Neferet held her head high, with both plumes of her feathered headdress catching the Nile breeze, which became the sweet breath of justice in her mind. She took her place at the front of the line of baldheaded men and, with grave ceremony, led the file of holy men to accuse Zayem.
They reached the steps of the grand residence and the Grand Vizier hurried down to meet them. He drew Neferet and Nebhotep aside.
“Do you have any idea of what you’re doing?” he demanded, hugging his cloak around him. His eyes were wild as if he had just been arguing with someone fierce. Neferet had no difficulty figuring out who that might be.
“Certainly,” Nebhotep said. “The laws of Ma’at —”
“Ma’at doesn’t hold any sway here, not in the palace. Not with …” he turned to see if anyone spied on them. “Not with certain people so close to the throne.”
Neferet studied him with her deepest gaze, and he stepped back a little. She pushed past him as if he didn’t tower over her by an arm’s length and led the procession up the grand stairway and through the entrance. She, rather than Nebhotep, demanded entrance to the throne room. Confronted with the most influential priests in the land, the sentries stepped aside, and the parade of clerics made their way into the hall of audiences.
Meryt rose in indignation when they approached, but no matter how many times she flapped open her mouth, she didn’t utter a word. The gray-faced Pharaoh was leaning on one hand, as if nodding out during the uncommon proceedings. The Grand Vizier had hurried to stand back behind the Pharaoh and whispered in his ear. Neferet noticed her father sported bags under his eyes and appeared worse than yesterday. His chest sagged. If anything, he gave the impression of being lethargic through and through — nothing like the spirited man she knew.
Nebhotep started to speak, but Neferet took charge. She explained the temple’s charges and described the desecration of the shrine of Amun, the assault and the rape and the possible murder of Maya. For these crimes, the temple retinue demanded Zayem be tried in their court.
After her speech, Zayem rushed out from behind a curtain and screamed at the priests.
“You can’t treat me like a common criminal,” he said. “I’m not like a thief stealing bread from a baker. I’m not the kind of man to be tried in a temple court.”
At this, the courtiers gaped. Everyone knew there existed no difference between a crime against man and a crime against the gods. Religion and the state were the same. Zayem, if guilty as charged, stood no higher than a criminal who stole gold bangles from the marketplace.
“You may not have him,” Meryt said, sitting on her throne and thrusting out her breasts. They didn’t make for much of a show.
“Ma’at does not hold here?” Nebhotep asked, in a quivering voice.
The Pharaoh stirred and conferred with the Vizier. Then he turned to his daughter.
“If it goes to the courts of the temple, it will eventually come back to me. I am the ultimate authority, the last judge in Kemet,” the Pharaoh said, slumping, exhausted by his own speech. “Leave him to me, and I’ll question him.”
“About everything?” Neferet demanded. “Even the murder?”
“Everything. Now, please, make your way back to your offerings and prayers. This is no place for priests.” He put his head back on the headrest of his throne as if spent. No place for priests? Everywhere in the kingdom is a place for priests. What is he talking about?
“Very well, my father’s word is a good as the word of the gods,” Neferet said. She swirled her robes and turned, catching a glimpse of Zayem in the corner of her eye. He no longer leered or smirked. His expression betrayed abject fear.
She and Nebhotep headed back to Karnak, followed by the same baldheaded brigade. The aged chief priest kept muttering that nothing happened, but Neferet thought plenty of work was underway. Zayem now stood under official suspicion and everyone forgot that detested escort service. The Vizier probably drew up plans at this moment to deal with Zayem.
She also had scrutinized her father and knew someone was drugging or possibly poisoning him. She needed to get a spy into the palace to prove it. If luck was with them, their spy could stop any further deterioration. Firm resistance met Meryt’s battle of wits, and with enough pressure, the Great Wife would be forced to break down.
Now that Kamose was on the march, she had to find a spy on her own, but she knew the boys he’d been paying to find information. She busied herself on the long walk back to the temple with figuring how she would contact an informant and where she would meet him.
When she parted company with Nebhotep and returned to her apartments, the servants groveled on their knees.
