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Back Maya and the Lord of Shadows Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Acknowledgments
  33. About the Author
  34. About the Publisher

Eleni tilted her head to the side. “Is that a reference to that old cartoon about a dog and his human companions?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. Even though I was still getting to know her, it was nice to have a sister. She always listened when I was worried about something.

I bit my bottom lip. This was the third time this week that Zeran had excused himself from practice early. Something was up, and I couldn’t keep waiting for the right moment to talk to him. Eleni was right. I had to be straight with Zeran. “I might as well get this over with now.”

Eleni and I left the gym just as Ogun started the next round of matches. Both Frankie and Eli were in the second group to go. Frankie squared up against a godling twice her side. I didn’t see who the kid was, but I knew they were going to lose. She was the first of my friends to show a gift for magic, and she excelled at it. Not to anyone’s surprise. She was a genius, after all. Eli had already dropped into ghost mode and his opponent was throwing wild punches.

“Hey, Zeran!” I called after him.

He stopped and turned around stiffly. “What is it?”

“Well, I wanted to ask you something . . . something important.”

I felt a tingling along my forearms, like static, only a hundred times worse. It snatched my breath away, and I forgot all about talking to Zeran. Dread climbed up my throat, and Eleni and I exchanged a knowing glance. Her face had gone blank.

“Another tear,” we both said at the same time.

Eleni grimaced. “It feels far.”

“Like on the West Coast far?” I guessed.

“Yeah,” she answered.

Zeran glanced at his watch. “The other thing I have to do can wait. I’ll come with you.”

There was no time to get Frankie and Eli. The recent tears in the veil were big enough to let through hundreds of darkbringers at once. Papa had already been gone for hours with Eshu, fixing up tears across the world, so it was up to Eleni and me to close this one. I might have lost my match against Zeran, but this I could do.

Time to get to work.

Two

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HELLO, MY LITTLE NIBLING

OF ALL THE rotten places to find a tear in the veil, this had to be the worst. Literally. After Eleni insisted on opening the gateway, we ended up falling above a garbage dump. I plunged toward a pile of decomposing trash that smelled a hundred times worse than my old sweaty gym shoes. The symbols glowed on my staff again, shifting their positions quickly. The lion with raised paws was suddenly leaping across the sun, and the leaves on the tree pulsed like Morse code.

Mayday. Mayday. Death by trash pile at six o’clock.