“Seth.” She laid her hands on the hard planes of his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart through the thin fabric. “I’m clean, you’re freshly regenerated, and I’ve had the implant for months now.” She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s one less thing I have to worry about in the morning.”
“And you say you’re not practical,” he murmured. He drew Theo into him, letting her cradle her head above his collarbone. She pressed another kiss there, and he arched, the hard lines of his throat standing out under the skin. He was so close to losing his control, and that was what needed to happen.
“Are you sure?” he whispered. “I’m stronger than you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She nipped at the skin over the pulse point, drawing a moan from him. “Just be with me, Anhurmose.…”
His name falling from her lips in a hoarse murmur made him shudder as he held her. She wondered how long it had been since someone had called him by his real name, his birth name—especially a woman in his arms. In that moment he looked stark, lost, and his pain and need were written in raw lines on his face.
“Anhurmose,” she whispered. His arms tightened around her, a silent promise.
“Meri tje.” His voice was a rumble deep in his chest. He drew her down onto the couch, and there were no more words between them.
Chapter Thirteen
I have unburdened myself to many priests and wise men in my time, but none so happily as to a woman who will bear no foolishness.
– Excerpt from the Jurisprudence of Diokles,
circa 910 BCE (fragment)
It had been a long time for him. Too long.
Seth wet a cloth with bottled water and finished his ablutions. Theo had gone to wash up, and he was once again alone with his gods for a few minutes. He breathed deeply, feeling the blessed emptiness where the fear had once been.
With striking ease Theo, the woman behind the glass, had crossed the final barrier between them. She’d said his name, his real name, and in that moment she’d meant something by it. Half of him was afraid that something was about to go wrong, but the other half felt like throwing a bottle of champagne through a plate-glass window and shouting to the world what had happened.
For a moment his English failed him, and he tilted his head back and poured half the water over his head.
He was sitting cross-legged on the couch, mopping his face, when the door slid open and Theo came light-footed into the room. She smiled awkwardly at him, almost shy. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright and lively. She was a creature of color and vitality, purely human, with no immortal clay in her. How had it happened that she could affect him so much?
Seeing her, Seth rose and offered her the couch. Theo shook her head and gently but firmly pushed him back down. Then she settled in next to him, a fresh bottle of water in hand, legs curled loosely under her as she made herself comfortable.
“All right, we both know how this is going to go,” she said softly. “You haven’t survived for so long by being careless. You’re wondering what kind of a liability I’ll be. No, that’s not right, is it? You’re wondering what’s going to go wrong. How I’m going to throw you over, make you realize what a bad idea it was to sleep with me.”
So that was how it happened. She called to his shabtis like an artist could, but she was blunter than a bow stave when needed. There would be no more compromising or lying to this one. Gods, what a relief.
Seth leaned forward and slid his fingers into the collar of her T-shirt, gently pulling the material down to expose the bruise he had left on her shoulder. Theo let out a soft breath as he pressed a kiss to the spot.
“I have lived a long time,” he murmured, his mouth a bare inch from her skin. “But I know how to hold on to a good thing when I find it.”
“Jerk,” she said fondly. She glanced up at the shelf of gods. “I wonder if we’ve scandalized them.”
He laughed. “Considering how some of them were worshiped, we may have earned a favor or two.”
“It’ll make up for the curses the rest of them will be throwing our way.” She scooted down on the couch, making herself comfortable against him and taking a sip of water. “They don’t look much like the shabtis.”
The casualness of her tone didn’t quite fool Seth. “Theo,” he said softly. “I told you. I don’t have any memories for your art.”
“I’m not asking for memories, Anhurmose.” His eyebrows shot up at that, and she put a hand on his arm. “Please don’t…don’t think I’m playing a game. This wasn’t a scheme to get information.” She swallowed. “But I can’t not ask.”
“Ask about what?”
“About the art. The story.” She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, and her hand tightened. “Tell me about the shabtis, Anhurmose. Please.”
He looked down at her. His first instinct was to say no—the secret must be protected at all costs, or his too-long life would be ended and the gods would have him. But… “Why?” he said finally.
“Because it’s what I love.”
He examined her, his eyes hooded in the dim light. Then, with a whisper of blankets and skin on cloth, he gathered her to him. Their bodies fit neatly together, her head against his shoulder, him staring at nothing.
He told her.
Magic had always been a part of his life, because it was part of Kemet itself. People believed in signs, spells, ritual incantations, and the power of names and images. It was said that great priests and kings had known the art of making wax figures of their enemies and then destroying those figures to bring destruction on the enemies. Those who could read, and were high enough to enjoy the privilege, studied in the kingdom’s great libraries in hopes of obtaining that kind of power. Whenever the sky clouded and rain fell, everyone who could made ritual offerings to help the barque of the sun overcome the serpent who wanted to swallow it.
But he’d never seen magic happen. Enchanters worked with their little figures and their incantations, but no matter how long he served in the pharaoh’s innumerable wars, he’d never seen spells destroy an army. No matter how people behaved when the rain began, the sun always came back. He believed, but in a perfunctory sort of way, the way he believed in the existence of dirt. It just…was. For a man who couldn’t read and relied on the priests to handle godly affairs, magic wasn’t something to be concerned about.
