Chapter One

1

Maria Dark flew north, from one America to the other, with a bag of treasures between her feet. The man beside her spoke Spanish into a cassette recorder. He seemed hardly to notice the lightning at their wings. The plane lurched, then continued to glide; orange strobes reflected on the clouds that surrounded them. A flight attendant cruised the aisle, checking seatbelts.

"What time will we land?" Maria asked her.

"We're in a holding pattern over Philadelphia," the woman said. "This storm is turning to snow in New York."

"You mean we might land here?" Maria asked.

"We might."

Lightning split the sky, and for one instant Maria wished to be on the ground anywhere: Philadelphia, Miami, Machu Picchu. Then she thought of Sophie and Nell, waiting at JFK, ready to drive her home to Hatuquitit; almost absently Maria reached into her bag for a talisman to guide the plane safely north. Her hand closed around the gold goddess she planned to give Sophie. She felt like the mysterious stranger going home, bringing storms with her.

"Pretty," said the man beside her, admiring the small statue. "Is it Incan?"

"No, she's Chav’n," Maria said. During their excavation at Chav’n de Huentar, she and Aldo had found several statues like her, and Maria, thinking of a present for Sophie, had commissioned a local goldsmith to copy one.

"That belongs in the national museum," the man said reproachfully.

"She's a replica. A present for my sister," Maria said. Aldo had taught her that foreign archaeologists were always suspected of tryi