“What’s that now?” Quint leaned forward. “When would be therighttime?”
“How did you understand KuTu so well?”Angélica asked, a hint of suspicion in her tone. She reached slowly toward Daisy’s arm. “His English is pretty rough.”
Daisy turned suddenly, her forehead lined. She caught Angélica’s hand, using it to tug her closer. “He wasn’t speaking English,” she whispered, her gaze unblinking for a couple of beats. Then she stole the cane away and smiled with her usual sunshiny laughter. “Touché, Dr. García.”
Okay, Quint was certain of two things at the moment. One, he never wanted to come back inside this damned bat hotel. Two, that wasn’t Daisy standing next to the wall. Well, not Daisy on the inside, anyway. Someone else was handling the puppet strings.
“I didn’t realize you knew any Mayan,” Juan said, a slight frown on his face as he looked back and forth between his daughter and Daisy.
“Oh, I’m just full of surprises, Juan. And I’m happy to share more with you later.” She pointed the cane toward the exit. “But for now, we need to leave posthaste.”
Quint stood, hunching again. He was ready to follow any order that had to do with them returning to the land of circling vultures and butterflies.
“Why so commanding,Daisy?” Angélica asked, her gaze narrowed while her fingers brushed over the locket hanging around her neck. “That’s not your usual tack.”
“Because I have a gut feeling that KuTu was right about leaving while the going is good.” She turned Angélica around and used the cane to nudge her toward Juan and Quint. “And then there’s the problem with the whistling.”
Juan held out his hand toward Daisy. “What problem?”
“It’s getting louder.” She handed him the cane.
Quint couldn’t hear any whistling at all.
“Vámonos,” she said, shooing them ahead of her. “Or poor Esteban will keel over from worry, and we’ll have to do some sacrificial bloodletting to convince the gods we still need him alive.”
Part Six: THE UNDERWORLD
“In the Maya religion, there is the belief that the gods can give humans many gifts, but only if the humans offer the gods something in return, such as blood—the source of human vitality. Royal blood is even better.”
~Dr. Marianne García, Mesoamerican Archaeologist
Chapter Twenty-One
Not Daisy!
Under the light of the nearly full moon, Angélica stared at the two words Quint had written on a piece of paper earlier today. He’d passed her the note after leaving the bat-house before he’d headed off with her father to take pictures of the crumbling temple next door.
He was right. That wasn’t Daisy.
Angélica looked up from the piece of paper to focus on the campfire in front of her. It snapped and crackled, periodically sending a plume of smoke in her direction along with waves of heat. She’d rather have sat in front of a fan inside the communications tent, but the fire pit was one of the few places in camp where she could be alone this evening.
As she watched the flames, her thoughts returned to the moment in the bat-house when Daisy had placed her hands on the block wall. It was then that Angélica had realized exactly who had been playing puppeteer—her mom. From what she’d witnessed to date, tactile discovery methods were not typical for Daisy, who often zeroed in on buried artifacts like she had some sort of built-in radar.
Marianne had slipped up in other ways, including her use of “posthaste” and “vámonos.” Too many times during her childhood, Angélica had been herded by her mother with those prompts, both of which she’d not heard Daisy say even once before today.
It was a wonder her father hadn’t caught on to the subterfuge. If he had, he’d given a great performance of being oblivious.
Unfortunately, Angélica hadn’t had any time alone with Daisy during the course of the afternoon, so she couldn’t reach out to her mother again—not that she knew how to conjure a ghost. So manyquestions had bubbled to the surface since Marianne had supposedly come to their rescue at KuTu’s bidding.
For starters, what had really spurred her mother to join them inside the bat-house? Had Marianne seen something … or someone … outside the ruin and rushed in to save them?
And why risk channeling around the man she’d been married to for decades? Had danger truly been part of the equation? Or was it simply an opportunity to interact with her lost love?
Angélica wadded up Quint’s piece of paper and tossed it into the fire, watching the edges curl. Tiny burning bits of paper floated upward, heading for the stars. The same celestial bodies that had enthralled the Maya for hundreds—no, make that thousands—of years.
If only the stars could give her the answers she needed about this damned place. With her desperation doubling by the day, Angélica would take any clues, big or small, that might explain what the hell had happened here long ago.
She sighed, trying to rub away tension holding court on her forehead.
