Nik was already settled on the couch, his eyes closed, the rise and fall of his chest shallow and even. He was either asleep or doing a damn good job pretending to be, so I did my best not to disturb him on my way back to the bedroom.
I crawled into the bed for the first time in what felt like forever. The mattress wasn’t fancy or new, and the sheets weren’t a very high thread count—hell, they probably weren’t even clean, since Nik had been staying at the apartment off and on in my absence—but it was my bed. And it felt awesome to be lying there.
I missed my home. I missed my life. I missed me.
I rolled onto my side, hugging a pillow to my chest and curling my legs up into a loose fetal position. The bond between Nik and me was a problem, but one that we would have to solve later. The same went for the Isfet dilemma. The shadows were the more urgent issue. If I didn’t figure out a way to immobilize them long enough for me to cleanse them, the massacre on the football field wouldn’t just be an echo of a possible future. It would be reality. All of those people would be dead—Alison would be dead—because I’d failed.
I closed my eyes, inhaling and exhaling deep, even breaths. There was no use in panicking. No use in expecting failure. I would figure it out. I always did.
Chapter Twenty-One
I stand in a long hallway, brick walls on either side of me. There’s an alcove to the left just ahead, and in it, there’s a door—GIRLS’ LOCKER ROOM.
A group of three teenage girls runs down the hallway behind me, giggling. I step into the alcove and out of their way, turning to watch them pass. I feel a twinge of envy at their carefree happiness. That had been me, once upon a time, a long, long time ago.
Once they’re gone, I turn my attention to the door. I reach out, curling my fingers around the metal handle, and pull the door open.
A girl sits on one of the benches near the door, knees hugged to her chest and face buried against her legs. She’s crying.
I head for the bathroom area in the back right corner, trying not to disturb her as I pass between rows of lockers and pick my way over the backpacks and messenger bags spilling out from under the benches. When I’m almost to the stalls, I turn and look in the mirror over the three porcelain sinks.
The girl staring back at me in the reflection looks nothing like me. She’s blonde and blue-eyed, her features delicate and pixie-like. For whatever reason, I’m not surprised to see this stranger reflected in the mirror instead of myself.
I lean in over the middle sink and raise my hand to tap my fingers on the glass. The girl in the reflection raises her hand, her fingers meeting mine.
“Dom,” I whisper. “Where are you?” His name is scratched into all four corners of the mirror, turning it into another anchor point for him to move to and from as he pleases.
The ghostly figure of my half-brother appears in the mirror, standing beside the unfamiliar girl. Beside me. “I am here,” he says. “Are you ready?”
I nod, and the girl in the mirror nods, too.
A scream startles me.
I turn, running in the direction that it came from.
The girl who’d been crying on the bench is struggling to fend off a greedy shadow. I recall the feel of the shadows draining me of my life-force and hesitate, just for a moment.
And then I lunge at the feasting shadow. “Leave her alone, dickwad,” I say as I soccer-kick the thing in the face. Not my most elegant move, but it does the trick.
The shadow soul releases the girl, its featureless face angling towards me.
“Oh, I’m sorry . . . did I disturb your snack?” I say, taking a skipping step backward before turning and running toward the mirror.
* * *
With a gasp, I woke. My eyes popped open, and I sat up, totally confused.
It had been another vision—another echo—I was sure of it. I could recognize the feel of them now. But nothing had really made sense. Why was Dom in the mirror in the locker room? Why did my reflection look nothing like me? And why had I been luring the shadow soul to the mirror?
I’d fallen asleep hoping for a vision that would tell me exactly how to immobilize the shadow souls long enough that I could cleanse them without them sucking me dry. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had my answer—the world within the mirrors. In an odd way, it made sense to my sleepy mind.
Grateful that I finally had an answer of sorts, I laid back in the bed and closed my eyes, letting sleep reclaim me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I woke early the next morning, irritated beyond words. I was irritated about the way the conversation with Nik had gone the previous night. I was irritated about the echo-dream I’d had, giving me answers veiled in more questions. I was irritated about the fact that I was irritated. I was pretty much irritated about everything, which was, in all fairness, kind of the norm for me. Which, again, only irritated me. Looked like the calm maturity of the night before was gone, barely a memory.
I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the most recent echo-dream. I felt far less certain about my interpretation than I had in the middle of the night—that shoving the shadows through the mirror was the way to trap them so I could cleanse them. My doubt definitely stemmed from my memory of the stranger reflected in the mirror. It just didn’t make sense.
The only logical conclusion I could come up with was that I would, somehow, figure out how to create a magical disguise for myself like Anapa had done back in the Ouroboros boardroom. That seemed pretty obvious. Only problem was, I had no idea how to change my appearance like that.
I could reach out to Anapa and ask him for help, but after Isfet’s mention of the “makers” being the enemy looming on the horizon, I was even less eager than before to call on him. The “makers” had to be her term for the Netjers—they were the original creators of this universe, after all.
An idea popped into my head. Nik had been full of surprises where his sheut was concerned lately. The entire time I’d known him, I’d only thought he was capable of manipulating At. Turned out, he could manipulate anti-At as well. And he could get into people’s heads, making them more compliant to his wishes. I didn’t think it was too much of a stretch to consider the possibility that he could use his magic to alter his appearance as well.