He’d taken it for granted that his life would go the way he wanted, and that when he died, he’d have a good burial and an afterlife worthy of a loyal servant of the pharaoh.
Then came disease, and Anhurmose had turned to magic when nothing else would help him.
“Hearts,” he said. “Wax figures are too mutable; that was part of it, but the spirit needed something to—hold on to, I suppose. We made shabtis that would hold my soul, and we put in the hearts of sacrificial animals.”
“A life for a life,” she said softly. Their hands were entwined, and she ran her thumb over the edge of his.
“Not quite. They say…” He mulled over his words, searching for the right ones. “They say Khnum made the first people on his potter’s wheel. Every one of us is clay, at the bottom of it. But the heart is the center of it, the thing that made us alive. And I think you can’t run blood through a heart that’s not your own. My brother might know, but after I died, I never saw him again.”
He spun out the story for her. Two brothers wrapped up in a race against time, frantically searching for the grain of truth in centuries of religion and mysticism. Testing and refining. Hoping. And finally, a formula and a prayer that could do what was needed.
“Can you tell me?” she said.
With only a second’s hesitation he whispered the words of the prayer for her, and he watched her drink them in: “Khnum is my father, Neith is my mother… Ha ne sah en Merenptah…”
She sighed and nestled into him.
“I’d like to paint it,” she said.
He made a hrrm noise, drawing a tired laugh from
her.
“Though not if it’s going to cost anyone their soul.”
“I don’t know if it will,” he murmured. “But being what I am gives me a healthy appreciation for charms and rituals.”
“There are so many thesis papers begging to be written about this.” He chuckled at that, and she poked him in the shoulder. “Don’t tell me it’s never crossed your mind. Even if you published your memories as theories, it could help expand people’s ideas of what Egypt—Kemet—was like. Isn’t that important?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s not going to change anything. Not a lot of people actually care what happened four thousand years ago, Theo.”
Her face fell. Seth gently brushed back a tousled curl of her hair, looking into her eyes. “I know you do,” he said. “But no matter what I do, it’s gone, Theo. A god with one worshiper is barely a god at all, and a nation with one citizen isn’t much better. I’d rather let people think of Kemet as dead and buried.”
“Not dead, maybe,” she said, running her fingers over his shoulder. “Moved on. If you’re still alive, maybe the afterlife is real too. For them, anyway.”
“I almost hope it isn’t,” he admitted in a low voice. “Maybe this is magic, or science, or…something. I don’t like the idea of facing Ammit and Anubis after four thousand years of hiding from them.”
She pressed a kiss to his mouth, smiling against the skin as he made a little noise deep in his throat.
He could feel his borrowed heart thumping under her hand, and wondered if she could too.
“Well,” she said, “at least you can start your negative confession with ‘I have not lied to those who sought knowledge from me.’”
“No, I haven’t,” he agreed. “It’s a nice change.”
Chapter Fourteen
For Set held in his heart great hatred for Osiris, and would not be swayed by words or by deeds. And when the rage was upon him, he slew him, and cut him into pieces to be scattered across the length and breadth of the land.
– Excerpt from the Rebirth Papyrus,
circa 1390 BCE
He was asleep, but he might have been dead. A strange pall lay over his left side, and the skin there was sunken and gray. Theo watched in silence, counting between each shallow breath, wondering if he might have had a stroke.
No, that couldn’t be it. What kind of clay-bleeding mummy man had a stroke? Carefully she oriented herself. North was that way, so—Ah.
His sickly side faced west. To Egyptians the west was the realm of the dying sun, where gods of the dead dwelled and souls were brought for judgment. She remembered the creeping, stalking dog shadow. Zoology was not her department, but she’d bet anything that it had been a jackal.
She knew enough to understand that Anubis wasn’t an evil god. He was a guardian of the dead and a patron of mummification, not a satanic ghoul. But Seth had committed a sin against him and against the cosmic order of ma’at, dodging his influence and the land of the dead entirely. Maybe there was no specific commandment against living forever, but if Anubis was real he would be understandably annoyed about it.
Yet Seth had trusted her despite the possibility of divine wrath. She remembered his low, soft voice reciting the incantation that had brought him back to life. One of the greatest discoveries in the history of humanity. The museum already had the inscription, the one written on the shabtis, but it was nothing without the prayer that went with it.
Ha ne sah en Merenptah. O Khnum, tjewet it; O Neith, tjewet imawet, ink nefer…
Ha and ne. Tangerine and gunmetal. She matched each syllable to a color, turning the poetry of the ancient language into a panorama in her mind.
It would stay there, locked away. The gallery of her mind’s eye had no visitors allowed. But knowing it—knowing the truth—meant more to her than she could ever put into words. The words of life were art.
Despite everything, a smile crept across her face. If she still had a job when this was over, Dr. Van Allen would be getting a hell of a mural from her.
