Jason slowed his pace, looking down at his sneakers as he let his arm graze mine. Goose bumps raced along my skin. “I’m really sorry,” he said.
I nodded at my shoes, watching them as they padded alongside Jason’s as if they, too, were having a private conversation. “Thanks,” I said finally. “But it’s really okay. I live with my aunt and uncle now. They’re still together and so in love it’s almost gross.” I gave Jason a smile, letting him know it was all right for him to smile too. This orphan story had as happy an ending as anyone could hope for.
I saw his lips curl up the tiniest bit. “Sounds like you have a really good home to go back to.”
“I do. I just wish things were as good here.”
Jason cast a concerned glance my way. “What do you mean?”
In brief, I told him about everything that had happened with Nicole and all the tension that had built up between her and her group, and me and mine—though I wasn’t sure which team Lin was on just yet. She hated me one day and was okay with me the next. “Everybody’s so different from my friends back home, especially Nicole. I just don’t know if I’ll ever fit with them.”
Jason considered my words for a moment and then said, “Why would you want to? Truthfully, I’ve never liked Nicole; she just seems so fake and shallow. All she talks about is money and clothes and what mean gossip she can spread about someone else. She sets my teeth on edge. If you did fit in with her and her friends, I doubt we would be friends.”
A warm feeling spread through my chest when he said we were friends. “Are you a good judge of character?” I asked.
“I haven’t been wrong yet.”
“So what do you think of Doli and Shani? Nicole told me to stay away from Doli, but she wouldn’t explain why. What do you think?” We had just reached my dorm. I could see lights coming on in various windows as the sun began to fade into the horizon.
“Nicole’s just jealous. Doli is nice, and so is Shani. A few months back I dropped my smartphone in the fountain and Shani fixed it for me in three minutes flat. She’s cool.” I panicked a little when he said that. Did he like Shani, like Shani? But then he turned to me and smiled shyly. “You seem cool too. Really cool.” He reached down and squeezed my hand.
“Good night, Ana,” he said, and walked on toward his home. Only when he disappeared around a bend in the path did I remember how to breathe.
chapter 12
A FEW DAYS LATER THE school buzzed with activity. Principal Ferris had made it clear at morning assembly that she wanted everything to run like clockwork for the exhibition. So naturally everything was a mess. A storm had blown in that morning, making the school’s lights flicker on and off, as if we were in a horror movie. Thanks to the rain, the temple itself was off limits, but plenty of people showed up anyway to see the artifacts that had been pulled from the site, along with the class projects about the Anasazi and the rest of the pieces in the Temple Museum, which was open to the public for the day. In fact, so many people had shown up that everyone in Ms. Benitez’s history class had been called to the museum to serve as volunteers.
Nicole and her friends looked miserable, of course. They were manning the coat-check room, and griping about it every step of the way. All they had to do was take the guest’s jacket and umbrella and hand the person a ticket, but Nicole moaned each time, like she’d been forced to do hard labor. I could hear her muttering from all the way across the room.
I, on the other hand, was in heaven. My job was to hand out brochures, while Shani and Doli acted as hostesses, welcoming guests and directing them through the exhibit. It felt so good to be around normal people again—my kind of normal, anyway. I was surrounded by average families dressed in basic cotton and denim, some of them pushing strollers or toting kids in Elmo T-shirts. Some had on costume jewelry and smelled of drugstore perfume. I couldn’t have been happier. These were not the kind of folks who had private jets in their backyards or Roberto Cavalli on speed dial. In short, they were my people.
When I’d finished handing out all the brochures, I looked around to find Doli and saw that she, too, had found her people—literally. She was standing near the doorway talking to what looked like a group of Native Americans. Like Doli, they had dark wavy hair and catlike eyes. I hurried to her side.
“Is this your family?” I asked her.
Doli smiled. “No, my parents had to work tonight. But this family does live on the reservation.”
I was so excited to meet someone from Doli’s world back home. I turned to the woman nearest me. “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.”
