“Hey!” Jenny stood and took a few steps toward them, but Neffe caught hold of her wrist before Jenny could get past her.
“Don’t,” Neffe hissed.
Jenny threw her free hand out toward Marcus and Aset in an almost violent gesture, just as the pair broke apart. “But—”
“She’s his sister . . . his twin sister,” she said. “It’s nothing like what you’re thinking.”
There was only one thing that I was thinking—Ewwwww . . .
Aset took a step back from Marcus and looked past him, her eyes settling first on Jenny, then on me. “Don’t worry. I have nothing but the utmost respect for your sister. I would never do anything to hurt her, and my love for Heru is purely that of a sister.”
I remained on my stool, bug-eyed as I watched the scene before me.
“Lex . . . you know Lex?” Marcus said. “How? Do you know where she is?”
Aset nodded, her lips curving into a sad smile. “I do, dear brother. I know where she is . . . and when.”
A collective, heavy exhale filled the room.
“So you were right,” Marcus said to Dom, who only nodded and continued to stare at Marcus’s no-longer-deceased sister.
“Yes, yes . . . he was right, Lex is safe, blah blah blah . . .” Aset shifted her canvas shoulder bag and started digging through it. A moment later, she pulled out a small, carved wooden box. She handed it to Marcus. “For you, from Lex.”
“She gave this to you?” He accepted the tiny container, but hardly looked at it. “So you’ve seen her since I—since the incident last night?”
Aset smiled. “Who do you think drove the getaway car?”
My mouth fell open. Heru’s sister kidnapped Lex? I stared at Dom and Marcus, not understanding why they weren’t hauling her away to interrogate her.
“Long story short—”
“I want the long story,” Marcus said.
Aset pursed her lips. “And I’ll give you the long story once we’re on our way.”
“Where are we—”
She raised one hand in a sharp motion, cutting him off. “Lex is with Nuin—and with you and me—in Men-nefer, a month or two before Nuin’s death . . . I don’t remember how many days, exactly.”
“She traveled back over four millennia?” When Aset nodded, Marcus shook his head. “That block of time has always been a bit of a fuzzy spot in my memory.”
“And now you know why.”
“Because Lex tapped into the power Nuin gave her and made me forget . . .”
“Actually, she made you remember a slightly altered version of events, but essentially, yes, she sealed your true memories away.” Aset touched the side of the box. “She made this for you, so you would be able to survive while she’s gone.”
My eyes could have been tricking me—I mean, I hadn’t blinked for at least two minutes, so it was entirely possible—but I thought I could see Marcus’s hands tremble as he opened the box. He pulled out a tiny crystal bottle attached to a silver chain heavy enough to not look too girly on a guy, but not thick enough to look like a ridiculous “gangsta” chain. He held the bottle up in front of his face. “This isn’t quartz, is it?”
Aset shook her head. “It is made of the At itself.” She took it from his hands and lifted it, standing on tiptoes to raise it over his head. She settled the chain around his neck, tucking the tiny bottle into his shirt. “And inside, it is packed full of Lex’s bonding pheromones. All you have to do is have it touching your skin, and you should be fine . . . for a while. But you must not open the bottle, or the pheromones will float away.”
Marcus touched his fingertips to the little lump under his shirt.
“Better?” Aset asked, studying his face.
He nodded and took a full, deep breath. “Much. And . . . what about Lex?”
Her eyes most definitely twinkled. “Trust me when I say that Lex is doing just fine.”
Marcus shook his head. “How—”
“You forget, dear brother”—she touched her fingertips to his chiseled cheek—“Lex has you.”
Marcus said nothing for several seconds. “You mentioned going somewhere?” Already his voice sounded less tight, less strained, and he stood a little taller.
“Yes,” Aset said, readjusting her shoulder bag. “We must leave for the Netjer-At Oasis immediately. Lex has left you something there that I think you’ll be eager to see.”
“She left me something . . . from the past?”
“Yes, and only once we’ve gone to the Oasis and explored what she left behind will she return.” She nodded once. “This I know.”
