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Don’t panic. That’s not how my story ends. But I couldn’t write any more down, because I would’ve had to lie to protect myself, and the magic paper would have… Huh. I’m not sure what it does when you try to make stuff up.
Anyway, everything up until now is absolutely true. So’s this next part. But I can’t let the gods see it. They can never know the whole story.
When I was finally done writing, Ixtab took me from that cell down a putrid-smelling corridor and into a small living room with gold-papered walls, expensive-looking paintings, a black leather wingback chair, two gray velvet sofas, and a glass coffee table covered in fashion magazines.
“Congratulations, little godborn,” Ixtab said, smiling. “You actually did it!”
Confused didn’t even begin to cover it. “What… what are you talking about? I thought…”
“Well, quit thinking!” With the wave of her hand, Ixtab changed, as in went from creepy goddess of death to magazine cover model. She wore leather cargo pants with too many zippers to count, a white silk blouse, and a Maya medallion on a long gold chain. Her hair morphed from demon-blue to honey brown with streaks of blond. Even her nasty gray teeth were a sparkling white. Definitely an improvement!
She sat down in the wingback chair and spread her arms wide. “Do you like it? It’s one of my private chambers in Xib’alb’a. I
t used to be so drab and depressing, but I’ve really livened it up, don’t you think? The gold wallpaper is all the way from India. And see that skull painting? O’Keeffe, from your neck of the woods.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, still feeling dazed. Good enough for HGTV, I thought, looking around. That’s when I noticed blueprints on easels set up on the other side of the room. There were swatches of fabric, paint samples, and photos attached to the boards with big block lettering: phase i, phase ii, and so on. I started again with the most obvious question: “What happened to my having to pound stones and—”
“Calm down. You’re not dead,” she said too casually. “I snatched you out of that fire pit you created. Thankfully, you being part god, the snake venom didn’t kill you.”
She raised her brows expectantly.
“Er… thanks?” I said.
“Don’t you see? I had to give you a good ending. Or, I should say, an ending the gods would approve of. This way they think you received your just reward by dying in battle.”
My heart skipped to a quick little beat: not-dead, not-dead, not-dead. Okay, so now that that little detail was out of the way… “I don’t get it. Wha… what happened?”
“Well, you managed to rid the world of You-Know-Who, and the war god, Nakon, rounded up Ah-Puch’s little pawns, including the Yant’o Triad. And when the gods found out about the hero twins’ manipulation and lies? Well, let’s just say those boys are getting their just deserts.” She sighed. “Don’t worry, Ah-Puch’s groupies can’t try anything without his power. So it looks like we averted a war. For now—which is a good thing, because this renovation is taking much longer than I expected.”
No war. Bad guys caught. Puke spinning in darkness forever. So far, so good.
“Where… where are my friends and…Hurakan?”
The sounds of jackhammers and electric saws started up right outside the massive wood doors. “Pardon the noise,” Ixtab said, raising her voice. She ignored my question and motioned for me to hand over the manuscript. “By the way,” she said, flipping through the pages, “Itzam gifted you this paper from the World Tree.”
“Yeah, you said that before. But why would this Itzam dude want to help me?”
“His sole purpose is to keep balance and peace. He doesn’t want to see the gods go to war.”
“Do you really think my story will convince the gods I’m dead? I’m not the world’s best writer….”
Ixtab tossed the stack of papers onto the coffee table. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s only one piece of evidence. There are more.”
“Yeah?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know what they were.
“When you disappeared with You-Know-Who,” Ixtab said, “your body was left in the Old World. No pulse, no movement. A little sack of bones. Pathetic, really.”
“That’s because Pukeface paralyzed me!”
“Yes, well, he did you a favor without even knowing it,” she said, twisting a diamond ring on her finger. “And of course my hellhound sealed the deal.”
Hellhound. “You mean my dog?” Anger gripped me when I thought about everything Rosie had been through. “You turned her into a monster!”
Ixtab dismissed the accusation with a wave of her hand. “Oh, please. She’s had quite an adventuresome life here with me. And I couldn’t have her going around the underworld looking like Bambi, now could I? She needed to be fierce if she was going to be a hellhound. So she got training and a little makeover.”
“She’s not a hellhound!”
