Lita leans forward, eyes wide, as Xotichl shakes her head and says, “Lita—honestly! I can’t believe you sometimes.” She mumbles something unintelligible under her breath and tucks a lock of light brown hair behind her ear.
“Well, was he?” Lita insists, ignoring Xotichl as she returns her focus to me. “I mean, since there’s no cute boys here, I was thinking maybe…”
“You were thinking what? That you’re going to move to the Upperworld so you can check out the hotties?” Xotichl groans, feigning complete exasperation that doesn’t hold for very long before it turns into a grin.
“Well, when you put it like that…” Lita folds her arms across her chest and frowns, as the two of them go at it like an old married couple. Their ease with each other making me wonder just how long I was gone, how much I might’ve missed.
“To answer your question, he had platinum hair, fair skin, and lavender eyes.”
“Seriously?” Lita squints as her lips twist to the side, presumably trying to assemble those pieces in her mind.
“You met your spirit guide?” The folds around Paloma’s eyes deepen.
“I’m not sure. He never did say. He referred to himself as a Mystic. That’s the most I ever got out of him. Though he failed to explain what that is.”
Paloma assumes a thoughtful expression. “The Upperworld is populated by Mystics,” she says. “Spirit guides and Mystics—and sometimes th
ey’re one and the same. Though Mystics are thought to be even more powerful than guides. The tales of their magick are legendary.” She reaches toward the buckskin pouch and key at my chest, determined to remove them in order to better examine me, but I clasp my hand over hers before she can get very far.
“Please leave them,” I say. “I’ve been too long without them.”
She tips her head in assent and arranges the cords so the talismans hang down my back. “The wound is serious,” she murmurs, along with a few choice words in Spanish I can’t understand.
“You should see what he did to my insides,” I quip. “He sliced my heart nearly in two. I truly was on the verge of death, when Axel restored my breath, took me to the Upperworld, and used some of that legendary magick to sew me back together again.” I glance at my friends, noting the way Xotichl leans toward me, as Lita looks on in horrified fascination. Unable to discern what they find more disturbing—my disfiguring scar or the detached way in which I relay the events.
“I will make a poultice,” Paloma says. “Something to help the wound fade.”
She struggles to her feet, about to head for her office, when I say, “There’s really no need. I prefer to keep the scar.”
She looks at me. They all look at me. Three sets of eyes bearing the same shade of concern.
“Trust me, you definitely want it to fade,” Lita says. “Take it from someone who has the memory of Cade branded on my brain. If I could erase it, I would.”
“I prefer to remember,” I say. “If nothing else, it’ll remind me to never leave myself vulnerable around a Richter again.”
“You seriously think you need to be reminded of that? After all that you’ve been through?” Xotichl tilts her chin in my direction.
“Okay, then I’ll use it to remind me of my success,” I say, convinced there’s no way to argue with that. “It’ll remind me of how despite what Cade did, I still managed to avert the prophecy and save Dace’s life.”
The second the words leave my lips they fall silent. Each of them carefully averting their gaze to look just about anywhere but at me. Lita examines her hands, as Xotichl tucks her chin to her chest and fools with the hem of her sweater. While Paloma, after a few moments of silence, looks upon me with deep grieving eyes.
“What is it?” I say, voice rising with suspicion. “What’s going on? Somebody tell me what happened—where’s Dace?”
“Nieta—” Paloma starts.
But Xotichl cuts in, saying, “Daire, that wasn’t the prophecy.”
“Of course it was!” I look at them like they’ve all gone mad. “I know exactly how the prophecy went. I memorized it word for word! The other side of midnight’s hour strikes a herald thrice rung—Seer, Shadow, Sun—together they come—Sixteen winters hence—the light shall be eclipsed—leaving darkness to ascend beneath a sky bleeding fire!” I recite the prediction so quickly the words all blend together. “If that wasn’t the prophecy, I don’t know what is! Me, Dace, and Cade—we were all born on the same day, just after midnight, sixteen years ago. Seer, Shadow, and Sun—that’s code for the three of us. The sky bled fire during our sixteenth winter, on Christmas Eve. And, in the end, Cade killed me. Only he didn’t. He just thinks that he did.” I pause, needing a moment to replenish my breath before I go on to say, “The sky was bleeding fire! I know you all saw it—there was no way you could’ve possibly missed it!”
“While we definitely saw it,” Xotichl says. “Thing is—it wasn’t a natural event.”
My gaze darts between them, having no idea what that means.
“The timing was right,” Paloma says in a cool, calm, authoritative voice. “But Cade was too impatient to allow it to unfold on its own, so he forced it into being. Cade made the sky burn.”
“I … I don’t understand.” My voice is distant, as though it belongs to someone else. “I don’t get it,” I repeat, though the truth is, I’m beginning to.
A forgotten space in my memory has now cleared, revealing something Cade said just after confronting me in the Lowerworld. Just after I taunted him for being stupid enough to virtually firebomb his own town.