“Men came while you were gone,” one servant cried. “Big, angry men, some of them foreign.” She had a red bruise on her face, which would surely turn purple by evening.
“They took her,” she continued. “She’s gone.”
“Who?” Neferet asked. Her head spun at the rapidity of Zayem’s retort. While the holy priests shuffled from the palace, the half-prince’s men had raced to the temple to exact revenge.
“Deena, my lady,” the head servant said, tears dripping from her eyes, causing tracks of kohl to wash down her cheeks. “They tied her hands and led her away.”
Neferet took in the room — familiar, comfortable — and again transgressed by violence. How could this be a place where Deena didn’t enjoy safety? Neferet stumbled, and a sturdy servant ran to lead her to a chair.
“My friend …” Neferet said, and her thoughts were lost in images of the horrible things Zayem could exact on her favored houseguest. Again, Zayem raised the stakes.
Chapter Twenty-one
A dim blue light bathed the back room when Raven finished tampering with the dance company’s rear lock and shoved the door wide open. Rebecca jumped back, frightened that the light might be connected to a burglar alarm.
“Don’t worry. That’s Randy’s cheap-ass way of pretending he has some kind of security system.” Raven hit a button on the wall and the light went out. “Once,” she said, chuckling half to herself, “he had a recording of a dog barking that would go off if anyone touched the doors or windows. We never let him hear the end of that — Robo-pooch.” She inclined her head toward the long hallway through the center of the building. “Follow me.”
She stepped into the gray gloom of the empty studio, the way illuminated by Jonas’ flashlight. Rebecca counted doors until they reached Randy’s office. Rebecca tried the handle. Locked.
“Oh, he keeps that secured good and tight, but the records wouldn’t be there, anyway,” Raven said. She gestured to the room immediately to the left.
“A storeroom? He just keeps junk in there,” Rebecca said.
“That’s what he’d have you believe,” Raven said as she worked at the storeroom lock. The door was open in seconds. Nice work with those picklocks.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” Rebecca, impressed with her friend’s illegal skills, felt an absurd sense of pride.
“Brothers,” Raven and Jonas repeated together, he in a hushed reverence.
They entered the room, filled floor to ceiling with old costumes, wigs, boxes of papers, dozens of papier maché masks, scripts, toe shoes, bags of rosin, sheets of music, rolls of tickets and more assorted castoffs. Raven reached under a box of old programs and retrieved an accordion file.
“That’s it?” Jonas said.
Raven nodded, undistracted from her task, and skimmed through the S category looking for Lenore Still-man’s personal statistics. She paged through some papers and then stabbed at one page with a long fingernail.
“Here it is, Fifteen-fifteen N. Lake Shore Dr., Apt. thirty-two-A.”
“Lake Shore Drive? How can she afford that?” Rebecca said.
“You’re the one who told me she lives with Sharif.”
Rebecca nodded. Of course. Part of their deal. She scribbled the address and phone number down on a scrap of paper she found in her purse. As she wrote,
a troubling thought zipped through her mind.
“They’ll have a doorman at a place like this,” she said. “We can’t just burst in.”
Jonas laughed. “Oh, I’ll just be the delivery man from a carryout restaurant.” Rebecca felt doubtful, lowering her eyebrows, while Raven pushed her out through the storeroom door.
“We’ll figure something on the drive over there. There are a million ways to get into Lenore’s place. I could fake a visit, for instance,” Raven said.
Rebecca didn’t feel any more reassured, but they scooted back into the night, now drizzling but not stormy, and drove off to the Gold Coast.
#
The watchman’s desk was bigger than Randy’s inlaid ebony and chestnut behemoth, and it intimidated Rebecca the moment she walked through the revolving door. She screwed up her courage and asked for Lenore Stillman. The watchman culled through his list of residents and came up smiling.
“The dancer?” he asked. Rebecca nodded and tapped her nails on the immaculate desk. “She expecting you?”
Rebecca searched in her head for an answer to this long-awaited and feared question. Lie? Admit the truth, but throw herself on his mercy? Say that Lenore would want to see her and risk her reaction? As she tore her mind from one solution to another, a large man in a security uniform came over and clapped the watchman on the back.
