The guide stares off in the distance for several moments, contemplating. “Take the day and enjoy Chichén Itza. Treat yourself to a hot meal, then wait until dark. The park closes at ten. Hide out in the jungle just before security makes its final rounds. When the last person leaves and the gates are locked, ascend the Kukulcan pyramid and wait.”

“Mick will be there?”

“It’s possible.”

He hands her back the money. “At the front entrance are tourist shops. Buy yourself a wool poncho, you’ll need it for tonight.”

“I want you to keep the money.”

“No. The Gabriels have been friends of my family for a very long time.” He smiles. “When Mick finds you, tell him that Elias Forma says you are far too beautiful to be left alone in the land of green lightning.”

The incessant buzzing of a thousand mosquitoes fills Dominique’s ears. She pulls the hood of her poncho over her head and huddles in the envelope of darkness, the jungle awakening around her.

What the hell am I doing here? She scratches at imaginary insects crawling on her arms. I should be finishing my internship. I should be getting ready to graduate.

The forest rustles around her. A flutter of wings disturbs the canopy of leaves above her head. Somewhere in the distance, a howler monkey screeches into the night. She checks her watch—10:23—then pulls her wool poncho back over her head and shifts her weight on the rock.

Give it another ten minutes.

She closes her eyes, allowing the jungle to wrap its arms around her, just as it had when she was a child. The heavy scent of moss, the sound of palm fronds dancing in the breeze—and she is back in Guatemala, only four, standing by the stucco wall outside her mother’s bedroom window, listening to her grandmother crying within. She waits until her aunt escorts the old woman out before entering through the window.

Dominique stares at the lifeless figure stretched out across the bed. Fingers that had stroked her long hair only hours earlier have turned blue at the tips. The mouth is open, the brown eyes half-closed, fixated at the ceiling. She touches the high cheekbones, feeling the cold, clammy skin.

This was not her madre. This was something else, a frame of inanimate flesh that her mother had worn while part of her world.

Her grandmother enters. She’s with the angels now, Dominique …

The night sky explodes above her head with the chaotic sounds of a thousand vampire bats flapping their wings. Dominique jumps to her feet, her pulse pounding as she tries to blink away the mosquitoes and the memories.

“No! This is not my home. This is not my life!”

She shoves her childhood back into the attic and seals the door shut, then climbs down from the rock and pushes her way through the thicket until she emerges at the mouth of the sacred cenote.