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you put it on the AmEx.” He paused. “Jox is going to be pissed, you know.”

    That surprised a bubble of laughter out of her, one that threatened to turn into a sob. The golden light powered up and the hum changed its note as Strike found the way home. The transport magic built, crowding them closer together. She found herself standing too near Nate, their bodies touching in too many places, reminding her of what they’d had, what they’d lost. That memory, and the relief of being safe, was enough to unlock the words she wouldn’t have said otherwise: “Thanks. I owe you one.”

    He looked away, jaw locked, and as the teleport swept them up, the last thing she heard was his clipped response: “Don’t kid yourself. I came for the statuette.”

CHAPTER TWO
    Located in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, the Nightkeepers’ training compound was hidden within a box canyon offshoot of Chaco Canyon, deep in Pueblo country. A scattering of outbuildings served various functions, ranging from the steel-span training hall where the Nightkeepers practiced their magic, to the handful of small cottages that had once been used by Nightkeeper families and now stood empty, save for one. A single huge tree grew near the training hall, in the rectangular ash-shadow where the Great Hall had burned twenty years earlier. The main mansion itself was a big, multiwinged monster of sandstone and shaped concrete. Since being reopened seven months earlier it’d been largely renovated; some rooms had been fully done over, while others remained little more than white-painted drywall and carpet or hardwood flooring.
    Strike, Nate, and Alexis materialized in the sunken main room of the mansion, which was a wide expanse of wood, chrome, and glass furnished with fat clubfooted couches and chairs. In the center of the space the royal winikin , Jox, had cleared a landing pad after the third coffee table had bitten the dust following Strike’s ’port magic, which typically returned him home a foot or two up in the air.
    The three of them landed with a jolt, and Alexis sagged against Nate. He propped her up by looping an arm around her waist, and tried to throttle the anger that rode him hard, the sharp pissed-offedness that she’d been in the line of fire. He might not want to be mated to her, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, either.

    “I’ll take her.” Izzy stepped in and practically dragged Alexis away from him, glaring daggers, like he’d been the one to put her in danger.

    He held up both hands in mock surrender. “By all means.”

    Carlos was there too, he saw, and Jox: three winikin to look after the three returning Nightkeepers. Each of them wore the aj-winikin glyph, which roughly translated to I am your servant , along with small bloodline glyphs, one for each living member of the Nightkeeper bloodline they served. Jox was the only surviving winikin with two bloodline members to protect: Strike and his sister, Anna. Carlos wore two different glyphs: the coyote for Sven, who had been his original charge, and the hawk for Nate, who had become Carlos’s problem by default.

    Poor bastard.

    Nate waved off his winikin when Carlos showed signs of hovering. “I’m fine.”

    “You need to eat something,” Carlos countered, “or you’ll fall over.” Magic was a huge energy sink; in the aftermath of major spell casting, the magi needed to pack in some serious calories and rest, not necessarily in that order.

    “Fine. Whatever.” Nate focused on Strike. “We need to bring the others up to speed on what just happened.”

    “No shit, Sherlock.” The king strode off, firing orders as he went. “You round them up while I get Leah. Meet me back here in five, so we can discuss what just went down.”

    We’ve got company, Nate thought. That was what’d gone down.

    The Nightkeepers were no longer the only magi on the block. The new guy had mad skills and looked like he’d been practicing way longer than