“But how will we find my mom if we can’t talk to them?”
“I have my sources,” he says, “but we need to be patient. Don’t do anything stupid or draw attention to ourselves. These things take time.”
I’m not waiting around for him. Time is of the essence. The thought of my mother bound, gagged and shivering on a cold cement floor at the hands of roughneck street thugs is horrible, but then again, they don’t know who they’re dealing with. My mom is like Houdini. She can outsmart any restraints. Likely she’s knocked out or unconscious, or else her captors are.
He needs to tell me more. Perhaps more liquor is the answer. Since he’s finished most of the bottle, I go to the refrigerator in search of another. When I come back, he’s engaged in some sort of imaginary conversation. With whom, I’m not sure.
The only creature close by is the cat. As I go to refill Janus’s glass, I notice that this cat is very unusual with its long, graceful body, black rimmed amber eyes, short plush golden fur and an expressive black-tipped tail. Like a miniature mountain lion.
Janus points down at the cat earnestly. “You stay away from her, you hear me?”
The cat stares back at him attentively, as if she understands him. Her tail swishes back and forth, one ear cocked as he speaks to her.
“I’m telling you, Diana would not like this one bit! Your job is to protect Helene, and that’s it!” Janus continues his tirade. Poor cat. Perhaps he’s had too much to drink. I’d better slow down on the alcohol.
The cat arches her back, her expression defiant. She paces back and forth, then returns to sit in front of him. He gives her the evil eye. If looks could kill, I’m afraid to say it, but the cat would be fine, and Janus would be going to his funeral.
As I sit back down at the table, the cat jumps up on my lap and nuzzles her head affectionately under my chin, purring so loudly that it vibrates my hand. This soothing sound, along with her incredibly soft fur and warm body nestled up against me, makes me feel safe. I like her.
I look up to see Janus warmly smiling at me. It’s weird. Suddenly, he’s become a completely different person. There must be at least two distinct personalities residing inside of my godfather, maybe more. He’s probably a Gemini. “You seem to like her,” he says softly.
I scrunch up my face. “Actually, I’m supposed to be deathly allergic to cats, so I’m not sure how it is that we are still in the same room together.”
“Well, it seems you’ve grown out of your allergy. It happens.”
“What kind of cat is this?” I ask, moving to pour him one more shot of alcohol.
“I have no idea. She just showed up here on the outside stairway this morning. I tried to ignore her, but she kept sticking her paws in through the crack in the window. She’s quite talkative. I had to let her in or suffer getting a noise complaint.” His tone is light and easy. I can’t fathom why anyone would issue a noise complaint around here with all the sirens blaring and the junkies whooping and hollering outside. But I don’t buy his story. There is something very intimate between Janus and this cat.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Did you hear a word I just said? She just got here. How would I know her name?” Janus gets a faraway look in his eyes, as if he is hearing a voice. “But how about we call her Bastet? In ancient Egyptian mythology, a protector-warrior goddess, originally depicted as a lioness, but later as a cat. Some believe that she was a precursor to our Greek goddess Artemis.”
“Okay, sure.” I’ll bet that’s been her name all along. As I scratch the back of Bastet’s ear, my finger grazes the edge of her collar. This isn’t a typical collar. It looks like a collector’s item: an antique, a call back to ancient times, bronze and stately, like something out of the early nineteenth century. Extraordinary.
Janus moves over to the kitchen to the espresso machine. “Want a coffee?”
“Isn’t it almost ten o’clock? I’ll be up all night if I have a coffee now, especially an espresso.”
“Well, that’s kind of the point.” Janus smirks. “I don’t go to bed until one or two in the morning, typically.” No wonder he’s so crazy. I cannot imagine how he functions like this. He yawns and looks down at his phone. “Ah, you’ve got to get to sleep for your first day of school. I won’t be far behind you.”
He staggers over to the couch, plopping down on what is my makeshift new bed. Did he say school…tomorrow?
“You must mean next week?” I ask.
His drooping eyes smile with his words. “Tomorrow.”
A moment later, he’s out cold, mouth hanging open, breathing loudly in and out. An uneven, rasping snort almost wakes him every second or third breath.
I can’t believe he expects me to start a brand-new school tomorrow! I just got here. Well, at least it would get me out of here, away from him and his craziness. His prone body is draped across the couch. Where am I supposed to sleep? The thought of my trying to sleep in Janus’s bed, especially after his obnoxious lecture on how I am never to go into his room, freaks me out. Not an option.
Bastet rubs her long, lithe body against the refrigerator and meows loudly. As I open the door for her, my eyes lock onto her intelligent bright golden-orange eyes. I sense panic there as her meowing grows more and more urgent. This cat is starving. I set a milk dish down in front of her and she quiets right down.
After she laps up the milk, I pick her up. She jumps up onto my shoulders, rubbing my hair and purring loudly. This is one affectionate cat.
