by Allie Burton
Xander grabbed the book off the floor and rushed to the desk. His white face matched the pages of the book. “What?”
With a trembling voice, I continued to read the individual file names out loud. “Oil Retrieval System, Drought Enhancement Steps, Demand Letter to US President.”
“Say what?” The question trembled out of his quivering lips.
I clicked on the last file. “It’s a letter addressed to the President saying the Society will destroy the environment and the world if their demands are not met by, oh my God that’s only five days away,” I shot a glance at Xander trying to gauge his reaction.
“I don’t believe it.” His mouth dropped open. His eyes bugged out. If possible, his face grew paler. “W-what else does it say?”
I continued reading, “We will begin an apocalyptic drought beginning with the evaporation of the San Francisco Bay. This will disrupt shipping, harm wildlife…” Each word I read stabbed my gut.
“Kill the environment.” Xander dropped the book onto the desk and ran a hand through his hair. He appeared frail, like a feather standing on its tip and one blow would knock him down.
“We have harnessed the mighty force of the sun,” Me! “and to demonstrate take note of the sudden increase in temperatures in Northern California and the lowering of high tide on the west coast.” I caught my breath still not believing the words I read. Still not believing the plan was even possible.
He sunk onto the desk top with lowered shoulders. “The letter doesn’t say anything about Tut’s religion. The Society planned to use the sun’s power to force governments to comply.”
“How did you think they planned to do it?” This was all new to me. I hadn’t given any thought to what the Society wanted to do with the power I now possessed.
“I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair again and stared at the carpet. “I just thought we’d show them the true beliefs and it would…just happen.” He slid off the desk and turned to face me. His pursed lips and narrow eyes telegraphed his disgust at himself. “I guess I didn’t think. Didn’t want to know or didn’t care. I just wanted Tut’s religion to be restored.”
He’d lost more than the Society when I’d swiped the amulet. He’d lost a part of himself. Or maybe he’d now found his own self, his true self. “Who’s to say what the right religion is? They would’ve used you to blackmail the President of the United States. Now, they want to use me.” My voice shrieked a little higher.
The Society thought they could move Xander, and now me, around like pawns in a chess match. Use us for their own wicked purpose until they had control of the world. They didn’t care if we burned out and died.
“They can’t use you unless they catch you. We’ve already put them behind schedule.” Xander’s tone turned intense.
“Even if they did catch me, I’d never help them.” I closed the letter and the folder listing reappeared. A file titled ‘Anointment of Essential Oils’ caught my attention. I hit it and tapped my fingers lightly on the keyboard as my command processed. Hurry up. The file opened on the screen. “I found something else.”
Not sure what. My instincts, or Tut, told me it was important. The two had begun to blur together. Which was a scary thought that I had no time to process.
“We can’t research all day.” His tight voice sounded worried.
“The file’s called Anointment of Essential Oils.”
“That’s important.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Print the pages and let’s get out of here.”
I hit the print key. The printer whirred and clicked. My stomach whirred along. Green lights flashed a harsh glare. The first piece of paper shot out.
A door slammed.
My fingers jumped off the keys. “What was that?”
The second page printed. The printer’s noise would alert whoever had entered the house.
“Front door. We need to get out of here. Shut it down.” He crept to the doorway and peered out.
“It’s still printing.” The third page slipped out of the printer.
I closed the file and started to shut down the computer. The printer still whirred. It spit out a fourth page.
Male voices echoed down the hall. Xander froze beside me.
“You should go.” I scrunched and unscrunched my toes.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“At least one of us will get out of this mega mansion monstrosity.” My knees knocked. “If I get caught, you can call the cops.”
Not that the cops would come looking for me. They didn’t care.
“I know where to hide. How to get out of here.” His determined voice reached out to me. Did he care?
No time to think about that. My tummy flipped and tumbled. I pinched the printed pages between my fingers waiting for the rest. “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.”
