me something productive to do.
Or maybe I’ll use this free time to plot how to escape. I’m lost in thoughts of sneaking out while my mom gives birth when something muffled and strange, a noise that doesn’t belong, comes from the other direction and I whip around.
There are two people tangled together. The sound is . . . oh, idiot gods, it’s their mouths slurping at each other. Thank you, Hathor and Whore-us. I’m about to run and bleach my eyeballs when I realize—those pointy features? The face that still carries a hint of predator? That is not the falcon-proud face of my brother.
That is the jackal-mean face of Anubis. Who has been banned from the main house since I was a kid. And who is now sucking face with Whore-us’s wife.
I try to sneak down the hall unnoticed but freeze when a voice I thought I’d forgotten hits a spot between my shoulder blades, making me tense up. A memory tickles, something about why he was banished from our house, but I cannot for the life of me remember. “Good morning, little one.” I turn to find Anubis right behind me, looming and leering. “Not so little anymore, though.”
I back up a step. Anubis is handsome, his features all sharp cunning, with a hint of cruelty to his eyes and the twist of his mouth. His ears are high and almost pointed.
“Oh, uh, hey. What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my domain, as is my right.”
My nose stings this close to him. Being the god of embalming doesn’t make you smell very nice. “Yeah, cool. Well, you know where to find my father.”
“Our father.” His teeth snap on the words, and he leans in, his eyes focused in the region lower than my face. “You are definitely not so little anymore.”
Floods, is Anubis hitting on me?
For once the sound of my mother’s shriek is music to my ears. “What are you doing here? You are not welcome.”
Nephthys comes into the hall from the workroom. Her eyes go wide when she sees her son, and she squeaks with panic.
“Did you bring him?” my mother demands, and I have a headache from the aftershock of her voice.
“No! No, I—no!” Nephthys backs away, not looking at any of us.
Hathor giggles from the dim back corner of the long hall, then sways her hips as she walks toward us. “Relax. He’s family, right?” From my vantage point I see Hathor trace a finger along Anubis’s arm.
But his hungry black eyes are still on me.
My mother must notice, too, because without looking at me she says, “Isadora. Go to your room. Now.”
That had been my plan, but now I want to see what’s going on here. And I really want to see Hathor get it for hanging out with Anubis. “But I—”
“NOW!” Her voice shoves me down the hall, and I trip and run into my room, slamming the door behind me.
My mother follows after a few short minutes, looking harried and distracted. “I need to know exactly what you have been dreaming of.”
“I can’t remember.” I look anywhere but at her. She’ll know I’m lying. She always knows. When I was little, it got to the point that if I even thought about doing something naughty, I’d get a headache anticipating her disapproving glare. She lets out a small noise like a hum, then puts her hand on her stomach.
“I do not like Anubis’s reappearance in our home, or the way he was looking at you. Normally I wouldn’t worry, but a woman is never more vulnerable than when she is with child and giving birth.” She sounds genuinely concerned.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, but you’re not a woman. You’re a goddess.” I barely manage to avoid tacking on a so shut up about it already.
“Have you learned that little from our family history?”
“You mean lessons on incest? Betrayal? Jealousy? Murder? It doesn’t count as dying if you come back to life, which everyone always managed to do.”
“It is not myself I am worried about.” She reaches out and takes my hand with a strange, frightened intensity, and suddenly, in spite of my insistence that dreams are only dreams, I really, really want to know what hers have been about. Or I really, really don’t. I can’t decide.
“Well, I think I’m pretty safe. Who would care enough to hurt me?” In the grand scheme of things, I don’t matter. At all.
“With the baby coming, I worry. I can’t watch you. I should have known Anubis was in our temple, but I didn’t even feel him.” She reaches up and takes a strand of my long black hair between her fingers. “I wanted this baby to be something we did together, to bridge the gulf between us. To make us a family again.”
I grit my teeth. She’s such a liar. She only has babies to serve her own selfish purposes.