As I pull her down off my shoulders, I suddenly want to know more about her, so I pull out the old laptop Janus gave me earlier. “Let’s see what kind of cat you are,” I say to her as I type in the search:
domestic cat that looks like a brown and black lion
The screen fills with images of cats that look like Bastet. Aha: she’s an Abyssinian. These cats are supposedly the descendants of the original domestic cats of ancient Egypt, where they were worshipped as a tribute to the goddess Bastet. Janus picked the right name. Abyssinia was once located in what is now modern-day Ethiopia. Although these cats appear to be exotic miniature mountain lions with their ticked fur and dark black markings around their eyes, they are no more related to a mountain lion than any domestic cat. Abyssinians are expensive purebred cats, which cost at the low end around US $1,200. She’s royalty. What is a cat like this doing here in this dump with Janus?
My thoughts feel fuzzy and unreal. I need to get to sleep soon. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for me – first day of school. I’m kind of excited to learn more about what school is like here.
There’s a pile of bedding next to the couch. I guess I’m sleeping on the floor. Not exactly how I envisioned my first night here. I cocoon into a pile of blankets and look around drowsily. Something smooth and shiny catches my eye, up on the fireplace mantel. It’s a stone of some kind, a brilliant amber color with a black slash up the middle. It looks familiar, like maybe I’ve seen it before. Bastet jumps up onto my chest and interrupts my thoughts. Her vivid gold-orange eyes shine like a flame. I know what this is.
A cat’s-eye stone.
I feel my mind drifting. As my last thoughts fade off, the stone grows in my vision and begins to glow, brighter, brighter….
7 – The Metro
I wake up thinking about the cat’s-eye stone, it’s brilliant amber color a beacon to call forth the flames that burn somewhere inside me. I must remember who I am. Like my mother, I am a survivor, forged from the fires of life. I know I can find her, but I can’t forget my power. I need to be strong.
The cat’s eye rests up on the mantel, now just a smooth stone, not glowing. Vibrant rays of sunlight stream into the room, forming an array of interesting shap
es and lines up on the wall behind me. Janus is gone.
Bastet springs onto the mantel. Her eyes sparkle with mischief. She is up to something. Her paw darts out, knocks the stone an inch forward.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I can understand now how Janus found himself engaged in conversation so easily with this animal. She’s lively and playful, her tail twitching slightly as her paw zips out again. This time, she bats the stone from side to side. One more strike and it skitters off onto the floor.
“No, stop!” I yell. A sudden, urgent need to hold that stone possesses me. I long to feel its silky texture in the palm of my hand. “Where is it?” I ask to no one.
I toss several pillows aside, searching frantically through the tangle of blankets me on the floor. Finally, there in the fold of a white sheet, is the stone. Sweet relief fills me.
I lift it up to eye level to study it. The cat’s-eye stone is inlaid in to a gorgeous antique bronze charm, the same color as Bastet’s collar, as if the two are meant to go together.
Thump, thump, thump. Janus stands above me, tapping his foot in an aggravated assault on the wooden floor. He’s not happy. My hand drops to my side like a dead weight. The cat’s-eye stone charm falls out of my hand, clatters across the rug, and rolls slowly down the hollow wood to rest somewhere out of sight.
I don’t understand why, but I need to hold it in my hand again. I feel a strange pull to protect this stone at all costs. But something tells me that I can’t let Janus know that I want it this badly…or at all.
“It’s about time you wake up!” he yells.
Somewhere off in the apartment, directly behind where Janus stands rigid and glaring at me, I hear the sound of the stone roll, clink, then rattle around on the hardwood floor. Bastet’s white whiskers are barely visible behind a chair. Her golden paw shoots out. The charm clatters across the floor to the other end of the room.
She peeks out at me from the corner of the chair, her golden-amber eyes filled to the brim with defiance. Intelligent determination fills her feline face. She’s enjoying this little game with me.
“Get up now! Time for school!” Janus yells. I recoil and cover my ears. I almost forgot he was standing there.
Bastet springs out from her hiding place. She across the room, headed straight for Janus. He steps aside, just avoiding her. The room is stone silent for a moment, then…clink…clank. The stone catapults around as Bastet bats it around like a soccer ball.
“This blasted cat is making me nuts!” He holds a stack of papers in his shaking hand. “About your school. There was no time to arrange the bus for pickup today, and who knows if they will even come to this neighborhood anyway? So, you need to take the Metro there. The Academy is due east from here, but there’s no direct route. These maps will show you how to get there.” He drops the loose pages into my lap, jabbing his fingers into one of the maps. “I’ve marked your school with an X.”
I nod, but I’m not listening. Bastet sits upright directly behind Janus, staring at me with keen interest. There’s no sign of the stone charm anywhere. What did she do with it?
Janus backs out of the room, muttering under his breath, “That ruddy school is going to eat up all of my cash! Really, Diana!” It’s as if he thinks my mother is here in the room with us. He stomps into his room and slams the door. I stare at the space where he was just standing. I can almost make out the trail of frenetic residue he just left behind.
I juggle the papers. There are maps of the city and the Metro, and all the school registration forms. Most of it is in Greek.
How am I supposed to figure this out? I’m so alone in this strange new city, and even worse, I’m afraid to go out where crazy assassins may be lurking who-knows-where. My life is at stake.
