Kat Dubois Chronicles

by Lindsey Sparks

  “Ah, yeah . . .” Nik followed, taking one halting step, then another. “I mean, no. I need to . . .” Again, he shook his head. “There’s something I have to do. I’ll, uh . . .” His pace increased, and he beat me to the doorway. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said, jogging into the hallway.

  I stopped in the doorway and watched him rush down the second-floor hallway toward the grand staircase at the front of the house. Once he was out of sight, I glanced over my shoulder at the family of three watching from within the study. Both Lex and Heru wore what-the-fuck expressions. Glad I wasn’t the only one.

  Nik wasn’t normal, not even for a Nejeret. His time sharing his body with Re had changed him irrevocably, making him distant and difficult to read. Even now, with Re gone—returned to his home universe where the rest of the Netjers could restore him to health—he still seemed to have a hold over Nik, almost like echoes of the god remained with him, haunting his consciousness. He was generally difficult to know, let alone to understand, but his behavior just moments ago was downright bizarre.

  I offered Lex and Heru a weak shrug before leaving them alone to discuss whatever the hell had just happened without me. I was halfway to my room when I heard the very distinctive sound of a door being eased shut, the little metal pieces snicking into place like alarm bells ringing in my ears.

  I paused and glanced around. All seven doors but the one to the study were closed—it could’ve been any of them. Not that it really mattered. None of what had been said in the study was overly sensitive information. We hadn’t decided to do anything. In fact, we’d settled on doing nothing as the best plan of non-action.

  One deep breath later, I made it the rest of the way to my room and locked myself in, leaning my back against the door. After Nik’s sudden bailout, I needed some solid alone time. To think. To worry. To mope. To figure out what the hell to do next, because whatever I’d told Heru, doing nothing at all really wasn’t an option. In defense of my lying to him, I had crossed my fingers.

  “That was quite peculiar behavior from Nik, don’t you—”

  I let my head fall back against the door with a dull thud and groaned. “Not now, Dom,” I breathed. My idea of alone time didn’t include my incorporeal half-brother’s ever-present presence. It didn’t mean I had to be an asshole about it, though. I sighed. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll give you some space,” Dom said a little primly. Great, I’d hurt his ghostly feelings. “Let me know when you want to talk.”

  I nodded. He’d moved to the standing mirror in the corner and could see me from there, so it wasn’t like he thought I was being a double asshole and flat-out ignoring him. And I knew from experience that speaking to him further would only spur him into drawing out the one-sided conversation, and I was craving a type of guidance he couldn’t give me.

  Dragging my feet, I made my way to the bed and plopped down on the edge. I opened the top drawer of the nightstand and pulled out the velvet drawstring bag containing my hand-drawn deck of tarot cards. I pulled my legs up and tucked my feet into the crooks of my knees before starting to shuffle the cards.

  Seven times, I divided the cards and threaded them back together, all the while thinking: What the hell is going on with Nik? Yes, I’d intended to do a more general what-am-I-supposed-to-do-now reading, focused on the bigger picture—the human extinction picture—but that was unceremoniously shoved aside by my subconscious. At the moment, I was way more concerned about Nik’s little show back in the study.

  I cut the deck into three piles and hovered my hand over each pile, eyes closed and mind and soul focused on the otherworldly energy charging the cards. Each pile gave off a little tingle of power, but it was the leftmost pile that made the air filling the narrow space between my skin and the cards feel thick with static electricity. Ding ding ding, we’ve got a winner.

  I restacked the cards, placing the leftmost pile on top, then flipped the top card.

  The Sun. Definitely a good omen. The design had altered itself to show a man wearing jeans and a torn white T-shirt standing with his back to the viewer. The man was Nik, I was certain. He stared up at the gilded sun engulfing the top half of the card.

