Beautiful Sacrifice

Clocks ticked away the hours and seconds until midnight, December 21. Subtly amused reporters stood in front of shrines and iconic ruins, interviewing crystal huggers and wannabe priest-kings. Some of the spectators wore costumes right out of popular-culture books and videos purporting to be about the Maya, except the feathers were from chickens rather than quetzal birds. Everyone shuddered deliciously at the false excitement of the end of the world that nobody sane really believed would come. Each person interviewed was more ridiculously earnest than the last.
    “Just one big party,” Hunter said from behind her. “Step right up and take your cup of Kool-Aid.”
    Lina grimaced. “The blood at those shrines was real.”
    “Blood is always real.”
    “Have you heard anything more from Jase?”
    Hunter wasn’t surprised that she associated blood with Jase. “Cell connection here sucks. The call was dropped halfway through Ali’s assurances that Jase was feeling good enough to pat her butt and other interesting bits.”
    Smiling, Lina shook her head. “It’s amazing that they only have two kids and one cooking.”
    “It’s early yet. Give them a few more years. Jase always wanted a houseful of children.”
    “What about you?” Lina asked, then bit her lip at the sadness that etched around Hunter’s eyes. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
    “No problem. Will I pass dinner inspection?” he asked.
    She looked from his clean, if well-used, dark jungle boots to the jeans and the square-bottomed dark shirt he wore open at the throat. “You sure pass my inspection.”
    “Parents are harder.”
    “Don’t worry. Carlos will probably go with the conservative businessman look or Maya gentry, depending on his mood. Abuelita usually makes do with canapés and goes off to be by herself. Mother will be dressed like a dictator’s wife, and Philip will show up in whatever he’s wearing when he remembers dinner. If he remembers. It wouldn’t be the first time he worked through meals.”
    As Lina spoke, she looked through the casita window. Less than a hundred yards away, a larger casita glowed quietly in the darkness brought by foliage and night.
    “Is that where Philip lives?” Hunter asked.
    She nodded.
    “Your mother, too?”
    “No. She and Carlos each have a wing of the main house. Abuelita, too. The guards stay there as well.”
    As Hunter straightened a pant leg, he quietly checked the knife in his boot. After a short argument with himself about paranoia, he had cursed the lack of a safe in the casita and secured the gun at his back.
    “Anyone mention the reason for all the guards?” he asked.
    “You heard Celia. They’ve been here for years. But I think all this Maya New Year stuff has them on edge. Strangers in Tulum, those wretched shrines.” Lina moved uneasily. “There’s something out there. I can feel it.”
    “Like Houston?” he asked sharply.
    She frowned. “No. I think I’m just creeped out by those shrines.”
    “So am I.”
    Her eyes widened. “You don’t show it.”
    “Contrary to Y-gene myths, I’m not fond of blood and guts,” he said dryly. “Speaking of which, just how civilized am I supposed to be?”
    “You mean, what kind of crap are you expected to take?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Abuelita is very old. From what my mother hinted, she may be getting senile, so I can’t vouch for her manners. Philip has no manners to speak of. If Celia and Carlos are openly rude, we walk out.”
    Hunter whistled softly. “You’re pissed off.”
    “I’m an adult. If I have to be polite, I require the same from others.”
    “How did your mother take it?”
    “Like a business deal she didn’t like but couldn’t change,” Lina said. She glanced at the thin gold watch her mother had given her last Christmas. “We’d better get going.”
    As Lina turned her head, her heavy gold earrings caught the light.
    “Those are Kawa’il glyphs,” Hunter said.
    “The jewelry was Abuelita’s gift to me last Christmas. I suspect it was her way of saying that she accepted my bent for archaeology. And probably a little slice at me for being so much Philip’s daughter.”
    “That’s a really expensive insult,” Hunter said.
    “I choose to focus on the acceptance. Insults, civilized and otherwise, are a part of Reyes Balam life.”
    “I can’t wait for dinner.”
    “Oh, it’s not as bad as I sound. I’m just still angry at Celia’s rudeness to you.”
    “She’s not the first,”