All of a sudden, I was enmeshed in the targeted When, watching the Where spin around me like a deranged carousel. It was odd to see the colors of the At moving unilaterally, instead of their usual, chaotic swirl.
“Very good, Alexandra!” my grandpa commended. “Now you must find your focal point, your celebrity. He or she is somewhere in this time, but you don’t know where, correct?”
“No idea,” I said, nodding.
“Perfect. This part will be easy if you’re a finder. Just think about the person, and the At will automatically shift itself around you.”
I did as he directed, and gasped. The endless spinning shifted, no longer circling, but instead moving past me like a headwind. When the movement ceased, Alexander and I were standing in a dim, packed bar. In a booth in a dark corner sat John Jakim with the other members of Johnny Stopwatch, a half-empty pint glass in hand.
“Is that your focal point?” Alexander asked eagerly, pointing to the musician. At my amazed nod, he said, “Wonderful! You’re a finder, and to some degree, a seer.” His voice was filled to the brim with grandfatherly pride.
“Well, you know … I get it from my grandpa,” I said, bumping his shoulder with my own. I was blushing profusely at his unabashed flattery. “So, should we call it a night? I’m kind of tired after all of this At surfing.”
“‘At surfing’ … I like that … like channel surfing. But yes, we can be done for today. Would you like to return us, or shall I?” he asked politely.
“Done,” I said as the world flickered briefly and we returned to our physical forms. It really wasn’t too difficult once I understood the basics. Stretching in my kitchen chair, I asked, “What happens to our bodies while we … or, um, our ‘ba’ is in the At?” According to the ancient Egyptians, the ba was one of the three essential pieces comprising a person’s soul, and I found it immensely interesting that it was what Nejerets called the part of ourselves that could venture into the At to view what has been and what may be.
Alexander smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask that. It really is a remarkable thing. When your ba leaves your body, your physical form enters a state of stasis called At-qed”—I recognized the word “qed” as one of the ancient Egyptian words for “sleep”—“where, to observers, we appear to zone out or become lost in thought. More or less, the body’s functions slow down and it retains whatever position and expression it held when the ba departed. And, as far as we know, we can remain in At-qed indefinitely.”
“So someone could just come in here and do whatever they wanted to our bodies and we wouldn’t even notice?” I asked, horrified.
Pressing his lips together, Alexander took a deep breath. “Yes. It’s the major downfall to using our gift. We are absolutely vulnerable when our ba enters the At, far more so than when we’re simply asleep. That is the very reason you should only enter the At in a safe, private place and not spend too much time viewing echoes … either that, or have someone you trust to protect your body while your ba is away.”
“Oh. That’s … interesting,” I said, and I meant it, but it came out sounding more like bored disinterest. My head was too full of new information and convoluted concepts: ba, At-qed, the When, the Where, manipulating … I needed time to process.
Seeming to read my thoughts, Alexander said, “I should go; you’ve had a long evening. Same time tomorrow?”
“I can’t tomorrow.” I have a date with the most enigmatic and enticing archaeologist on the planet. “How about Thursday?”
“Very well, my dear. I’ll see you then,” he said, giving me a brief hug before leaving.
After cleaning up the remnants of our Chinese food feast, I considered turning in for the night. It was nearly midnight and I really was tired, but I wasn’t done yet. I wasn’t even close.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Catch & Trap
He has to be Nejeret, I thought as, once again, I studied the shadowed man in the echo of the incident with Mike. It was the only way he could’ve disguised himself in the echo. But who is he? Something about him, about that night, had been tugging at my subconscious ever since I woke up in the hospital. I needed to know his identity, desperately … even if I didn’t understand the reason behind my desperation.
As I glanced at Mike and registered the absolute terror in his eyes, my need to know the Nejeret’s identity became crushing. I was certain there was a way to unmask him, I just had to figure it out. I need more time!
The cloaked Nejeret lurked toward my fallen attacker, spitting vicious, incomprehensible syllables along the way. He beat Mike until his need for violence was expended, and then he returned to the unconscious version of me. He picked her up and carried her out of the apartment.
