Strange and Ever After (14 page)

Before I could offer a response, Jie made a guttural sound.
Her face was unusually pale. “I don’t feel good,” she said.

Allison whipped an apple from her pocket. “Because you must eat.”

Jie accepted the fruit, and I cleared my throat. “So you learned about this”—I motioned to the thimble filled with blood that now rested in Allison’s palm—“because of your father?”

“Yes. Our doctor insisted it would get rid of his . . .” Allison hesitated, as if searching for a delicate word. But she gave up and shrugged. “Violence.” She scoffed, and after capping the used thimble with rubber and placing it in her medical kit, she muttered to herself, “It didn’t work.”

And with those three words the world shifted. My view of Allison came into such a clear, sharp focus, I stopped breathing. I had spent my entire childhood envying her. Everything always seemed to come so easily—from friendship to comfort. When I had scrimped and saved, she had flaunted her wealth in my face.

But I had never—not once—considered what happened inside her home.

I gulped, suddenly hot and uncomfortable. Maybe Allison and I were not so different. Maybe we both had nightmares in our pasts.

And maybe all that time I had hated Clarence for bullying Elijah, I should have considered who might be bullying Clarence.

“Land.” Jie’s voice broke through my thoughts. She pointed. “Look—
land
!”

Allison darted to the glass, and I rubbed my palms on my pants—physically pushing away my distress. Then I moved to
the windows as well and squinted into the bright morning light. I could just make out a shift in the horizon to our left—due south.

“Daniel!” Jie shouted, scrabbling toward the hall. “We’re approaching land!”

“Shhhh.” Joseph’s voice hissed into the pilothouse as he entered. “Daniel sleeps, and I believe I can manage to get us aimed for Cairo. “His eyes landed briefly on me. “Am I correct in assuming this is where we must go?”

“I . . .” My mouth bobbed shut. I did not know—Oliver had not yet told me.

Fortunately, Joseph did not wait for an answer. He strode to the left table of charts and thumbed through pages.

Giza
. Oliver’s thought flashed in my mind. Startling and clear.
We must go to the pyramids.
For half a breath I saw through Oliver’s eyes—through his porthole. He watched the approaching craggy, yellow land. . . .

And then a sharp
stab
hit my lungs. Aching, wrenching pain impaled me.
Impaled him
. For this was the place where Elijah had chosen power and revenge instead of Oliver.

I held my lips tight and tamped down on our bond. Shoved it deep inside until I could not feel how much Oliver hurt.

“Giza,” I ground out. “We must go to the pyramids.”

“Which are beside Cairo,” Joseph said, tapping at a map. Then he spun around and moved to the steering wheel. “We must head farther south then, and less east.” With great care and a pensive expression, he shifted the wheel right, shoved in
two of the levers, and then waited. . . .

We
all
waited, feeling the airship adjust its course . . . and then aim us directly for long strips of beach.

Minutes trickled past until at last the turquoise water vanished beneath us, and we puttered into a flat country, as smooth as glass.

We were in
Egypt.

The airship left a perfect, egg-shaped shadow on the barren sands below, and for a time it seemed this desert land must be empty . . .

Until Allison spotted the first mud village. We all crowded against the right side of the pilothouse and stared while robed figures came out, hands over their heads, to gape up at us. When Joseph pointed out the first mosque, we rushed to the other side to stare at its elaborate minaret. And at the first string of camels, led by the nomadic Bedouin, I ogled with as much wonderment as Allison. Even Jie managed a twitch of a smile.

Over the dry earth we traveled. We passed fields of colorful corn and groves of green dates, tended by women and donkeys and irrigated with long channels that eventually wound and snaked like silver threads to the mighty Nile.

“I have always wanted to go to Egypt,” Allison said in a reverent tone as we floated over a waving field of wheat. “Ever since Father invested in an expedition when I was a little girl, I have
dreamed
of seeing it.”

“What was the expedition?” I asked, watching the cloaked women and donkeys move through the field.

“It was led by a professor at the University of Philadelphia. Rodney . . . Milton—yes, that was it.” Her lips slid into a frown. “Do you recall him? They made a big fuss over him in the local paper, and I think they had one of his mummies on display at the Centennial Exhibition. He found some special burial ground a few years back. Since Father funded the trip, we were supposed to receive half of whatever treasure he uncovered.”

