“Exactly. His house is filled with rare artifacts.” And that included the whistle of death her mom had taken back with her.
After wrestling with whether or not she should turn in the whistle along with the conch-shell trumpets, Angélica decided itmight be safer to keep that artifact hidden for the time being so nobody accidentally opened up another walled-off entrance toXibalbaand called upCamazotzor more of his bat army in the future. Marianne and Quint had both agreed.
“Ohhh!” Quint sat upright. “That’s where I know Fernel from. About a year ago, I read an article when I was researching your ex. In it, Fernel was defending his right to own artifacts procured prior to the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, even though many of the pieces in his collection likely had been acquired by looting done on public lands.”
“That asshole.” Maybe Dr. Fernel had gotten his just rewards at Site 5 after all, at least according to the Maya gods. “It’s a shame it took so long for laws to be put in place to stop that sort of treasure hunting, especially since the antiquities black market was probably the source of his collection.” She reached for her glass of coffee. “Mom also told me that she’d like us to fly up there when we have a chance. She wants help going through his treasure trove to see if there is something that can be salvaged for history’s sake.”
“Marianne is coming back down here, though, right?”
Angélica nodded. “I already told Dad that Dr. Fernel is moving to this area and would like to keep working with us.”
“Don’t you think he’ll find that odd, being that you were opposed to having Fernel on site initially?”
She smiled coyly at him. “I wasn’t thrilled about you being there at first, either, but now look at you. You’re in my bed every night with no plans to leave.”
He squinted back at her. “That’sourbed, woman. Especially since you got rid of that frilly comforter.”
She grinned. “Now that I have a hot demon in my bed, who needs covers?”
“That’s right, boss lady, and don’t you forget it.”
“I’d like to bring Daisy back again,” she said, switching to what she’d been thinking about before she’d read Quint’s article. “But now I’m worried how Mom will feel about having Daisy there since Dad seems to be warming up to her even more.”
“Oof, that is a pickle.” His brows pinched. “I mean, Daisy is fun and good at finding things, plus she knows the history of the Maya well. And your mom, well, her knowledge and help will be great, andshe can work at proving her theories now so you can start focusing on advancing your own career. But Marianne being inside of Fernel for however long this lasts makes things even messier than when she was a ghost who could channel through Daisy to be near your dad.”
Angélica groaned at the even more bizarre love triangle they now had.
“We need to get used to calling Marianne ‘Fernel’ around Juan,” Quint said.
“Right, and be careful of our pronouns. I don’t know if Dad knowing about all of this would be good or bad.”
He rubbed his jaw. “There might come a time in the future that we should let Juan decide if it’s good or bad. If I were him and I had lost you, but I had a chance to sort of have you back, I’d take it in a heartbeat.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Let’s see how things go for a bit. Dad believed me when I told him we were closing the dig site for the time being due to a lack of finding enough to keep spending time and money on it, which was partly true. Someday, maybe I’ll tell him the rest of the story behind us hightailing it out of there.”
“What about Pedro?” he asked. “Are you going to tell him the truth about Marianne?”
“I don’t know. He’s still pretty flabbergasted about the huge bats, same as Bronko, but both of them agreed to keep that part of the tale of finding Fernel under wraps.”
“You told Pedro the screeching he heard back in the tunnel was just another bat, right?”
She nodded. “But I’m not sure he believed it, especially after I explained to him why Daisy called you ‘Kimi’ that day at the wall, and you had asked if it was Mom channeling through her. Plus, I caught him staring at Mom—I mean Fernel—several times while we were packing up camp. Once, when I asked him what he was thinking, he said that Fernel reminded him of ‘someone’ because of a few traits that were new since the night at the bat-house.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way Fernel started sitting with one leg bent under him while at supper and spun his spoon on the table after finishing. Both were things my mom did repeatedly.”
“Did Pedro say who Fernel reminded him of?”
She shook her head. “And I didn’t press him.” She finished her coffee, chewing on a small ice cube. “Teodoro figured it out, though, before I had a chance to corner him and explain anything. I assumed he knew due to being a shaman and the ancient spirits whispering in his ear, or something along those lines. But he said he knew for sure as soon as Mom asked if María would make somexocolatlwith extra cinnamon.”
“The chocolate drink she’d made for us before?”
“Yep. That was one of Mom’s favorite desserts, specifically with the extra cinnamon. Plus, Mom screwed up and said, ‘Que sueñes con los angelitos, Teo,’ before she went to bed her first night at the camp as Fernel.”
“Which means ‘Sleep with the angels’?”
“Close. It’s ‘Dream with the angels.’ That was something my mom would say to him each night while on a dig.”
