by Amber Benson
“Please forgive me?” I begged, but still, Jarvis wouldn’t relent.
“You’re really gonna make me do this, aren’t you?” I sighed.
Jarvis nodded.
“Okay,” I said as I got down on my knee in the doorway and put my hands together in mock prayer. “Please, Jarvis. Please, please, please forgive me.”
“This is ridiculous,” Jarvis said, grasping my arm and hauling me back onto my feet. “Stand up.”
“Forgiven?” I asked.
“How can I say no when you’re blocking the doorway like this?” Jarvis said dryly.
“I thought you’d see it my way,” I said. “Now that we’re all made up, I need another favor.”
Jarvis rolled his eyes heavenward.
“Of course you do, my dear. As they say in the animal kingdom: A leopard never changes its spots.”
I took the dig willingly. At least I knew Jarvis was back on my side again, thank God.
“I need you to take Senenmut and me to Target.”
“Oh, you are slumming it, aren’t you?” Jarvis said, snickering. “Calliope Reaper-Jones shopping the Jaclyn Smith Collection at Target? This I have to see. I’ll go get the car.”
He started to head toward the garage, but I stopped him.
“Actually,” I said, loving the fact that Jarvis was wrong about something for a change. “I think you mean Kmart when you’re talking Jaclyn Smith, Mr. Smarty-pants. And we’re gonna be needing a wormhole, not a car, so you better get cracking.”
originally, jarvis had wanted to come with us on our long-lost-love search, but after I told him about my last run-in with Bast, he changed his mind.
“She’s a piece of work, that cat,” Jarvis said as he opened the wormhole for us. “She hates working with your father, even though he does nothing but treat her with respect.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t like being controlled,” I offered, but Jarvis only shook his head.
“I think it’s more than that. I think it has nothing to do with being controlled and everything to do with power.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“For centuries, humanity worshipped her, made offerings in her name, sacrificed for her blessings,” Jarvis said in explanation. “Now the cult of the cat is over. She has lost most of her power and she blames your father for it. Totally irrational, I know, since he had nothing to do with the death of the Egyptian culture.”
“So why is she working for him, then?” I asked curiously.
“As Death’s spirit guide, she retains some of her previous powers,” Jarvis replied. “Powers that she would’ve lost otherwise.”
“You think she’s gonna use those powers on Daniel?”
Jarvis only shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But one of us must remain behind to make sure that cat doesn’t get into too much mischief here at Sea Verge while your parents are away.”
“I think she’s turned Clio’s head,” I said. “She’s got her watching reality TV and painting her toenails.”
Jarvis sighed and shook his head.
“I don’t think that’s Bast’s doing. Your sister has been behaving very strangely as of late.”
“What do you mean?” I said, even though I already had an inkling as to what he was talking about.
“Your father and I believe that she has been secretly seeing your friend Indra.”
“What?” I squeaked. “And by the way, he is so not my friend.”
Okay, let me just preface this by saying that the only experiences I’ve had with Indra were when he was being a total egocentric prick. In fact, during the whole “dad kidnapping” fiasco, he had been a real pain in my ass, causing me nothing but strife. He’d been the proud owner of one of the items that the Board of Death had wanted me to retrieve in order to fulfill my tasks and take over my dad’s job. Needless to say, Indra had been anything but forthcoming at the time. It wasn’t until after I’d saved his butt from the demon Vritra that he’d changed his attitude and gotten a whole lot nicer to be around.
He was one of the few Gods I knew who still liked to keep his hands in the world of human affairs. He had taken on the persona of a noted Bollywood actor and director, winning more acclaim and accord with each new film he conceived. The human world might not have known he was a real God, but there were plenty of ladies out there who thought he was the human equivalent.
After we—Daniel, Jarvis, Kali, Runt, Clio, and me—vanquished the demon Vritra, Indra had invited everyone to the premiere of his latest Bollywood spectacular. I hadn’t seen Clio talking to him that night, but I’d been pretty preoccupied with the Gopi—Indra’s hard-core female bodyguards, whom I’d resurrected from the dead after Vritra had decimated them—so I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that I’d missed their flirtation.
“Wow, okay,” I said calmly. “Well, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather on that one.”
Jarvis merely pursed his lips and nodded.
“Your father doesn’t think the relationship is appropriate, but he has chosen to remain silent—he doesn’t want to lose another one of his daughters by speaking up.”
Well, that hit me right in the heart. With Thalia in Purgatorial jail and me hiding out in New York, I guess I couldn’t blame my dad for not wanting to alienate Clio.
“Boyfriend or not, I think you’d better keep your eye on her,” I said. “Bast has something up her sleeve and I don’t think it’s gonna be pretty.”
Jarvis nodded his agreement.
And with that, I left my dad’s more-than-capable Executive Assistant to watch Sea Verge . . . and I led Senenmut into the wormhole.
my feelings about wormholes notwithstanding, the trip to Vegas wasn’t too torturous. That is, no one got queasy or lost or dead, so I considered it pretty much a success.
