“I’m almost done,” I said, writing the last sentence from the ash whisper: and the great land formed from the belly of the sea, glittering with gold. I set down my pen and scratched my dog as her eyes rolled back with pleasure.
“She’s a fine hellhound,” Ixtab said as she walked into the temple.
I blinked. “You’re…you’re you again!” I said excitedly. “Are all the gods back to normal?”
With a groan, Rosie jumped to her feet and went over to Ixtab, nudging the goddess with her nose.
“Only a few of us,” Ixtab said, patting Rosie’s chest.
“Is my dad—”
“No,” she said. “He’s still an annoying teen, as is Ah-Puch. I really hope they return to godly status soon, because I’m tired of looking at a bunch of kids.”
Rosie pawed Ixtab gently like she was trying to tell her something. My heart sank. What if she wanted to go back to Xib’alb’a with Ixtab? The goddess nodded at my dog, then zeroed in on me. “Are you going to the fiesta dressed like that?”
I glanced down at my SHIHOM uniform. “Isn’t everyone?”
“Didn’t you get the memo?” Ixtab said. “The air spirits are giving everyone a makeover. Well, as much as they can, given that you all are disgustingly part human.”
“I’m good with how I look.”
Ixtab smirked. “I came to say good-bye.”
“You’re not coming to the party?”
“I have an underworld to repair and demons to punish,” she said. “And then there are the sobrenaturales who never got Itzamna’s message. So I’m the only one capable of improving emergency response systems.” She shook her head regretfully.
“But Adrik and Alana—”
“Will be just fine without me,” she said, shifting her gold bracelets up and down her arm. “Besides, I already spoke to them, not that it’s any of your business. They told me how brave you were, how…Well, it doesn’t matter. You were there for them. So I have a parting gift for you.”
“A gift?”
Just then, a circle of light surrounded Rosie—pink and gold with flecks of deep green. Oh no. What was Ixtab doing to her this time?
In a flash, Rosie was transformed.
My heart leaped into my throat.
It was my dog! My boxmatian!
“Rosie?” My voice squeaked, but I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees as my dog bounded toward me, tongue hanging out of her mouth. I had missed that sweet face, that medium-size wiggly body. She sat down on her haunches and licked my face and neck excitedly, pawing my chest with her one front paw.
Tears filled my eyes. I looked up at Ixtab. “Thank you.”
“She’s still a hellhound,” she said coldly. “Can change whenever she needs to. I couldn’t risk her being defenseless, now, could I?”
I didn’t care what Ixtab’s reasoning was—or whether it was a thank-you to me, to Rosie, or the whole universe. I had my dog back. I had Rosie!
Dance music boomed across the jungle as Rosie and I made our way to the party. She leaped and loped like she had missed her old dog self, too.
Green and blue lights twinkled in the trees to the precise beat of the music. Monkeys leaped from branch to branch above me, smacking their lips and jabbering.
We came to the edge of the clearing, and I blinked in surprise. I didn’t know the god of death had it in him, but man, the place looked awesome. New thatched-roof huts lined the borders, each lit up with torches and filled with tables of food and drink. The first two shacks were full of godborns. At least I thought they were godborns—it was hard to tell them apart from the teen gods.
At the center of the clearing was a glass dance floor with flashing blue, pink, and green lights. No one was dancing, but some kids were eyeing the space like they might take the risk. To my right was a waterfall, tumbling in slow motion so you could see winged golden fish leaping out of it in a coordinated dance.
Rosie startled as teen Pacific came up behind me. “Aren’t you going to join the party?”
I patted my dog’s head, hardly believing she was mine again. “Aren’t you?” I asked as I leaned against Fuego and took it all in, thinking how differently things could have turned out. It led to thoughts about snags in destinies, and how I might have ruined mine when I was inside of K’iin. Before I knew it, I was spilling my worries to Pacific about getting snagged in my destiny thread.
“Ah,” she said. “And you didn’t want to see?”
I shook my head. “Not if I couldn’t change it.”
“What if it was a good snag?” she asked. “A twist in the road that leads you to something you might have never found otherwise.”
A good snag? “Oh…I just assumed…”
Rosie settled onto her side and began licking her paws. Have I mentioned how beautiful she is?
“Maybe you should stop assuming.”
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I turned my gaze back to the party with a totally different outlook. Good snag. I liked the sound of that.
“And what about Ren?” I asked. “The favor she owes K’iin.”
“She made an honest deal, so that will be up to K’iin to collect when the time comes,” she said casually. “But perhaps I can help alleviate the weight of the favor.”
“That’s good,” I said. I mean, who wants to owe a mighty all-seeing calendar anything?
Ixchel and Ah-Puch were barking orders at the earth and air spirits, who had given up their strike when the gods gave them a raise and more vacation time. But clearly the spirits hadn’t earned any more respect.
Speaking of spirits, I kept my promise to Kip and asked the gods to give him a bigger greenhouse. Hopefully it wouldn’t come with bigger centipedes, too….
My mom and dad were sitting at a table, sipping some gran blue drinks out of straws. They were talking and laughing like they hadn’t seen each other in a millennium, and maybe this sounds corny, but I was happier in that moment than I think I had ever been.
Quinn and Hondo made their way to the dance floor, and let me just tell you that Hondo can’t dance. Like at all. He jerks his arms and legs around like a badly strung puppet. But Quinn didn’t seem to mind. Maybe because Itzamna had told them Jordan’s date with a time loop meant she was no longer married to him. Plus, the moon god was going to bend the law about humans and sobrenaturals mixing, since Hondo had shown “sobrenatural bravery.”
Ren, Marco, Adrik, and Alana headed to the floor next, jumping up and down to the beat. Louie joined them, doing a moonwalk with a monkey on his shoulder. I realized then that we were a family, and it had taken everyone’s talents to beat our enemy: Louie’s snow, Alana’s gateways, Adrik’s memory stealing, Marco’s cloning, and Ren’s time rope.
And Brooks’s water powers. Without her, we never could have gotten the devourer out of that tank. I scanned the crowd until I spotted her on the far end of the clearing, glancing around like she was looking for someone.
Rosie whined. Her ears perked sharply as her eyes landed on Brooks, too. Brooks was wearing a white tank-top dress and she had her hair in a loose ponytail draped to one side like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to let her hair down or not. Pacific must have seen me watching her.