“Don’t you know who she is?” he asked his coworker, pointing at Rebecca. She quailed, stepping back. “The girl on the bus.”
Both men peered at her face, and she tried to smile back as if she understood.
“That’s you, girl? The one on the bus? I take it every day. And on those posters on Michigan Avenue?” The watchman’s voice went up a pitch. “Why, you a regular star. What’s that show again?”
“Aïda,” she said, feeling the flush on her face as she talked.
“Oh, so that’s how you say it, hmm,” the security guard said. “It’s like Ay-dah when you read it, you know? Ay-eedah. Huh. But isn’t it about an African girl? You’re white.” He grinned. “Tan, but white.”
Rebecca turned on her stage smile. “Oh, we are color-blind in our dance company. Everyone can dance any role, black, white, brown, whatever.”
“Brown. That’s what them Egyptians are,” the watchman said. “Not black Africans, but brown, like, like …” He stammered, considering the perplexities.
“Iraqis? Yeah, maybe, that’s it,” the guard said. “Anyways, you a star, girl. You go on up and see Ms. Lenore anytime you want. Apartment Thirty-two-A.”
While the workers had been gushing over Rebecca, Jonas and Raven already sidled unseen over to the elevators. Rebecca heard a metallic ding and saw them slip inside an elevator door.
“Well, go on up, girl. I won’t even call,” the watchman said with glee. “First, you give me your autograph, then you run along.”
She scribbled her name on a piece of paper and hurried off to the elevator bank. Jonas and Raven were already on floor thirty-two, according to the overhead lights. She got into the next available ride and shot up to the middle floors.
Once off the elevator, she felt someone pull her left arm. Jonas whispered in her ear. They were going to take advantage of this lucky break and let Rebecca surprise Sharif, if he lurked there. He and Raven would stay in the hallway, ready for help if she should need it.
“With the door locking me inside? How are you going to support me?”
“Carryout service,” Jonas said, popping on a Cubs hat backward. He slouched and pulled off his jacket, exposing a “Cooler by the Lake” t-shirt he must have stashed in his back seat. He became a college student before her eyes. She nodded with trepidation and knocked on the heavy oak door.
“Who could that be now?” a shrill voice called from inside. Lenore. Great luck. The door jolted open, and the squat, pug-nosed dancer stood staring up at Rebecca. Shock registered in her glance, but she blinked and recovered within a millisecond.
“He’s out,” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “I don’t suppose you came to see me.”
“I think you have someone I want,” Rebecca said, not missing a beat. Lenore tried to close the door, but Raven and Jonas appeared from either side and helped Rebecca push herself in.
The apartment was bigger than many ranch houses Rebecca had seen. All the tasteful furniture graced the glittering picture window that overlooked the lake. Boats and lighthouses twinkled their lights in the distance. Amid the finery — the overstuffed brocade couch, the velvet curtains, the objects d’ art that filled every tabletop — sat Amy. She wasn’t tied up or restrained in any way but perched on the end of an antique chair in a far corner. Her chestnut hair was messy, but she was in good shape, considering the long bus ride she had just endured. When she saw Rebecca, she jumped up.
When Rebecca ran to Amy, the younger sister reached up and hugged her sibling around the waist. She held fast, but there was no fear in her grip. Amy must have been secure in Sharif ’s lair. Rebecca’s heart pounded as she considered how to get her sister out of the high-rise prison.
“How are you? Did he hurt you?” Rebecca asked, keeping her voice steady.
“No. Why would he?” Amy said, features contorted and confused. She seemed to be thinking of the recent past. “The bus ride was long and scary.” She stopped and emitted a nervous laugh. “The lightning was striking all around the bus. And then we got stuck on the expressway.” She let go of Rebecca and wagged her head, as if to dislodge the memory. “Awful. We hardly moved a foot a minute. But eventually, we got going, and we made it.”
Rebecca studied Amy and let her concern show. “How did you get here, hon?”
