CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TRUE TO HIS WORD, Sam showed up bright and early to drive, at just a yawn past dawn in the morning. He did not look happy as I opened the door to the main room. A recent shower matted down his black and gray curly hair, and bags sagged under his brown eyes, which didn’t quite want to meet mine, at first.

“Morning, Sam.”

He lowered an eyebrow at me, one eye narrowed, his fingers moving about the rim of his driving cap, around and around. “My brother-in-law says there was lots of commotion here yesterday. A lot of trouble.”

“And it looks like he called you either very late or very early.”

Sam nodded.

Morty eased us all out the door, carrying a plastic bag full of leftover trail mix and Coke cans. “Indeed there was, but now your brother-in-law’s establishment has two brand-new security doors and a new LED TV in each room.”

“You got him TVs, too?”

Morty smiled. “It seemed the least we could do for the inconvenience.”

“I didn’t see any new TV.” He peered over the freshly vacuumed room.

“Because they’re being installed tomorrow.”

I think I huffed. I know my lower lip stuck out a little as Brian laughed faintly and jostled my elbow.

Sam considered Morty before giving a sharp nod. “All right then. My brother-in-law can be hard to please, but it sounds as if you gave a good compensation. Come on, before the traffic gets really bad.” He pulled his cap into place.

Already warm, the sun gleamed down, threatening to bring on a truly hot day, with all the humidity it could also provide. I wasn’t unhappy to be leaving DC under those conditions, although I would have loved to have just strolled about, taking in the various sights. Maybe the zoo with its pandas. All the tiny but very good restaurants where people-watching was better than TV. According to my newly charged phone, as I rarely leave home without a charger, the weather in the city looked to be ten degrees cooler and much more respectable in dampness. As for people-watching, what could beat New York? Go Big Apple! I hopped in the car with anticipation that Malender, at least, would be left behind, and what more could happen?

Brian solemnly gave me custody of his cane as we settled in the back seat. It rested across my knees with scarcely more weight than a handful of leaves. I ran my fingertip over the ornate carvings and the words etched yesterday, still holding a faint blue cast to my eyes. I wondered why I should have seen what happened while they did not. I told myself it was because both of them had been incredibly busy at the time.

Sam evidently decided his time to be silent had passed, and kept up a running spiel as he negotiated the terrible traffic on the various connections. One or the other of us would speak up now and then to respond to something he asked or said, while the other two would relax. Except Morty snored when he was being tranquil, ruining the overall effect. Brian kept lapsing in and out of professor mode so that I never knew who I was talking to there, and I found it easier to keep up conversation with Sam than with the phoenix wizard sitting next to me. Some things were just odder than others. Not to mention that I tended to cringe whenever I saw a winged creature in the airspace about our moving vehicle while Sam regaled me with stories about near-miss collisions in both New York and Boston. The ones about Boston raised the hair on the back of my neck. No wonder their baseball fans were screwy.

Finally Sam seemed to be talked out. He directed his attention to the highway and said, “You might as well nap too. Seems like you all had a busy night.”

Morty was already grinding logs and Brian purring softly, so I put my head back and closed my eyes. I’d slept in my own room, with the door between half-open, and the night hadn’t been nearly long enough. Somewhere in my dreams I realized that Steptoe hadn’t joined us, because I was running around looking for him. I couldn’t decide if his absence was a good thing or a bad thing, and when I woke up, I was still undecided.

The traffic noise rose around us. What would New York be without the sound of car congestion and horns blaring? And the people, moving quickly and with determination down the ranks of sidewalks, to and fro, colorful and different, suited and nonconformist, each and every one. Half expecting to see Steptoe’s dapper figure in the crowd, I stared out my window at the migration. The electronic billboards dazzled the eye, though not nearly so much as they would at night. Rolled-up windows kept the smell from hitting us, but it would the minute we stepped out at Central Park. We hit town at midmorning and I knew the skyscrapers around us would be full of people. Yet the sidewalks had not even begun to empty, everyone on a different and busy timetable.

“Okay,” Sam told us. “We’re here and I’m heading to the museum. You can’t miss the needle, it’s tall. I’m going to let you off at the stop for the museum. I can’t wait there—”

“Why not?” Brian asked.

