by Tanya Huff
Celluci sighed and stuffed the parking ticket into his jacket pocket. From midnight to seven the street outside Vicki’s apartment building was permit parking only. The time on the ticket said five thirty-three; if he’d gotten up five minutes earlier, he could have avoided a twenty dollar fine.
It had been hard to drag himself away. He must’ve lain in the darkness for a good twenty minutes listening to her breathe. Wondering if she was dreaming. Wondering if she was dreaming about him. Or about Henry. Or if it mattered.
“What I mean, Celluci, is no commitments beyond friendship.”
“We’re going to be buddies?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t ball your buddies, Vicki.”
She’d snorted and run a bare foot up his inner thigh until she could grab the soft skin of his scrotum with her toes. “Wanna bet?”
So it had been from the beginning. . . .
He scratched at his stubble and got into the car. Their friendship was solid, he knew that, the scars they’d both inflicted when she’d left the force had faded into memory. The sex was still terrific. But lately, things had gotten complicated.
“Henry’s not competition, Mike. Whatever happens between him and me, doesn’t affect us. You’re my best friend. ”
He’d believed her then, he believed her now. But he still thought Henry Fitzroy was a dangerous man for her to get involved with. Not only was he physically dangerous, and that had been proven last August beyond a doubt, but he had the kind of personal power it would be easy to get lost in. Christ, I could get lost in it. No one with that kind of power should be, could be, trusted.
He trusted Vicki. He didn’t trust Henry. That’s what it came down to. Henry Fitzroy made up the rules as he went along, and for Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci that was the sticking point. More than supposedly supernatural, undead, powers of darkness. There were a number of very definite rules surrounding his and Vicki’s relationship, and Celluci knew damned well Fitzroy wouldn’t honor them.
Except he had so far . . .
“Maybe what it all comes down to,” he mused, maneuvering through the maze of one-way streets south of College, “is that I’m ready to settle down.”
It took a few seconds for the implications of that to sink in, and he had a sudden vision of what Vicki’s response would be if he brought up marriage. He couldn’t stop himself from ducking. The woman was more commitment shy than any man he’d ever met.
He frowned as he guided the car around the Queen’s Park circle. It was too early in the morning for deep philosophical questions on the nature of his relationship with Vicki Nelson—things were going well, he shouldn’t fuck with that. Gratefully noticing the ambulance and the police car pulled up in front of the museum, he made a U-turn across the empty six-lane road and dumped the problems of his love life for more immediate concerns.
“Detective-Sergeant Celluci, homicide.” He flipped his badge at the approaching constable as he got out of the car, forestalling a confrontation about the less than legal U-turn. “What’s going on?”
The young woman snapped her mouth shut around what she’d been about to say and managed, “Constable Trembley, sir. They sent homicide? I don’t understand.”
“No one sent me, I was just driving past.” The attendants were loading a body into the ambulance, face covered. Obviously D.O.A. “Thought I’d stop and see if there was anything I could do.”
“Nothing I can think of, Sergeant. Paramedics say it was a heart attack. They figure it was because of the mummy.”
A year ago, eight months ago even, Celluci would have repeated the word mummy, sounding intrigued or amused or both, but after having busted his ass last April tracking down a minion of hell and part of August associating with a pack of werewolves, not to mention time spent with Mr. Henry Fitzroy, his reaction was a little more extreme. He no longer took reality for granted.
“Mummy?” he growled.
“It was, uh, in the Egyptology workroom.” Constable Trembley took a step back, wondering why the detective had gone for his gun. “Just laying there in its coffin. Too much for one of the janitors apparently.” He still looked weirdly suspicious. “It had been dead for a long time.” She tried a grin. “I don’t think they’ll need you on that case either . . .”
The joke fell flat, but the grin worked and Celluci let his hand fall to his side. Of course a museum would have a mummy. He felt like a fool. “If you’re sure there’s nothing I can do . . .”
“No, sir.”
“Fine.” Muttering under his breath, he headed back to his car. What he really needed was a hot shower, a large breakfast, and a nice simple murder.
Snapping his occurrence book closed, Trembley’s partner wandered over to her side. “Who was that?” he asked.
“Detective-Sergeant Celluci. Homicide. He was driving by, stopped to see if he could help.”
“Yeah? He looked like he could use some more sleep. What was he muttering as he walked away?”
“It sounded like,” PC Trembley frowned, “lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh, my.”
Three
“Hi, Mom.”
“Good morning, dear. How did you know it was me?”
Vicki sighed and hiked the towel up more securely under her arms. “I’d just gotten into the shower. Who else could it be?” Her mother had an absolute genius for calling at the worst possible times. Henry had almost died once because of it or, conversely, she’d just missed getting killed because of that same call—Vicki had never quite settled the question to her own satisfaction.
“It’s twenty to nine, dear, don’t tell me you’re just getting up?”
“All right.”
There was a long pause while Vicki waited for her mother to work that last comment through. She heard her sigh and then she heard, faintly in the background, the staccato sound of her nails against the desk.
