She saw her own shock reflected in Mike’s expression.
“They all did, every statue in the place,” she went on. “I thought they were going to shake down the temple. Ash says the power comes from Horus, that Horus is using him as a vessel. But that’s impossible, right? I don’t know what I think.”
“I don’t know what I think either,” Mike admitted. “One God, revealed to humanity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is what the Church teaches.”
“So, does that mean you think Ash is … is somehow against God? That his powers are evil?” M demanded, her voice sharper than she’d intended.
“I’m not inclined to call everything I don’t understand evil,” Mike said crisply. Then her voice softened. “Some scholars believe Horus was a model for Christ. There are similarities in their stories. But that can be said of many mythological gods—Mithra, Krishna, even Dionysus. Maybe there’s a spark of the divine anywhere someone worships with pure intent. It goes against my deepest beliefs, but no human has a perfect understanding of God. I certainly don’t have an explanation for Ash’s abilities.”
“His parents treated him like an abomination. They thought his power came from the devil or something like it. I think … I’m pretty sure they tried to beat it out of him,” M said quietly.
“Poor boy. Poor, poor boy.” Mike slowly shook her head.
“It was the Eye that saved him,” M told her. “They taught him his power was from Horus.”
“Which gives me even more reason to be concerned,” Mike said. She reached across the table and took M’s hand, a sure sign she wanted to make a Serious Point. “Ash is going to have to choose between his religion and helping you. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.”
“No,” M protested. “We have a bargain. The Eye doesn’t get the pieces of the Set animal until they rescue Dad.”
“And yet, those who worship Horus feel they have a sacred duty to protect the pieces, to protect the entire world. What is one man’s safety when you believe the world is at stake? It’s hard for me to accept that the Eye has agreed to this bargain in good faith,” Mike said. “If Ash has to choose between the duty to his god and his desire to help you, no matter how strong … Well, it wouldn’t be an easy choice even for me, much as I love you and your father. I feel for him.”
M’s body went cold. She’d let herself lower her guard. She’d let herself believe all she had to do was find the last two pieces—with Ash’s help. But Mike could be right. Ash’s religion, his connection to his god, was as deep as her connection to her father. Could she really be sure he would honor their deal? Would it be possible even if he wanted to?
And Liza was going to start hurting Dad soon. There were only three days left in the week.
“I can’t afford to feel for him,” M said. “If he tries to break our bargain, I’ll do anything to stop him.”
Mike studied her, as if taking an X-ray of M’s soul. Then she slapped her palm on the legal pad. “Fine. Let’s get started. I’m a lot stronger in Sanskrit than I am in the Horus language, so I’ve made good progress. See these words written in a jagged horseshoe?” She traced the marks on the enlarged photo with one finger.
M nodded.
“There are several words repeated: fire, earth, shudder, ash,” Mike explained. “The words, and especially the shape they form, made me think of the Ring of Fire.”
M snorted. “That doesn’t help us much. If you’re right, we know the piece is located somewhere along the Pacific coast of New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, North America, and South America. Doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”
Ash came in just in time to hear Mike say “Patience.”
“Asking M to be patient?” he joked. “Good luck with that.”
“Mike just told me the next piece is somewhere in the Ring of Fire.” Ash gave her a quizzical look. “It’s where seventy or eighty percent of active volcanoes are, and where the worst earthquakes happen,” she explained. “This is New Zealand.” M pointed to the bottom of half of the horseshoe. “And this.” She stabbed the bottom of the other half with one finger. “Is Chile.”
Ash sank down into one of the chairs. “Mango juice?” Mike offered, rising to her feet.
“Please. Cheers,” Ash replied, staring at the photo. “That’s got to be around forty thousand kilometers.”
“Patience,” Mike said again, putting a glass of juice in front of Ash. “Those are only part of the glyphs. “Right here”—she showed them a glyph—“this says mud cat and the one next to it says child.”
“That’s around where Central America would be on the Ring,” M said.
