“Mom?”

She fell to her knees and pulled me into a fierce hug, saying incomprehensible words broken up by her heaves and sobs.

“I’m okay,” I reassured her. “See?” I pulled back and gave her a relieved but trembling smile. “All in one piece.” Well, sort of, unless you counted all the gashes and burns the time rope had left on my arms, hands, and cheek, and the sheer terror still coursing through my veins. “Don’t worry—Rosie’ll fix me up.”

“I could have lost you,” she cried, her eyes wide with fear.

“But you didn’t,” I said. “You saved me. But how? How could you—”

“How could I, a mere mortal, save you?” she asked, a smile creeping onto her face. “Desperate moms have superpowers, didn’t you know that?”

This time I was the one who pulled her into a hug.

“Zane!” Ren hurried over and threw her arms around both me and my mom, muttering, “That was too close,” over and over and pretty much smothering us.

Hurakan groaned and turned onto his side. My mom’s eyes fixed on him, and her expression froze when she saw the resemblance to me.

“Dad?” I helped him to his feet. It was muy cool that I was taller than him (by at least three inches). He rubbed the back of his head, grimacing. “This non-godly power stuff is dreadful.”

Ren tapped his shoulder gently. “But it’s not forever. I mean, you’ll get your godliness back, right?”

He gazed at my mom, then looked away. “I imagine we will. Someday.”

Someday was good enough for me, because it wasn’t never.

“So Ixkik’ and Jordan—” I began.

Ren cut in, “Are stuck in a time loop with no chance for parole. I wasn’t sure I could even do it.”

“You’re sure they won’t be coming back?” Mom asked. Her voice was still shaky.

Ren snapped the time rope, retracting it to the size of a ruler. “Positive.”

“How…how…did you get the rope?” I asked, still dazed. “I thought only Pacific could use it.”

She shook her head and sucked in a sharp breath. “Pacific knew the time rope was our only chance to get rid of Ixkik’ for good.” She hesitated, as if she couldn’t believe she had possession of something so magical, so powerful. “It didn’t work for her anymore, and after you left to face off with Blood Moon, we knew we had to do something drastic. That’s when Marco came up with the plan to be you and throw Ixkik’ off-balance.”

Hurakan opened and closed his jaw like he had been clocked. Which he had. “Your mother sacrificed everything by giving that to you, Ren.”

“Ren can’t give it back?” I asked.

Hurakan shook his head, and Ren pressed her lips together. “It’s definitely mine now,” she said, “and I have a lot to learn. It almost slipped from my hands.”

I tried not to imagine what would have happened in that event.

“Why didn’t you just stop time?” I asked. Seemed like that would have saved us a lot of pounding.

“I tried,” Ren said. “My watch doesn’t work anymore, and even if it had—”

“You couldn’t have also thrown them into a time loop,” Hurakan put in. “Not simultaneously.”

“Bird!” I shouted, remembering that Brooks had gone after him, which meant he was still a threat. “He’s still free!”

“Bird’s in a cage.” Hondo’s voice reached us before he walked in, hoisting an ax over his shoulder. His eyes darted everywhere before he let out a huge whoop. “I don’t see the rest of the wicked familia around, so does that mean the plan actually worked?”

Actually? I wasn’t about to ask how many time-loop practice runs Ren had been through. Probs none. I shuddered thinking how poorly all this could have turned out.

For the next couple of minutes, everyone talked over each other, telling me what had happened after I left Hurakan’s tree house.

Ren said, “Rosie found your dad, and he told us that the only way to trap Ixkik’ was to make her show her face, and that led us to figure out how to trap her, which led to Pacific giving up the time rope—”

Hondo cut in, “And Adrik was a boss. He took control, called his sister telepathically, because, man, we needed our friends to round up all the gods.”

“And when I found out you were in trouble,” Mom said, “I knew I had to come, too.”

Just then, a loud roar from above caught all of our attention. We looked up to see a massive dragon, blue and shimmering, flying our way.

“Itzamna!” Ren shouted.

He had a teen passenger, and from the blazing eyes and murderous expression, I knew it was Ixtab.

The dragon perched on the remains of the roof, claws extended, and threw his head back to release a wave of fire that looked like it could incinerate the entire universe.

Hurakan said to me, “He wants to talk to you alone.”

“You speak Dragon?”

“You don’t?” Hurakan asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

Almost everyone took off toward the jungle. Mom, who’d been clinging to me, stretched my shirt as she left. My dad hung back.

“I thought he wanted to talk to me alone,” I said.

“Who cares what he wants,” Hurakan said. “I’m sticking around.”

With a fiery snort, Itzamna floated down and shifted into his godly form. Teen Ixtab stormed over, glaring. “Zane Obispo! You are impossible to communicate with.”

Whoa. Seeing the goddess of the underworld as a kid was weird. I felt like I shouldn’t look directly at her, in case I laughed or something. But I didn’t have a choice, because she was only inches from my face.

“Didn’t you see I was inside Rosie?” she growled. “Can’t you read hellhound signals? Howls? Fire colors in the pupils?”

“The orb,” I whispered.

“Yes, the orb, you fool!” Steam practically rolled off Ixtab’s head and I was super glad she didn’t have her goddess powers right then. “I used the hellhound to keep an eye on things here, not knowing she would be my very lifeline, but getting you to listen to me was harder than turning a demon vegan!”

Hurakan said, “Zane rescued you.”

Ixtab’s eyes flicked to my dad, then back to me. “By the skin of his teeth.”

“But you were rescued,” Itzamna reminded the goddess. “We all were.” Then, turning his attention to me, he added, “There’s someone else we need to thank. Your uncle is the greatest shadow crosser I have ever seen. He truly saved us all.”