“You’re working for yourself now, Vicki, and that doesn’t mean you can lie about all day.”
“What if I was up all night on a case?”
“Were you?”
“Actually, no.” Vicki put her bare foot up on one of the kitchen chairs and massaged her calf with the heel of one hand. Yesterday’s climb up the tower had begun to make itself felt. “Now, as I was home two weeks ago for Thanksgiving . . .” Which is going to have to hold you until Christmas. “. . . to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
“Do I have to have a reason to call my only daughter?”
“No, but you usually do.”
“Well, no one else is in the office yet . . .”
“Mom, some day the Life Sciences Department is going to expect you to start paying for these long distance calls.”
“Nonsense, Vicki. Queens University has lots of money and it’s not like it costs a fortune to call from Kingston to Toronto, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to see how your visit to the eye doctor went.”
“Retinitis pigmentosa doesn’t get any better, Mom. I still have no night sight and bugger all in the way of peripheral vision. What difference does it make how the visit to the eye doctor went?”
“Victoria!”
Vicki sighed and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Sorry. Nothing’s changed.”
“Then it hasn’t gotten any worse.” Her mother’s tone acknowledged the apology and agreed to drop the subject. “Have you managed to line up any work?”
She’d finished an insurance fraud case the last week of September. There hadn’t been anything since. If she were a better liar . . . “Nothing yet, Mom.”
“Well, what about Michael Celluci? He’s still on the force. Can’t he find you something?”
“Mother!”
“Or that nice Henry Fitzroy.” He’d answered the phone once when she called and she’d been very impressed. “He found you something last summer.”
“Mother! I don’t need them to find me work. I don’t need anyone to find me work. I am perfectly capable of finding work on my own.
“Don’t grind your teeth, dear. And I know you’re perfectly capable of finding work, but . . . oops, Dr. Burke just walked in, so I should go. Remember you can always come live with me if you need to.”
Vicki managed to hang up without giving in to the urge for violence but only because she knew it would be her phone that suffered and she couldn’t afford to buy another new one right now. Her mother could be so . . . so . . . Well, I suppose it could be worse. She has a career and a life of her own and she could be after me for grandchildren. She wandered back to the shower, shaking her head at the thought; motherhood had never been a part of her plans.
She’d been ten when her father left, old enough to decide that motherhood had caused most of the problems between her parents. While other children of divorce blamed themselves, she laid the blame squarely where she felt it belonged. Motherhood had turned the young and exciting woman her father had married into someone who had no time for him, and after he left, the need to provide for a child had governed all her choices. Vicki had grown up as fast as she could, her independence granting a mutual independence for her mother—which had never quite been accepted in the spirit in which it was offered.
Vicki sometimes wondered if her mother wouldn’t prefer a pink and lacy sort of a daughter who wouldn’t mind being fussed over, but she didn’t lose any sleep worrying about it, given that her decidedly non-pink and non-lacy attitudes had no effect on her mother’s fussing as it was. While proud of the work that Vicki did, she fretted over potential dangers, public opinion, the men in Vicki’s life, her eating habits, her eyes, and her caseload.
“Not that my caseload doesn’t need fussing over,” Vicki admitted, working up a lather on her hair. Money was beginning to get tight and if something didn’t turn up soon. . . .
“Something’ll turn up.” She rinsed and turned the water off. “Something always does.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous! I won’t stand for it!” Dr. Rax threw himself down into his desk chair, slamming the upper edge back into the wall. “How dare they keep us out!”
“Calm down, Elias, you’ll give yourself an ulcer.” Dr. Shane stood in the office doorway, arms crossed. “It’s only until the autopsy comes back and we know for sure it was a heart attack that killed that poor janitor.”
“Of course it was a heart attack.” Dr Rax rubbed at his eyes. Trapped in a cycle of frighteningly realistic dreams about being buried alive, he’d welcomed the phone call that’d freed him in the early hours of the morning. “The police officer I talked to said you could tell just from looking at him. Said the mummy had probably scared him to death.” He snorted, his opinion of anyone who could be scared to death by a piece of history clear.
Dr. Shane frowned. “Mummy . . . ?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Rachel. You can’t have forgotten the baron’s little souvenir.”
“No, of course not . . .” Except that for a moment, she had.
Dr. Rax rubbed at his eyes again; they felt as though bits of sand had jammed up under the lids. “Funny thing is, I knew young Ellis. Talked to him on a number of occasions when I’d stayed late. He had a good mind, all things considered, but not what I’d call much of an imagination and I’d have expected him to take anything he ran into in the workroom in stride.” He surprised himself with a dry chuckle. “Unlike Ms. Taggart.”
Although she continued to clean the department offices, Ms. Taggart would not go into the workroom alone since the incident last summer with the mummified head. No one had ever admitted placing the Blue Jays cap on the artifact, but as Dr. Rax had made no real effort to find the culprit and had been more than vocal about the lack of depth in the bull pen, the rest of the department had its suspicions.