“You’ve lost me. What does that mean?” Ash asked.
“That, my friend, is what we have to figure out,” Mike told him.
“Every hiding place so far has been sacred. Temples, churches, a sacred grove,” M said. “Anybody ever heard of mud cat worship?” Ash and Mike shook their heads. “Anybody ever heard of a mud cat at all?” They shook their heads again.
“We have much work to do, but while we work, how about some rice porridge? Not made by me! Promise,” Mike said. She began filling dishes from the pot on the stove without waiting for an answer.
“Mud cat, mud cat, mud cat,” M muttered. “Mud. Cat. Mud. Cat. It’s already getting to the point where the words don’t sound like words.”
“Do you think it meant a brown or black cat?” Ash asked. “Mud-colored?”
“Possibly.” M looked up “cats” and “Central America” on her cell. “Most of them seem to be spotted. Except the cougar, which is tan. Oh, and one called a jaguarundi. Its fur is supposed to be unmarked, but the color goes through stages—black, brownish gray, and reddish brown. So I guess part of the year, it’s mud-colored. It’s not much bigger than a house cat, and has a tail that’s more like an otter’s than a cat’s, if that’s useful to anyone.”
Mike gave M and Ash their porridge and sat down, flipping to a new page of her pad. She began to draw spots all over it.
“She can’t think well without doodling,” M told Ash. Maybe that’s where she’d picked up her own doodling habit.
“What are those spots?” Ash asked.
“Mud puddles, of course,” Mike answered, without looking up.
Distraction, M thought. What’s your favorite band? What’s your favorite movie? “What did you find out about the piece from the Temple Church?” she asked. “The piece that should have been there but wasn’t?”
Mike looked surprised at the sudden subject change, but didn’t question it. She raked her hands through her short hair, giving it what M used to call the porcupine do. “I have a contact who has another, somewhat shady contact who sometimes, but not always, deals in stolen artifacts. He specializes in—”
“We don’t need his CV, Mike!” M interrupted.
“I was finding it quite interesting,” Ash put in.
M glared at him. “Quit the polite British thing. Unless you’re wondering if you knew him from your time as a criminal—”
Ash’s face began to color. “Stop it,” Mike barked.
M went silent. Part of her would always be a little kid around Mike, and that little kid knew when to obey.
“Here’s the short version,” Mike went on. “An artifact matching your description turned up in an acquisition by the British Museum. It was lumped in with a collection of minor Egyptian artifacts, catalogued, and stuck in a box somewhere. The only remarkable thing about the piece was that it resisted carbon dating, and, in fact, the material couldn’t be identified. The attempts to analyze it were made in 1969, and shortly thereafter, the piece disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Ash repeated.
“My contact’s contact has heard mention of a similar piece in New Orleans. And, interestingly, a young lab assistant from New Orleans was working at the British museum in ’69. He quit soon after the piece vanished.”
M found herself staring at Mike’s legal pad. The top sheet was now covered with black
spots. “Spots!” she cried.
Ash looked at Mike, and Mike shrugged. “I usually have a good idea what she’s thinking, but not this time.”
“Wasn’t there a myth about a jaguar getting its spots by using its paw to daub mud on itself?” M asked. She jumped up, almost tipping over her juice glass. Ash caught it.
“Yes!” Mike cried. “A Mayan myth. The Maya revered jaguars. The jaguar was their god of the underworld. It helped the sun travel under the earth at night, so it could rise again in the morning.”
“They believed in were-jaguars, too!” M exclaimed, her Mayan mythology coming back to her. “Dad and I went to an exhibit once that had all these statues of parents holding half-jaguar, half-human babies. Some researchers thought they were showing deformed children being offered to the gods. But some thought the statues memorialized a child born to the Jaguar line who would be a successor to the throne.”
“The glyphs! ‘Child’ and ‘mud cat’ together.” Mike raked her hands through her hair again. “It seems we’re looking for a temple where the were-jaguar was worshipped, somewhere along the Central American coast.”
