Constance shook my hand, and the agreement was made. “Thank you,” she said softly.
I pulled my hand back and turned to the two men huddling at the other side of the room, as far away from us as possible. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, boys.” I dipped the tip of the needle dagger in the vial of infected blood to re-coat it and stalked their way. “So . . . you two were in charge of the day-to-day operations on this project. Isn’t that just fascinating?”
They exchanged a look. It reeked of piss on this side of the room, and it only took a glance down at Scott’s trousers to see why.
“I wonder who might’ve let Sammy out?” I stopped a few feet from them and waggled the tainted dagger in front of their noses. “Who wanted the disease to get out—to spread?”
They recoiled.
I crouched down, elbows on my knees. “First person to spill the beans doesn’t get infected . . .”
“It was me,” Scott blurted. “I did it.”
I blinked, taken aback by the quick response. I hadn’t expected it to be so easy to get a confession. I also hadn’t expected that confession to be a lie. “Now why would you ever lie about a thing like that?”
Gregory sighed, and the older man’s entire demeanor changed. Not just his demeanor, his whole damn appearance. He stood, his head filling out with thick, dark brown hair and his face shedding several dozen years even as his shoulders broadened and he gained a few inches. The muddy brown of his irises gave way to an ethereal bronze that shimmered with an alien light and swirled with a whole galaxy’s worth of stars.
“Because I compelled him to,” he said.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, standing and stumbling back a few steps. Gregory—or whoever the hell he was—wasn’t human. And he wasn’t even Nejeret; no Nejeret had eyes like that. The man standing before me was a fully-fledged Netjer, an actual, full-powered god, like the two who were currently still on sabbatical from our universe.
Vines of At shot past me as Nik reacted, but those indestructible ropes evaporated into a rainbow mist before they even came close to touching the Netjer.
I took another step backward, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. My heart hammered in my chest as I struggled, fruitlessly, to come up with a plan. But a Netjer is basically all-powerful. There was nothing I could do to this guy that he couldn’t fend off, let alone throw back at me tenfold. There was no way for me to beat him and a gazillion ways for me to die trying.
I took one more step backward and ran into Nik’s warm, solid body. The sudden contact made nearly jump out of my skin.
“Just me,” Nik said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He rested his hands on my shoulders, and I took comfort from his touch. Drew strength from it. Maybe I couldn’t beat this guy in a fight, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to run away with my tail tucked between my legs.
I straightened my spine and locked stares with the unwelcome Netjer. He wasn’t from our universe; there were only four Netjers native to this place—the original creators of this universe, Re and Apep, and the new gods, my niece and nephew, Susie and Syris—and this Netjer was most certainly none of them. He didn’t belong here.
“Who are you?” I asked, voice hard and surprisingly steady. Go me.
The Netjer clasped his hands behind his back. “A visitor.”
“Well, you’re not welcome here,” I snapped. “Go—”
Nik gave my shoulders a squeeze, and I shut my mouth, however reluctantly. “Why are you here?” he asked, sounding a whole lot more in control than I had.
“I’ve heard much about you, Nekure,” the Netjer said, using Nik’s true, ancient name. “Re speaks of you often.”
I felt Nik stiffen behind me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
The Netjer leveled a cold stare my way, and his scrutiny paralyzed my lungs. “It would be impossible for your mind to understand my desires while in your current form.”
“Why are you here?” Nik asked, repeating his earlier question.
The Netjer’s stare shifted to Nik, and only then could I suck in a lungful of breath. “To observe,” he said and turned away to stroll toward the sealed-off wall of windows. “To learn.” He glanced at us over his shoulder. “To decide,” he said a second before he evaporated into a glowing, writhing mass and floated through the wall of windows.
“Wait!” I shouted after him.
But he—it—was already gone.
25
“To decide,” Lex said, her brow scrunched as she studied my face. “That’s what he said—to observe, to learn, and to decide?”