“It’s not legal. Don’t worry, I won’t get caught dropping youse guys off, but I can’t wait there. I’ll circle about. When you’re ready, head back to the museum and I’ll see you there. I’ll park there if I can, but not bettin’ on it.”

“It’s a tuck and roll.”

Sam grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “Not quite, but it would be nice if you all hurried out.”

I picked up the cane and my backpack, ready to unlatch the seat belt and take off. Brian got his feet under him as Sam reached out and shook Morty’s shoulder. The snoring had stopped, so I knew the big guy had stopped sleeping a while ago, alert under the radar. He shrugged and sat up higher in his seat.

“Everyone ready?” Without waiting for an answer, Sam took a city corner at breakneck speed, pulled out and stopped with a screech, and we flung our doors open. He left us standing at the curb with the same alacrity.

We watched him drive off with a wave.

“I wonder if that was necessary.”

“I think New York driving requires a certain authenticity and showmanship,” Morty told Brian.

“You mean street cred.”

Brian would have groaned if he’d understood the pun. I settled for an eyebrow waggle from Morty. We all turned about to scan the horizon of Central Park and indeed, the stone obelisk could be seen, at least its pointy top, very easily. It looked small from where we stood but I was certain that was a matter of distance and perspective. As I looked at it, I thought of what Morty had told me about stone and promises. I wondered if he was thinking the same as he cleared his throat twice. I knew that he helped us out of loyalty to the professor but also, no doubt, out of hope that the restoration of his friend would bring help to find Goldie, his missing wife. Time seemed of the essence for both people.

“What are we looking for?”

We hit the pathway into the park. It wound back and forth, determined to take people wandering even if they didn’t want to. But it was meant to preserve the greenery, so we stuck to it. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Another keystone maybe? It’s almost too much to hope the cane has the ability to dowse the location again.” I carried it lightly in one hand, the weight of it so frail that I didn’t even dare lean on it for fear that it would fall into little more than dust. It looked a little like Brian, as if it were becoming transparent and insubstantial. He strode beside me, though, with stronger steps than yesterday, but I had to blame his vigor on caffeine and sugar. Somebody had decimated the pack of cola overnight and seemed to be riding the wave into the daylight.

Central Park is gorgeous. Someone presented a project at school once about how the older trees are dying out and it needed an aggressive replacement plan, but I couldn’t tell as we strolled into the forested area. Pebbles lay across the rough asphalt here and there, followed by scatterings of grass bits and green leaves. We could see the obelisk pointing to the spring sky, fading in and out of sight as we approached it and the trees alternately revealed and then hid it. Because the pathway didn’t go straight in, we had a chance to admire Cleopatra’s Needle from several views, and although I thought it was striking, most people walked past without a second look. How could they? Here was a bit of ancient Egypt, misplaced though it was, taken apart and transported here, only to be resurrected. It might have been the center of mysterious rites when it stood by the Nile. Heck, maybe even here a hundred years ago.

A couple of midday joggers passed us, as did one screaming-fast messenger bike, taking a shortcut across town, his satchel banging against his side as his legs pumped the bicycle to new speeds. I pulled Brian out of the way, our hair blown to one side from the draft.

Brian murmured something I didn’t catch as we centered ourselves on the path again. “New York,” I explained.

His head bobbed in the affirmative. Unintelligible remarks made me think of the attack the day before. “What did M shout at you, by the way? Was that Latin or what?”

He stumbled a half step. “I don’t recall.”

“Maybe you don’t, boy wonder, but how about you give the professor a nudge.”

He made a quiet humph noise.

“Well?”

“Neither of us caught it.”

“Nor,” said Morty as he flanked us, “did I.”

“It seemed important at the time.”

Brian glanced at me. “So did staying alive.”

“All I’m pointing out is that he’s likely to yell that at us again sometime in the future so it might be helpful to know what kind of doom he’s hurling at us. Maybe it could be blocked or nulled?”

“It could. However, it’s just as likely he was calling on some ancient god to curse us.”

I peered over at Morty. “Seriously? Old and forgotten gods? He has that much mojo?”