I tossed back the covers and scooted to the edge of the bed. Only one way to find out.
I left my bedroom and headed straight for the living room, stopping at the mouth of the hallway and staring at the couch. At Nik.
He still lay there, right where he’d been when I’d retired the previous night. His arm was thrown over his eyes, his lips parted. At some point during the night, he’d kicked off the blanket he’d been using, revealing his less-is-more sleeping attire. All he wore was a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs.
My eyes scoured every inch of him greedily. I’d never seen so much of his body before. Almost no part of his skin was untouched by ink. There were patches with less and patches with more, but almost everything was covered in some design or shade of gray. He was absolutely stunning.
In my mind, I replayed our brief conversation from the night before. He wanted to try to break the bond; we’d agreed it was for the best. It was for the best—I knew that. Hell, I’d been the one fighting the bond the entire time. But hearing Nik’s proposal, hearing him express his desire to be away from me—that fucking hurt. Tears welled in my eyes. Not tears of sadness, but tears of anger. Of frustration. Of hating my stupid, traitorous heart.
So, yeah, I’d say the calm of the previous night was definitely gone.
“Why don’t you take a picture,” Nik said, his voice husky with sleep. “It’ll last longer.” The faintest hint of a smirk touched his lips.
I rolled my eyes, the threat of tears abating. I could always count on Nik to derail my thoughts and upset my emotions.
I lifted my foot and nudged his knee with my toes. “Would you wake up already?” I nudged him again, harder this time. “We need to talk.”
N
ik moved his arm up a couple inches and squinted at me. “Looks like somebody’s back to normal.”
He recovered his eyes with his arm.
With a tiny growl, I stomped my foot and turned away from the couch, stalking into the kitchen. My stomach was all grumbles and rumbles again, probably because of all I’d put my body through the previous day. Dying really took a lot out of me. I supposed I should’ve been grateful that I hadn’t gone into a regenerative sleep—that could’ve lasted days—but I wasn’t stocked up on much gratitude at the moment.
I rummaged through the cupboards, pretty pleased when I found an untouched family-size bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and two liters of Cherry Coke. The pop was warm, making it extra fizzy, but I didn’t care. I cracked a bottle open and guzzled about a quarter of it, eyes burning.
“You’re upset,” Nik said. “About last night?”
I choked on Cherry Coke and turned away from him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, coughing.
Nik moved further into the kitchen, closer to me. “You just said you wanted to talk.”
My back was to him, but I could hear his quiet footsteps bringing him closer to me. Biting back a snide retort, I set the bottle of Coke down on the counter and reached for the bag of Cheetos, doing my best to ignore Nik’s slow approach. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Do you want to do something else about it?” he asked, right behind me. His breath rustled my mussed hair. His heat skimmed my skin. And damn it all to hell, but I felt a faint, tingly caress that could only have come from his soul brushing against mine.
I hung my head, fighting the urge to lean back against him. I put down the bag of Cheetos and pushed it away, placing my palms on the counter and focusing on taking deep, even breaths. “We agreed, remember?” I said, my voice slightly hoarse and tinged with more than a little bitterness. “You don’t want to risk making this permanent, do you?”
Nik touched my shoulder. “Kat—”
“No, I’m not doing this right now.” I slipped out from between Nik and the counter before he could say more, grabbing the bag of Cheetos and the open bottle of Cherry Coke, and retreated into the bathroom.
Nik was messing with my head, just like he’d always done, taunting me with something I knew he didn’t want to give me. Something I didn’t even want. There were too many strings. Too many repercussions. He didn’t know what I knew. He hadn’t seen the cards. He didn’t get that I was trying to save his damn life.
I locked the bathroom door, not that the lock would do any good against Nik if he really wanted to get in, and shut the toilet, setting my breakfast on the lid. Not the cleanest of tables, but I’d read the studies—not the dirtiest, either. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was surprised at the relief I felt in seeing my own face reflected back, not that stranger from the dream.
“Get it under control,” I told myself, voice barely audible. This was no time to start falling apart.
Fifteen minutes later, I reemerged from the bathroom, bottle drained and bag of Cheetos empty, more or less in control of my emotions. Nik was back on the couch, feet up on the coffee table and arms stretched across the tops of the cushions on either side of him. He still wore next to nothing.
I tromped past him to the closet housing the laundry machines and moved my clothes over from the washer to the dryer. The dryer hummed along, sending slight vibrations through the floor. After I shut the closet doors, I turned to Nik. “Would it hurt you to put some clothes on?”
Nik arched his pierced eyebrow higher, but the rest of his expression remained surprisingly blank. He lowered his feet to the floor, then stood. “If you’re done in the bathroom, I’d like to shower.” What—now he was pissy with me?
Fine, whatever. I nodded, gesturing to the hallway that led to the bathroom and bedroom. “Be my guest.” I regained my senses a moment later and blurted, “Wait, Nik, I—”
He paused in the doorway to the bathroom, turning partway to look at me.