The woman shook my hand and said, “Yá’át’ééh.” At my confused look, she sounded it out slowly for me: yah-ah-te. “That means hello in Navajo,” she explained.
I tried repeating it in return and Doli nodded her head. “Not bad, Ana,” she said. She turned back to finish a brief conversation in Navajo with the woman and her family, and they waved at me before heading farther into the museum.
“You didn’t tell me you could speak Navajo!” I exclaimed.
Doli shrugged. “Of course I can,” she answered. “I grew up on a Navajo reservation. It’s my native language. Most of us there speak Navajo and English.”
“That’s so cool. What did she say to you just now?” I asked, gesturing to the woman from Doli’s reservation as she walked away.
“She said she was glad she could come. They heard about the temple and are excited about it. She didn’t think that the ancient Pueblo peoples were active here, so they are very interested in seeing what was found.”
Even the local Navajo people hadn’t known the Anasazi were active here? Interesting. I thought back to the Roman coin Jason found; was it possible that it really hadn’t fallen out of Dr. Logan’s pocket? I’d have to make it my mission to find out for sure.
For now, I followed the crowd around the museum, taking in the beauty of the donated pieces. But one by one the other members of the Ancient Civilization Superpowers—Shani, Doli, and Lin—gravitated toward me. “You guys notice anything missing here?” Shani asked as she looked around the room.
Though I knew it probably wasn’t what she meant, I wanted to say Jason. Since he didn’t want to have anything to do with Dr. Logan or his exhibit, he’d told me he would give his mother some excuse about homework to get out of coming. So far, Dr. Logan was a no-show anyway.
“Our families’ donations aren’t here,” Doli pointed out.
“Bingo,” said Shani. “After all that orb mumbo jumbo, this exhibit is still one sphinx, one golden fan, one blanket, and one vase shy. Why is that?”
It was a good question. It sounded like my aunt and uncle had gone through quite a bit of trouble to make sure that vase got here safely. But why did they bother if the only eyes that would ever see it belonged to the spiders that lived in the basement? It annoyed me to think that Ms. Benitez was keeping our families’ treasures hidden away in the safe so that she could be the only one to enjoy them. What kind of museum curator was she?
“I’m actually glad the fan isn’t on display,” Lin said, making us all turn in her direction. “Just look at some of the people here. We might as well be in Walmart! And their kids—yuck. That fan is worth far too much money to let them near it with their grubby little hands.”
Ugh . . . there she went again. Lin was always so determined to remind everyone that her family was rich that she forgot when she was standing with someone who wasn’t.
She wandered away and Doli stared after her, glaring a hole in her back. “That little—”
I jumped as the screeching of the museum’s fire alarm cut off the rest of her sentence. We all looked at one another in alarm as the light in one of the hallways flickered and went out for good.
The guests, who had been milling around, enjoying the artwork, began to chatter. Children started to wail, and rain battered against the windows. But even with that riot of noise, I could hear Principal Ferris talking to one of the other staff members. “This may ju
st be a false alarm triggered by the storm,” said a woman whom I recognized from around school.
“That may be,” said Principal Ferris, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to evacuate the museum to be on the safe side.” She gave the staff members marching orders and asked that the student volunteers help usher everyone to safety. Once outside, they would be led to the closest dorm to take shelter from the rain.
As Doli, Shani, and I waved the last of the guests through the exit, we followed them out, relieved to see the rain letting up enough to allow people to get home safely. But before we’d reached the outside gate, something stopped me. One of the Superpowers was missing. “Where’s Lin?” I cried.
“I don’t know,” said Shani. “I haven’t seen her since the alarm went off.”
“Good riddance,” mumbled Doli. “She probably just took off early because she was bored.”
I had to agree that did sound like something Lin would do, but somehow I had a strong feeling that wasn’t the case. “Guys, there might really be a fire somewhere in the museum. What if she’s trapped and can’t get out? What if she needs our help? We have to find her and make sure.”
Doli and Shani shared a look, then nodded in unison. “You’re right, Ana,” Doli said. “Let’s go.”
Together the three of us flew back into the now empty museum building.