“They’re coming this way.” Xander waved at me. “We need to get out. Now.”
“But the printer—”
“No time. Let’s go.” He peered out the door and held out his hand.
I ran around the desk and grabbed the fifth piece of paper from the printer. Then, I darted toward him, hoping the file was only five pages long. If not, the Society would see the other pages and know someone had been there. Someone who had found the file and printed it.
Knowing the damage I could cause, I didn’t take his offered hand. He was already risking his life. He nodded that the hall was clear, and we headed out in the opposite direction of the voices.
Footsteps followed behind us. Whoever had entered the house headed in our direction. And they didn’t care if they were heard. My body shook with each step. It was like walking during a seven-point-one earthquake. We needed to get out of the house and far away.
“This way.” Xander opened a door and stepped inside.
I squeezed in the room and he closed the door behind me. Leaning against the door, I took a huge breath. “Will they look here?”
“They don’t know we’re in the mansion.”
“Not yet.” I shoved the crumpled papers in my back pocket and rushed toward the picture window.
The room was larger than any foster home where I’d lived. I passed a king-sized bed on a pedestal. White silk draped around the canopy and dipped low to the ground. Dozens of pillows decorated the lapis blue quilt. The headboard featured an ankh sign—the symbol of life.
I didn’t even ask myself how I knew that, the answer obvious.
The bed reminded me of the one in my dream. The one where Tut died.
Bumps erupted on my skin and I gripped the overly-long curtains hanging by the window. “What about escaping out the window?” A ploy I’d used plenty of times in my past.
“Too high up on the cliffs. Too big a fall.” So Xander had contemplated escape in the past.
I looked out noting the sheer drop down to the harsh rocks below where the waves crashed. He was right.
“Where are we?”
A bookshelf filled one wall with books on Egyptian history. We were living through Egyptian history right now. Making Egyptian history.
Antique dressers decorated with hieroglyphics stood against one wall. And I could read all of them. A tiny thrill shot through me until I began deciphering the stories. Gory tales about ancient warriors and the sun god Aten. Sacrifices. Death.
“This is where I slept.”
I squirmed and gripped the white curtains tighter. I’d never been in a guy’s bedroom before. Always thought if a guy invited me I’d really have to like him. I wasn’t a goody-goody girl, but knew I had to be careful. You learned these things young on the streets.
Not that I’d been with a guy before. No making out, or dating, or even flirting for me. No opportunity living with Fitch and being in his world.
A new emotion passed through me flushing out the embarrassment of being in Xander’s room. I didn’t feel uncomfortable just…curious. And yet, the room didn’t tell me anything about Xander. Sterile and sanitized, every surface had the appropri
ate items with nothing out of place. Disappointment settled like dust that wasn’t present in this room. Normally, a bedroom told so much about a person.
No better than slave quarters.
Wait until Tut saw my place. First of all mine was a warehouse storage closet. Clutter from cheap jewelry, make-up, and accessories littered the surfaces or were stuffed in cardboard boxes I liked to call suitcases. Never knew when I’d have to run again.
Xander stood with an ear to the door watching me examine his room. Could he see the jealousy mixed with revulsion on my face?
I twirled the globe by the window. When I touched Egypt a zing of familiarity shot down my spine. I crushed it.
A dagger with an iron blade sat beside the globe. My warrior instincts ignited, but I normally didn’t have an aggressive drive. I was a runner, not a fighter.
“We need to find them before anyone else,” Jeb’s voice boomed by the bedroom door.
My ears didn’t have to strain to hear.
“Sefu, call a few loyal members and have them search the city.” Jeb’s voice continued to carry into the bedroom even though I could tell he’d walked further down the hall. “Get a hold of the captain.”
“Quick.” Xander shuffled away from the door and opened a closet. “We’ll hide in here until they leave the mansion.”