Again, I thought, and the echo started over.
I lost track of how many times I viewed the echo, but eventually I realized I didn’t need to keep watching the attack over and over again just to see the shadowed man. Stop, I thought, and it was as though I’d hit a pause button. The shadowed man was frozen, crouching on his heels with his hand outstretched toward the other version of me. He was in the middle of brushing a stray lock of hair from her face.
I circled the figure, studying every shadowed inch of him. I could see that the darkness cloaking him was different—set apart from the echo itself. It was like some foreign At had been layered over the original echo, like a palimpsest.
I touched the out-of-place At, and it vibrated. Determined, I grasped the shadowy cloak with both hands and tugged. Nothing happened. I tugged harder, and again, nothing happened.
Apparently I couldn’t strip it off … but I thought it was possible I could slip between the two layers of At. I was fairly certain that no two particles could occupy the same space at the same time. I only hoped the same rule of matter applied in the At.
Gently, as I’d done the first time, I touched the superimposed At. It vibrated, but I was pretty sure the man underneath remained still. I carefully searched with my fingers, following the increasingly strong vibrations, until I found what felt like an edge. It wasn’t an edge in the conventional sense, like the edge of a piece of paper or the hem of a dress. It was more like a sense of something met by a sense of nothing.
I slipped the tips of my fingers under the edge, and then followed with my whole hand. My teeth chattered with the increasingly intense vibrations, but I reached further. When I could finally slip my head between the two layers of At, the vibrations stopped. The cloak, I realized, was gone.
Unfortunately, in my At-splitting, I’d maneuvered myself so that I was crouched in front of the man with my face mere millimeters from his black sweater. I stumbled backward, tripped over the other version of me, and fell on my butt. When I’d finally composed myself enough to stand and look at the man’s face, I gasped and dropped back down to the floor.
“Oh my God … Marcus!” I exclaimed aloud. Marcus is Nejeret. Marcus is Nejeret! What does this—
“Damn it, Lex!” The growling admonishment filled every open space in the frozen echo. It was Marcus’s voice, but the Marcus in the echo, the one I’d just uncloaked and was watching, was still frozen. My stomach dropped as I realized what was going on. Marcus is Nejeret. Marcus, the real Marcus, is here.
Gripping my upper arms, he hauled me up off the ground and spun me around. I was staring straight in to the very real, very pissed off face of Marcus Bahur, professor, archaeologist, and undercover Nejeret.
“I was going to explain everything tomorrow night,” he said, articulating each word with exceptional care.
Instinctively, I punched him in the gut. It was the first time I’d ever really hit another person, and on the whole, it was rather ineffective. He barely flinched.
“How long have you known?” I shouted. “I’ve barely been able to keep my head above the water and you’ve been sitting by, watching? I thought I was losing my mind!” I punched him again, hoping for a better reaction. I was let down. So, naturally, I began slapping and hitting every inch o
f his bare torso. It didn’t take me long to tire. I dropped my arms limply to my sides.
“Are you finished?” he asked, more than a hint of frost in his tone … like, a blizzard’s worth.
I nodded weakly, studying his blue and gray tennis shoes. Marcus never wears tennis shoes. His bare torso finally registered in the coherent part of my mind. Misbehaving, my eyes raised to the golden brown skin less than a foot away. Hard ridges rippled the perfect flesh, defining muscles I hadn’t even known existed.
I’d seen him shirtless once before—in a dream that had been set in ancient Egypt … or what I had thought was a dream. Considering it could have been an echo, I shivered. Marcus would have to be at least three thousand years old.
“Where’s your shirt?” I asked, picking the least terrifying question I could think of.
“What?” he asked, surprised. His tone warmed considerably when he continued, “I was in the middle of a workout when I felt you fumbling with my cloak in this echo. If you wanted to strip off my clothes, all you needed to do was say so.” There was a short pause. “I must say, Lex, when you blush, it’s very becoming.” His tone could have melted the polar ice caps.
I realized my eyes were closed when I felt the feather-light touch of his fingertips on the sides of my face. They traced my cheekbones, jawline, and chin, tilting my face up with the faintest pressure.