“Very well.” Marcus strode toward the door, Dom and Aset close on his heels. “During the journey, you will tell me everything you know of what is going on with Lex,” he said to Aset over his shoulder. He opened the door and held it for the other two to pass through the doorway.
“I will tell you what I can,” Aset said as the door swung shut.
Stunned by pretty much everything that had just happened, I stared at the door.
Until Neffe clapped her hands repeatedly. “What are you just standing around for? Go make yourselves useful. We’re leaving soon.”
For once, I had no retort. I hopped off my stool and hurried to the door.
“Go!” Neffe repeated, and I heard Jenny rushing along behind me.
***
I stuffed my favorite pair of jeans into my duffel bag, which also happened to be the only pair of jeans I’d packed from Seattle—which, honestly, I thought was showing a ton of restraint—then pulled them back out and tossed them on the bed. Skinny jeans and the Sahara did not seem like an epic combination. But just as I was zipping up the bag, I stuffed them back in.
Dominic barged into the room. No knock. No apology. Just barging. “Why aren’t you ready yet?”
“I could’ve been naked,” I said, crossing my arms over my miniscule chest. “You really should’ve knocked.”
He stood in the doorway and stared at me. “But you weren’t.”
“No, but I could’ve been. It’s about respect, you know?” I quirked my mouth to the side.
He furrowed his brow, looking, of all things, confused. Men . . .
“You would’ve knocked for Lex.”
“Lex would already have been packed and downstairs.” Dom raised his eyebrows lazily. Who even does that? “I would not have had to retrieve her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed . . . I’m. Not. Lex.”
“I have, but I am not the one who keeps comparing you to the Meswett.”
I rolled my eyes again and hoisted my duffel bag onto my shoulder before reaching for the messenger bag containing my more personal items. “So what’s this oasis place like anyway? Is it filled with springs and palm trees and camels that spit and—”
“You’ve watched too many movies.”
I approached the doorway and the new-door-formerly-known-as-Dominic, stopping in front of him to show him my “ha ha, you’re so funny” face. “I’m eighteen—which means I’m still a teenager, note the teen. That means watching movies is practically part of my job. It’s like school.”
Dom stared down at me, those dark eyes seeming to dig into my soul and to weigh its worth. He didn’t look impressed. “You received your diploma; you no longer attend school.”
Only because Marcus’s people had arranged it right before we left Seattle. “Whatever. Move?”
He didn’t.
I batted my eyelashes at him and smiled sweetly. “Please . . .”
Dom sighed and stepped out of my way.
I paused in the hallway to wait for him as he shut the door. Such a gentleman, my big, stuffier-than-an-antique-shop brother. “You never answered my question. What’s this ‘Netjer-At Oasis’ like? And how come I’ve never heard of it, if it’s, like, a thing?”
Dom smoothed his hair back and started walking toward the stairs, and I fell in step beside him. “We don’t speak of it,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because the Oasis is where the Great Father’s body lies.”
I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the hallway. “Wait, what? We know where Nuin’s body is and it’s not a sacred place? How is this Oasis not our Mecca?”
“A great disaster befell it thousands of years ago, immediately after Nuin’s death, and the desert reclaimed it. And since then, it has not been spoken of except amongst the closest of friends. It is somewhat of a taboo topic.” He continued on down the hall, and I had to speed-walk to keep up.
“But, why? Why all the mystery and secrecy and stuff? Why don’t we ever talk about it or what happened there?”
Dom shrugged. “It is simply our way. It is tradition. You should respect it.”
I could almost hear him silently saying, You should respect me.
I rolled my eyes. Again.
***
Dozens of us stood in the Cairo palace’s marble and gold grand entryway, all of our attention on Marcus and Aset, who were posted before the doors. Marcus was making his final announcements and doing a half-assed job at taking roll call.
“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes,” Marcus said. “If you see that someone is missing, find them before we leave. We’re going with or without them.” Clearly, solving the problem of his withdrawal symptoms hadn’t improved his mood much.