M felt the smile spreading across her face just as one beamed back from Mike’s. “Dr. Verela,” they said together.
“If there’s a Mayan were-jaguar temple, he knows about it,” M explained, turning to Ash.
“On it!” Mike hurried from the room.
M let out a deep breath and sat back down. “We’re getting so close.”
“No one will be waiting for us in Central America or in New Orleans,” Ash said. “Neither place was on the map.”
“Great. Then it will be easy-peasy lemon-squeezey.”
“I’m sorry?” He blinked in confusion.
M laughed. “You’re right. I can’t believe I just said that.”
Ash gave a mock frown. “I can’t believe I’ve been traveling the world with someone who would utter such a thing.”
“I can’t believe I’ve been traveling the world with someone who would utter the word ‘utter,’” M shot back.
“‘Utter’ is a perfectly—”
Ash was interrupted by Mike returning. “Dr. V. came through. He’s going to email me the location of a temple in Guatemala where there is a throne with a statue of a huge golden jaguar standing behind it.”
“How is that not in a museum?” Ash asked.
“The locals think it’s bad luck. And, for whatever reason, many of the people who have tried to study, in many cases loot, the temple have been killed,” Mike replied, staring hard at M. “Even Dr. Verela is unwilling to go inside.”
“But Dr. Verela is incredibly superstitious. Every time he hears about a new superstition, he takes it on,” M reminded her.
“Even so, there are real dangers behind some old superstitions. You have to promise me you’ll be careful, both of you.”
“We will,” M and Ash said together, and Mike handed M a slip of paper.
“The coordinates,” she said, her voice cracking a little.
“Don’t you dare cry,” M warned her. “Or I’ll cry too, and I don’t want to cry.”
Mike wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I wasn’t crying.”
“As soon as we finish this thing, Dad and I are going to be expecting a visit from you, a long one,” M said. Mike nodded. M was afraid they’d both be full-on crying momentarily. She threw her arms around Mike, and Mike squeezed her back so hard it hurt M’s ribs, but she didn’t want to let go. After a long moment, she forced herself to step back. It was time to save Dad.
She turned to Ash. “So where first? Guatemala or the Big Easy?”
* * *
“Do you ever want to go to college?” M asked as they walked across Loyola’s Peace Quad. The day was warm, and kids were hanging out all over the place, flirting, studying, talking, playing Frisbee, sunbathing, napping.
“Not particularly,” Ash said.
“You don’t need to know about anything but Horus?”
“Which includes studying linguistics, history, philosophy, and archeology with some of the most knowledgeable people in the world,” Ash retorted.
M wondered if the Eye would even let him go to college if he wanted. She decided not to ask. They were in New Orleans with no reason to think anyone from Set knew it. Why spoil this little bit of time they were safe?
“What about you?”
“I’m deciding between Boston University and the University of Sheffield,” M told him.
Ash let out a low whistle. “Not bad.”
“Yeah, well, everyone in those archeology departments knew—knows,” she quickly corrected herself, “my dad. And that he and Mom took me with them whenever they possibly could. So I have the life experience factor. So I’ll probably go. When all this is over.”
“You don’t sound so sure,” Ash commented.
M glanced around at the college kids again. “It’s hard to imagine fitting in. They feel like an alien life form.”
“You’ve experienced more, survived more, than most of them,” Ash said. “You know, when I first met you, I was expecting a spoiled American teenager. You’re anything but. At least, most of the time.”
“That’s sweet. You’ve defied my expectations of a foaming-at-the-mouth cult member too,” she said.
He smirked. “I only foam when I brush my teeth.”
M grinned. Crap. She was really starting to like him. And what if Mike was right? What if when it came down to it, if the Eye demanded the pieces, Ash just took them from her? Could she really expect him to go against his god?
They reached Bobet Hall, and Ash opened the door for her. M glanced at her cell. “His lecture should be wrapping up in a few. Wonder what made a lab tech decide he wanted to teach philosophy.”
