“What’s this?” Jade moved to the TV and raised a hand to trace the stylized figures of six men arranged in an asymmetrical pattern, two on the left, four on the right.

Five wore elaborate, feather-worked headdresses made from the skulls of jaguars and coyotes, along with protective shielding that covered only one side of their bodies. The sixth stood at the far right, apart from the others. Wearing a musician’s loincloth and lacking a headdress, he held a conch shell to his lips. Glyphs emerged from the crude instrument as though they were musical notes, though no such scheme had been identified for the ancient Maya. The paint colors ranged from pale mauve through rusty red to charcoal black. The earthy hues reflected on Jade’s face as she frowned, trying to parse out the glyphs.

“Don’t bother, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “The current theory is that the artist was illiterate, and just copied a bunch of cool-looking glyphs from other places. It’s just gibberish.” He didn’t say why he’d been studying the painting, why it was important to him.

Under other circumstances, with another woman, talking translation would’ve spoiled the mood. With Jade, though, it only served to heighten the sense of intimacy provided by the small, quiet cottage and the rust-red light. They shared a love of language, and although he couldn’t honestly say he was more attracted to her brains than her body, the two together had made a hell of an impression when he’d first met her.

Or rather, once he’d gotten past her habitual reserve, which came across as shyness, but he’d learned was her way of hiding in plain sight. They each suffered from their own cultural conditioning, he’d long ago realized, though hers had come from a too-demanding winikin and a set of writs rather than a disappointed family and the gods of football.

“There’s something …” She trailed off, still frowning at the glyphs, but then she shook her head and turned back to him, expression going from intrigued to warmth with a hint of nerves. “Never mind. We’re here for a different reason, aren’t we?”

Which was true—it wasn’t like this was just about sex, for either of them.

There was a far larger goal, one that hung over them, weighing on him as it had for nearly half a year now, only this time edged with a sharp sense of anticipation. Determination. He was getting his ass into the library, whatever it took. And if that meant that the Nightkeepers’ needs and his own desire to be part of things wound up getting all mixed together with the desire he felt for Jade— had felt for her from that first day they’d worked together— then that was part of the Nightkeepers’ culture, wasn’t it?

Sex was magic, magic was power, and power could save the world.