I glanced around the cavernous space, scanning the backs of heads and faces of each person. I reached for Dom’s sleeve and gave it a tug. When he shot me a sideways glance, I said, “My mom’s not here. I’ve got to go get her . . .”
Pressing his lips together, Dom shrugged.
I dropped my bags on the polished marble stairs and turned to run back up, but a hand latched around my elbow before I’d made it up two steps. I turned. “Dom, wha—”
“Hurry,” he said, his dark eyes intense. Sometimes, he looked so much like Set, it was creepy.
“Um . . .” I nodded, and when he released me, I raced up the stairs that much faster. I ran down the hall past the room I was sharing with Jenny, skidded around a corner, heading for my mom’s room, and lunged forward the last few steps, falling to my knees. Because there, on the floor in front of her door, was Jenny, blood seeping through the crotch of her khaki pants.
I didn’t even hesitate. “DOM!”
20
Death & Threat
“DOM!”
He rounded the corner at a near sprint and seemed to assess the situation in a matter of seconds. “Neffe,” he called over his shoulder. “We need you. It’s Jenny. Something has happened.”
I reached for Jenny’s hand, squeezing it, but not too hard because it was limp and felt so fragile, and I didn’t want to break her. And there was so much blood . . .
Neffe glided around the corner, Aset and Marcus close on her heels. “What is it?” she said, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She shouldered Dom out of the way as she crouched on the other side of Jenny, reaching for her wrist. “Her pulse is weak.” She focused on the blood seeping through Jenny’s pants, staining the fabric crimson, then shifted her focus to me. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with her. Has she complained of any discomfort? Cramping? Bleeding?”
“I—I—” Swallowing and unable to tear my eyes away from the blood, I nodded. “My mom . . . she—she . . .”
Neffe reached across Jenny’s body and closed her hand around my wrist, her nails digging into my skin. “Your mother what?”
Eyes wide, I shook my head. So much blood . . .
It was only hours ago that Jenny had been talking about the baby, about how she was going to love it no matter what . . . and now . . . now . . . what if she was losing it?
“Kat!”
I blinked but couldn’t look away.
Dom knelt beside me. “Let go, Neffe.” As Neffe released my wrist, Dom captured my hand. “Look at me, Kat.” His voice was gentle. “Look at me.”
I did, and it was like I’d been underwater but had just broken through the surface and could breathe. I stared into his dark eyes, thinking they weren’t nearly as cold and boring as I’d thought. They were guarded. They held secrets. They were filled with emotion—turmoil, desperation, anger—not devoid of it like I’d pretended.
“You mentioned your mother, Kat. Why?”
I rubbed my thumb over the back of Jenny’s hand. “Jenny—she started feeling nauseous . . . like all the time. I told her she should tell Neffe, but my mom stopped by our room before she could and started asking Jenny about her pregnancy and how she was feeling.” I frowned. “I remember thinking it was weird that she was being so chatty with Jenny, because she hadn’t said much to me since I switched rooms . . .”
“And what happened next?” Dom’s voice was coaxing, his accent soothing rather than irritating, like I used to think.
“And my mom told her she’d felt the same when she was pregnant with me, and then said that nothing the doctors gave her had helped, but that Marcus showed her how to make an ancient Nejeret medicine . . . that it was the only thing that helped her. She told Jenny that the nausea was only the beginning, and that cramping would soon follow, but that if Jenny took the medicine my mom made for her, she’d avoid the worst of it.”
“I never showed Gen how to make anything like that,” Marcus said, a razor-sharp edge to his voice.
“How long has she been taking this ‘medicine’?” Aset asked.
I looked at her. “Um . . . since we got to Cairo.” I shrugged. “So, like, four or five days.” I started shaking my head. “But my mom would never—”
“The concoction could have been tainted with a bacteria,” Aset said. “Maybe E. coli or listeria . . . the girl likely would have assigned any symptoms caused by the infection to her pregnancy.”