I draw in a breath and smooth out the map in front of me. Janus must be the last person left on the planet who uses paper maps and schedules. He probably still has an old-fashioned answering machine with a tape recorder, too. The piece-of-crap phone Janus gave me is for calls and texts only. No Internet, so no way to look up the route to school. I could boot up the laptop he gave me, but there’s no time. Finally, after cross-referencing three maps, I figure out that I need to take two different trains on the Metro and then transfer to a separate bus line to get there. All this, just to get to school!
Bastet sidles over to where I’m sitting. She nudges me insistently with her furry brown head.
“All right, up and at ’em!” I say as I stroke her fur. Something about the way the sunlight shimmers off the surface of the glass lamp next to me makes me suddenly remember the stone, the cat’s-eye. My desire to hold it again is back, stronger than ever. I need it. I search the floor, but it seems to have disappeared.
Oh, Bastet, what did you do with it?
She shoves her head abruptly into my hand. Her tail twitches. I pat her head and thread my hand around the edges of her neck to her collar, rubbing vigorously. There, my fingers run across something cold, hard, and smooth. It’s the cat’s-eye charm!
The stone is embedded into the side of her collar, as if it’s always been there. But how? Perhaps Janus? No. He’s been locked in his room for the past five minutes.
I swear that the cat’s mocking me. “Oh yeah, you’re really funny,” I say out loud. Yes, I can definitely see why Janus was talking to Bastet earlier. Maybe he’s not so nuts after all.
Janus yells from the other room, “Helene, you’re going to be late if you don’t go now!!”
There’s no time to spare. I spring up, change, grab a banana and gather up all the maps hastily as I head down the stairs, out the door, and onto the street.
My laptop weighs down my backpack, dragging at my shoulders. I’m wearing one of only two sets of clothes I can claim as my own, both of which Hal Avery must have purchased for me.
So, here I am in neon purple sweatpants and a dull blue t-shirt with the words “I Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge” splashed across the front. I may as well stand in the middle of the school stadium and yell, “I’m American!” While it’s true that I did walk across that bridge, I don’t feel like advertising it to everyone here and now. Lucky for me, I have the matching purple running jacket on over the t-shirt, but it’s too small, so I can’t zip it up to cover the words on the shirt.
My long brown hair is as frizzy as ever, alive with static. I have to regularly smooth it down with water or spit. I don’t even have a hairbrush or makeup. There’s also a fresh new zit on my cheek this morning, and I have nothing to cover it up. This is not how any girl in her right mind would dress for the first day at a new school.
I’m standing inside the Metaxourgeio Metro station, trying to read the signs, but it’s is all Greek to me, literally. While the ticket machine is in English, I’m totally confused about what to do. I pull out a stack of Euros of different denominations and try to figure out which one I need. There is a long and very impatient line of people behind me.
“I wouldn’t flash your money around here. It’s not safe,” A gruff male voice says from behind me. I’m a little nervous to turn around. I mean, what if he’s trying to rob me?
Flustered, I turn to see who it is. This guy is probably about my age, fairly tall, maybe five feet ten, and solid, with well-sculpted muscles visible through his fitted white shirt. He glares at me with intense gray-green eyes. This, with his longish tousled blond hair, a gold hoop earring and a wild tattoo that covers his whole arm give him a definite bad boy vibe. Doesn’t match his pressed pants at all, like he’s a rebel in disguise.
“What? Oh!” I gush, then gape in horror as a blob of spit flies out of my mouth, hitting him on the shoulder. Please tell me that he didn’t notice that. He doesn’t react. I cram my wad of cash deep down into my pockets and out of sight. “You spe
ak English?”
“Yeah, I do. I’m a tourist group leader for the cruise ships.” He grins confidently. The words roll smoothly off his tongue with a slight accent. The unique shade of his eyes captivates me, but this moment is shattered when I catch a whiff of his breath. Ugh. He must be a smoker.
Right on cue, he pulls out a cigarette and lights up, right there in the middle of the Metro station. I look around for a no smoking sign but don’t see one anywhere. I check the people around me, but no one seems annoyed. This isn’t California, where we have a lot of rules against smoking in public places, which I’m starting to miss.
“Would you mind putting that out?” I ask, pointing to his cigarette with a frown. “I have asthma.” I’m lying. I have never had asthma in my life, but the pungent smell of his smoky breath makes me want to gag.
It’s obvious to both of us that I am full of it about the asthma. He looks down at the smoldering cigarette in his hand and then up again, as if he’s trying to decide what to do next. Just then, a man behind us starts muttering something in Greek. My new “friend” and this man go back and forth heatedly. Finally, my friend turns around to face me, rolling his eyes.
“There sure have been a lot of Americans claiming to have asthma in my tour groups lately. You’re from…let me guess…California?”
“How did you know that?”
“Uh, your shirt?”
I look down and laugh.
He continues, “Also, the tourists from California are always the first to complain about smoking as if it were the most horrible thing on the planet. But when they come to Greece, I tell them to lighten up…ha-ha.” He laughs at his own joke. “In Greece, a lot of people smoke, and that’s the way it is. If you’d rather be in America, just stay there. Don’t bother to visit us here.”
Protogenesis: Before the Beginning Page 6
