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steep, faintly slippery stone stairway that ran down the backside of the watchtower pyramid. When he hit level ground, he headed away from the ruin, angling in the opposite direction from the soldier in the hopes that the guy was just staying visible to the tourists thronging the popular site.
    The other man changed vector to intercept, though, which had Michael muttering a curse under his breath. The ruins of Tulum weren’t normally under military control; technically they weren’t now, but there was a definite armed presence in the region, thanks to an ongoing tug-of-war between the government and a group of resorts that might or might not have been built on protected parkland right next to the ruins. Michael had bribed one of the soldiers to gain access to the watchtower ruin, which was supposed to be closed to the public. But the guy on his tail wasn’t the one he’d bribed; he was older and tougher looking, with a serious don’t screw with me; I’m having a shitty week look in his eyes.
    Although Michael had never been one to back down from a fight—fair or otherwise—things were apt to get dicey if the local militia took too much of an interest in him. The fake ID Jox had hooked him up with was good enough to get him across the border, good enough for most airports stateside, but it wouldn’t stand up to intense scrutiny. And while the other Nightkeepers could and would spring him out of a Mexican prison if it came to it, they preferred to avoid that sort of thing. The magi didn’t exist in absolute secrecy, but they kept a low profile when it came to normal human affairs.
    Moving fast, Michael ducked around a man-high pile of rubble that had probably once been a stela. The high pillars had been carved with glyphs spelling out births, deaths, politics, war, and just about anything else human beings of any time period found important. Now, the state of the art in thirteenth-century billboards was reduced to a hiding spot as Michael hunkered down behind the stela. Warning danced across his skin, courtesy of his warrior’s powers. But while he might not be able to call fireball magic like the others, he was hell on wheels with its antithesis, shield magic.
    As the soldier drew near, Michael pulled a carved obsidian knife from an ankle holster. Drawing the scalpel-sharp blade across his palm, he welcomed the bite of pain and the faint glow of red-gold Nightkeeper power it brought. Before the destruction of the skyroad he wouldn’t have needed the blood for a shield spell. Now, though, he needed blood for even lower-level spells.
    Concentrating, Michael touched his talent, calling the power of the barrier and using it to cast a thick shield around his body: a faint tremor in the air, a few degrees of refractive index that hadn’t been there moments earlier. He couldn’t make himself invisible like Patience could, but he’d learned that if he cast the shield at a certain angle from his body, it distorted both light and sound, confusing human perceptions. Once the shield was in place, the soldier shouldn’t be able to see or hear him.
    Moments later, footsteps approached, boots ringing on stone.
    Keep walking , Michael thought as the militiaman appeared, eyes sharp, M-16 still on his shoulder. Nothing to see here . Michael wasn’t a mind-bender like Rabbit, and thus wasn’t actually able to shove the thought into the human’s mind, but he figured the power of suggestion couldn’t hurt, and he needed the guy to keep going.
    Whether thanks to wishful thinking or the chameleon shield, or a bit of both, the soldier kept going, not even glancing in Michael’s direction. Once he was gone, Michael dropped the shield and slipped into a milling herd of tourists headed back toward the hotels. He hadn’t gotten far when his phone chirped in his pocket. Seeing the main Skywatch number on the display, he flipped the phone and answered, “Stone here.”
    “Get yourself someplace private.” It was Michael’s winikin