“Do they realize we’re here?” I scurried inside, not liking being enclosed in a closet. Although this closet was bigger than some bedrooms.
He followed and snapped the door shut. “Didn’t sound like it.”
The walk-in closet had one wall of shelves, mostly empty, and two walls with rods filled with clothes. Suits, dress shirts, casual shirts, jackets and pants hung on hangars. If I could afford a closet this size, it would’ve been filled with the latest designer dresses. Unfortunately, I owned a small fraction of the clothes here and none of mine were designer anything.
Jealousy reared its ugly head again until I noticed several white tunics hanging next to the regular clothes. He might’ve had a huge bedroom and a ton of clothes but he had nothing else. No family, no friends, no life.
“This way.” He pushed the hanging clothes out of the way. A two-foot by three-foot panel recessed into the wall. He stuck his fingers in the grooves and took the panel off.
I froze. The dark spaced loomed behind the open panel. “I-I’m sure they won’t look in the closet. I’ll stay here.”
“A closet is one of the first places Jeb would look if they realize were in the house.” Xander waved at the open panel. “Get inside.”
My heart pounded so loud Jeb could probably hear it through the closet and bedroom doors. I swallowed the lump in my throat and got to my knees. Crawling inside, my knees and palms began to sweat. I hated this fear. I turned to make sure Xander was right behind me.
He wasn’t. Instead, he grabbed a backpack and shoved jeans, sweatshirt and gym shoes inside the bag. Then, he arranged the hanging clothes to cover the opening, crawled in beside me, and set the panel over the hole.
The dark room gave no hint of size. My entire body warmed. Perspiration broke out on my upper lip. “Now what?”
“We wait.” He flicked a switch.
The light hanging from the ceiling blinded me for a second. The room was the size of a cave. And just as scary. About four feet high, the space was tall enough to move around but not stand. The ceiling seemed to swoop down in the center. The room itself was bigger than a twin bed, but not by much.
He appeared so calm, so at-home, in this claustrophobic space, while the walls closed in on me. I tried to distract myself by reading the titles of the books on the shelf. Spy and adventure novels with folded corners and crinkled spines, obviously read several times.
A torn Giants pennant with a large black signature across the top hung on another wall above photos of past teams. A small soccer ball and a baseball lay in the corner.
“What is this place?” And how soon could I get out?
Blurred visions of locked basement closets swam in front of my eyes. Imagined and remembered sharp bites from spiders and beetles and ants crawling around beside me. The pitch black nothingness of darkness. The difficulty of breathing as the small quantity of air was used up. Hours and hours, possibly days, of enforced isolation. I couldn’t remember. I tried not to remember. A shaky breath escaped my chest adding more carbon dioxide to the small room. My lungs tightened.
“This is my real room.” Pride oozed from his words. He shoved the backpack into the corner. The backpack that took up more precious space.
Keep the conversation going. Must not let him know about my fear. “Did you build it?”
The plastered walls were painted an eerie white. Carpeting so loose on the floor it could smother you. Not nice Oriental carpeting. Old carpeting with stains and ragged edges. Kind of like the carpeting we had at Fitch’s, stuff we’d found lying by the garbage and brought home.
“I found it.”
“Found it?”
“I was,” he stared at his feet, “hiding in the closet when I was little and noticed the panel. It took several tries but I finally figured out how to open it.”
“And you found all this?” I gestured with my hands encompassing all the stuff that had been crammed into the miniscule space.
“I added things a little at a time. Made it so I was comfortable. Made it my own.” Again, pride sounded in his tone.
Way too small to be anything close to comfortable. Obviously size didn’t matter to him. He liked this space better than his bedroom. Maybe because he’d done this on his own. This place showed his personality.
“What does Jeb think about it?” Cause the cubby certainly didn’t go with the rest of the mansion’s décor.
