I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Felicitas Ivey

  “Ah.” I nodded like I knew what he was talking about.

  “You don’t….” He sighed. “But if it has been as long as I think… things do change, as shown with Ramses.”

  “I sort of know that name,” I said slowly. I did, but don’t expect me to know where or when he was pharaoh. “But what changed?”

  “The sons of Horus and Ra drove out my God’s priests. They destroyed his temples and tried to wipe all knowledge of his power from the Two Lands.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  I had no idea what Sutekhgen was talking about, but it made him really angry.

  “Because they felt threatened by his might,” he said simply. “Horus stole his power, helped by his mother. But then Isis blamed Set for killing her husband-brother, Osiris. The Two Lands needed to be as one. However, it would have been better for my Lord to have taken control and not Horus, who was inexperienced and foolish at times.”

  “That doesn’t sound nice,” I said. While husband-brother sounded very icky, as I vaguely remembered it was an ancient Egyptian custom. They weren’t as crazy about it as the Hapsburgs had been, so the inbreeding probably wasn’t as bad. But it might explain Sutekhgen’s attitude if his parents were too closely related.

  “Osiris lost nothing in his death.” Sutekhgen smirked. “Well, nothing important.”

  He stopped, listening intently. A look of concern crossed his face.

  “It seems we aren’t as alone as I thought we were,” he said, looking around. “The danger from the enemy is closer than I realized.”

  I heard whooshing off in the distance. The ground was shaking a little, like something really heavy was walking toward us. Sutekhgen took my arm and started guiding me toward a doorway. I opened my mouth to protest, and he shot me a look. I pulled my elbow out of his grip but still followed him. He was worried about whatever was stomping toward us, and I didn’t blame him, because it sounded really big.

  We walked hurriedly toward a looming doorway guarded by statues carved out of black stone, facing each other and twice the size of a man. The body was human and dressed in the same style of loincloth Sutekhgen was wearing, but there was some sort of animal head topping it. The head looked like it belonged on Fido, from the quick glance I had before we were between them.

  “Mwy, forgive my presumptuousness, but I would rather you’re angry with me than to leave you ignorant.”

  Before I could say anything, he kissed me on the mouth. I opened my mouth to protest, while trying to push him away, but his tongue thrust into it. It felt weird, and not just because that tongue didn’t belong in my mouth. It was too thin and flexible to be a human tongue. I choked as something slid down my throat, and I swallowed it so I could breathe. We broke off that awful thing quickly. I wiped my mouth and glared at him, too stunned and disgusted to react.

  I didn’t know why, but then Naked Guy pushed me. And I fell through a doorway that shattered like it was made out of glass. The dark shards exploded around me, and I should have been cut to pieces, but none of it cut me.

  I woke up screaming on the floor, splayed out like I had been pushed through a door and hadn’t simply fallen off the sofa bed.

  Chapter Five

  I WAS starting to sit up when Uncle Yushua rushed into the room, with Harper and Rat close behind.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded, scanning the room.

  Harper and Rat were looking around also. I don’t know what they expected to pop out of the walls, but given Sutekhgen had already shown up in Boston once, he could follow me here if he wanted to.

  “It was a dream,” I said hoarsely. “Just a dream.”

  If I repeated that often enough, I’d believe it. There had been an air of clarity there that had hinted to me it was more than a dream. Besides, dreams weren’t usually just you talking and walking. In my usual dreams, there was a lot of fighting or running. Something exciting was always happening.

  “It’s dawn,” Harper said.

  Uncle Yushua frowned, and they looked at each other. I could see the faint line of the sun coming up, and I checked my phone to see what time it was. I was surprised to see it was just a little after five. I felt really awake, even with only four hours of sleep. Getting the crap scared out of you because of a dream would do that. Adrenaline for the win!

  “I can’t go back to sleep. Can you, Mykayla?” Rat asked.

  “I don’t want to,” I muttered.

  I didn’t. If I went to sleep again, would I find myself back in that place? Would I see what was making the ground shake or what had frightened Sutekhgen? Would I have to admit it hadn’t been just a dream? There was an annoying headache behind my eyes, and for a second, I thought I had a hangover, but I felt fine other than that. Weren’t hangovers supposed to be devastating and make you swear you’d never drink again?

  “Then a run sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?” Rat grinned.

  A run sounded like a wonderful idea. To just move and not worry about strange dreams or naked guys, just the road underneath my feet and maybe dodging the few pedestrians who were awake. Still, I should use his name and not call him Naked Guy since we had introduced ourselves. But the fresh air would do me some good, and I always felt better after a run.

  “But…,” Harper protested.

  “She needs to clear her head,” Rat said firmly. “You can talk to her about whatever had her screaming when we get back.” He turned to me. “Does three miles sound good?”

  “On a trail or on the street?” I asked. Three miles was a short run for me, but it was better than nothing. Had I really been screaming? That might be the reason my throat felt a little sore. But I didn’t remember screaming in the dream.

  “A bit of both,” he said. “And after that I can cook you a breakfast that will make you wish we’d run twice as much.”

