By the time we finished eating, Mom looked exhausted. “We should all get some rest. We can talk more in the morning.” She turned to Brooks. “You’ll stay here tonight.”
What? A girl spending the night? In my house? Then I realized I actually had no idea where Brooks went whenever she took off. When she agreed to stay over, my breath hitched in my throat. I offered my room, but Mom said Brooks could have hers.
“I’ll sleep in the chair in Zane’s room,” Mom said when Brooks tried to argue. “To make sure…” She hesitated. “Just in case.”
“I can take care of myself, Mom!”
She messed up my hair playfully. “Maybe I want you to take care of me,” she said with a smile.
While Mom did the dishes, I went to find Brooks. She was sitting on the edge of Mom’s bed, kicking her feet. I briefly thought about what Ms. Cab had said about not being able to trust her. But she’d just saved our butts, and evil people didn’t do that sort of thing. “Brooks?”
She stared straight ahead with a faraway look in her eyes. “Whoever sent that alux is going to figure out it didn’t succeed.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Someone wants to stop you from releasing Ah-Puch, and they’re willing to kill you to do it.”
“The demon runners
are rooting for me to do it, and some mysterious person wants to prevent me from doing it. Who do you think it could be?” I swallowed the lump in my throat, thinking about all the creatures in my Maya book, trying to decide which was the least evil.
“No idea,” Brooks said. “Ah-Puch has a lot of enemies. It could be anyone.”
I was sort of hoping she could help me narrow it down through the process of elimination. Then at least I’d know what I was dealing with and where I stood. But, truth be told, I didn’t even know where I stood with Brooks. “How did you find out about the prophecy in the first place?”
Brooks’s mouth was a thin line. “Secrets like that are hard to keep.”
That’s how it was in school, too. Someone would tell a secret at lunch and by the end of the day, the whole school knew about it. I picked mindlessly at a chip of paint on the doorjamb.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell.” She looked miserable, like she wanted to break that promise. “I… I would if I could.”
I didn’t know what to believe. On the one hand, Brooks acted like a friend most of the time, but she was so secretive and mysterious. On the other hand, Ms. Cab had warned me not to trust her. Why would she tell me nawals are tricksters if it wasn’t true?
“You saved my mom. So… um… thanks.” Then our eyes met. It was really hard to concentrate when she looked at me like that, all soft and understanding. I cleared my throat. “We have to stop Ah-Puch.”
“We will.”
The way she said it, with all that determination in her voice, made my spine tingle. I tapped my fingers on the door and said good night.
Back in my room, I sat on my bed and pulled out the Maya book again. There were so many gods, legends, and creatures, and all of them had different names and stories, depending on the Maya region of either Mexico or Central America. Mom had said my dad was from the Yucatán, but nothing in the book was categorized by geography. I fell back against my pillow in frustration. My muscles ached. My eyes burned. I closed them for a second….
When I opened them again, it was already two in the afternoon. The eclipse was only three hours away. How had I slept for so long?
I stumbled into the living room, where Hondo was watching TV, as usual.
“Where’s Mom?”
Hondo didn’t look up. “Had to give the cops a statement. Then she had something else to take care of.”
“Take care of?”
“Yeah. She said she’d be back tomorrow and you’re supposed to stay home with me. Don’t worry, kid. I’ll make sure you don’t starve.”
Sudden gusts rattled the windows. Thunder crashed in the distance.
“Why didn’t she wake me up?”