“I’m fine! Don’t worry about me. But I don’t understand how this happened. Deena was totally healthy a few days ago.” Had Anubis done something to her?
“It’s just one of those things. Pregnancy leaves women vulnerable in a lot of ways. But I mean it—you don’t need to worry. The only problem we’re facing now is a baby without a nursery, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t such a big deal.”
I sigh, relieved. At least one part of my family is safe from Anubis. “Great. Thanks for the guilt, there, Sirus.”
After again reassuring me that everything is fine, he hangs up.
I sink into the couch, not bothering to go upstairs, and my aching head spins with everything that happened tonight. It’s too much to process. Deena, Anubis, Ry. I thought everything would be easier after I finished the stupid museum room.
I snort a sleepy giggle as I think of Anubis’s face when he gets back to Egypt and realizes he doesn’t have the name. What an idiot.
Happy with that thought, I’m on the very edge of sleep when I remember Sirus’s words, similar to what my mother had said: a woman is most vulnerable when she’s pregnant. Something tickles at the back of my numbed skull, something I’m not quite grasping but know I need to.
“Oh, no.” I sit straight up, terrified in the certainty of my new realization.
Anubis wasn’t looking for a name to control a god.
He was looking for a poison to kill one.
Chapter 17
One day as Amun-Re walked the earth, a snake bit him. But it was no snake he had created, and so he could not name it and remove the poison. Amun-Re, god of the sun, was dying.
A snake. The myths only ever said a snake. But a version written in Isis’s own hand had one key difference—not a snake, but a child of Apep. The snake demon found in the underworld.
The underworld only Osiris and Anubis could freely visit.
“PICK UP!” I SCREAM INTO THE PHONE AS IT rings and rings and rings. Screaming makes my head throb, but I can’t stop. I stumble upstairs, throwing everything out of my drawers as I look for my passport. My hand closes over the small bag of protective amulets my mother sent, the ones that survived Anubis’s destruction of my room. I shove them into the pocket of my flannel pajama pants.
Passport passport where is my passport ANSWER THE PHONE MOTHER ANSWER IT ANSWER IT.
Passport in the nightstand.
She’s not answering the phone.
I pull on a pair of shoes and run down the stairs, this time calling Sirus.
He doesn’t answer, either.
Email she’ll check her email. I write one so fast I’m sure it’s incoherent but it doesn’t matter because she needs to know. I have to know that she knows.
Still the phone cradled against my ear rings and rings and rings. Why isn’t she answering the phone? He can’t be there yet. He still has to fly back to Egypt. Where I need to be, where I should be. The images, so many of them, of my mother being unmade by darkness play on repeat in my pounding head and I can’t let that happen, I won’t let that happen.
Why would Anubis do this? What does he stand to gain by killing my mother? What did he say to me . . . something about Hathor saying I was useless. The hall. They were kissing in the hall.
Hathor. If anyone has a reason to hate my mother and want her dead, it’s Hathor. She must have seduced Anubis and gotten him to work for her. How long has she been planning this, plotting to strike when my mother is most vulnerable?
“ANSWER!” I scream into the phone, then throw it against the wall.
Airport. I’ll go to the airport and get on the next flight to Egypt. It’s a stupid plan, some part of me knows that, but I can’t sit here. Either my mom will check her email or she won’t, but I can’t sit here and wait and wait to see whether or not I’ll have a mother to go home to.
How to get to the airport, though? I laugh bitterly at the irony of staying with a brother who arranges transportation to the airport for a living but having no idea how to do it for myself. Screw it, I’ll drive. I grab the keys to the Mini off the counter and run into the garage, opening it.
The key fits in the ignition, then nothing happens. I put the key in. WHY IS NOTHING HAPPENING? I twist it, and the radio and lights come on, but the engine is still off. “Start! Start! Why won’t you start??
?? I sob, smashing my bloodied palms against the steering wheel.
Even if I get the car started, I literally have no idea how to drive it or how to get to the airport from here. My forehead drops against the steering wheel and I cry because I am powerless and I’ve always been powerless and I hate, hate, hate it. How can I have a happy heart and helping hands when I can’t help the woman who spent her whole life helping me, the woman I spent the last three years hating?