“Jonas met me,” Amy said with an audible gulp. Lenore started to pace and tried to interject, but Raven shut her down with a withering glance. Rebecca inhaled and held her breath. Amy continued, “Well, he said he was Jonas and would take me to your place.” She twisted her foot around on the plush carpeting, plucking at the ends of her chestnut hair. “But this isn’t your apartment, is it?”
Rebecca wheeled on Lenore, who now tried to fade into flocked wallpaper.
“How long has she been here?”
Lenore pouted. “This isn’t my doing, you know.”
“Answer.”
“Okay, okay ... she’s been here about forty-five minutes ... an hour, maybe. Hard to tell. He just sat her down and left. I have no idea when he’s coming back.”
“Sharif didn’t talk to you about this at all?” Jonas asked, hands balled at his sides.
“Why would he? He never talks to me about anything.” Lenore had a wide, astonished expression. “You guys think he actually plans things with me?”
Rebecca, Jonas and Raven exchanged baffled glances. Rebecca was the first to break the agitated silence.
“Doesn’t he live here with you?” she asked.
Lenore raised her over-plucked eyebrows heavenward and began to emit a low, but unmistakable, chuckle. The four stood gaping as she giggled, then let out open-mouthed laughter. When she sank to the floor on the verge of hysteria, Raven pulled her up by the arm to bring her back to planet Earth.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Lenore said, still emitting laughs between phrases, wiping tears from her eyes. “He bought this swanky condo and settled me here. But do I ever see him? Are you kidding?”
Rebecca noticed Raven tossing a disbelieving expression her way and jumped into the conversation. “But, Sharif told me you two were married so that ...” Lenore began laughing again, and Rebecca spoke. “He could enter the U.S ...”
Lenore, unable to talk, grabbed her abdomen and simply nodded her head. Raven pushed her down into a chair and coaxed long breaths from the small dancer. Lenore followed instructions and calmed down. Without warning, her voice came back.
“It’s true. He did that. I have the marriage license to prove it. But if you think there was any ...” Raven gave her a severe glance. “Well, it was never consummated. And he sure doesn’t live here. He appears here now and then to pi
ck things up or drop shit off.” She nodded at Amy, as if she were one of those “things.” “I don’t know what the hell is going on.
“He talks about being from The Other Side, whatever that means. And he keeps saying the Stargate is closing, so his comings and goings are getting more frequent.”
Rebecca, Jonas and Raven all exchanged glances. Only Rebecca had an inkling of what Sharif could be talking about.
Amy looked around, confused by Lenore’s babbling. “Didn’t you want me here?”
“This isn’t Jonas’ apartment, Amy. That’s where we were expecting you.”
Jonas introduced himself and shook Amy’s hand. “I’m Jonas, Amy. Big mixup at the train station,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you first.”
“That man said he was your friend.” Amy said to Rebecca. Rebecca shook her head, troubled. “Gather your things, Amy, we are going to get out of here while we can.” Lenore made no move to stop them. Amy picked up a heavy backpack, but Jonas swooped over to take it off her hands. They moved toward the front door when an image appeared in the mirror.
Amy took in a short breath of air. “No.”
Sharif stood at the entrance to one of the bedrooms, smiling that ever-present smirk. “I think the host will insist you stay.” Lenore too froze in place at this magic trick. If there was a second entrance into the apartment, even she appeared to know nothing of it.
“I was just waiting for your dear Amy up until Jonas got there,” Sharif said, pacing toward them bit by bit. His voice became icy, less friendly. “Since he didn’t show up, I thought this would be the safest place for her.”
“That’s not true,” Amy piped up. “He said he was Jonas.”
Rebecca crossed her arms, hot anger driving her bodily movements, nerves dancing on her skin.
“When were you planning to call me?” She whirled from Amy to face Sharif.
“With all the cell phones not working?” he asked, his voice smooth. Too smooth.
“If you haven’t noticed, it’s stopped raining. The weather is fine now. Still, I got no phone call.”
Rebecca noticed the spell that Sharif wove every time she saw him had disappeared. She felt no attraction to him at all. His brutishness stood out like never before.
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