* * *
The last half hour of their journey had been spent finding a parking space in Central London. By the time they arrived at the museum, it was getting late. Tourists and boisterous Londoners bustled past them on the street, undoubtedly on their way to a pub or club for the night.
‘You really think they’re in there?’ Itzy wondered as they stood outside the Victorian black iron gates topped with ornamental spikes so no one could climb over. Beyond the gates, the museum stood in all its faux-Roman majesty, its perimeter studded with creamy Ionic columns.
Aidan shrugged. ‘That’s what she said.’
‘And what Oz said,’ Seth put in. ‘Or rather, what Melody must have made Oz say.’
‘But how did they get in there?’ Itzy wondered.
Aidan pressed his hand against the place where the gates opened electronically during normal opening times - which had ended about three hours earlier. ‘I reckon Melody turned her music up to a shriek that was so piercing, it broke the glass of one of the wee windows and they were able to climb inside. She did it once before, when I was out and she forgot her key and got locked outside the flat.’ Despite their circumstances, he laughed at the memory.
Itzy shook her head at this. ‘Wouldn’t that set off an alarm?’
‘She’s like a bat,’ Aidan said. ‘Shur she can make sounds to interfere with that sort of thing.’
Itzy gaped at him. She opened her mouth to respond, and noticed Seth drawing a square with his hands. Aidan’s hand fell through the gate and he stumbled before regaining his footing. A block of transparency had materialised, allowing them to see through the gate and into the square that lay at the foot of the museum. Aidan let out a whistle of admiration and Seth stood back proudly.
‘Let me guess,’ said Itzy. ‘You only just realised you could do that, too.’
‘Pretty much,’ said Seth.
‘Well, come on then,’ said Aidan. He hurried through the doorway, with Seth following. Only Itzy hung back.
‘Don’t you think we’re attracting attention?’ she remarked.
Seth motioned to the busy street bordering the gate. A group of twenty-something-year-old men pushed past, singing a football anthem in at least five different keys. They were followed by a crowd of laughing women decked out in pink. The woman in the centre wore a sash that read, Bride to Be.
‘It’s London,’ Seth said. ‘Who ever notices anything here?’
He was right; the crowds were engrossed in their own conversations, while seamlessly dodging each other as they crossed paths. They weren’t paying any attention to three teenagers on the wrong side of the museum gates. It was a little unsettling to think how much one could get away with in such a city.
Itzy stepped through the doorway and Seth waved it away behind her. They crossed the square, past the modern art sculpture erected to greet visitors, and mounted the steps to one of the main doors. It was oversized and made of heavy dark wood. Without thinking about it this time, Seth created another doorway, and light poured out from within. They entered the museum and were swathed in the remaining sunlight outside, beaming down through the glass ceiling. At the centre was the museum library, surrounded by a circular stone walkway, with doorways leading off to the exhibits.
Itzy had been to the museum uncountable times, but only as a little girl. Stephen had taken her, of course, to teach her about what he did. He’d known most of the staff and given his daughter personal guided tours, explaining the history of each item, while she only half-listened, her imagination running away with her and dreaming up what she would later realise were historical romances.
After her father left them - after she made him leave - she had never returned to the museum. It held too many painful memories of the times when Stephen had tried to share something with her and teach her things. Looking around at it now, she felt numb at heart.
‘Where do you think they could be?’ she broke the silence that had fallen over their trio.
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ said Aidan, ‘but I’d wager we just listen for voices.’
They chose a doorway at random and kept their ears open as they navigated through the labyrinthine corridors of the museum. All the while, Itzy tried to force her worries from her mind and replace them with words, sentences, something constructive.
She still hadn’t managed to finish her story. The boys didn’t understand what it was like to be a writer. Sometimes the ideas were incomplete. They took time to form, to solidify into something meaningful.
The greatest difficulty she faced now was not knowing what they would find when they reached their destination - wherever that might be. She didn’t know what to imagine.
Then it occurred to her that perhaps she had control over that, too. Just how far did her talents extend?
But even then, hers was the power to narrate. As far as she knew, she couldn’t just think, ‘Ropes: disappear.’ She had to put it into context and form sentences in her mind. And that took a lot of consideration. The wrong wording could put them in terrible trouble - which she was convinced was what happened that afternoon when she broke the light bulb in her bedroom.
When they passed the Rosetta Stone, Seth stopped in front of it. It was at least half his height and much wider.
‘I’ve never seen it so clearly,’ he explained over his shoulder as he examined it through its glass casing. ‘Normally there’s a queue and it’s murder getting to the front of it.’
‘We don’t have time,’ Itzy noted from behind him.
He sighed and turned around, continuing to follow them past parades of headless Greek statues, an exhibit on living and dying in different cultures from around the world, Chinese and Korean ceramics and jewellery, Islamic artefacts, a Moai statue nabbed from Easter Island - yet still they didn’t find what they were looking for.
They climbed a marble staircase to the upper floor and found themselves surrounded by Samurai relics, a collection of swords, ancient Celtic crosses, Mesopotamian pottery, and yet more Greek and Roman stonework. Just when Itzy thought maybe this was a wild goose chase after all, Seth announced, ‘I hear them’.
The trio stopped in place and, sure enough, faint voices could be heard in the distance.
They followed the sound, finally ending up in the entranceway to the ancient Egypt section. The walls were lined with glass cases filled with items that had been found in Egyptian tombs, things the mummies supposedly needed with them in the afterlife, and yet now they were on display for all the world to see. So much for respect for the dead.
At the centre of the room was a larger glass case housing a sarcophagus. Its lid was painted in rich gold, red, blue. It looked so ordinary, there was something hyper-real about it. It looked less convincing than the mummy Itzy had seen in Seth’s imagination. She supposed she had seen mummies on television and in books so many times, when she was actually faced with one, it struck her as anticlimactic.
