“Egypt certainly seems to have agreed with you,” Dr. Ramirez said after releasing me from a body-engulfing grandfatherly hug. His soft brown eyes scanned my face. “You look absolutely radiant.”
“Oh, well . . .” I glanced down at the floor and felt my face heat. Gracefully accepting compliments had never been my strong suit, a facet of my personality that appeared to intrigue Marcus.
“That’s because she’s pr—” Kat slapped her hands over her mouth. When I glanced down at her with what could only be called “a look,” I found laughter and apologies dancing in her eyes.
“Dr. Ramirez,” I said through a slightly forced smile. I placed my hand on Kat’s shoulder—she was seated with Dominic at the good-sized square table we’d claimed a couple minutes earlier, my chair beside hers and the extra for Dr. Ramirez opposite her currently empty. “This is my youngest sister, Kat.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Kat,” Dr. Ramirez said, offering her his hand. She looked a little stumped, but just for a moment, before reaching out to shake hands. “For whatever reason,” he said when they’d finished, “I was under the impression that you only had the one sister.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm . . . Jenny, if I’m correct?”
“I did only have the one sister,” I said, motioning to his free chair before pulling out my own to sit. “Or, at least, I thought I did.” I glanced at Kat, meeting her eyes and smiling fondly. “Kat’s my half-sister, and we just found out about each other a few months back.” I let out a breathy laugh. “It’s a long story,” I said, shaking my head. And complicated. And absolutely, completely unbelievable.
“It would seem that you’re full of long stories today.” Before he sat, Dr. Ramirez pulled a slender, polished wooden box out of his leather briefcase and set it on the table.
The feeling of waiting—what I was now starting to recognize as a strange mixture of dread and expectation—quadrupled with that single action. It was like a timer was ticking, counting down to something, only I didn’t know how long it would tick for or what would happen when it stopped. It just kept on ticking and ticking and ticking, silent and unsettling.
Dr. Ramirez rested his bag on the floor and eased himself down into his chair. My eyes were glued to the slim wooden box, but he didn’t notice, as he was too focused on something else. I forced my gaze to break away from the box to see what had captured his attention.
It was Nik. Of course.
Walking around with Nik was the opposite of camouflage, but in some ways, that was better than trying to hide. He was one of those people who was always gawked at, but those same gawkers usually went out of their way to ignore him. The same thing that made him stand out often rendered him all but invisible. He was the guy with the piercings and tattoos. That was all most people saw. It was all most people wanted to see. A sad notion, but sadder still was my suspicion that it was all Nik wanted people to see when they looked at him. His appearance was a barrier between himself and the world—by choice. I didn’t get it, and unlike most of the Nejerets who weren’t too afraid of him to talk about him, I didn’t pretend to.
At the moment, my confounding friend was returning from the coffee bar with a monstrous energy drink, a plastic-wrapped sandwich, and a couple of large cookies, everyone around him either watching him or trying to appear disinterested. He sat two tables away, seeming to ignore us completely as he kept an eye on everyone else in the room.
I met Dr. Ramirez’s speculative eyes and shrugged. He smiled faintly and shook his head, his eyebrows quirked together as if to say, “Kids these days . . .”
“Trust me,” I told him, “I don’t get it either.” As I spoke, my stomach rumbled quietly—apparently triggered by the sight of Nik’s food—and almost instantly, Dominic pushed his chair back and stood.
“What can I get everyone to eat?” he asked, his accent elevating his polite demeanor to the next level.
Remembering my rusty manners, I cleared my throat. “Dr. Ramirez, you remember Dominic l’Aragne from the Djeser-Djeseru excavation crew, don’t you? I’m sure your paths must’ve crossed at some point while we were holed up in Denny . . .”
“Why yes, yes, I do remember seeing you around.” Dr. Ramirez stood and shook the younger-appearing man’s hand. “I knew you looked familiar, but I couldn’t place you. It’s great to see you again.”
“And you as well, professor.” A smile softened his severe features, and he bowed his head minutely. “Now what can I get you for lunch?”
Dr. Ramirez paused halfway in the act of sitting back down. “Oh, no, you don’t need to do—”
“Please,” I said, placing my fingertips on his forearm. “It’s our treat . . . for everything you’ve done for me over the past few years.”
He met my smile with an awkward one of his own and lowered himself down the rest of the way into his chair. “Well, alright, but only this once.” He gave Dominic his order, which I followed up with “the usual”—a turkey sandwich, a scone, and large decaf vanilla latte—and Kat requested, “PB & J—anything red—and a chocolate chip cookie. And some hot Cheetos. And a Coke—a Cherry Coke.”
While Dominic was fetching lunch, Dr. Ramirez and I did the catching-up dance—how have you been and what’s new and the like—but finally I had to interrupt our conversation to look at Kat, who was literally bouncing in her seat. “What is up with you?”
“How have you not told him yet?” she all but exploded.
My eyes opened wide. “Told him what?” I asked, astonished. She couldn’t possibly have expected me to divulge the past eight months’ happenings—Nejeret matters, time travel, and all—to my former, very human graduate advisor.
“About”—she glanced down at my middle—“you know . . .”
“Oh! Right,” I said, smacking my forehead at my denseness. “I’m pregnant.” The words came out blasé, but the moment they were free, I blushed. Because to get pregnant, as everyone knows, you had to have sex. Which meant I’d basically just told Dr. Ramirez that I’d had sex. Which was just awkward.