She paused for a dramatic eye roll. “Of
course
, we never received anything, and Mother still complains of it. Clarence even hired a detective to find Milton, but when a man is all the way in Cairo, it is hard to actually demand a debt be paid.”

“You could try to find him now,” I offered, fighting to ignore the way Clarence’s name made my chest squeeze with guilt. “You
are
near to Cairo now.”

“Perhaps,” Allison mumbled, her attention already focused back outside. Then she gasped. “Look! It’s the Nile!”

I snapped my gaze ahead—and my own breath caught in my throat. For n
ever
had I seen a river so powerful. Its brown, muddy waters moved so gently, with the age and patience of a river that had seen more civilizations rise and fall than any other. The rich, green landscape only grew denser the closer we came to it, and there was no missing how black the soil became.

The sun reached its zenith soon after Joseph shifted the airship directly south, to follow the Nile’s path to Cairo. The room had grown hot—a veritable greenhouse—and I was sweating. We were
all
sweating.

Wiping a sleeve over my forehead, I wandered into the
hall to get water from the galley. Yet Daniel strode out just as I turned in.

I pulled up short, and he lurched to a stop. Once I’d freed my heart from my esophagus, I scanned his face for some sign of how he felt. . . .

But I did not need to search, for he made it abundantly clear right away that he harbored no harsh feelings.

“I made potatoes for everyone. I ain’t the best cook, but . . .” He motioned vaguely into the galley. “Hopefully they’ll fill you up. Oh!” He spun toward the table. “I also cut some bread. I think it might be a bit stale, but I slathered enough butter on there that you shouldn’t notice.”

“Th-thank you,” I stammered.

He gave a half smile and rubbed his hands together. “Well, I reckon I should get flyin’. Eat up before it goes cold.” He sidestepped me into the hall. “Jie! Your garlic mash is ready!”

I watched him go, a mixture of gratitude and affection and . . . and love rolling in my heart.

Not for the first time, regret twined through me for last night. Did a grieving heart stop what I felt for him? No. So why had summoning the words been so impossible?

In a daze of hunger and muddled emotions, I moved to a metal pot on the table. Inside were boiled potatoes—unpeeled, but appetizing. As long as there was silverware (there was) and butter (heaps of it), I was happy.

As I munched beside the porthole, I pondered how best to confess my feelings to Daniel. When to say it. What to say.

Soon Jie joined me to eat her raw garlic mashed with potatoes. She grimaced as she ate but didn’t complain, and we watched the view drift by.

Steamers and boats sailed below us, and the farther south we went—and the closer to Cairo we came—the more traffic there was on the Nile. And the more people on the riverbanks. Fishing, bathing, washing clothes—it seemed to be a part of each and every person’s life. It was so unlike the Delaware River back in Philadelphia—a fickle, wild force—or the river Seine in Paris, with its elegant, structured waterways. The Nile seemed to be the very lifeblood of Egypt.

“It’s kinda cloudy, yeah?” Jie smacked her lips and tipped back a glass of water. “I thought Egypt was always sunny.”

“Well, it must rain sometime,” I replied, leaning into the glass. “But you’re right. It
is
cloudy. And windy.” I motioned to gusting palm trees below. “There must be quite a storm coming.”

“And coming in fast.” She frowned. “It’s getting darker by the second. I’ve never seen clouds move so fast.”

I tugged at my earlobe, alarm prickling along my neck. Then, without a word, I scrambled into the hall. Daniel and Joseph stood side by side at the wheel, their shoulders tense.

“The storm,” I said, hurrying into the pilothouse—and catching full sight of the rolling gray clouds ahead. “It isn’t right.”

“We know,” Daniel replied, his gaze intent on the horizon. “But we’re only a few minutes outside of Cairo.”

Joseph offered me the spyglass. “That rise in the distance is where the city is.”

I pressed the glass to my eye . . . and a thousand tiny turrets appeared. At the foot of a white mountain, Cairo was a sprawling city of towers, domes, and layered, flat-roofed buildings.

I swung the glass farther left, to the east and toward the desert. Arid, lonely, and empty. Swinging right, to the west, I saw beyond the Nile, to fields of brilliant green and a rocky plateau with three sharp pyramids rising to the sky.

Suddenly, a cloud spun across my field of view. A cloud of darkness and death in the shape of a wild hound.