She wondered, almost idly, what the curator was doing. How would he handle another blow to the department? The first robbery had been bad enough, and now it looked like his trust in Theo (if he’d ever had any) had been misplaced. The exhibit was ruined.
The thought squeezed at her heart. The mummy and the shabtis, not to mention the jewelry.
Jewelry…that was the piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit. Mummy and shabtis, yes, united by magic and Seth. Jewelry? There wasn’t much jewelry listed among Number Three’s grave goods, thanks to what Seth had described as the “secrecy of sacrilege.” It was hard to gather valuables for a tomb when there wasn’t supposed to be a tomb. What little had been found was cheap clay and faience amulets, stuff that even as antiquities wouldn’t fetch much of a price and apparently had no connection to magic beyond the usual protective symbols. The tyet had been noteworthy for its unusual placement, but it wasn’t that big of a note.
So why had it been taken? Or had it really been jewels from the burial, and not something else entirely?
Dr. Van Allen wouldn’t talk to the press if he could avoid it. Letting people know exactly what had been stolen guaranteed that the thief would take the items apart to prevent their being recognized. Better they be lost to an illegal collection than destroyed entirely. That was how Van Allen would see it, anyway.
She needed to find out what was going on.
Seth had learned to play the long game because it used to be his best option. He was going to outlive everyone and, at least until the mummy was taken, he could have afforded to be patient. It had kept him alive, but it also meant he had learned not to think like a vulnerable human.
Theo couldn’t afford to hide forever. She had one lifetime, and she didn’t want to spend it as someone else. Falsely accused fugitives on TV always seemed to manage pretty well, but Theo wasn’t the A-Team type. There had to be a way to fix this without going that far.
Seth hadn’t blinked at the mention of jewelry. It was one more part of a situation he had to escape. But it niggled at Theo, a discordant patch of olive drab in the middle of “Starry Night.” She needed to learn more.
She pressed a kiss to his cool, sunken cheek and slipped off the couch. He didn’t stir. If it hadn’t been for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he might have been completely dead.
It wasn’t a face she’d anticipated when she’d hoped to meet someone, but it wasn’t one she regretted.
His keys were in his jacket where he’d dropped it. After a moment’s thought, she unlocked the door, then used the keys to weigh down a piece of parchment on the spindly writing desk.
She started to write in English, but stopped and, rearranging her grip on the pen, pieced out a few English words in the hieroglyphic alphabet.
I’m going to ask some questions. Back soon. T.
Then she made a quick bow to the standing gods and slipped the small tyet amulet off the shelf. It was a symbol of resurrection, but it was also a woman’s, and she could use the luck. Wearing it would feel strange, but there was nothing wrong with carrying it in her pocket.
Dr. Van Allen was a loner and a night owl. Rumor had it that he lived in a crypt, or possibly a basement laboratory with a body on the slab. With no access to the staff database, she had no way to find out where he lived. But he was also a curator with a pilfered exhibit, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Easy bet that he was still at the museum.
The question was, could she get to him?
But for once she had a stroke of luck. The industrial park around the airport had been built decades ago, and though it didn’t see a lot of pedestrians, it did a lot of business. Pay phones had been scattered here and there on the long, unlined streets, and with so little foot traffic, few of the phones had been destroyed by casual vandalism. It’d do.
The block around her was deserted, but she still pulled her collar up and glanced around nervously. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her.
An automated voice, a little wavery through the old phone, greeted her, “You have reached the office of Dr. Wayne Van Allen. Who shall I say is calling?”
She pitched her voice down a little. “Sophie Winslow, Clausen Insurance.”
“Hold, please,” the automated system said. It paid to know whom your boss dreaded.
There was a click, and a familiar voice answered, “This is Dr. Van Allen. Is there a problem?”
“Doctor? I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but this a very irregular case.”
“I understand.” Van Allen’s voice was oddly worn, and Theo felt a twitch of sympathy for the cold curator. He might not be sociable, but he wasn’t a bad person, and she doubted he would enjoy the opportunity to be interrogated about his department’s loss. “What is it?”
“The files your office sent for confirmation have been corrupted, and we need to double-check our records for the lost properties.” She tried to sound busy and harassed, which wasn’t hard. “Can you please confirm the item list?”
There was a moment of silence. Papers shuffled. “I’m surprised. I thought you had that on file, Miss Speer.”
Theo almost dropped the phone, but fought to keep her composure. “I’m sorry?”
“I know my employees, Miss Speer. Including those accused of theft.” The voice was as cool and flat as ever. “Is there a reason you called?”
“You’ve got to believe me, sir,” she said. “If I’d stolen them, I wouldn’t be calling you.”
“If so, why did you run from the police?”
“I made a mistake.” Was it true? She didn’t know. “I got scared.”
“And what do you expect me to do?” he said calmly. “I assume you’re calling me—and not the authorities—for a reason.”
“The jewelry…well…the jewelry doesn’t fit the thief’s pattern. I wanted to know what it was they stole.”
Papers rustled again. “Some rather impressive examples from the Scythian exhibit.”
Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1) Page 21