“Where do we start?” Shani said. “There are so many rooms. . . .”
I closed my eyes and blocked all the sights and sounds around me. “Shhh,” I said. “Just stop . . . and listen.”
They did stop, and in the stillness, we all heard it: a voice crying out in fear from the basement. Lin? We dashed off toward the sound of the voice.
chapter 13
BEFORE WE EVEN GOT TO the stairs to the basement, we heard the screaming.
“Is that Lin?” Doli asked, looking at both of us with wide eyes.
My heart was pounding in my chest. “It has to be,” I whispered. “We have to help her, guys.”
Shani nodded. “Knowing Lin, she might be screaming because someone has a knockoff purse,” she said. But the joke fell flat. Even if none of us was friends with Lin, exactly, we were all still too worried about her to laugh.
Going down the stairs was like walking into a nightmare. The space beyond the freight elevator was darker than I remembered, and I couldn’t see a thing at first, not even my hands as they stretched out ahead of me, groping for the walls. The only thing that comforted me was knowing that Doli and Shani were behind me.
We followed the voice through the hallways and around the corner, where a faint light illuminated the door to the safe.
The door hung wide open.
“This is a bad sign,” I said immediately. “Ms. Benitez would never leave the safe unlocked.”
We carefully made our way through the small room, barely glancing at the donated pieces from our families, and sped into the larger space, where Ms. Benitez had made us pass around the orb. There in the center of the room were Ms. Benitez and . . . Dr. Logan? What was he doing down here, and how did he get in without us seeing him? When Ms. Benitez shifted to the side, I realized that they were fighting over something . . . and when I got closer I saw it was the Mayan vase she’d told me my aunt and uncle had donated! She seemed to be trying to keep it from Dr. Logan, who was doing his best to tear it from her hands. Each time she wrested it away from him, she let out a scream that only seemed to give her power. I realized with a start that the voice we’d heard crying out had been hers. So where is Lin?
“What the . . . ?” Shani muttered, her blue hank of hair falling over her left eye. Suddenly Doli’s hands closed around my arm and Shani’s, and she yanked us back behind a large cabinet.
“What are you doing? We have to help Ms. Benitez!” I hissed, trying to break free. But Doli latched on to me and held me in place.
“Ana, listen to them. Something really strange is going on here.”
I forced myself to stop moving and open my ears.
“Let it go, Anubis!” Ms. Benitez commanded. “It will never be yours!”
“You underestimate me, Ixchel. I will have what I came for.”
“Never,” replied Ms. Benitez—Ixchel—her voice strangely magnified, as if it were being broadcast in surround sound. “For years I have awaited your return, and ever since the earthquakes and thunderstorms began to plague us, I knew that you walked the Earth once more. It was only a matter of time before you revealed your true nature. But I have made preparations and they are complete at last. Go now or face your doom!”
As I listened to them argue, the air suddenly felt thin and cold, as if I were on a mountaintop, and my head swirled with images. The earthquakes, the storms, the Roman coin in Dr. Logan’s hand, Lin’s phone going black, the frightening dreams that were beginning to linger into the daylight, Ms. Benitez handing us the glowing orb, and her words: Your ancestry makes you powerful. It was all coming together now, but in a way that might mean I was crazy.
I turned to the other girls. “You guys,” I started breathlessly, “that name. I’ve heard that word before. I know I have. Ixchel . . .” I rolled the name around in my mouth, the meaning tugging at the corners of my memory. And then it hit me and my eyes went wide. “Ixchel is the Mayan goddess of war—one of the most powerful there is. I might be losing my mind, but I think . . . Ms. Benitez . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. My mouth had gone dry.
Shani looked at us in alarm. I’d never seen such deep fear on her face. “If you’re crazy, so am I. Anubis is the Egyptian god of death,” she hissed. “He can assume many forms, but in his true demon form, h-he l-looks like—”
BOOM!