A huge balloon of pride expanded in my chest. The greatest shadow crosser ever. Knowing Hondo, he was definitely going to have that printed on new business cards.

Itzamna went on. “This is a glorious day. Let’s not ruin it with what might have happened and how close we were to annihilation, both literally and in the history books.”

“Easy for you to say, Itzamna,” Ixtab complained. “You aren’t…” She glanced down at herself and groaned. “You aren’t an adolescent!”

“You weren’t in such great shape earlier,” I said to the moon god, remembering his sickly gray self. “How’d you get better?”

“The gods might be in a weakened state,” Itzamna said, “but with so many of them awake now, the Tree has been powered up, and me as well.”

That gave me hope that everyone else would return to normal, too. I never thought I would say this, but I wanted that to happen soon, because hanging around with a bunch of angry teen gods might be worse than being with the angry old gods. “How long will…?” My eyes darted between Ixtab and Hurakan.

“We be like this?” Ixtab hissed. “It better not be long! I have an underworld to run, a spy network to oversee, demons to punish.”

“There is no way to tell,” Itzamna said, throwing a chill-out glance Ixtab’s way. “But we are facing a bigger problem.”

I clung to Fuego, wishing I never had to hear the word problem again. “What?”

“Our written history—the truth—has been completely destroyed.”

Nodding, I said, “Ixkik’ was going to make me rewrite it, to change sobrenaturals’ memories, all because—”

“You are my chosen scribe with the power of the dragon,” Itzamna said.

“Dragon this or that,” Ixtab said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Who cares? Someone just needs to reconstruct what was lost. Looks like that’s you, godborn.”

All six god eyes were on me. “You want me to write the history? What do I know about it? Nothing! There…there has to be someone else.”

“You’re the only one who can,” Itzamna said. “Well, technically, I could do it, but I am in serious need of a vacation and a float through some healing stardust.” With one finger, he pulled on the lower lid of his left eye. “Look at these eyes. Puffy and bloodshot!”

“You need a vacation?” Ixtab growled. “I haven’t had one in three centuries!”

As annoying as the gods were, and as tedious as it sounded to have to record centuries of history, seeing all those books go up in flames and knowing the truth could be stolen made me want to bring it back. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. But I’m going to need some help….”

“That’s my boy,” Hurakan said, which sounded really weird coming from a guy my age. “In the meantime, we will continue what we started at SHIHOM. But the godborn training will be incomplete without the truth, and our history will be in danger until we replenish it.”

“There are other dangers,” Itzamna said.

I rubbed my eyes and wished I was back on Isla Holbox, where I could toss all these problems and dangers to the bottom of the sea.

“Don’t tell him all the horrors at once,” Ixtab said, grinning.

I looked at the moon god expectantly.

He sighed and said, “Well, it does make for a more exciting ending to this tale.”

I felt a pounding headache coming on. “Just tell me.”

“Some of the godborns took off from Montana. We don’t know where they went.”

I was totally unsurprised. After all, Serena and a few of the others had publicly declared that they wanted to take down the gods, steal all the power and magic for themselves. But where had they gone? Did they really think they could hide from the gods? Okay, maybe they could at the moment, but that moment wouldn’t last forever. “How many?” I asked.

Ixtab scowled, holding up five fingers. “I cannot wait to find the traitors and give them a long cruise down Blood River.”

“You’re offering cruises in the underworld now?” Ah-Puch popped out from behind a wall. He eyed Ixtab and covered his mouth like he might start laughing.

“Another word,” she said, “and I will rip out your spine one vertebra at a time.”

Ah-Puch held up his hands in surrender, a corner of his mouth curled up in a sly smile. “I was just going to say it’s time for a serious party!”

Turns out the god of death meant it when he said serious party. It took two weeks to organize. The good news was that Itzamna postponed his vacation in order to attend, and in the meantime, he healed the scorched jungle. The bad news was that Ah-Puch was constantly hollering at the air spirits, whose “party standards were appalling at best.” But once he told me he hadn’t been invited to a fiesta in over a thousand years, I kind of understood why it was such a big deal for the guy.

When Ah-Puch wasn’t party-planning, he and Hondo were prison-planning for Bird and Zotz. Let’s just say they made a deal with Sipacna and the Four Hundred Boys. Yeah, the giant and ghosts were more than happy to take the villains off our hands, and something told me it was going to be pretty hellish for Bird and the teen bat god.

The godborns returned from Montana, except the rogue bunch that I really hoped someone else found waaay before Ixtab did. Blood River is pretty creepy—take it from someone who knows. Anyhow, they made us tell them the story of how we rescued the gods so many times I decided to write it all down. It only took a single night, thanks to magic paper and my having the power of the dragon. Ixkik’ had lied about the paper being destroyed. At first, we couldn’t find it, but then Itzamna discovered that the monkeys had stolen the stash during all the chaos. I felt kind of bad for the rascals when he reclaimed it, so I let them keep a few sheets. Sorry, Itzamna.

I also began rewriting true history, which should have taken a thousand years, but with the aid of Itzamna’s magic, I would be done in a year, tops. To be honest, it wasn’t half bad.

I had collected all the ashes from the bonfire and stuck them in a dozen huge stone vases. Whenever I sat down to write, the ashes would float into the air and whisper their stories to me. Rosie lazed about the biblioteca while I worked, perking her ears over every whisper. I guess hellhounds don’t like ghosts too much.

The day of the party, Rosie seemed more restless than usual. She sniffed around all the library’s corners and then lay down next to me with a sigh. She turned over and kicked her legs in the air, demanding a belly rub.

“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!