Shadow crosser.

I heard those two words and knew instantly they couldn’t equal anything good.

“The shadow crosser is the anchor,” Itzamna went on. “Someone powerful enough to hold the time thread to ensure the travelers come back.”

“I’ll do it,” Hondo said without hesitation. In that moment, I swear my uncle looked like he was made of only grit and granite.

“You are merely human,” Itzamna said flatly. “You possess neither the physical nor the mental strength that this will require.”

Hondo didn’t even flinch. “I can do it. I won’t let you guys down.” I knew he was planning to use the warrior mask Quinn had given him.

Brooks’s face fell as she grabbed Hondo’s hand and looked him in the eye. “I know how brave you are, Hondo, and you always have our backs, but maybe this time…” She hesitated. “Maybe Marco should be the anchor.”

“Except I didn’t volunteer,” Marco said, looking insulted.

I could tell Brooks’s words hurt my uncle, but she didn’t know about his secret weapon or how much he loved Quinn. And you can’t buy that kind of reliability.

“Hondo can do it,” I said. “There’s no one else I trust to bring us back.”

“Uh, no offense, dude,” Marco said to me, “but I’m the strongest one here. Not that I want the job or anything.”

Itzamna said, “It isn’t a matter of just holding the time thread—it’s a matter of crossing into the shadows between this time and the next. It is a perilous place filled with anger and fear and darkness. No one, not even a god, would want to travel there.”

“Then how did you guys time-travel?” I asked.

“We employed shadow crossers—usually magicians,” Itzamna said, like it was no big deal. “But they knew the risks. They understood that their minds would never be the same afterward.”

“Why would they do it?” Brooks said, looking horrified.

“Riches. Fame. Glory for their legacies and families,” Itzamna said. “They always believed they would be the exception and not the rule.”

“That’s awful!” Ren scowled. “How could the gods be so mean?”

“How can humans be so mean?” Itzamna said. “In our world, there is both light and dark, good and evil in everyone.”

“I’m not evil,” Ren argued.

“You haven’t yet had to be,” the god said quietly.

Hondo came closer. “Listen, I fought through the twins’ poison. That was dark and worse than any nightmare,” he said. “I don’t talk about it, because why give power to the memory, but it’s what led me to meditation and mindfulness. Maybe it was also training for this exact moment.”

Marco nodded slowly and stared at my uncle with total respect.

“It will feel like your skin is slowly being picked off your bones,” Itzamna said, dragging out each word dramatically. “Your body, mind, and spirit will be tormented in ways you cannot imagine.”

Hondo crossed his arms over his chest, indicating his decision was final.

“I’ll be your wingman,” Marco said to Hondo, and for the first time, I liked the guy. For once, he wasn’t trying to protect himself or get out of doing anything. He saw how important it was to my uncle to do this part of the quest, and Marco had faith in him, without even knowing him. That counted for a lot.

“How do we know how many threads are left in the watch?” Ren asked Itzamna.

“You must draw them out,” he said. “But it will take more than your own strength.”

Ren twisted her mouth, thinking. “We’ll use the godborn connection,” she said. “It will generate more power.”

Just then, a black SUV with tinted windows came down the gravel road that led to the house.

“That must be your mom,” Hondo said to me as the car pulled into the driveway. I tugged off Itzamna’s shades and, with Fuego’s help, hurried over. Mom jumped out of the car and threw her arms around me, clinging so tight I thought she might snap my ribs. Rosie leaped out after her, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. I patted my dog’s neck with one hand while I hugged my mom with the other. We stayed like that for a few more seconds—a few more seconds in which the sky was a beautiful blue, the world was turning as it should, and nothing could touch us. Not even the truth of what had already happened and what still lay ahead.

Mom pulled back first, keeping a tight grip on my arms. “Zane, you’re okay. Everything is okay.” She repeated those last words a few more times, like just saying them could make them true.

Rosie whined and pushed her head against my shoulder. “How’s my girl?” I rubbed her between the eyes before she lowered her head and started sniffing my ankles and legs like she could smell where I had been.

By this time, Alana had made her way over and was talking to the driver, who was still behind the wheel, nodding at whatever she was telling him.

“Mom,” I started, “we…we have to…” I didn’t even know what I was trying to say, but she did. Moms always know stuff like that.

“I know about the gods being trapped,” she said.

But you don’t know they’re in 1987.

“And I know I can’t talk you out of whatever you’re planning to do. And I’m sorry and angry that you’ve been put in this position, and…” She took a deep breath and added, “If anyone can do this, Zane, it’s you and Rosie and Hondo.” Her eyes darted toward the group by the front porch. “You all can do this.”

I wondered if she would say the same thing if she knew we had to travel back in time. Or if she knew that Hondo was going to have to go through worse than hell, again.