  WE SLOWLY stretched outside the building, not talking. Rat handed me a bottle of water. I’d already had some when I’d gotten ready for the run. No way I was running without brushing my teeth and stuff. But water hadn’t made the headache disappear, even if my throat felt better.

  “Tell me if I’m going too fast,” he said.

  “I will,” I promised.

  One more stretch and then Rat started to trot down the street. It was cool, and there weren’t too many people up at this hour. We headed down narrow side streets, not named, but designated with letters and crowded with cars parked on both sides, making them bottlenecks almost. We dodged the occasional car, but I had more trouble with potholes than I did drivers as the city woke up. Rat set a good pace: quick but not so killing that you were gasping for air after the first minute.

  We left the congestion behind when Rat led me to a boulevard running along the ocean. We ran about a mile or so down that before it ended in a park. We ran around a fort of some sort, and down a walkway that led over the ocean and ended in a circle with seats in it. Rat stopped and flopped on a bench. I flopped beside him, grabbing my water to take a drink.

  “You feeling better?” Rat asked after his own drink. He sounded barely winded, and I wondered what his usual run was. It had been only three miles to get here, so with the return trip, it would be a respectable run. I usually did five miles a day.

  I thought about it for a moment, because he’d sounded odd. The run had done me good. It was nice just to worry about the next step and nothing else. The headache was still there, but I could live with it. It would probably go away if I popped a couple of aspirin with breakfast.

  “I have a track I usually go on, so this was nice,” I said, aware he wanted an answer.

  “Down the crooked cow paths of Boston, versus a smooth track?”

  “It can get a bit boring,” I admitted, relaxing. He was determined to ignore what had gotten us up so early, and I went along with it. “And Xiu doesn’t run, so I’m usually alone. It’s nice to run with a buddy.”

  “You’re alone a lot, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I bit my lip. He wasn’t pulling any pu
nches right now. Though I didn’t know what he was looking for, it was nice he wasn’t trying fancy mind games to get information.

  “If this is an attempt to make me not think about the dream last night by negging on my parents, I don’t want to talk about them yet either,” I said coolly.

  “If you want warm understanding, Harper’s the man for that.” Rat shrugged, clearly not put out by my bad temper. “He’s very good at dealing with frantic scholars looking for books they can’t remember the name of, but so desperately need for a paper.”

  I snorted. “Not with the way you mother hen.”

  Harper didn’t strike me as the warm-and-fuzzy type, but I could be wrong.

  “Food is love.” Rat grinned. “But you don’t seem like you’re the life of the party.”

  “I’m quiet.” I shrugged. “And people can be exhausting.”

  “But not Xiu,” Rat said, turning to stare at me.

  “Xiu’s a good friend,” I said. “And we usually have a lot more fun on our own than with a group.” I wrinkled my nose. “Some of my classmates can be a little weird.”

  Not to mention they were more interested in attracting boys’ attention than we were.

  “People are weird.” Rat grinned. “Plus, I guarantee they say the same thing about the two of you.”

  I laughed. “You’re just trying to be nice.”

  I think the whole school thought Xiu and I were dating or something.

  “Shh…. That’s supposed to be a secret,” he said. “But I wanted to give you some breathing space before the other two start questioning you.”

  “I have no problem telling them about my dream,” I said. “Talking about my parents might be another thing.”

  “Fair enough.” Rat nodded. “And I doubt they’re going to come up in the conversation.”

  “Can you tell me how you met my uncle?” I asked after we’d spent some time just staring at the ocean. It was soothing. There were a couple of other runners out here, but they didn’t stop to talk to us.

  “It was a dark and stormy night.”

  “You can just tell me no,” I said dryly.

  Rat laughed. “It actually was a stormy night,” he protested. “I was on my last tour—doing something I can’t tell you about and in a place I can’t reveal—when I met him. I was counting the hours I had left and convinced before I got out of there, I was going to get shot or run over a bomb or something.”

  “That sounds scary,” I said.

  What was Uncle Yushua doing in a place like that? I’d guessed Rat had been ex-military from the way he stood and his haircut. Uncle Yushua wasn’t even close to that, with his slouch and braid. So what was he doing in a war zone? He’d never mentioned that kind of trip, although we never really talked about stuff like that.

  “Scary was being told me and my squad needed to escort this civilian out in the desert for a supersecret thing. We all thought it was some sort of rebel or terrorist meeting.”

  Rat sounded sad and angry.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

  “You got dragged into this sh… mess,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I have heard the word shit before. I’m not going to faint away like a Victorian maiden because you said it around me. I just try not to use it a lot, so when I do so, it means something.”

  Plus my parents would kill me. They didn’t even think the twins should swear, since it made you sound “common” or something. I just stuck to curses in foreign languages when I had to vent.

  “Just trying to be polite,” Rat said. “Josh has been trying to civilize me.”

  “Is it working?” I asked, because Rat was polite, for the most part. I thought the rum had been a dirty trick, but he’d meant well. And I didn’t have too much of a headache.

  “But I do need to mind my manners more now that I’m out of the Army. I wasn’t an officer, so I didn’t need them,” Rat explained. “I have to be nice to a lot more people now. I think it was even in the job description.”

  I laughed. “You get to be ‘out’ also.”