“Well, uh, congratulations . . .” He looked from me to Kat and back, clearly uncomfortable. Apparently he found it awkward, too. “I’m assuming?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kat said. “It’s not one of those whoopsie things. I mean, it kind of is, but they’re stoked about it, anyway.”
Dr. Ramirez’s responding grin was full and warm. “Congratulations. You two make a handsome couple,” he said, glancing to the line at the coffee bar, where Dominic was standing with a food-filled wire basket in his arms, next to pay.
“Dom?” I said, surprised, and Kat snorted unabashedly. “Oh, no, we’re not—he’s not—he’s just my—” Half-brother I didn’t know about last year? Best friend? Bodyguard? Platonic soul mate? “Friend,” I said lamely, because he was so much more.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dr. Ramirez said. “I just assumed . . .” He shifted in his seat, shaking his head. “This is a bit embarrassing.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “Dom and I are really close friends, but I’m actually engaged to Marcus Bahur . . . the Djeser-Djeseru excavation director.” I chuckled to myself. “So, uh, thanks for recommending me for the position on the excavation . . .”
Dr. Ramirez laughed out loud and, much to my amusement, actually slapped his knee. “Well, how about that! Never knew I had a future in matchmaking.” His smile was broad, warm, and catching. Kat and I were grinning along with him almost immediately.
But as my eyes were once again drawn to the small wooden box, my smile wilted.
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
“Ah, yes!” Dr. Ramirez pushed the box across the corner of the table to me. “This. I forgot about it in the excitement of everything.”
I made small, interested noises, once again forcing myself to look away from the box despite my desire to do nothing but stare at it, especially now that it was close enough to me that I could almost make out a shadow of my reflection on its surface. Part of me expected it to open a yawning mouth and lunge at me in an attempt to bite my face off. Another part of me wanted to open it more than I’d ever wanted to open anything, because I was fairly certain opening the damn box would be the only way to make the sense of waiting—the silent ticking—finally stop.
“So what’s in it, anyway?” Kat asked. Her words seemed to jog me out of a trance.
I placed my fingertips on the edge of the box and slid it closer to me. “And what’s the story behind it?” I looked at Dr. Ramirez. “All you said in your email was that you had an artifact for me, something with me ‘written all over it.’”
Dr. Ramirez nodded slowly. “Right, well . . .” He reached out and tapped the polished lid. “This little gem here actually came to me with a note inside, just two words written on it.”
Both Kat and I leaned forward, waiting.
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Dr. Ramirez’s warm brown eyes met mine, his eyebrows raised. “Alexandra Larson.”
Slowly, my stare dropped to the box, and I fought the urge to shiver. The expectant sensation was nearly overwhelming now, the silent ticking almost deafening.
“Ohmigod, open it, Lex,” Kat said, squirming in her seat. She was gripping the edge of the table, her fingertips pressing against the surface so hard they were bleaching of color. “All this mystery . . . I seriously can’t handle it!”
Neither could I.
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
The lid creaked faintly as I opened it. The sense of waiting, of expectation, turned to full-on dread and, as I rested the lid on the tabletop, to near-outright revulsion. It was a struggle to keep my expression curious, interested, to fight the urge to slam the lid closed and throw the repulsive thing across the room while brushing off the sudden tidal wave of heebie-jeebies like so much raw sewage.
Because I had absolutely no reason to feel that way about what was in the box. I would have no way to explain my totally bizarre reaction to it.
And, possibly most disturbing of all, the ticking in my head hadn’t stopped when I’d opened the box. It had only grown louder, become truly audible.
“What is it?” Kat asked, her voice filled with nothing but curiosity and maybe a hint of disappointment. “A compass?”
I shook my head, leaning in to get a closer look despite my urge to fling the box away. “It’s a watch . . . a pocket watch.” Couldn’t she hear it ticking? It sounded so loud to me, overwhelming all the other sounds in the room as I stared at the device nestled snugly in a padded gray velvet depression.
The watch was made of some dark metal that had been treated in a way that caused it to appear nearly black. I squinted, my mouth quirked to the side. Not nearly black—the thing was pitch-black, its dull metal surface not reflecting light but seeming to consume it. The sense of revulsion it instilled within me wasn’t based on how it looked—rather, the watch was a breathtakingly beautiful creation, its black filigree design undeniably delicate and feminine—but from something deeper. It was instinctive, a gut feeling.
This pocket watch was wrong, or off. Its very existence clashed with my internal sense of balance. Of ma’at, I realized, pressing my palm against my abdomen as though I could somehow draw strength of will and clarity of mind from the two souls within, the living embodiment of universal balance.
“What’s it look like on the inside?” Kat asked, reaching out to touch the watch’s black filigree cover.
Breath catching, I snapped the lid of the box shut and raised my head, meeting her eyes. I didn’t know what would’ve happened if she’d touched the watch, but I had the visceral sense that touching it would be a very, very bad thing.
“Lex?” Her brows drew together, her eyes filled with worry. “Are you okay? You’re so pale . . .”
“I—” I cleared my throat and licked my lips. “I’m feeling a little light-headed,” I said truthfully. “I think I just need to eat something.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Dr. Ramirez said gruffly. “Let’s let the mother-to-be eat before we get too sidetracked by our mysterious artifact here.”
I looked at my old advisor, giving him a weak, grateful smile. His expression was wrought with concern, but his eyes weren’t troubled like Kat’s. I glanced two tables over.
Or Nik’s.