Jarvis had sent us to the first Target on the list—but had missed by a shrub, the length of one humongous casino, and three plain old city blocks. My new Egyptian friend seemed immediately impressed by all the neon signs that surrounded the casino—especially one sign in particular, which held his attention even when I tapped his arm and tried to get him to follow me down the sidewalk. It advertised “An Evening with Wayne Newton” and showed a picture of the man himself, his wide-lipped smile exposing some of the largest teeth I’d ever seen in a picture—or in person, for that matter.
“I know that smile,” Senenmut said, staring at the gaudy signage that blinked on and off like some tentative, silent heartbeat.
“Yeah?” I said.
He took a few steps forward, getting as close to the sign as the sidewalk, and an encircling gate, would let him.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “Teeth like a crocodile.”
“Was that his name in a past life?”
Senenmut shook his head.
“No, that’s just what his teeth looked like.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to dredge up bad memories. “Look, we don’t have a ton of time and there are, like, eleven possible Targets in the greater Las Vegas area, so we need to get a move on.”
Senenmut nodded, not wanting to drag his gaze away from Wayne but gently letting me lead him down the sidewalk toward our first destination.
senenmut was adamant that he would know Hatshepsut when he saw her—regardless of what body she was sporting these days. I was a little skeptical of his ability, but since this was his show, I just kept my mouth shut.
My bald-headed Egyptian friend walked the length of the first Target we entered, his eyes wide with wonder, but nothing love-interest oriented caught his eye.
Now, the store itself was another story entirely. It dawned on me as Senenmut stalked the bright red and white aisles of domestic goods and foodstuffs that the man had never seen anything of this conspicuous consumption magnitude before in his life.
Ancient Egypt might’ve had the pyramids, but we had strip malls and casinos.
The refrigerated aisles held the mo
st interest for my friend. I vaguely remembered Cerberus saying that Senenmut had been an architect once upon a time, so it only made sense that something all technical and engineering-based would grab his attention. He kept asking me how they made the cold air that circulated inside the cases, but I had no idea how refrigeration worked. I promised to get him a book or something on the subject, which only seemed to spark his curiosity, not assuage it.
“She is not here,” he said finally after he’d walked the entire length of the store three times and inhaled the two Butterfingers and one Kit Kat bar I’d bought him at the self-serve checkout stand. Needless to say, he was overjoyed when I introduced him to the water fountain over by the toilets. I almost couldn’t get him to leave it behind. He kept examining how it was connected to the wall, trying to gauge how he could get it off its moorings and take it with him.
And thus it went with the next six Targets we attacked.
Luckily, I’d brought my purse with me, so we didn’t have to hoof it all over town. Senenmut was terribly intrigued by the taxis we trooped in and out of, which made me realize just how foreign my world must seem to him. He’d actually climbed on top of the first taxi that picked us up and I had to gently, yet firmly, yank him off the car’s roof.
Like an irate child, he “not so” gently protested my being hands-on with him—and at one point, he might have even been having what I think parents like to term a “temper tantrum.” In retrospect, I guess it had been a while since he’d been manhandled by a girl, but that was still no excuse for his trying to bite me as I settled him into the interior of the taxi and threw a wad of bills in the taxi driver’s direction.
“Drive!”
The whole experience made me even more certain that having children was going to be a low priority on my “things to do before I die” list.
At the seventh Target—and after Senenmut had gotten completely bored with driving around in “horseless chariot” after “horseless chariot,” as he called the taxis—we finally hit pay dirt.
she was standing in one of the checkout aisles, her short, dyed-black hair pulled back in a silver bandanna. She had on a pair of fitted black leggings that made her twiggy legs look even more emaciated than they were, a wifebeater that was two sizes too big for her—it was really more of a dress than a shirt—and a wide silver belt that kept the wifebeater cinched at her waist.
“That’s her?” I asked incredulously as Senenmut pointed at her.
She was unloading the last items out of her shopping cart and appeared to be having trouble lifting a twenty-four-pack of bottled water from the cart’s bottom rack.
“I feel a connection to her,” Senenmut said, still pointing. I pushed his hand down so people would stop staring at us.
“So what do we do now?” I asked uncertainly.
Senenmut didn’t even bother to answer my question.
Seeing his opening, he took it. Like a proud parent, I watched him saunter over to the struggling girl—she couldn’t have been more than eighteen—and offer to help her. She looked around suspiciously, sensing some kind of trick, but when no camera-men leapt out of the shadows to yell Punk’d at her, she relented and let him lift the water out of the cart for her.
Once the water was on the conveyor belt, Senenmut leaned on the cart, trying to engage the girl in conversation. She looked around worriedly, wondering why no one from Target upper management was calling security on the weird terrorist-looking guy who wouldn’t leave her alone.
I stood on the sidelines, watching and waiting for a sign—or better yet a frantic 911 call on the girl’s cell—that signaled a need for me to intercede, but after a few more minutes of talking at the girl, Senenmut frowned and walked back over to where I had nonchalantly hidden behind a glass case of revolving soft pretzels.
“What’s wrong?”