But before 1987 and hell, we needed food and sleep.

And we were in the right place for both. Apparently, Alana and Adrik’s log mansion also came with a chef, and the guy was a master at grilling a killer burger. My plan had been to spill the truth to the godborns before dinner, but Hondo and Brooks thought that was a bad idea.

“We need to keep them calm,” Hondo said.

“Why freak them out?” Brooks added.

“I can’t keep all this secret anymore,” I argued. “They deserve to know.”

Brooks sighed and said, “At least wait until after they’ve eaten.”

Hondo chuckled. “Yeah, frenzy is much better on a full stomach.”

After I cleaned myself up in one of the guesthouses, I made my way back outside. The smell of smoked beef and sizzling bacon filled the air. Normally that would be enough to start me drooling, but right then, it made my stomach turn. And as I rounded the corner of the house, I froze. Dozens of tiki torches cast long shadows across the cluster of picnic tables where the godborns sat laughing, talking, and chowing down.

The white barn loomed behind them, and I headed for it, suddenly needing to clear my head. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: You’ve fought gods and faced demons! But in the moment, all that seemed a whole lot easier than delivering bad news to a crowd that had no idea what was about to hit them.

Back in New Mexico, whenever I had frayed nerves, Rosie and I would hike my volcano, the Beast. Since I was minus the Beast, I took off into the forest, hoping the right words would come to me there. As the trees closed in all around me, everyone’s voices trailed off.

Except one. “Zane?”

Gripping Fuego, I spun to see Brooks step from the shadowed trees.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“What’s up with the sneak attack?” I asked, forgetting how eerily quiet she could be.

She came over and stood right in front of me. “I’m just going to say it. I know you’ve got a thing for me.” She kept her eyes on the wedge of night sky between the trees.

Whoa! I wasn’t ready for that. I felt like I’d been mowed down by an eighteen-wheeler. Was I supposed to agree? Tell her she had bad timing? Say nothing? “Can we…uh, talk about this later?”

She shook her head and turned so I couldn’t see her face. “It’s not going to work out. I needed to tell you, since, you know, one of us could die in 1987.”

I take it back. I felt like I had been mowed down by an eighteen-wheeler twice. As my mind and heart and every cell in my body struggled to find the right words, Brooks busted up laughing, clutching her gut. Then I saw her morph right before my eyes. She wasn’t Brooks—she was Marco!

“Dude!” he cried, still splitting a gut. “You should have seen your face.”

A tornado of fire whirled in my chest. It would have taken 0.2 seconds for me to incinerate his stupid smile—and believe me, I wanted to—but I had to restrain myself. I couldn’t blaze the guy for a practical joke.

Remember what I said about liking the guy? All that went up in smoke. Literally.

I reached for the best Hondoism I could come up with in the humiliating moment: Keep it frontal. Don’t go limbic. In other words, I couldn’t let the limbic part of my brain go berserk, because I’d lose control and power.

I gripped Fuego and was muy glad for the dark. “I guess you graduated past busting noses.”

“I told you I would get stronger,” he said with a smirk. “Just took some practice.”

I felt smoke drift from my eyes, and I walked away quickly so Marco wouldn’t see it. I started back toward the barbecue area.

Marco kept pace. “Dude, it was just a joke. Everyone knows you’ve got it bad for her—you could read it between every line of those books.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him. Flecks of moonlight sifted through the trees. “Great. While you’re obsessing over me and Brooks, I have to go tell the godborns that Zotz has pretty much won,” I said. “That we’re about to do something no human has ever lived through, and if we don’t make it back, their lives are going to—”

“Why would you do something so stupid?” Marco asked, suddenly serious.

“It’s rotten to keep lying to them.”

“Rotten?” He bit back a laugh. “Dude, that’s the worst strategy I’ve ever heard. Wait—you’re serious?” He shook his head. “They’ll freak, and you know what happens when a big group of people freak? They do stupid things. They feed off one another’s worst fears and do anything to survive.”

I jammed Fuego into the soft earth. “I told them they’d be safe at SHIHOM, and now I’m supposed to lie to them? They need to know so they can be prepared.”

“No one is safe anywhere,” Marco argued. “Especially not godborns. So yeah, lie to them. Let them think this is still part of their training.”

For half of a second, I considered taking Marco’s advice. I mean, he was a pretty awesome strategist. But as the son of war, he was also a master manipulator who was probably trying to manipulate me right now.

Fire rushed through me in waves, but I couldn’t tell if it was directing me to listen to Marco or stay on my own path.

“That was a really good impersonation of Brooks,” I said as I took off for the barn, using Fuego to create a quick distance between us.

Marco called after me, “Zane, you don’t know what you’re doing!”