“Jeb doesn’t know the space exists.” A smirk lit Xander’s face with the knowledge he’d gotten away with it. “Days when I didn’t want to train or was angry at him I’d hide in here and he’d never find me.” He laughed with a touch of boastful glee. “Jeb would search the bedroom looking under the bed and even in the closet but he never moved the clothes or found the panel.”
So, Xander had found a way to rebel. Maybe there’d been hope if he’d inherited Tut’s soul. Once Xander realized what the Society’s evil plans were he would’ve stood up to them.
“What do you do in here?” Keep asking questions, keep your mind occupied. I didn’t want to think about how close the walls were, how very little air must be in here, how if the light went out we’d be in complete blackness.
He scrutinized the room as if looking at it from a stranger’s point of view. “Read, play games, think, sleep.” He said it like he enjoyed being here.
I rolled my eyes and spotted the orange pennant. “You a Giants fan?” I needed conversation to take my mind off of things.
“Yeah.” He pointed at the pennant. “Signed by Willie McCovey.”
“Wow.” I pointed at myself. “A’s fan.”
“How can you be?” He shook his head and frowned. “Haven’t you lived in San Francisco your entire life?”
“The Oakland A’s are my kind of people.” Hard, street smart, and a bit glitzy. “Their last season was phenomenal.”
“Been to any games?”
“Nope.” The cheapest tickets were way too expensive.
“Me, either.” His voice lowered.
Another thing we had in common.
We looked at each other. The green of his gaze pierced like a laser, poking holes in my heart. If he continued looking at me like that I’d forget all about my claustrophobia. My knees trembled and I hugged them to my chest.
He’d stayed in Jeb’s office when he could’ve run. He’d worked with me to escape the Society and the homeless in the park. He’d strategized and given me knowledge. He’d helped me.
Xander leaned toward me. The golden flecks in his eyes flashed. Sparks arced between us like the arches on the Golden Gate Bridge. My body was still warm, but not from my fear.
Was he about to kiss me? I’d never been kiss
ed before. Never wanted a kiss from anyone else. Definitely a good distraction.
A strand of hair fell over his face, blocking my view of his incredible eyes. He jerked his head back to swing the hair out of the way and his gaze pierced deeper. He watched me, waiting for me to do or say something.
I caught my breath. My heart leapt. I licked my suddenly dry lips.
His lips moved closer.
My body went limp. My heart beat so loud I was sure he heard it. My lips parted.
Chapter 12
A huge burp escaped my mouth.
The sound vibrated between us knocking me back and replacing the earlier sparks. Good thing the sparks didn’t ignite. My hand flew to my lips. My face flamed. Heat swamped, dragging me down. I wanted to disappear in the burp’s vapor.
Too soon.
Tut had no right to stop me from kissing a guy. Who are you, my father?
I’m the soul that slammed inside you.
Right. Not my father, but a male all the same.
Xander rolled backward and laughed.
At me.
I waved my hands in front of my face. Where was a gilded fan when you needed one? Never in my life had I burped so loud in front of anyone. And Tut had forced me to do it.
I hated the burping and farting contests the boys had at home. So gross. And yet, I’d been doing gnarly stuff like that all day. Tut’s influence. He might be a king, but he was still a guy. But that didn’t make it any less embarrassing. “Excuse me.”
Xander’s cheeks were redder than usual. His forehead creased. He twisted his lips together. “We probably shouldn’t have…” He pointed to his mouth and then mine.
Cold chilled the warmth inside. Hot to cold in less than ten seconds. Fear to anger in a minute. He didn’t really want to kiss me.
“Oh?” My voice sounded frosty. Finally, I was cooling off.
“No touching. Remember.”
Duh. Guess not. With my claustrophobia hammering away and Xander so close all thought had flown out of my head. “Right.” Maybe that’s why Tut had stopped us.
Xander’s never been hugged and now, I’ll never be able to hug him. Or touch him. Or kiss him. Or any boy for that matter. This latest fact sucker punched me. I ached with loneliness.