  My brow furrowed. The Sun card almost never carries any negative connotation, even when reversed. It represents improvement, recovery, growth, and success. If someone’s ill, it means they’ll recover. If someone’s business is struggling, the Sun means they’ll find a way to prosper. It’s hands down one of the most positive cards in the major arcana, so drawing it first should’ve been comforting. Then why did new knots of anxiety tighten and twist in my stomach? Usually I had a sense of a card’s meaning relating to the situation at hand; not so this time. I felt more confused than ever, and my concern for Nik amped up a few notches.

  I blew out a breath and angled my eyes up at the ceiling. “Loving the clarity here, really,” I said to whatever universal power fed me these insights. “Big help. Super fantastic.”

  But maybe the universe’s clouded answer was a response in another way, possibly a gentle nudging for me to ask some other question—like, the more important question. Fine, I thought, we’ll do it your way.

  Deliberately, I collected all the cards and restarted the whole shuffling and cutting process. This time I forced myself to focus on the billion-life question: What are we supposed to do now? How are we supposed to help humanity? How can we save them? And last but not least: Should we listen to Heru? Should we follow his orders? Should we do nothing and just let all those people die?

  As I cut the deck and tested the magical potency of each stack, whispers of the merits of asking for forgiveness rather than permission danced through my mind. Nik and I could break rank and start transforming people behind Heru’s back. Together, we were probably skilled and powerful enough to evade him long enough to at least make a dent in the droves of sick and dying.

  Settling on the middle chunk of cards this time, I restacked the deck and drew the top card.

  Three of Swords. The card depicted a lone woman—me—crumpled on the muddy ground, rain pouring down on her, a single ray of sunshine lighting the area over her heart. Three swords stuck out of her body, each resembling Mercy, except only one appeared to be made of At. The other two were metal, one gold, one steel, or maybe silver.

  Heartache. Sorrow. Betrayal. The Three of Swords represents the pain that comes when the clouds part and truth shines down, uninhibited and unavoidable.

  More than a little unsettled, I wiped my suddenly clammy hand on my jeans, then drew another card.

  Five of Pentacles. A test. Loss, emotional or financial. The fear of isolation. This card was almost as discouraging as the first. Was the test the card referred to me deciding whether or not to follow Heru’s orders? If I did cross him, was this card telling me I would lose everything? Would I be cut off from the people I loved? Even the mere thought was devastating; I’d only just mended these relationships. Was I really willing to risk them to save people I’d never met?

  Almost on impulse, I drew another card.

  Ten of Swords. Ruin. The breaking of bonds. Endings. Not the blindsiding kind of ending, but the kind that comes with warning bells and dread. The kind that results from a culmination of a whole load of messy shit. The kind that’s expected, unavoidable, but no less devastating for it. At least this card bears a single ray of hope: the Ten of Swords promises an ending that will clear the way for a new beginning. When one door closes, and all that . . .

  A rotten seed implanted itself in the pit of my stomach. This reading was just as confusing as the last, aside from one crystal-clear part—I couldn’t do nothing. None of the cards hinted at any kind of static anything. They were all about action, about change. Which meant I couldn’t follow Heru’s orders. Defying him wouldn’t be easy, and it would be really damn painful. But according to the cards, it had to be done.

  “Well, shit . . .” Looked like I’d be asking for forgiveness then, since the permission route was off the table.
>
  I would need to talk to Nik, to find some way to convince him that inaction wasn’t an option. If anyone would be up for disobeying Heru, his nephew was the right guy for the job. Heru would never hurt Nik, his twin sister’s only son. Her only child. Only if Lex’s or Reni’s lives were in danger. Only then.

  I collected the tarot cards and flicked the top of the deck a few times with my index finger to discharge whatever remained of that oh-so-potent universal energy—that magic, so to speak—before putting the cards away. A few invisible sparks crackled, and the deck went quiet.

  I jumped at a knock on the bedroom door, then froze, hunched over on the bed, the tarot cards halfway into their drawstring bag.

  Was it Heru? Had he somehow guessed my rebellious intentions?

  I sat on the bed, paying way too much attention to my breaths and heartbeats, my eyes searching the room for some explanation, for some excuse. Except I hadn’t done anything wrong. Yet.