“You have medical training,” Neffe said. It wasn’t a question.
“I do.” Aset glanced at Marcus. “I was the doctor who treated Lex last year, after . . .”
Marcus clenched his jaw so hard that I was surprised I didn’t hear the sound of his teeth breaking. “Did you know what that piece of shit would do to her?”
Aset didn’t even blink an eye at his seething tone. “I did.”
“And you didn’t try to stop it?”
And . . . I was starting to worry about Aset’s safety as Marcus glared at her. If looks could kill, she would have died, like, eight thousand times in a few seconds.
Aset pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. “Lex is the one who told me when and where I had to be so she and I would meet when she first woke in the hospital. She told me it had to happen that way.”
“Um . . . guys . . .” I stared down at Jenny’s washed-out face. “Shouldn’t we be doing something to help Jenny and the baby . . . ?”
My words seemed to shake Marcus out of his outraged trance, and he started barking orders. “Neffe, do what you need to do for Jenny, and when you know more, let me know what kind of delay we’re looking at.”
Neffe bowed her head. “Yes, Father.” She looked at Aset, who nodded and moved closer to her, and the two Nejerettes started speaking in hushed tones.
“Dom,” Marcus said. “Arrange a team to search for Gen. Find her.”
Dominic was up and running down the hall as soon as Marcus’s order was voiced.
Marcus turned eyes that burned like the sun on me. “You don’t leave my sight.”
I gulped. It was all I could do to make myself nod.
***
“Gen’s gone,” Dom said as he strode into the sitting room next to the entryway, where Marcus, Aset, and I had been waiting, surrounded by Lex’s full retinue of guards. In my opinion, it was less of a sitting room and more of a ballroom, with fancy things like “settees” and “chaise lounges.”
Dominic stopped on the enormous, intricately patterned rug in front of the armchair where Marcus was sitting. “The security cameras caught her sneaking away last night, during the chaos after you—” He cleared his throat. “After Lex vanished. I have our
people working on tracking her down.”
Aset said something to Marcus in a language that sounded a little bit like the Nejeret language, but whatever they were speaking was different enough that I couldn’t understand them. But I could understand their tones: snippy. Just like a brother and sister should sound, I thought.
“So she left to go do something.” I shrugged nonchalantly, feeling anything but nonchalant. “I don’t see why you guys are so hell-bent on finding her. I mean, it might all have been an accident . . . and Jenny and the baby are fine, Neffe said so. So she didn’t actually hurt anyone . . .” It wasn’t that I was an idiot—at least, not most of the time—but this was my mom they were hunting down. My mom. She wasn’t the kind of person who would do something like poison a woman in an attempt to make her miscarry. She was the type of person who helped people, not hurt them.
Yeah, if you looked up denial in the dictionary . . .
“Only the guilty run,” Dom said. “She ran.”
“But . . .”
Marcus straightened in his chair, stretching his back. Leaning forward, he rested an elbow on his knee and rubbed his hand over his short hair. “That’s not always true, Dom.” He exhaled a heavy sigh. “Pull our people back in. We’ll need all the trustworthy help we can get at the Oasis.”
Dom bowed his head, then turned and walked toward the doorway.
“Wait.” Marcus lifted his head to look at Dom. “I want Lex’s parents and grandmother here before we leave.”
“Are you intending for them to accompany us to the Oasis?” Dom asked.
“I am.”
Dom’s eyes narrowed the slightest amount. “You understand that by doing this, you’ll likely have to reveal the truth about us to Alice and Joe.”
Marcus nodded. “It was bound to happen eventually.”
“Lex will not be pleased . . .”
“Lex isn’t here,” Marcus snapped, earning mutters from the guards stationed around the room and a “tsk” from his sister. “But she will be more displeased if she returns to find them dead.” That shut everyone up. “They’re coming with us. Work out the details with Alex—he’s upstairs with Neffe in Jenny’s room.”
Time Anomaly: A Time Travel Romance (Echo Trilogy, #2) Page 17