We were sitting at the table tucked away in the breakfast nook, surrounded by windows giving us a view of the storm pouring rain outside and bending the trees this way and that. The manicured gardens behind the house were already covered in a bevy of pine branches and bunches of leaves, and the angry clouds in the sky only seemed to be darkening.
“No and,” I said, “but yeah, those were his words.” I took a gulp of my Cherry Coke. Their house had one of those fancy pop machines that could make essentially any flavor of carbonated beverage. It was pretty awesome, and the sugar and caffeine were doing wonders to fend off the shock of the Netjer run-in. “What the hell—” I glanced at Reni, sitting in the high chair beside Lex at the table, snacking on string cheese. Her onyx ringlets appeared almost blue in the stormy afternoon light. “Sorry. I meant, what the heck is a fu—freaking Netjer doing here? Did Susie or Syris mention anything about a visitor?”
Lex shook her head, her fingers automatically going to the At falcon pendant hanging on a silver chain around her neck. It had been a gift from her godly children given to her just a few minutes before they left for the Netjer home universe three years ago, and it’s the sole link between this universe and wherever they are, at least so far as us lowly Nejerets are concerned. I crossed my arms over my chest and sniffed. Apparently some Netjers could come and go as they pleased.
“He had coppery eyes,” Nik told Lex, “if that helps the twins identify who he is. I think that part of his physical appearance was genuine, at least, though I don’t know about anything else.”
“He dissolved into one of those shining light blobs like the twins did,” I added, though I doubted that helped at all. I lifted my glass to take another sugary sip.
“I’ll talk to the twins,” Lex said. “See what they know.”
I bit my lip. “I don’t suppose there’s any way that they can come back here and, oh, say, deal with this whole mess, can they?”
Sighing, Lex shook her head. “I wish . . .” She picked a stray chunk of string cheese off her shoulder, seemed to think about what to do with it, then handed it back to her daughter, who grinned and popped it into her mouth. I wondered if Lex been considering eating it herself. “They’re stuck where they are until the other Netjers decide they’re capable of tending to this universe.” Her shoulders bunched up. “All I keep thinking is that maybe the other Netjers sent this guy here to watch over things in the twins’ absence, but . . .” Her shoulders dropped. “I don’t know.”
I snorted a bitter laugh. “Well, if that’s the deal, he sure is doing a bang-up job.” Shaking my head, I tapped Nik’s arm with the back of my hand and said, “We should go.” We’d spent too much time discussing the “visitor” already, and Garth’s life was sand in an hourglass.
“Oooooh . . .” Reni pointed in Nik’s and my general direction. “Pretty colors!” She clapped her hands together, causing a few cheese bits to go flying.
I exchanged a quick, confused glance with Nik, then looked at Lex, eyebrows drawn together.
Lex raised one hand and shook her head. “I have no idea. She’s been seeing things that are invisible to the rest of us lately—must be her sheut maturing.”
Like Nik, Reni was one of the few Nejerets to have been born of two Nejeret parents, thanks to a little loophole in that whole Nejeret reproductive snag. Lex and Heru were what Nejerets called a “bonded pair,” a rare set
of true soul mates, their bas resonating perfectly with one another. As a result, they were one of the few Nejeret couples able to reproduce together. They were also addicted to each other—physically—and would die if separated for two long. A tough bargain, but one they seemed content with. And unlike Lex, Heru, Aset, and me, who’d all gained sheuts later in life by Susie and Syris, Reni had been born with hers, courtesy of her unique parentage. She was growing up with a sheut, giving her access to unknown powers at a very early age. She fit into the small fraction of the Nejeret population born with sheuts—Nik, Mei, and Mari, among them—and it would be a while before the full extent of Reni’s innate powers was clear.
I exchanged another look with Nik, frowning this time. What did Reni see when she looked at me? Or at us? “Right, well . . .” I pushed my chair back and stood, and Nik did the same. Lex followed a moment later. “We’re taking Constance with us, but we promise to bring her back.”