“I don’t need you to tell me all of your secrets,” I said. “Or any of them, really. But . . . I had a dream—an echo—last night, and what I saw made it pretty clear that I’m going to need to figure out how to disguise myself more than just changing my clothes and dying my hair before I go back to the school.” I raised my eyebrows, giving him a meaningful look. “You know, like how Anapa did it . . .”
Nik blinked but didn’t say anything.
“So . . .” My index finger tapped against my thigh, a nervous tic. “Do you know how to do that kind of thing?”
Nik pressed his lips together into a flat line and shook his head. “Sorry, Kitty Kat. That’s not one of my tricks.”
I blew out a breath. “Alright, well . . . I’ll just find another way, then.” I narrowed my eyes, staring at the ceiling. My thoughts raced around my mind, but they kept returning to the same conclusion.
“We can brainstorm when I get back out,” Nik said.
I nodded, not looking at him. “Yeah, sure.” But I already knew what I was going to do.
Nik retreated into the bathroom, shutting the door gently.
I continued to tap my finger against my thigh. There was only one other option, only one other being in this universe capable of disguising his appearance in such an otherworldly way, at least that I knew of—Anapa, the real-life Netjer who was the inspiration for the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis. Eager as I wasn’t to trust him, he was my only hope. If I was to fulfill the future shown in the echo, I needed his help.
Plan forming, I hurried into the second bedroom that had functioned as my sanctuary for the past three years to retrieve a sketchbook and something to draw with. Once I had everything I needed, I sat at the kitchen table, opened the sketch pad to a blank page, and started to draw.
Anapa, I thought. Where are you?
I kept my thoughts focused on the elusive Netjer as my pen moved. I hadn’t seen him since our little trip into Duat some three weeks ago; I didn’t even know if he was still around. For all I knew, he’d returned to the Netjer home universe. It would explain why he’d yet to come to me about the sickly state of the soul-energy in Duat.
Even so, I had to try.
Lines formed on the white paper, my pen seeming to move of its own accord, and I studied the image as it formed.
A table. This table. Me, sitting at the table. I felt the corner of my mouth lift as another figure appeared at the opposite end of the table in the drawing. Looked like Anapa was still in town, and a hell of a lot closer than I’d even dared to hope.
I set down the pen and raised my eyes, looking across the table. “Anapa,” I said. “I know you’re here. Show yourself.”
The air beyond the chair at the opposite end of the table shimmered, wavering as the Netjer took on form and substance. After a few seconds, Anapa stood behind the chair, tall and lanky, his elongated, too-sharp alien features placid.
“You’ve been spying on me,” I said, commenting more than accusing. “Why?” I asked, then narrowed my eyes. “And for how long?” Did he know about my interactions with Isfet? Did he know that she wanted me to break her out of Aaru? Did he know about the threat to this universe? If the “makers” were, indeed, the Netjers, was he in on it?
Anapa gestured to the chair in front of him. “May I?”
I nodded.
He pulled the chair back and sat gracefully. He looked around, eyes taking in everything. “Your home is very . . . you.”
“Thanks.” I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “How long have you been spying on me?”
He continued to look around for a few seconds longer. Finally, he focused on my face. “Since your latest death.” He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “What exactly were you looking for in Duat?”
I pulled my elbows off the table and sat back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest and chewing on the inside of my lip. “You didn’t follow me there?”
Anapa shook his head. “You would have known if I ha
d. There are not many places to hide in Duat.”
“Huh,” I said, surprised.
I was tempted to ask him about Isfet and the threat on the horizon—to confirm that Isfet’s “makers” were the Netjers. I wondered if he knew anything about it, or if Isfet was sensing something yet to develop. The only way to find out would be to ask, but that might be giving away my—our—position to the enemy, and in that case, I figured it best to keep my mouth shut.
I inhaled and exhaled deeply, opting to broach a safer subject instead. “Since you’ve been watching me for the past day or two,” I said, “you must know what’s been going on.”
“At the school?” Anapa said. “Yes, quite disturbing, that.”
“Tell me about it.” I took a deep breath, considering my next words. “The shadows are consuming the soul-energy. Did you know?” I paused, waiting for his response.
After a few tense seconds, Anapa nodded.
“Duat is looking pretty shaky, and the song of ma’at sounds like shit,” I told him. “Are we in danger of universal amputation?”
Anapa didn’t say anything, but he did give a slight nod.
“And you didn’t think it might be nice to give me fair warning?” I said. “Or was that just a one-time deal?”
He clasped his fingers together, hands resting on top of the table. “You were already involved in the situation. There was no further guidance for me to give you. You must remember, I am not supposed to interfere. I am only here to observe, to—”
“To observe, to learn, and to decide,” I said, interrupting him. “Yeah, yeah . . . I remember the spiel.” I pushed back my chair and stood, needing movement to help keep my irritation at bay. “Listen, Anapa—I called you here because I need your help. I have to go back to the school—during school hours—but I can’t risk going there looking like, well . . .” I waved a hand up and down my body. “I need a disguise. One that nobody will see through,” I said, raising my eyebrows for emphasis.
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