“You want me,” he said. “Admit it.”
I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut more tightly. I was angry—no, pissed—at him. I needed to hold onto that emotion.
“Admit it,” he whispered, so close I could feel his breath on my face. My eyes popped open and my heart skipped a beat … or three. Not amber, but golden, blazing eyes trapped me. I’d never seen his eyes so light, and I suddenly realized that was what I’d remembered when I first awoke in the hospital—the memory of glorious, golden fire. I must have come to briefly while he’d been transporting me to the hospital and looked into his eyes … and felt safe. Staring into those eyes now, I involuntarily wet my lips.
Marcus’s fingers slid down my neck to trace my collarbones, then traveled back up to tangle in my hair. A tingling trail burned along my skin, invisibly marking every place he touched. He tightened his grasp, preventing me from turning away. It was unnecessary; I was completely lost, a captive held in the prison of his eyes.
I inhaled softly, my breath catching. One moment, he was staring at me—into me—the next, his lips were parting mine. I gasped at the bruising intensity of the kiss. His tongue delved into my mouth, teasing mine out expertly. His arm dropped to my waist, pulling me against him so ardently that I had to stand on my tiptoes to remain tethered to the ground. Something about the jarring movement shook my brain awake, and I pushed against his bare chest. Until that gesture, I hadn’t noticed that my traitorous hands were fondling his muscles. I’m angry, remember! I reminded myself.
“Marcus …” I whispered, more than a trace of warning contained in that one word.
As he released his death grip on my hair, I maneuvered myself away from him, retreating through my open bedroom door. I didn’t know why or how, but being too close to him tended to cloud my judgment until I could only make decisions based on the overwhelming desire I felt around him. It was like he naturally emitted an aphrodisiac designed specifically for me, and I craved it when we were apart. But it went beyond lust, beyond desire … I felt good around him—safe and whole and at peace. I shook my head, trying to dispel my clearly delusional emotions.
How I’d ever thought he was a plain old human was beyond me. I guess we only see what we want to see … what we expect to see …
“Lex—”
“I can’t trust you,” I interrupted. “I have no idea who you really are.” I spun around. Marcus was standing in the doorway just a few steps away. “You’re Nejeret, and you’ve been watching me since before we met at the café, obviously. How long, Marcus? How long have you been spying on me?”
Anger and frustration flashed across Marcus’s face so briefly that I almost missed it. And then, abruptly, his clothes changed. No longer in sneakers and basketball shorts, he wore tailored black trousers and a silver-gray button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal toned forearms.
“Hey! How’d you—” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not distracting me that easily. How long have you been watching me?”
He sighed melodramatically, like I was the one being difficult, when in reality, everything was so obviously his fault.
“Since August,” he finally said.
He’s been watching me for five whole months? “Why?” I spat.
“Because Alex requested it of me,” he responded in kind. “Believe me, Lex, I had much better things to do than watch over a woman who was unlikely to even manifest.”
“Well, I did manifest, didn’t I?” I briefly wondered if sticking out my tongue would help get my point across. Then, I remembered where my tongue had just been and blushed. Damn him!
“Yes,” he purred and stalked toward me, his eyes devouring my every inch. “You are manifesting quite nicely.”
“Stop right there!” I screeched, holding my hand up as I backed away from him.
Marcus stopped, but he didn’t look happy about it.
“Alex … as in Alexander? My grandpa asked you to keep an eye on me?” I clarified, my voice too high. I’d only known that Alexander had asked Heru, a member of the Council of Seven, to watch over me … not Marcus.
“Yes,” Marcus said.
A sudden, nauseating thought occurred to me. “And the excavation … you didn’t really need me to figure out the riddle on the tablet to find the entrance to the temple, did you? You could just look in the At.” I took a deep breath, ignoring Marcus’s slowly shaking head. “Did you just offer me a position on the excavation because of Alexander, too?”