The Hell Hounds were here.

Everything inside me froze. Blood, pulse, thought. Just as when the Hounds had found me on the boat to France, they had somehow entered the earthly realm once more—and I had no doubt they were after us. . . .

My brain—and my body—roared back to full speed. Faster, even. “We need to land!” I snapped down the spyglass. “
Now
, Daniel!”

He winced. “We’re almost there, and I think I can navigate—”

“No.” I thrust the spyglass to him.
“Now!”

Daniel glanced to Joseph—and Joseph nodded. “Do it.”

With a spin of the steering wheel and a wrenching of levers, the airship lurched left—to the east bank of the Nile—and began a descent.

We would not be fast enough—not to outrun the Hell Hounds. But what I could not figure out was
why
they were here. On the boat, Marcus’s spell had called them through. Had he done that again?

“El!” Oliver’s voice bellowed through the airship. Then he charged into the pilothouse, his eyes huge. “Is this your doing? Are they here because of you?”

“Is who here?” Joseph demanded. “And why is it Eleanor’s fa—”

His words were cut off by a single, long howl.

A hound’s howl.

My stomach punched into my lungs. I doubled over. And beside me, Oliver whispered, “God save us all. It’s the Hell Hounds.”

No one moved. A frantic glance to the front showed Daniel looking puzzled while Joseph had paled to near-deathly white.

“Hell Hounds?” Daniel asked. “You mean those creatures that killed Madame Marineaux?”

“Those are the ones!” Oliver answered, while I shrieked at Daniel: “Land the airship!”

“I’m trying.” Daniel twisted back to the wheel. “Everyone hold on!”

But no one had time to hold on. The storm rammed into us. The airship snapped sideways like a kite, and I reeled into the wall.

“Right lever!” Daniel yelled, spinning the wheel left as Joseph hurtled for the levers. “Now left lever, halfway!”

I staggered around to Oliver. “What do we do?”

“Figure out what they want,” he yelled back.

I lifted my right hand. That was how Marcus had set the Hounds on me before—by casting a spell on my amputated ghost hand. But the fingers were not glowing, and no pain coursed through me. “It isn’t me. Could it be you, Oliver?”

My demon wrenched out his locket—the necklace that kept him magically locked in the earthly realm. But the locket was not glowing either.

Lightning cracked, flashing over miles of farmland. Thunder rumbled through the metal. It was close—far too close.

“What’s happening?” Allison cried, running in from the hall and pushing past Oliver.

Behind me, Daniel kept bellowing commands at Joseph—“Middle lever, down!”—and spinning the wheel as hard as he could against the wind. But then he jolted back as if struck . . . and he began to shout.

“Oh shit, oh shit—get it off me! Get it off!” He yanked at something around his neck. Something that glowed bright blue.

I lunged for him. “What is that?”

His eyes met mine, wide with panic. “Monocle.”

“Oh God.” I snatched at the chain and tried to snap it off his neck. It held fast. “Oliver!” I screamed. “Help us!”

“Why is it stuck?” Daniel cried. “Why can’t I get it off?”

Oliver paled. “It must be
bound
to you. A spell.”

“But Madame Marineaux is dead!” I argued. “How can the spell still work?” Even as the words fell from my mouth, though,
I knew the answer. The monocle might have come from Madame Marineaux and the Marquis, but just like Jie’s hair clasp, it must have been bewitched by Marcus. And now whatever spell it contained was calling the Hell Hounds to us.

Daniel gaped, first at Oliver. Then at me. “How do I get it off?”

Oliver shook his head. “You don’t. Only the spell caster can break a spell like this.”

“Will we die?” Allison screeched.

Jie clambered into the room. “Should we put on parachutes?”

“Yes.” Daniel stumbled toward the hall. “Everyone put on a parachute. Joseph, you take the wheel while I go back and pull the sandbags to the—”

Another gale hit the airship, and everyone went flying across the pilothouse. I hit the glass with a thud, and before I could scrabble back to my feet, my nose was filled with the stench of grave dirt.

Against my will I gagged. We were out of time. After all this, the Hounds were going to pluck us from the sky, and there was nothing we could do.

Daniel rounded back on Oliver. The chain clenched in his fingers, he yelled over the roaring hounds, “This is what they want?”