Moss and grasses stained the gray rocks. It looked as if the green wanted to devour the stone. Beyond the temple was the rain forest. Kayla heard birds she didn’t recognize and a shriek that could have been either a monkey or a pissed-off parrot and … oh God, she was in another country! She was breathing air that tasted nothing like California air. It was thick with the scent of plants and so heavy with humidity that it felt like broth in her throat. It was simultaneously so overwhelmingly real and unbelievably surreal. Shielding her eyes from the blazing sun, Kayla squinted at the temple—a pyramid with a crownlike structure at the top. About two hundred steep stone steps led up the face of the ruin to a black doorway in the center of the crown. Other ruins were clustered nearby, including one shorter pyramid directly opposite the jaguar temple. Some of them had wooden staircases strapped to their sides. One staircase swayed as if it was going to break from its support beams and topple into the rain forest at any second.