“No!” he hissed. “We couldn’t find the entrance because the At has been manipulated … we can’t find any of the echoes relating to it. Damn it, Lex, I wanted you on my team because you’re good at what you do, unbelievably good for someone so young, but also because”—he shook his head, like he couldn’t quite find the words to say what he meant—“you started manifesting. You started manifesting and you know nothing of our people … of our customs. Nobody expected you to manifest, so you were never trained in our ways. Other Nejerets will be participating in the excavation. I wanted to give you the chance to interact with others of our kind—to learn all that it means to be Nejeret.”
“If you wanted me to learn what it means to be Nejeret, why didn’t you just explain what was going on with me?” I sounded so bitchy, I nearly cringed. Instead, I barreled on. “Were you toying with me? Was it fun for you to—”
Marcus turned away abruptly, clenching his hands into fists at his sides. “No, Lex, it wasn’t fun for me. Just like it wasn’t fun finding that piece of shit forcing himself on you.” He spared a moment to glare at Mike’s frozen body. “I’d grown somewhat fond of you over the months. I disliked seeing you struggle so much, seeing you in such pain. But it was against the rules for me to tell you of our people, of your heritage. In rare cases like yours, where the Nejeret knows absolutely nothing about his or her heritage, only the nearest Nejeret in your direct line is allowed to explain. I had to wait for Alex.”
“Rules! Why are we running around following the rules of some ‘council’ that doesn’t even meet anymore?” Suddenly so exasperated that I had to move, I slipped around Marcus and out of the room. I paced from the bedroom door to the kitchen and back again, over and over.
“Not the Council’s rules—my grandfather’s,” Marcus said when he finally emerged from my bedroom.
I waved my hand dismissively. “And we should follow your grandfather’s rules because … ?” That time I did cringe at my snotty, juvenile tone.
“Because, Little Ivanov, he’s the Great Father,” Marcus said quietly from right behind me.
The Great Father, Nuin, from whom we all descend �
� is Marcus’s grandfather? I halted mid-stride, only a few steps from the fridge. I could hear Marcus’s footsteps as he approached behind me.
“Who are you?” I whispered to the fridge. I just … I couldn’t face him.
“I’m the grandson of Nuin,” he said, his voice hard. “I’m a member of the Council of Seven, and I’m older than you can imagine.” He was silent for a few moments, the sound of his breathing the only thing I could hear over my pounding heart. Finally, softly, he said, “I’m also the man who didn’t let you die.”
Hanging my head in shame, I started to apologize. “Marcus, I’m—” My words halted in mid-sentence as his second statement registered. I whirled to face him. “There’s no ‘Marcus’ on the Council.”
He took a step closer, and I stepped back. “True. But I have many names,” he explained, his eyes willing me to comprehend. “You know who I am, Lex. Think about it.”
Set. Heru. Moses. Sid. Dedwen. Shangdi. Ivan. He definitely wasn’t Ivan, my great-grandpa … not after the kiss.
Set. Heru. Moses. Sid. Dedwen. Shangdi. He definitely wasn’t Dedwen or Shangdi, based on their mythological descriptions—one was a Nubian god, the other a Chinese deity.
Set. Heru. Moses. Sid. Marcus Bahur. Marcus Bahur. Marcus. Bahur.
Bahur.
I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest idiot.
Marcus took another step toward me, and I backed into the refrigerator. I halted his forward progress with a smile. “Bahur,” I said. “‘Of Heru.’ Clever, Marcus … or should I say, Heru?” Heru—commonly known as Horus—was the fierce Egyptian god of kingship and war, whose beautiful eyes had led to one of the most famous ancient Egyptian symbols—the Wedjat, otherwise known as the “Eye of Horus.” Marcus, who had kissed me, was Heru. It was … impossible, but then a lot of impossible things had been happening lately.
When I said his true name, he cringed. Shaking his head, he explained, “I hate the way that name sounds on these lips.” He brushed his thumb across my bottom lip for emphasis. “You say ‘Heru’ like you’re talking about a god … someone untouchable … unknowable. But when you say ‘Marcus,’ you’re talking about a man. A man can be known … touched.”
Echo in Time: A Time Travel Romance (Echo Trilogy, #1) Page 17