  Spine straightening, I shook my head. A breathy laugh escaped from my mouth, just slightly tinged with hysteria.

  The knock came again, and once more, I jumped at the sound.

  I silently chastised myself, then cleared my throat and looked at the door. “Who is it? What do you want?” Everyone who lived here was a Nejeret, which meant they’d have been able to hear my words clearly even though I hadn’t raised my voice.

  “It’s me,” Garth called through the door far louder than was necessary.

  My eyes opened wide. I hadn’t seen him conscious since the transformation. He’d been out for days, his brand new ba working on a cellular level, turning him from human to near-immortal Nejeret.

  I abandoned the cards, leaping off the bed and rushing to the door. My feet couldn’t carry me quickly enough.

  And yet, when I reached the door, I hesitated. Frozen. Paralyzed by the unknown. Would the man on the other side of the door be the same man I’d come to care about? Would he be different? Would he still be Garth?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter Three

  My fingers fumbled with the lock, but I managed to get the door open. “You’re awake?” I said, beaming up at Garth. “I mean, duh, that’s obvious, but—”

  My smile grew limp the second my overexcited brain processed the expression on Garth’s face. His strong brow was furrowed, the corners of his mouth turned down, and he was squinting, barely a hint of his warm brown irises visible through the dark lashes. Hardly a happy expression.

  “Are you—” I swallowed roughly. “Are you alright?” Had something gone wrong with the transformation? His pulse was racing, and he wasn’t exactly flush with the exuberance and excitement of fresh immortality.

  “I—” He winced, almost like the sound of his own voice hurt his ears. His frown deepened, and he shook his head. “Honestly, Kat, I’m not really sure what I am right now,” he said, his gravelly voice barely more than a whisper. “Let alone where I am . . . or if the procedure worked. I feel—I feel strange, to say the least.”

  I offered what I hoped appeared as a reassuring smile despite the worry tumbling around in my chest. “Yes, it worked,” I told him, “and you’re in Heru’s house, a couple floors above the lab.” I took a step backward and held out my arm, inviting him into the room. “How long have you been up?” Once he was through the threshold, I eased the door shut. “How do you feel?”

  His back to me, Garth stopped near the foot of the bed and bowed his head. He was wearing rumpled blue and gray pajama pants and a navy blue T-shirt. His feet were bare, his short, black hair tousled. “Everything is so—” His broad shoulders rose and fell as he inhaled deeply then let the breath out in a sigh. “It’s all just so much more.” He was still using that almost-whisper. “So loud and bright and—and—”

  I closed the distance between us and placed my hand on the back of his shoulder. I trailed my fingertips down the length of his arm as I moved around to face him. Goose bumps rose under my touch, and I laced my fingers through his when I was finally standing in front of him. “And sensitive?” He had no idea what he’d been missing out on as a human, touch-wise, and I was more than willing to enlighten him.

  Except he hardly seemed to be enjoying my touch. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his hand shook in mine. “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. “Very sensitive.” Nope, his reaction definitely wasn’t one of pleasure, but of something that looked a whole lot more like pain.

  Abashed, I released his hand and crossed my arms over my chest, tucking my hands under my armpits. I wasn’t sure what else to do with them. “Sorry,” I said softly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Nejeret traits don’t manifest until full maturity, a.k.a. adulthood. When mine manifested, I’d had months to get used to my gradually heightening senses, and the process had still been quite the adjustment. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go to sleep as a human and wake up a Nejeret, all senses turned up to the max. Pity panged in my chest, and all I wanted to do was comfort Garth, but I didn’t know how.

  Under pressure, all I could come up with was, “How are you holding up?”

  “Alright, I guess.” Garth laughed breathily and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe not so alright. I don’t know . . .”

  I started to outstretch my hand, like reaching out to him, touching him, might provide some comfort when all evidence pointed to the contrary. I tucked my hand back under my arm, practically hugging myself. “So, what are you—”

  “Kat, listen, I—”

  We started and stopped speaking at the same time. After a tense couple of seconds, we both laughed, though that cut off just as quickly when Garth winced and covered one ear with his hand.