The sarcophagus itself depicted a pharaoh with his arms at his sides and his hair long and square around his head. He wore a smile of eternal serenity, and his limbs were gold, like Aidan’s.
But what made Itzy gasp was Oz.
He was leaning against one of the exhibits, mummified the Verdi way, wrapped in an array of thick vines dressed in thorns, the sort of creeper that sometimes grew under the foundations of houses and threatened to uproot them if they weren’t poisoned in time - and even then, they didn’t always die. Any part of him that was visible was covered in scratches and cuts. His face was painted in dried blood and his clothes torn. His hair mushroomed around his face as his head leaned back against the glass.
Off to the side was Verdi, sitting on a bench, hunched over a 3DS and shooting virtual enemies. He had clearly fulfilled his part in the plan and no longer cared. His dark hair covered his face, making him look like a goth Cousin Itt.
Melody was pacing near him, clearly nervous. She wore skinny jeans that cl
ung to her hips, and a pastel pink baby-tee. Her hair was swept over her head, some of it falling into her face, but she didn’t make to move it. She was too lost in her thoughts.
Aidan announced their presence by clearing his throat.
Melody looked up in surprise, before a look of elation spread across her face. ‘You came!’ she squealed like a little girl who had just been told she could have a pony for her birthday. ‘I knew you would. All of you,’ she added as she took in the sight of Itzy and Seth.
‘Oz!’ Itzy cried as if she’d just been roused from a deep spell.
She ran to her brother’s side, Seth right behind her. She lifted Oz’s head and he blinked at her wearily. Then his face took on the look of someone swallowing - Seth had produced water for him.
Itzy glared up at Melody with cold hostility. ‘What have you done to him? How did you even find him?’
Melody shrugged carelessly. ‘It’s a funny thing, Itzel. I don’t think you realise just how close my ex-boyfriend here was to your father. Before he died, they used to talk all the time. Aidan had all his numbers scribbled down on a piece of paper. I found it, a while back. He was using it as a bookmark.’
Itzy recoiled. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Call it instinct,’ Melody continued, ‘but I kept that paper. I guess I just knew it would come in handy some day.’ She shot a smile at Aidan, who remained impassive.
Determined not to let that spoil her mood, she turned back to Itzy. ‘So, I made some calls. I said I was a friend of your brother’s and I’d changed my phone, so I’d lost his number. His mother gave it to me, in the end.’
Despite his predicament, Oz looked up in surprise. ‘You…she was home? But she….’
Melody ignored him. ‘I texted him and said I knew something about the Wisdom. And, like the gullible fools you all are -’ she splayed out her hands to indicate all her guests ‘- he came running!’
Itzy wanted to argue with her, but she had a point. And what had Oz been trying to say?
Melody beamed a self-satisfied smile at the still immoveable Aidan. ‘Are you just going to stand there? Come see what I’ve done.’
He clasped his hands together behind his back. ‘I can see what ye’ve done, from here. What’re ye wanting? Applause?’
He released his hands and drew them forward, clapping slowly. Clap. Clap. Clap. The sound echoed around the room and down the adjoining marble hallway.
Melody’s hair flew behind her as she stormed toward him, skirting the vividly painted sarcophagus. ‘For someone so intelligent, sometimes you can be so stupid,’ she threw at him.
Aidan’s head lilted. ‘Oh? Would ye be hoping to win me back through flattery, then?’
She stopped two paces from him. ‘You like to think you’re so powerful,’ she said with venom, ‘but I’ve realised you’re all talk. You have all these ideas, but you never do anything. Even in the fields, who did all the work? Verdi.’ She pointed to her brother, who looked up in surprise.
‘Leave me out of this,’ he said from his bench, as if he hadn’t already involved himself by entrapping Oz.
‘And what was it even for?’ Melody went on as though Verdi hadn’t said anything. ‘Finding the Wisdom.’ She laughed like it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard. ‘Do you even know what that means?’
Aidan redistributed his body weight from one leg to the other and sighed. ‘What’s yer point, Melody?’
‘My point,’ she snapped, ‘is that I have found a way to get you the answers you think you need.’
His brow rose with scepticism and he folded his arms across his chest in challenge. ‘And what would that be?’
She smiled and motioned to Oz on the floor.
Aidan regarded him thoughtfully. Then he looked back at Melody and asked, ‘And how might that fella be able to help me?’
She grinned wickedly at him. ‘He can raise the dead.’ When there was no response, she added, ‘And look what we have here!’
She turned out her hand, as if she were royalty greeting her minions, and motioned to the mummy lying sleeping in his painted box. The atmosphere took on an eerie air at the thought that they were in a graveyard of sorts.
Aidan scratched the side of his unreadable face, just below his ear. ‘And?’ he prompted her.
She made a noise of impatience and rolled her eyes at him. Speaking slowly, as if to a child, she explained, ‘I once read in one of Daddy’s boring history books that the Egyptian pharaohs were Ancients. So I figured one of them might know what happened to the Wisdom. Who knows? Maybe this musty old corpse would love to blurt all the secrets it took to its grave. After all, it was left behind on Earth, just like we were, right? I bet there’s some proper resentment festering in this room.’ She grinned at her audience like she was terribly pleased with her own brilliance.
Itzy was dumbfounded. She threw a look at Aidan, wondering what he was thinking.
‘And just how were ye planning on getting him to perform for ye?’ he asked, his expression one of disinterest.
Melody spun around on her heels and rushed in Itzy’s direction. She yanked her by the hair so she could make eye contact. Itzy let out a small cry. She pressed her lips together and clenched her teeth through the pain.
As if she knew what pain really was, yet.
Melody closed her eyes.
Mythos (The Descendants, #1) Page 24