hours I had left tonight.
“We didn’t have that time to waste!” I growled.
“That’s what I said,” Ah-Puch agreed. “Time to eat.”
“I said time to waste, not —”
“Where exactly are we?” Ren asked.
“They call this paradise Cabo San Lucas,” Ah-Puch said. “Well, that’s not the true name, but history is quite the liar sometimes, isn’t she? Just ask the ghosts of the forgotten Pericú people.”
“Can we just get to the Fire Keeper?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.
A few tourists cruised by, followed by a skinny dude on a bike pulling a covered carriage. “¿Quieren un aventón?”
“We don’t need a ride,” I told him, waving him past. “Look,” I said to Ah-Puch. “The deal was to take us to the Fire Keeper. Today! So, where is he?”
“Do you mean in this exact moment?”
My hands trembled with the craving to throttle him. “You get what I mean.”
“How should I know?” he said. “Give me a break here. You asked to come to Land’s End in Cabo San Lucas and I delivered—flawlessly, I might add. Now we just have to narrow things down a bit. Not to worry.”
I was definitely going to strangle the god of death. “Then I guess you’re going back to the Empty, because the deal was to take me to the Fire Keeper today.”
“Then I have until midnight, don’t I?” There was a challenge in Ah-Puch’s eyes that reminded me of the powerhouse he used to be.
“Can’t you call up one of your spies in Xib’alb’a?” Ren asked him.
“I have to be careful how I communicate. If the gods find out a part of me is free…”
I didn’t catch the tail end of Ah-Puch’s sentence, because a loud and terrible cry came from the palm tree above our heads. I swung my gaze upward. Clinging to the trunk was a blue-haired monkey. His mouth was shaped like a giant O and his scream sounded like a mix of gnashing teeth and a horrifying howl.
I jumped back in case the thing was about to leap onto my head, and nearly tumbled into the water.
“What’s wrong?” Ren said, following my gaze.
“That…” I said, pointing up.
“The tree?”
“Ren, the monkey. He’s pretty hard to miss.”
“Zane, there is no monkey. Are you feeling okay? Maybe your blood sugar is dropping, or you’re having hallucination side effects. You should eat something.”
Was I hallucinating? But the monkey looked so real, and that screech…Ah-Puch lifted his gaze and I was sort of hoping he’d point and say Hey, check out the blue primate, but his eyes didn’t register that he’d seen the monkey either. And then the thing vanished into a cloud of yellowish smoke. I didn’t even have time to register that, because Ah-Puch sniffed the air hungrily and announced, “I smell fresh blood.”
Rosie butted my ribs as Ah-Puch started to take off. I grabbed the god by his scrawny arm, stopping him in his tracks. “I said no killing or devouring, remember?”