  “I think that’s a bad pun, and rude to think I’m gay when I haven’t said one way or another,” Rat grumbled. “But that hasn’t been an issue in the military for a long time. And yes, I’m into guys, Ms. Nosy.”

  His phone rang and he answered it. “We’re at Castle Island.”

  “This is an island?” I blurted out.

  There was a bay behind us, and I had spotted a couple of small bridges on the causeway to the left, to let the water flow with the tide and not stagnate.

  Rat rolled his eyes at me. “Started out as one. Then Boston got overenthusiastic with filling in dirt in places over the decades.” He waved his left arm. “The island was over there with the fort on the top of the hill.”

  So that was what that squat stone building was.

  “Really?” I should read up on that. I made a mental note to start out with what I could find on the internet.

  “No, Harper, we aren’t running to work, it’s too early to get there. Plus I’m not going to work in my sweaty running clothes. We’re going to jog back, shower, and I’ll make breakfast.”

  “How can we run to work from here?” I asked.

  Rat turned to the right and pointed to a group of buildings on the other side of the bay. There was a tall white-and-glass pyramid, some brick building off to the side and back of it, and hidden behind a small green hill running the length of the ocean walkway, there was a black blob.

  “The Shawmut’s over that way,” Rat explained. “It’s the black building. The white one is the JFK Library, while the rest of them belong to the local state university. There’s a trail that runs from here to there, which is about four miles. We can try it sometime if you like, just not today.”

  I had guessed the Shawmut was the glass pyramid. It was an impressive-looking building. The black one was a squat thing you could barely see behind a dirt berm edging the harbor trail.

  “She needed it,” Rat said, talking into the phone again. “And it’s giving you two time to poke… at things.”

  I sniggered. That did sound dirty the way he phrased it.

  “We’re going to finish our conversation and then head back.” He paused, listening to Harper. “You know it’s barely six. And the boss ain’t going to care when we show up, because I’m going to be making him breakfast to butter him up when I get back to his place.”

  I laughed at that, and Rat mock glared at me. “I’m so glad I amuse you.”

  Harper said something. “We’ll be heading back in a couple of minutes,” Rat said. “’Cause we were talking about things before you called and fretted at me.”

  “Fretted?” I echoed as he hung up.

  “Harper worries. He’s like Josh, the brains of an operation. And he can think up all sorts of nasty creatures who might want to join us on our morning run. Besides Boston drivers.”

  “You aren’t dumb,” I protested.

  “Just don’t have the talent for magic those two have,” Rat said. “Kinda of glad that I don’t, because it can be terribly wearing on a person.”

  And that seemed like an understatement, seeing how bad Uncle Yushua looked last night.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked, trying not to panic.

  “He’ll be good after a couple nights of rest,” Rat assured me. “Just if you push too hard, it can kill you. Most of the time, you feel like you’ve just run a marathon, I’ve been told. Wearing and hard on the body. And if you do it too often, a person can burn out. Not just your magic, but also your life.”

  “Oh,” I said in a tiny voice. “How hard is too hard?”

  “That depends on a lot of things,” Rat said. “Listen, when I first met him, Josh pushed hard to save me and my squad’s asses. And it didn’t kill him. He’s tough. It’s just been a long couple of days.”

  “So why did he spend time with me, instead of resting? I would’ve understood.”

  “The
re was nothing else he could do about the problem,” Rat explained. “He needed to check out things at the MFA, in case what has happened was just grad student stupidity and not something else. There was nothing else to do. We couldn’t stand around waiting for the worst to happen, because it might never. Or it might have happened someplace else, and we needed to be in good shape to clean up the mess there. Josh wanted to spend time with you. And it wasn’t like you were hiking or something; you went shopping and then out to dinner. We knew where he was and could have called him if there was trouble.”

  “Because my parents are selfish jerks,” I said acidly. “If Mother had called, I bet Uncle Yushua might have told her that he couldn’t take me, which was why she didn’t, no matter what she says.”

  “You’re here,” Rat said firmly. “And as shitty as this sounds, welcome to the funny farm.”

  I laughed, and we stood up to start our run back to my uncle’s place. It was a little harder this time, because people were now awake and going to work. There were a lot of near misses with a couple of cars and some pedestrians before we got back to the condo.

  “Shower,” Harper said, wrinkling his nose. We were pretty sweaty and disgusting.

  Rat laughed and spread his arms out and lumbered over to Harper, who started backing away with a revolted look on his face. I laughed, and Uncle Yushua just shook his head.

  Rat stopped chasing Harper to jog upstairs. I decided to wait until I heard the water running before I ventured upstairs so I wouldn’t see something traumatizing before I got to my bathroom. I wanted a shower and to find some aspirin, because this headache was beginning to get annoying.

  “Are you all right?” Uncle Yushua asked softly.

  “I’m wondering if I should ask that of you,” I replied. “Rat mentioned something about magic being trying on a person.”

  “He would phrase it like that.” Uncle Yushua sighed. “I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. I barely had any power in the banishing. I was surprised that it worked, quite frankly.”

  I shrugged. “I managed to convince Sutekhgen he wasn’t the man of my dreams.”