“Fair enough,” Lex said. She followed us to the front door, standing in the opening as we made our way down the porch stairs. “You don’t want to see Garth before you go?”
The muscles in my shoulders bunched up. The thought of facing him without having a way to save him made my stomach turn. Guilt. Dread. Flat-out fear. I was sick with all of it. But not as sick as Garth would be soon, especially if this didn’t work.
I shook my head, unable to turn around to look my sister in the eye.
Lex sighed. “Alright, well, will you tell Heru to come join me when he’s finished?” He was in the dungeon, where Nik and I were headed to pick up Constance, the third member of our impromptu ambush-Mari team. He’d been leading the charge on interrogating the board members ever since we started sending them through the bedsheet gateway, and I had no doubt he was extracting some pretty juicy information.
I nodded, turning partially to wave at her. “And you’ll have Dom pass on whatever you learn from the twins, yeah?”
“Of course,” Lex said with a nod. At the sound of a high-pitched shriek from within the house—either a laugh or a cry, I couldn’t tell—she cringed, then shut the door. I loved Reni, but man, the kid was just so very toddler.
***
I passed through the gateway I’d drawn on the wall of the garage, right on top of Heru’s dungeon, and stepped into a crowded pub. Constance followed me, Nik right behind her. I’d been nervous about creating the gateway to the Pike Brewing Company, an always-bustling brewery and eatery located in the warren beneath Pike Place Market—I wasn’t eager about exposing so many people to the now-infectious Constance, but so long as she kept her hands and her fluids to herself, all of the innocent humans would be safe.
I’d have chosen a less-crowded destination, but this was the place in the market I knew best—and hence could draw best—and the gateway had been a breeze to create. My only other option was the oh-so-famous fish market upstairs, and that was way too exposed for an out-of-thin-air appearance. At least down here there were doorways to pretend to pass through, not to mention alcohol to dull any onlookers’ senses.
“Lead the way,” I told Constance, holding my arm out for her to pass me by. I figured I didn’t have to worry about her bolting—helping us was her only chance at surviving the disease. The only way she’d ever get to see her kids again. The only way her son would get better.
Pike Place Market is a multistoried maze, with ramps and hallways and in-between floors aplenty, and our route through the tangle was far from a straight shot. We headed up to the main outdoor level, passing by the famed fish market, narrowly dodging the huge Coho salmon being lobbed around to entertain the tourists, and wound through the throng to an offshooting stairway that led to the lower floors—or, at least, to parts of the lower floors. We passed by a free-trade jewelry and trinkets shop, a seller of miniature cars, animals, and pretty much everything else, and a kitschy magic shop on our way to a locked door marked “Restricted” tucked between the odorific men’s restroom and a used bookstore.
When we reached the door, Constance produced an inky black key made of anti-At, and Nik and I both recoiled instinctively, however minutely. Touching the stuff wouldn’t hurt Constance, since she didn’t have an eternal ba—yet—but it would unmake any Nejeret from the soul out. Except for me, thanks to the protective Eye of Horus symbol tattooed into my palm. The At-inked symbol had already saved my life and my ba from the effects of anti-At, and it had the obsidian striations marbling through the opalescent ink to prove it.
Constance unlocked the door, and the three of us entered a narrow, steep stairwell lit only by a few ancient-looking bulbs in caged light fixtures high up on the walls.
“Cozy,” I commented, eyeing the flickering lights. About one in three bulbs actually worked.
“This leads to an old utilities room,” Constance explained without looking back. She was concentrating on the slightly uneven stairs. “The market made some updates a few years ago, and this area’s not in use anymore.”
“That explains the excellent upkeep,” I said, glancing back at Nik.
He breathed a laugh, but no hint of a smile touched his lips. He had his game face on. Not surprising—Mari wasn’t his favorite person, and she was one of the few people whose sheut power was a match for his. She was one of the few people who could pose an actual threat to him.