“The being in question has tons of mojo when he wishes.”

“Again, I’d like to point out that he isn’t emperor of Europe or Asia.”

“Not that we know of.”

“I stand by my assessment.”

That brought a short guffaw from Morty. “Be sure to tell him when next we meet. It might put him off his game.”

“Or so anger him that none of us will have a chance of surviving,” Brian muttered. “He does have an ego.”

We rounded a last corner and broke out into the open, taking a moment to stand and admire the structure. Nearby magnolia trees flowered, their branches laden with the early May blossoms, petals fallen brown about the benches. The Needle had been cleaned not too long ago and the hieroglyphs and runes on the whitish stone stood out after being nearly obscured by decades of New York grit and pollution. The obelisk stood nearly seventy feet high, not nearly as impressive as the Washington Monument, but then, it was a few thousand years older, too, and I gave it credit for that. It had been installed on not one but two platforms, which gave it quite a boost before the obelisk itself rose upward, but the ancient majesty reigned, circled by wrought-iron fencing and curving benches. While the Needle impressed me, the cane seemed entirely unaffected by it.

Morty sat down on the long bench. “Well?”

Brian and I looked up at the two stone platforms holding the obelisk, one on top of the other. A bronze crab perched in the crack between them, its weathering not nearly as old, its claws outstretched as if to protect the bases. I couldn’t tell whether it had just been sculpted to fit into an odd crack or separation between the bases or if it had been designed to be there intentionally, like some turtle holding the world on its back. Peering at it didn’t clarify the structure.

“That’s freaky.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Brian shaded his eyes. “It wasn’t stolen, by the way. It was a gift after the building of the Suez Canal, because the U.S. stayed neutral in the canal politics. It took a decade or so to get here, but it eventually made it. ”

“Politics.”

“Undoubtedly.” He reached for the cane and removed it from my tight grip. With a look around to see if anybody watched, he stepped over the protective railing, holding the cane with outstretched arm at its greatest length, and tapped it gently about the bottom of the actual obelisk. Nothing.

Morty leaned back, folding his arms over his barrel chest, looking like he might slip back into tranquility.

I paced the perimeter of the object. Crabapple trees had finished blossoming and their faded flowers littered the ground as they turned into dust of their own. The hieroglyphs looked amazing, and I remembered, when I was little, wanting to be an archaeologist who could read things like that, thanks to reruns of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and my mother’s own historical bent. I had even learned a few but didn’t recognize any now. Except the eye. That seemed rather obvious. I ran into Brian on the other side.

“What do you suppose all this was about?”

“You didn’t read up on it last night?”

“Not really. I decided to sleep instead.”

“It regales one of the pharaohs, Ramses II. Hails him as the son of the sun and so forth.”

“So you did Google it.” I peered at his eyes, unable to tell who spoke to me just now. I hated that, frankly, because I wanted to get to know and understand Brian, but it felt odd to be getting close to the professor. I mean, he was not only old enough to be my grandfather, but he was dead. Or supposed to be. Or soon to be. Or maybe this whole reincarnation thing only meant that he would regress and start over. Who knew? A thought occurred.

“Hey. Maybe we’re supposed to be at the London one.”

“I scattered my things about, but not so far as to be unreachable in a crisis.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, I stopped in my tracks. That bronze crab. Kind of reminded me of the professor in his finer days. “Give me that.” I reached for the cane.

He stretched it back over the railing.

I took it as I climbed over and took the three steps of the first base, getting close enough to put my nose to the stone. “Keep watch.” No way did I intend to be arrested in the city for vandalism or whatever it would be called. A huge block of stone stood between the crab and me. I didn’t think I could scale it, not without some tools and a fuss. But, if I stood on tippy-toe and stretched the cane up as far as I could . . .

The wood trembled in my hands. Or maybe I was shaking. I knocked on a crab claw tentatively, and said “Avaunt!”

That saying about letting sleeping dogs lie is undoubtedly one of the wisest things ever said in the history of mankind. The crab shot to life, grabbed the cane, jerked it out of my hand and scuttled away to disappear in the crack between the base and obelisk, leaving wood burns that stung like crazy on my palm.