Jem had a gold-bottomed pot bubbling merrily on the fire when I returned. The room had filled with a lovely smell, enough to drive even the memory of green onion from my senses. Grifo leaned as far as he could without setting a paw through the doorway. Emma tossed him a carrot. His head whipped up as someone entered the room behind him. My hand clenched the chopping knife, but my dog's fluffy, curly tail started wagging fit to fall off instead. He woofed a greeting.

"Hello to you, too." Xolotl was awake. He crouched beside the dog, who spun around to get his ears scratched. The god glanced at the rest of the room and smiled. "I smelled pozole."

"Is it okay that we're in here?" said Jem with a guilty look. "We didn't have supper."

Xolotl waved off the worry and got his hand licked. One of his Xolos had trotted up beside him. "Make yourselves at home. Can I help with anything?"

Jem contemplated the soup pot. "Do you have any meat?"

Xolotl stood with a flick of his wrists that made the Grifo hairs on them disappear. He snapped his fingers in my direction. A large, pink chunk appeared on my cutting board. It was genuine pork. Jem looked delighted. I cautiously allowed the tension in my hands to ease a little. Xolotl seemed genuinely friendly, and Grifo had an excellent danger gauge. Unless he was being manipulated... I eyed the god's Xolo cap. Could a god manipulate a living creature like that? Somehow, I doubted it.

"Tea?" said Xolotl, now at the counter, sifting through a stack of pots.

"Poleo?" said Emma, and got a smile. Xolotl downsized the firewood pile in the other pit with a flick, then lit it with another. The small pot he'd found had filled with water while he held it. He hung it over the flames and went back to digging through the edges of the counter. This time he surfaced with a jar of dried leaves, which he set aside.

"Why didn't you just make those?" said Jem curiously.

"They taste better grown."

Emma held out a rabbit drumstick for Grifo and the Xolo to sniff. Xolotl flicked surreptitiously in its direction. Its appearance didn't change, but the dogs perked up and licked it delicately. Emma made a sound of delight. Another Xolo trotted up. This one was in a playful mood, so Emma grabbed its ears and shook them. They growled happily at each other. Grifo had forgotten the no-dogs-in-the-cooking-area rule and was sniffing Xolotl's pant leg.

"Afuera," I said. "That's Grifo."

Xolotl chuckled. "He told me."

"He—what?"

"Ask them," said Emma. "These ones do, too."

I looked down at my meat-juice-covered hands and willed them clean. Nothing happened. Xolotl snapped his fingers. A bowl of water appeared beside me, with a bar of soap purloined from the bathroom's washbasin.

"Thanks."

I scrubbed my hands and joined Emma amidst her growing pack of dogs. The playful one woofed and hopped around me. I put a hand on her head. Tochtli popped into my mind as clearly as Chimalli once had. This time, though, images followed it: chasing rabbits through tall grass; running down a long cave guided by golden torchlight; then standing on the bank of a slow, impossibly broad river under a black sky. There was a tap behind me, and the vision cut short. Tochtli bounded back to Xolotl, who had called her over. He was still smiling, but he didn't look at me.

There didn't seem to be an issue with me petting the other dog, though. He was smaller than Tochtli and rather more composed. Huitecoya. In his mind was another vision. We stood together under a night sky full of pinpricks like shining grains of sand. A rain of shooting stars drew a curtain down on the horizon. The sight sent a shiver through me that set the hair on my arms on end. Huitecoya watched me with somber eyes as I let go of his scruff.

I found Grifo and worked my fingers into his fur to relieve the tiny pinpricks still worrying my skin. There was no name here, and no images. I threw the question to Xolotl. "How did he tell you?"

"Same as the others."

"He's never talked to me," said Emma. She crossed her arms. "Does that only work for you?"

"Probably." Xolotl caught my look, and his eyes twinkled. "God of dogs. Among other things."

When the soup was ready, we filled bowls and carried them to the dining room. We were all starving, and the food was as good as anything Jem made, but Xolotl barely ate. He eventually abandoned his bowl and sat back with a glance at the doorway into the hall. He had taken the seat closest to the door. Tochtli whined and shoved her head under his hands. He scratched her ears.