“Very few people end up doing what they expected they’d do when they were twenty,” Ash replied.
“There you go again, sounding like a middle-aged man,” she teased.
“It’s still true,” he grumbled. They climbed the stairs to the second-floor lecture room and waited outside until all the students had left. When they walked in, M was surprised to see an old man gathering papers at the lectern. He was probably in his twenties back in 1969, she reminded herself. “Dr. Ferguson? Would you mind answering a question for us?”
He glanced up at them and smiled. “Is it the Hegel? I know it’s a challenge. Just get through the reading before class, and we’ll start hammering it out.”
“We’re not in your class, sir,” Ash said. “We thought you might have some information regarding a piece that was once part of the collection at the British Museum. It would look something like this.” He brought up a picture on his cell of the Set arms. They had photographed the pieces while they were separate at the convent.
The professor swallowed. Then smoothed down one eyebrow with his pinky. M narrowed her eyes. He was about to lie. “We don’t care how you got it. We just want to know where it is now,” she said quickly. “It’s important. Really, really important.” She hated that she sounded like she was begging.
The professor’s genial manner dropped away. “I sold it to a man who calls himself Papa Ozee. He has a shop in the Quarter. Anything else you want to know, you’ll have to ask him.” With that, he pushed past them and out the door.
“I’m surprised he told us,” Ash commented. “Even years later, stealing from the British Museum could ruin his career.”
M nodded, already searching on her phone. “There’s a Papa Ozee’s House of Voodoo on Decatur Street. The St. Charles Streetcar should take us most of the way there.”
* * *
“It’s like stepping back in time,” Ash said as they found places on the mahogany seats of the streetcar.
“It is,” M agreed, gazing at the brass fittings and exposed lightbulbs. The kids on campus had made her feel like such an outsider, but here, sitting on the streetcar with Ash, she suddenly felt like a tourist out for a fun day. “You can tell Mardi Gras wasn’t that long
ago,” she commented, gesturing at the brightly colored beads that still hung from the power lines and the giant oak trees.
Ash leaned across her to get a better look, his soapy scent catching her off guard. She inhaled deeply. “I wonder how it compares to Kerala?” he asked, straightening up.
“Fewer elephants, more alcohol, more boob flashing,” M answered.
“Then by all means we should go,” Ash joked.
M played along, deciding, temporarily, to put her worries on pause and pretend they were just normal friends who could make plans for the future. “Definitely. We’ll stay there.” She pointed to one of the huge old mansions, layered like a wedding cake, with a gallery running along the second floor.
“Is it a bed-and-breakfast?” Ash asked. “There’s no sign.”
M gave her hand a dismissive flick. “Doesn’t matter. For us, they’ll make an exception. We’ll sit up there and drink mint juleps out of silver cups. No, silver vases!”
“Big drinker, are you?”
She shrugged. “It’s Mardi Gras.”
“Vases it is.”
M was almost positive Ash didn’t drink anymore. It didn’t fit with the whole being a vessel thing. But he’d started the Mardi Gras game, and she was glad he was still playing. “At midnight, we’ll go to a masquerade ball,” she added. “I’ll wear some grotesquely expensive gown and a fabulous mask. You’ll wear white tie and tails, with white gloves.”
“I thought I’d be dressing up,” Ash said. “That’s my usual weekend wear.”
She laughed.
“And of course, we’ll dance,” he went on, a slight rasp in his voice. “You’ll look too beautiful in your grotesquely expensive gown for me to resist dancing with you.”
Heat flooded her body. “Of course,” she said, trying to seem casual, like she wasn’t reacting to what Ash had said, how he’d said it, or the way he’d looked at her. She started to turn away, but her gaze caught on his, and she couldn’t.
“Right,” he said.
“Right,” she repeated.
She wasn’t sure who’d moved, or if they both had, but somehow they were closer together. M felt paralyzed, unable to pull herself away from him.
I Do Not Trust You: A Novel Page 22
