Page 80 of The Bones in the Yard

“And there’s the Hart we all know and love.”

I held up my middle finger in Doc’s direction, then looked guiltily over at Taavi, expecting to see censure or dismay, but instead got sparkling eyes and a quirked mischievous expression that absolutely melted my heart.

Because for some obscene reason, he thought it was funny when I was a dick.

I was so fucking lucky to have found him.

In a dumpster.

My life is fucking weird.

Taavi smiled at Doc, then held out a thin cardboard tube. “I thought this might be useful working through the museum case.”

Doc rolled out from behind his desk, holding out one big green hand, and Taavi walked in to pass it to him.

I resisted the urge to go over and put my arm around him. Not that Doc probably would have minded, but it didn’t seem professional. I wasn’t really much of a public affection guy anyway, especially because it made me really self-conscious. But I still wanted to.

Then I got distracted by what Doc was pulling out of the tube—it looked like a map at first, but then I realized that it was a huge set of concentric symbols. It looked kinda like the thing Taavi had called a Sun Stone, but even I could see that it was a lot more complicated than that.

“Taavi, this is fantastic.” Doc was clearly pleased.

“The second one might be more useful,” Taavi replied.

Doc went back to the tube, pulling out another poster-sized sheet. I watched his gold-flecked eyes get wide. “Taavi—”

Taavi was grinning. “I thought it might be helpful to be able to map the Aztec calendar days against the intervening modern calendar for the last few decades.”

“It’s—” Then Doc must have realized something, because he turned to look at his monitor. “This isperfect,” he almost whispered.

“What days does it show?” I asked him, immediately understanding that he was looking for the date pattern that he couldn’t figure out from the spreadsheet.

“Holy shit,” Doc breathed.

I leaned over, and Taavi joined us. I moved so that he could step in front of me—given he was so much shorter, I could easily see over his head. I saw the pattern almost as quickly as Doc had.

Every date that a shifter had been killed was a day marked by theitzcuintli—the dog. For example, the day that Theodore Newton had died—two years ago on October 3—was marked as 4Itzcuintli-Xochitl-Calli. The day Mariah Stebbens had died had been seven years ago, October 9. Another shifter, Joshua Gates, had died three years before that on October 5.

All of them were marked the day of the dog. Gates on 9Itzcuintli-Tochtli-Calli, Stebbens on 11Itzcuintli-Xochitl-Tecapatl.

“They all died on a day of the dog,” I breathed, looking to Taavi for confirmation.

“Not only that,” he replied. “All of them at the beginning of the calendrical cycle. InPop, what the Aztecs callIzcalli, the first month of a new cycle.”

“Fucking hell,” I whispered.

Doc was nodding, his fingers tracing the lines on Taavi’s calendar, then typing into the spreadsheet, adding the Aztec calendar days in a new column.

And every single shifter had died on anItzcuintliday.

“What about the dogs?” I asked. “What was… the twenty-third?”

Doc’s finger moved, then he looked up at us. “ThreeItzcuintli-Tochtli-Acatl.”

Taavi drew in a sharp breath. “InKumk’u, orTititl, the last month of the cycle.”

“So that fucking email,” I said. “It was sent right after they killed a dog—on the lastitzcuintliday of the cycle. When’s the next one? The first dog day of the new cycle?”

“The thirteenth,” Taavi breathed.

---