Senenmut merely shook his head, unable to speak.
“What happened?” I pestered him.
Senenmut shook his head again, and as I watched, one single, solitary tear slipped down his cheek.
“She doesn’t know me,” came the dejected answer.
And then the big strong man standing before me began to cry.
twenty
As the tears began to trickle down his cheeks, I found myself pulling him toward me into a giant bear hug. Even though I now felt more like his mother than a single female in close proximity to a hunka, hunka burning manhood, I had to admit that it was really nice to have a firm pair of man-arms wrapped around me. Needless to say, it had been a while since I’d had any kind of physical contact with someone I wasn’t related to.
“Hey, don’t cry,” I said, patting his back in the best approximation of parental support that I could muster. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, but it seemed to make Senenmut less miserable, so I just kept patting.
Now, I had never been one of those girls who adored babies and small children. I liked them—don’t get me wrong—but was I interested in getting drool and baby food all over myself just for, like, fun?
Nope.
I’d never done any babysitting, never been a camp counselor or even a card-carrying member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. I didn’t plan elaborate baby showers for my pregnant friends, nor had I ever gone specifically to visit a friend because she’d just—ouch—given birth to a newborn.
I was one of the large but mostly silent group of women out there who just didn’t get the whole “baby” thing. I understood that having children fulfilled some kind of biological imperative, but that still didn’t mean I had to listen to my biological clock. I didn’t want to deal with motherhood until it was (1) thrust upon me, and (2) someone had found a way to put a stop to all that pesky weight gain that went along with it.
Yes, I was being shallow, but it was my body, so bug off.
Besides, I had, like, a zillion years in which to change my mind. Unlike pretty much 95 percent of other women on the planet, I was immortal. I could take my time making important decisions like whether or not to pop out a screaming bundle of joy that I would have to be responsible for until the end of time.
Speaking of immortality, I suppose since we’re already on the topic, now would be as good a time as any to explain how it works. You see, there are two ways to live forever. The first—and best—is to be born that way. You lead a pretty normal existence for your first eighteen or so years, but then at the point when a normal person’s body stops growing and starts dying, an immortal’s body diverges from the pattern and just kind of goes into a state of suspended animation—your cells don’t die; your body doesn’t age . . . You basically stay exactly the same forever and ever.
Now, the second—and not as good—way to get on the immortality gravy train is to be granted immortality by some supernatural entity. That’s the path that both of my parents took. When you’re made immortal, the same suspended animation thing happens to your body, but you stay whatever age you were when you were granted immortality. So, instead of looking all young and beautiful forever, you might look like an old, wrinkly grandma—if that’s what you were when you got your “gift.”
Craziness, huh?
“What can I do to help you?” I asked Senenmut as I ceased my incessant patting and took a step away from him. I was hoping that he’d say, “Just take me down to Hell and hand me over to your buddy Cerberus and be done with it,” but of course, that didn’t happen.
“I want to go back to Egypt,” he said in between sniffles.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see why that would sound like a good idea to you, but trust me when I say it’s not the same place you knew anymore.”
Until that moment there’d been only a few weird looks from our fellow shoppers as Senenmut blubbered against my shoulder, but now a security guard I hadn’t noticed before was slowly sneaking toward the little deli/restaurant area where we were standing, a crackling walkie-talkie in his hand.
Finally, it seemed we had started to wear out our Target welcome.
“I
think we should talk about this outside,” I said, taking his hand and leading him toward the exit—with a quick pause so that Senenmut could watch the automatic doors open and close twice before we went outside.
Once we were standing out in front of the store, I thought we were home free, but before I could explain to Senenmut why the Egypt of today was so very different from the Egypt that he had known, the dumb girl who was the reincarnation of his lost love pushed her stupid cart through the automatic doors.
Senenmut’s head instantly went up, and suddenly, like an overexcited dog, he was dragging me over to the girl. She saw us coming and began to pick up speed. I think she was trying to outrun us, but there was no hope of that happening now that Senenmut had regained most of his old agility and speed.
“Senenmut, stop!” I commanded as I was pulled bodily forward, my feet barely touching the ground as he gave chase to the frightened shopping cart-wielding girl.
I realized that it didn’t matter what I said because he was hell-bent on catching her. The best I could do, given the situation, was to try to ease the awkwardness of the whole thing once he caught her—so I was totally unprepared for what happened next.
“Eat shit and die!” the girl screamed as she let go of her cart and held up her key chain, spraying Senenmut right in the eyes with a liberal dose of pepper spray. The Egyptian let go of my hand and began clawing at his eyes, tears of anger and pain running down his face.
“Hey, why’d you do that?” I screamed at the girl as she chased after her cart.
“You want some of this, bitch!” she called back at me as her hands grasped the cart’s handle and she started to roll her groceries toward a green Honda Element parked about three cars away.
“He just wanted to ask you a few questions,” I yelled, keeping my distance because I so did not want to get splashed with any pepper spray.
“Questions, my ass!” she yelled back at me. “If you don’t back off, I’m calling the police!”