The Shadow Crosser (The Storm Runner 3)

“What are you doing in here?” Alana asked.

“Trying to find out more about your stone,” said Brooks. She gestured at the three levels of bookshelves. “But it would be a lot easier if you just came clean.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How about you tell us what the stone does exactly?”

The twins exchanged glances.

Finally, Adrik said miserably, “What does it matter? It’s gone now. We failed.”

Alana touched her brother’s arm. Her eyes flicked from face to face. “Okay, we’ll tell you.”

“It opens things,” Alana said.

“Things?” I asked.

“Like it’s a key?” Brooks tilted her head.

Adrik nodded. So that’s how they had opened the laundromat door.

Alana spoke quietly. “But I don’t see how that helps Zotz and Blood Moon.”

“How did your dad even get the stone?” I asked.

“The goddess of the underworld,” Alana said like I was slow on the uptake.

“You mean the amazing Ixtab!” Ren said excitedly.

Amazing Ixtab? I was about to argue but then picked up on what Ren was doing—she wanted the twins to feel good about their goddess mom, even though she ruled the land of the dead and was kind of sinister. Okay, a lot sinister.

Rosie threw back her head and howled at the sound of Ixtab’s name. Jealousy thrummed in my bones. Why was my dog so loyal to the goddess? Because Ixtab had saved her life and made her a hellhound? Or did this have to do with the orb Ixtab had planted in Rosie’s ear?

Brooks looked like she was trying to find a teaspoon of patience in this flood of chaos.

“The stone’s from Ixtab?” Hondo’s pacing came to a halt. “Not Ix-tub-tun?”

“We don’t know where Ixtab got it,” Adrik said. “We didn’t even know she was…” He took a shaky breath. “Come on, man. Our dad didn’t exactly say, ‘Hey, your mom is the goddess of the underworld’ like it was some bedtime story.”

Alana added, “He just said that our mom gave it to him. That it was a way for him to see her in case of an emergency. But he didn’t know how to use it, exactly. We thought we would come here and get answers, talk to someone in the know.”

That made sense. Ixtab was all about emergency measures—like the gateway to the underworld she had created for me but never gave me instructions for.

Adrik’s eyes went wide and he collapsed into a chair.

“What’s wrong?” Alana rushed over.

“I…I had a dream last night,” Adrik said.

“Are you being melodramatic again?” Alana narrowed her eyes, studying her brother.

“I thought we were talking about the stone?” Brooks whispered to me.

“I had forgotten the dream until now, when we started talking about Ixtab,” Adrik said. “Then it just popped into my head.”

“What happened in it?” Ren asked.

“It was right before Zane dragged me into his dream,” Adrik went on. “I was on a huge lumpy sofa that practically swallowed me up, and this bird-size butterfly swooped in from nowhere. It started talking to me…. It might have been Ixtab.” He shook his head.

“What did she say?” I asked.