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“Why don’t you come to the shore?”
“The time rope won’t reach that far.”
Time rope?
“I’ve had enough demons after my head.” I plopped onto the sand. “So whatever you want to tell me, you can do it from there.”
She waded closer. Then something jerked her back. She took a frustrated breath. “Your father sent me.”
Okay, she had my attention now. I jumped to my feet. “You know my father?”
“Shhh….You want them to hear you?”
I looked around. There was no one else here, unless you counted the seagull and the surfer guys still in the parking lot. “Them?”
“Time is of the essence, and the longer you stand on that shore, the less time I have to help you in your quest.”
I inched toward the water suspiciously. “How do I know you won’t drown me?”
“Because your father would demolish me if I touched a hair on your head.”
I probably should’ve walked away, but I was curious. Maybe she could tell me who my father was once and for all. Maybe he really had sent her. I hadn’t forgotten the distant image of the guy on the pyramid and how he’d tried to stop me from making a deal with Ah-Puch. But since then? MIA.
Carefully, I waded in. The first wave knocked me over.
“Dive under,” she instructed. “Or you’ll never get past the breakers.”
As the next wave rolled toward me, I dove beneath. The water was icy and dark. The salt burned my eyes and made my skin itch, and my heart raced unevenly, like a skipping stone. I came up for air just as another wave was forming. I dove again.
Finally, I was past the waves and I swam through the rippling water to where the woman waited, bobbing on her shiny black surfboard. I treaded water, keeping enough distance to vamoose if I had to.
“Hello, Zane,” she said. Okay, so not only did she have white blond hair with caramel-brown streaks, it was knotted into dreadlocks and looked like she hadn’t washed it in a century. She wore a tattered leopard-skin cape. It had a hood that hung to the side. Her mouth was turned up like she was on the verge of a smile, and her ears were pointed, but instead of being where they were supposed to be, they stuck out the top of her head like a cat’s. And her eyes? They burned green and aqua-blue, constantly changing like a turning kaleidoscope.
I told myself to take a deep breath as I floated in the water. To be calm. So what if a surfer cat lady wanted to talk to me? Oh God! What if she worked for Ixtab? What if she was Ixtab? I remembered the image of Ixtab in my book—always with a rope around her neck. This woman was clutching a gold rope, its end trailing into the dark waters as if it was connected to an anchor.
I swept my arms forward, trying to distance myself, but the tide was like a magnet pulling me closer and closer. Okay, so this was a really bad idea. And just like that, the tide stopped and the waves froze in mid-crash. The air went still. It was as if the whole world had stopped spinning.
The cat-surfer ran her hands through the sea and a silver bodyboard appeared. “Join me before you drown. Quickly.” So she didn’t want to plunge me into the depths of the Pacific. I needed the rest, so I cradled the board and brought myself to a straddled sitting position.
“You g-g-got a w-w-wet s-suit I c-c-could b-b-borrow?” I shivered.
She looked around nervously.
Fine, no magic wet suit was going to appear. I supposed I should’ve been grateful for the bodyboard.
“Who ar-are y-y-you?” I asked, my teeth chattering. Please, please, please, don’t say Ixtab, I prayed.
“I am the goddess of time. For now, you may call me Pacific,” she said, arching a perfect brow.
I didn’t remember ever reading about any such goddess. “How c-c-come I’ve never heard of y-y-you?”
Pacific’s gaze intensified. “I was erased. From the glyphs, my people’s stories, as if I never existed. I was one of the most powerful of the gods,” she said with a huff. “The great sky-watcher. I taught the people to read the stars, to plant their harvest at the appointed time, to prepare for the seasons. But then I made a grave mistake.” She narrowed her eyes. “I told of a prophecy the gods didn’t want to hear.”
“P-p-p-rophecy?” My voice hitched in my throat.
“I have many names, Zane. I am the Great Fate, the soothsayer who foretold of a boy who would be born unlike any we’d ever seen.”
I gave her a blank stare. Holy crap! She was the soothsayer? My blood started to warm up. “You’re Ms. Cab’s—”