A sudden explosion rocked the whole basement, sparks flying in every direction, the whoosh of power sending us reeling to the floor. Our heads poked out from behind the cabinet just in time to see Dr. Logan shed his human skin and transform into a terrible creature. My heart froze in my chest as I recognized the demon I’d seen in my dream—a creature with a jackal’s head and an almost human body, dressed in tattered strips of gauze like a mummy. A putrid stench like rotten flesh filled the air. Anubis held up a striped stick with three strands hanging from one end. I think it was called a flail. He reeled back, turned his demonic face to the ceiling, and laughed.
I turned to my teacher, fighting my instinct to save her, but she, too, was transforming. There was a cloud of smoke and ash, and when it cleared, Ms. Benitez was gone. In her place was the figure I’d always recognized as Ixchel, a warrior woman with a writhing green snake on her head and a heavy beaded chain around her neck. She wore a green leather tunic with a sash of feathers slung across her chest. She twirled a heavy two-headed ax as if it were as light as the feathers on her sash, and her hair rippled behind her like a black river.
“This isn’t happening, right?” I heard Shani say. “I’m not seeing this.”
“This is getting weird. Like, Twilight Zone weird. Are we dreaming? Someone pinch me,” said Doli.
Shani and I both reached out and pinched her arm as hard as we could. Maybe if she could wake up, she could wake us, too. And I wanted more than anything to wake up. But she winced and rubbed her arm. This is real.
Turning back to the battle of the two gods, I saw Anubis aim the flail at Ixchel, firing off a bolt of light that crackled in the air. Ixchel returned fire with her ax, and soon the basement was ablaze with fire and magic. My brain felt like it might explode. How can this be happening? These are just stories. These gods aren’t real. Magic isn’t real. And yet . . .
A crack like thunder echoed against the walls, and the cabinet we’d been hiding behind exploded. Each of us dived in a different direction, taking cover behind the nearest statue and doing our best to stay out of sight.
“It won’t be long now, Ixchel. My Chaos Spirits will be set free and the Brotherhood of Chaos will finish the work we started so very long ago.” Anubis’s voice was chilling. Icy and calculated, yet laced with malice and amplified, as if m
any demons spoke through him.
In answer, Ixchel raised her ax. I heard a scuffling noise and glanced to the other side of the room. There, in the doorway, stood Lin. When she laid eyes on the scene before us, her jaw went slack. So much had happened in the past few minutes that I’d almost forgotten we’d come looking for her. And now she stood between the two gods, though neither had noticed her yet. While I was watching Lin, Ixchel threw another bolt of magic at Anubis, who blocked it with his flail, sending it crashing into the support beam above Lin’s head.
If she didn’t move, she would be crushed by the falling masonry. But she seemed frozen with fear. Just like when I had swiped at Nicole, I didn’t think. I leaped to my feet and dashed across the dark expanse behind Ixchel, driven by instinct. I saw the beam above Lin break apart, the pieces falling from the high ceiling. Lin looked up and screamed, but the sound was lost amid the thunderous sounds of the battle. I reached her just in time and tackled her to the ground, out of harm’s way.
“What on earth is going on?” she cried out, staring at Ixchel and Anubis in shock as I helped her to her feet.
“No time to explain. We’ve got to get out of here!”
As I turned to lead Lin back to the other side of the room near the exit, I saw Ixchel’s head swivel in my direction. She’d seen us, and for a second she lowered her ax and her timeless face glowed with supernatural light. She breathed out in what I think was relief.
But in that brief moment of distraction, Anubis, his back to us, released a magical blast that struck the Mayan vase, which Ixchel had cradled in her arm. I gasped. “NO!” At the same time, Ixchel let out a bloodcurdling cry that tore at my soul. She released the vase as lightning rippled across its surface, illuminating the deep grooves on every side. There was a hush, and then the vase exploded into thousands of glittering shards, raining down like sand. Taking advantage of the cover provided by this cloud of debris, I grabbed Lin’s hand and ran across the back of the room. We huddled behind the ornate bench where Shani and Doli were now hiding. But I had to see what was happening. I peeked around the edge of the bench and almost wished I hadn’t.
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