  “Sorry,” I said again, the word barely audible. “What were you going to say?”

  After a few more heartbeats, Garth’s tense, pained expression downgraded from nails-on-a-chalkboard to annoying-high-pitched-sound, and he managed to open his eyes, though he still squinted as though he were staring straight into the sun despite the dimness of the gloomy light coming in through the windows.

  “It’s probably nothing,” he said. “It was right when I was waking up, so I may have been hallucinating or dreaming or something, but I thought I overheard . . .” He hesitated.

  “What?” I thought back to the heated conversation with Heru in the study—fine, it was an argument—and catalogued each notable point. What might Garth have overheard that could’ve troubled him enough to drag him from his recovery bed and down the hallway to my bedroom when clearly even breathing overwhelmed his hypersensitive senses? I searched the slivers of his rich brown eyes, thoughts whirling. “Really, Garth, what is it?”

  Was he bothered by the fact that so many people were dying? Who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Or was it the fact that so many more people would die while we waited to find out how Garth’s own body reacted to the transformation? Surely he feared for his family’s safety. Or was it that—

  “You can’t have kids?”

  I opened my mouth, then promptly snapped it shut again and stared at him in stunned silence. Of everything Heru and I had said to each other, that was what dragged Garth out of bed?

  Garth’s brows drew together, and he shook his head, almost like he was wading through his own tangled thoughts. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with a swamp for a brain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That came out wrong. I just meant—is that a Nejeret thing, or just a you thing?” Another headshake. “That didn’t sound much better, sorry. It’s just that I don’t really know much about your kind, and now your kind is my kind, and I have no idea what else to expect.” He rubbed his temples with trembling fingertips. “With all this sensory overload . . . I’m barely holding it together. I don’t know how I’m going to manage some brand-new superpower on top of all of this, and—”

  “Whoa,” I said, raising my hands. “Hold on, bud.” I scrutinized his scrunched features. “Did someone tell you that you got a piece of Heru’s sheut a
s well as his ba?”

  Garth’s temple-rubbing stilled. “No. Why? What’s a sheut?”

  I blew out a breath and turned away from him, crossing to the corner of the room to sit in the cushy, mauve armchair. It was a toned-down version of my fortune-telling chair back at the shop, the one I’d inherited from my mom. I collapsed into the chair. “So, nobody’s explained to you the different parts of a Nejeret’s soul?”

  Garth lowered his hands and shook his head.

  “Alright, so . . .” I pulled the hair tie down the length of my ponytail and let the long strands of hair cascade over my shoulders. “Have a seat.” I gestured to the bed with the hair tie, then slouched against the armrest as I rubbed the ache of a too-tight ponytail from my scalp.

  Once Garth was seated on the foot of the bed, I let my hand drop to the chair’s arm. “A Nejeret soul is different from a human soul for a bunch of reasons, but the biggest one is this,” I began. “Nobody really knows what exactly happens to a human soul after death—I suppose Re knew, but he’s gone now and he never filled the rest of us in, so . . .”

  I frowned as a wayward thought tunneled into my mind. The mysterious Netjer from the Ouroboros boardroom—the “Visitor,” as we’d been calling him—probably knew, too. I tucked that question away for later, if our paths ever crossed again. He might even answer. He hadn’t exactly been hostile. He also hadn’t been not hostile.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “so far as we know, when humans die, their souls sort of evaporate, or something like that.”

  A mild look of horror slowly set into Garth’s face. His entire family was human; of course that reality would bother him. Gods, I could be such an insensitive moron sometimes. But it was the truth, and he would’ve found out eventually. Isn’t it better to just rip the bandage off all at once?

  I had no comforting words of wisdom about losing people; I was still messed up over losing my mom. I decided pushing on to the less depressing part of this impromptu lesson was the best salve for that harsh truth. “But a Nejeret’s soul remains an independent entity,” I explained, “even after the Nejeret’s physical body is dead.”