Constance led us deeper into the market’s underbelly, and we entered a defunct boiler room with a hodgepodge of breaker boxes lining the brick walls to what appeared to be a bricked-over doorway. At least, until Constance wound her way through the ancient machinery filling the room and depressed a single brick to the right of the old doorway, then pushed on the area of newer bricks. It gave in with the grind of stone on stone until there was an opening plenty wide enough for a person to fit through. The space beyond was pitch-black, even to my sensitive eyes.
Nik whistled, and I grinned. Who doesn’t love a secret passageway?
Constance reached through the opening, fumbling blindly for something. “There’s a lantern here, somewhere . . .”
“Here,” Nik said, holding up his hand, palm up. A writhing, glowing mass of living At flared to life, looking so much like some alien form of fire. It cast the area around us in an eerie incandescent light, making the world appear almost silver.
Constance’s eyes widened, and she licked her lips. “Thanks,” she said, eyeing the otherworldly mass for a moment before turning away from us.
We followed her through the opening to what appeared to be an old sidewalk—there was even an antique lamppost a few yards up the passageway and an arched opening for a window, though the view through the cracked glass only showed a mass of dirt, rocks, and rubble. The air down here smelled musty and earthy, sort of like a cave, but not quite. I’d been in spaces like this under the city before, areas leftover from the citywide regrade after the devastating fire of 1889. The old Seattleites had decided building a new city on top of the old one would be more practical and efficient than rebuilding the old. And lucky us, that meant that much of the original city remained . . . one only need know where to look.
“You won’t find this on the underground tour,” I said, voice hushed, as Constance led us further into the remnants of a Seattle long forgotten.
“I remember this place,” Nik said, his voice barely a whisper. He walked ahead of me now, sharing his light with Constance as much as possible. I watched his profile as he slowed and looked around, nostalgia transforming his features. He reached his free hand out, brushing the half-burned wood frame of another window opening. “This was a hotel—the Occidental. Mother and I stayed here once.” A wistful smile touched his lips. “This was the first place I ever had my photograph taken.” He laughed under his breath. “Re disapproved, but Mother was so eager . . .”
I smiled to myself, enjoying this rare glimpse into Nik’s past.
“Just a little farther,” Constance said, pausing and tossing a glance back at us. Only then did I realize how far behind we’d fallen.
Fi
ve minutes later, we reached an old armored door, the kind used on a bank vault a century or two back. PUGET SOUND NATIONAL BANK was engraved in the metal near the center of the door. Constance made quick work of the heavy-duty built-in lock, spun the wheel, then turned a handle, and the door slowly swung outward on surprisingly well-oiled hinges. “Stay here, out of sight,” she whispered, then passed through the vault doorway and headed for a second door just a few yards in from the first. It was smaller and rusted, with a several-inch square hatch at face height for a peekaboo window.
Nik nodded, and the two of us backed up a few steps, retreating into the passageway. I inhaled deeply, then held my breath.
Constance’s knock was gentle, but she didn’t need more than that to alert Mari’s Nejeret ears of her presence. “It’s me,” she called quietly. “I have news.”
There was a rusty creak, followed by, “What happened at the meeting?”
Adrenaline flooded my bloodstream at the sound of Mari’s voice, and my whole body hummed with anticipation. She was really here. We’d found her. I might just be able to save Garth.
“You look like hell,” Mari told Constance. “Did the board vote you out?”
“Not exactly,” Constance said. “Let me in, and I’ll explain.”
Nik and I stared at each other as we waited for the sound of a door opening. It seemed to take forever. There was clang after clang as Mari dealt with the door’s locks, and I was starting to get a little lightheaded from holding my breath for so long. But I could hardly let it out now, in a massive exhale. Mari would hear that, for sure.
Finally, the door opened with the faintest of creeks. We waited a few more seconds for Constance to actually get in the doorway, where she could bar the way so Mari wouldn’t be able slam the door as soon as she spotted us, and then I stepped into view.
“Hey, Mars,” I said, raising a hand to wave.
Her familiar, almond-shaped eyes rounded in surprise.
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