The obvious tension in the room clicked me out of my thoughts on how to broach the topic of Fuego. Jem set his spoon down and glanced at me, unsure if he should ask whatever he was thinking about. I gave him a shrug.

He turned to the god. "Are they still in there?"

Xolotl nodded.

Who?

... Oh.

Emma and Jem exchanged wide-eyed looks. Xolotl's twin, that was who. Quet had been shot in the back... but he was a god. They were all gods. If a lick from an apparently magical dog could heal a cut on one of them, it shouldn't take so many hours to handle a larger injury. Something was wrong here.

Jem, ever the aspiring doctor, pressed further. "How long is it going to take?"

"I don't know." Xolotl stroked the dog, who looked back at him with big, worried eyes. "It was a poison arrow. And he took it in human form."

The stress he had been carrying all day, and distracting himself from, dawned on me like a view wiped into crisp focus after a rainstorm. My heart plunged. There had been two giant creatures in the fire-cave during that battle: a dog, and a snake with feathers the same colours as the ones in Quet's hair. If the dog had been Xolotl, his wounds must have downsized with him when he returned to human form. Quet had not been so lucky.

But he was still a god. Whose arrow could put a god in such dire condition?

Xolotl wasn't offering any more answers, so we finished eating in silence. Then we filled tea mugs and found seats on the couches in the round, windowed room. Xolotl forced his stress behind a smile again and asked us questions about Grillo Negro. He seemed genuinely interested. I kept my silence in the corner. I had a nasty, sneaking feeling that whoever had shot that arrow was somehow connected to the other things still making me just as nervous. The destroyed cave village, and the gods protecting Grillo Negro. I didn't want to get sucked into this, whatever it was.

We were on our second cups and more detailed stories when there was a sudden commotion in the entryway. Something cracked against a wall. The voices that had appeared around it were sharp and heavy. Golden-god and the butterfly goddess trudged into the room. The dark god behind them whipped a tiny hurricane at the wall and knocked a chip off the rock before he too flung himself down on a couch.

"They found Totolme," said the goddess. Xochi. "We beat them to the village these guys are from, thank Ōmeteōtl, so we got that one warded in time. But now we're down to one village again." She drew both hands down her face and looked at Xolotl. "You've got work tonight. Are you picking up Huitz?"

Who found what? I looked around uneasily, but nobody was explaining yet. Another village? What had happened to it? And why did this give Xolotl work?

Xolotl nodded, then dropped his mug as another figure appeared in the doorway. The green-skirted goddess who had first met us at the door flicked a finger. The mug reappeared on a table before it smashed. The goddess looked exhausted, but she was smiling.

"He's going to be okay," she said. Xolotl might have collapsed had she not pulled him into a hug. She rubbed his back as the tension drained from his body. The rest of the room stayed quiet until they broke apart. Xolotl slipped out with a tap on his leg to gather his dogs.

Quet was okay. One thing at least had gone right today.

"We left Chimalli with him," said the goddess over her shoulder, making me wonder again what powers Xolotl's dogs had.

There must have been a nonverbal acknowledgement, because the next sound was a whisper of gold fire and the click of the door. The goddess found a free seat and dropped into it like she was ready to fall asleep on the spot.

"How was it?" said Xochi. Her butterfly had reappeared, perched on her shoulder.

"Close." Her sister rested her head in her hands. "Too close."

The twisting feeling in my gut extended tendrils through my stomach like an unwanted strangling-vine. Forget injuring... whose arrow could almost kill a god?

The dark god twirled a finger at Jem, Emma and I. "Don't bring it up with Xol. He's dealing with enough already."

No shit.

"And speaking of that," said the green-skirted goddess. She gave him a hard look. "You will do everything in your capacity not to make it worse. Understood?"

He rolled his eyes and slouched back. Emma had her arms crossed, taking up half a couch with her tiny figure and her aura. She now crossed her legs, too. It was time for an explanation. The goddess waited for the giant man to arrive from Quet's room and settle in his enormous armchair before she spoke again.

"We're at war," she said. "We have been, for a hundred and three years. To cut a very long story short, we have an older sister and she's trying to end the world."