“You realize this is only going to encourage her.” Dr. Shane sighed. “She’ll probably transfer to Geology or somewhere else without bone and we’ll lose the best cleaning lady we’ve ever had. I’ll never again be able to leave papers on my desk overnight.” Escorting her into the workroom was a small price to pay when measured against the knowledge that Ms. Taggart was the only cleaning lady in the building who never disturbed office work in progress. “Speaking of papers . . .” She waved a hand at the curator’s overloaded desk. “Why don’t you use this time as a chance to catch up?”
“The moment we can get back to work . . .”
“I’ll let you know.” She pulled the door closed behind her and walked slowly across to her own office, brows drawn down into a worried vee. Her memories of the mummy slid over and around each other as though they’d been run through a blender and she just couldn’t believe that for one moment she’d forgotten its existence entirely. Obviously, I’ve been more affected by that young man’s death than I thought.
The ka he had taken in the night told him of wonders greater than even Egypt in all her glory had known. The great pyramids had been dwarfed not by monuments to the glory of kings but by gleaming anthills of metal and glass built for fat-assed yuppies. Chariots had been replaced by four cylinder shit-boxes with no more pickup than a sick duck. Although he was unclear on many of the other concepts, beer and bureaucracy, at least, seemed to have endured. He was halfway around the world from the Mother Nile in a country that fought with sticks upon frozen water. Its queen sat in state many leagues away, no longer Osiris incarnate, although he who ruled for her here seemed to think himself some kind of tin-plate, big-chinned god.
Most importantly, the gods he had known and who had known him appeared to be no more. No longer would he have to hide from the all-seeing eye of Thoth in the night sky but, more importantly, there were none to replace the priest-wizards who had bound him. The gods of this new world were weak and had claimed few souls. He would go among them as a lion among the goats, able to feed where he willed.
He recognized that the one known as Reid Ellis had belonged to the lower classes, a common laborer, and that the information he had absorbed was tainted by this lack of position. That mattered little, for he had long since chosen the one who would feed him with what he needed—the, history of the time that had passed and the way to prosper in the time that was now.
The life had also given him strength. Although his physical form remained bound, his ka had been able to wander throughout the minds that knew of him.
And how pitifully little they knew.
With each touch, he took bits of the knowledge away; it was knowledge of him after all and thus he could control it. Those with the weakest wills forgot in a single passing, the stronger lost memories a piece at a time. Soon, there would be none who knew how to bind him again.
He would be released; he had not touched the one who would ensure it, except to strengthen the bond between them, and he left the other enough to assist. They would peel the binding spell away and he would rise, magic restored, ready to claim his place in this strange new world.
He would deal with them then.
“Where is everybody?”
“Well, as no one knew when we were going to be allowed back into the workroom, I told them they might as well finish up any paperwork and then head home.”
Dr. Rax turned to stare at his assistant curator. You told them what? he wanted to shout. We have the first new mummy in decades and you dismissed my staff! But somewhere between thought and speech, the words changed. “That seems reasonable. No point in them hanging around with nothing to do.” He frowned, confused.
Reaching the door to the workroom, Dr. Shane peeled off the six-inch strip of bright yellow and black police tape that has been pasted over the lock. “I’m glad you agree.” She hadn’t been sure he would. In fact, now that she thought about it, she wondered how she could have . . . could have . . . “And it’s not like we’ll need them for what we’re about to do.”
“No . . .” He had the strangest feeling that they were walking into deadly danger and half expected the door to creak open like a bad special effect. We should get out of here now, while there’s still time. Then they were in the workroom with
the mummy and nothing else mattered.
Together they removed the plastic shroud, bundling it carelessly to one side.
“I do feel a bit guilty about young Ellis though,” Dr. Shane sighed as she pulled two pairs of cotton work gloves out of the cardboard box marked Wear these or die! “Heart failure might have been the cause, but our mummy certainly contributed to the effect.”
“Nonsense.” Dr. Rax worked his fingers into the gloves. “As dreadful as it was, as sad as it was, we are in no way responsible for that young man’s fears.” He picked up a pair of broad-tipped tweezers and bent over the coffin, breathing through his mouth to minimize the almost overpowering smell of cedar. Very, very gently, he caught hold of the hieroglyphic strip at the point where the winding ended on the mummy’s chest. “I think we’ll need some solvent. It appears to be attached to the actual wrappings.”
“Cedar gum?”
“I think so.”
He continued to apply a gentle pull on the ancient linen while Dr. Shane carefully moistened the end with a solvent-soaked cotton swab.
“It’s amazing how little the fabric has deteriorated over the centuries,” she observed. “I send a shirt to the dry cleaner twice and it begins to fall apar . . . !” The hand holding the swab jerked back.
“What is it?”
“The chest, where I touched it, it felt warm.” She laughed a little nervously, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. “Even through the glove.”
Dr. Rax snorted. “Probably the heat from the lights.”
“They’re fluorescent.”
“All right, it was a by-product of the slow and continuing process of decay.”
“Felt through the wrapping and the glove?”
“How about pure imagination brought on by misdirected guilt over that janitor?”
She managed a doubting smile. “I suppose I’ll settle for that.”
