THE GOD'S WIFE (20 page)

“Looks late … eight-forty … not here ... I’ll keep ... wait …”

That tiny excerpt made up the whole of message number one.

“Yikes,” Rebecca said to no one in particular and pushed the number for the second message.

“Bus company … arrived … passengers off … trying … bus driver saw her ... call me … I think … bad …”

The message died. Messages three and four consisted of nothing but unintelligible racket.

Rebecca looked at the clock on the wall: ten-twenty at night. Jonas should have Amy by now, but the cell phone yielded no information. Just scrambled voice mail. She left a message telling him to call her and then to stay put. She turned to Raven, trying to keep her panic in check.

“I can’t make much of the messages, but it sounds like the bus was late. Then when it came in, Jonas didn’t see her, but the driver did.”

Raven took off her wig and shook her hair free.

“Where’s he supposed to take her?”

“We didn’t work that out. He was just supposed to treat her to dinner and drive to my place after the show.”

“It’s a light show out there. Traffic has slowed to a standstill. He can’t have gotten far.”

They scurried into the dressing room where a small television perched on a high shelf. Usually, it stayed off, but now a deep-throated woman droned on screen, standing in a rain slicker, talking about trees blown over and trucks jackknifing on the Edens Expressway. By reflex, Rebecca put her hand over her mouth when the cameras focused on dazed travelers.

“Turn it up! Turn it up!” she commanded. Someone scooted up the ladder near the shelves and adjusted the volume.

“These travelers arrived a little scared and late, as all the buses were delayed,” the announcer said. Then the scene changed to a busy airport terminal. “O’Hare has announced all flights will be delayed by at least one hour” The reporter rattled on but delivered no new information about bus travelers.

“Let’s get over there. Delays. They may still be at the station,” Rebecca said. She turned to Raven, who owned a car parked behind the theater. They raced to remove their makeup and slipped back into street clothes. Lightning crackled, and thunder pounded outside as Rebecca hung up her final-act dress.
That strike landed too close.

“We don’t have raincoats,” Rebecca hollered as they prepared to make their run to the car.

“There’s an umbrella in the back seat,” Raven said. “But I don’t think it’s going to do much good.”

They sloshed through the deluge and squashed into Raven’s subcompact soaking wet. The engine roared to life, and they moved off, careening down the flooded streets, like an ark parting the waters.

When they arrived downtown, the bus terminal felt like a mausoleum compared to the earsplitting light display outside. They stepped across the slippery tiled floors and approached the Greyhound help desk to inquire about Amy’s bus.

“Everyone’s been asking after that one,” an old man behind the counter said. He took off his wire-framed glasses, wiped them with a handkerchief and scrutinized the schedule again. “It was about an hour late and everyone got off just fine, as far as I know.”

“Who else was asking about it?” Rebecca demanded.

“Oh, many people. I remember in particular a nice young man with black hair and a red jacket. Pleasant fellow. Very polite. He kept asking if there was some kind of mistake.” The old man reached for a sheet of paper. “He was looking for an Amy someone.”

“Amy Kirk.”

“Yes, that was it.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t know where she is?”

The winds slammed a tree limb against the glass doors, causing Rebecca and Raven to jump.

“Bad one out there,” the clerk muttered. He cast his sharp eyes on the two women. “I have no information on her, but she’s not wandering around here missing. I’m pretty sure of that. This place is almost empty.”

While he prattled on, Rebecca saw Jonas from across the vast waiting room. She jumped up and down, waving her arms, until he recognized her. Then he came barreling at her and seized her in an emphatic hug. Raven, however, still had her eyes on the clerk.

“Who else was asking about Amy Kirk’s bus?” Raven inquired.

“Well, there was a reporter trying to get information about everyone, because that bus was mighty late and in that mess out there on the Edens Expressway —”

“Who else asked?” Raven interrupted.

“There was this other man with sandy brown hair. He had an accent, maybe Greek, maybe Middle Eastern. He asked for Amy by name. Seemed to know all about the delay.”

Rebecca met Raven’s eyes with frenzied fear. Rebecca’s stomach tightened, and she could only utter one word: “Sharif.”

Another mighty blast sounded outdoors, and sirens wailed all around the building. The terminal shuddered, the lights flickered and darkness fell as if someone draped an inky blanket over the entire structure. They ran, bumbling in the dark, and reached Jonas’ car in the back lot.

“We’ve got to think,” Jonas said, as they huddled in his late model, leak-proof, car. “She got off when I was going down the line looking for buses that pulled up at the various bays. The old geezer in there said the bays kept changing.”

“Like gates at the airport, I know,” Rebecca wanted to chew her nails, but didn’t dare disturb the henna-colored manicure that Randy had ordered.

“So the bus came in late, you weren’t there at the exact moment of arrival, and Sharif stepped in as the new Jonas,” Raven said, her eyes reflecting the lightning.

“How could he do that? I described Jonas to Amy. How could she mistake one for the other?”

“They both have dark hair and in this weather, she probably couldn’t tell shades of brown. They are about the same height,” Raven said.

“But their eyes! Jonas has bright blue eyes and Sharif ’s are black.”

“Once again, who’s going to notice at night? Look at him,” she said, pointing at Jonas who leaned over toward the women from the driver’s seat. “Do you really see his eye color?”

Rebecca hesitated, then shook her head.

“And how much light shone in those terminals, Jonas?” Raven continued.

He scrunched up his mouth and then let out an exasperated breath. “Not much. Not much at all.”

“But why?” Rebecca said with a wail, realizing the desperateness of her plight. “What reason would Sharif have for impersonating Jonas?”

They fell silent. Rebecca thought back to the time Randy told her Sharif couldn’t force Rebecca out of the European tour. He thought the whole idea preposterous. It seemed now that Sharif found a way to make her bow to his demands. She considered calling Sharif and putting him on the spot — but the cell phones were fried out, and she had no idea of his landline number.

Silence lingered as they became lost in thoughts of their own. No one came up with a plan of action. The rain continued to hammer on the roof.

Raven floated the idea of filing a missing-persons report with the police, but Jonas and Rebecca shot that down.

“Police don’t consider someone missing unless they’ve been gone forty-eight hours,” Jonas said. Instead, he suggested Rebecca call Iowa to make sure Amy really boarded the bus, but Rebecca knew this would only start a firestorm at home.

“I think Sharif kidnapped her,” Rebecca said, folding and unfolding her hands. “He wants to use her to force me to do something I don’t want to do.” She looked at Jonas, who seemed to be melting into his seat, full of worry and self-condemnation. “I say we go to the dance company offices and look up Lenore’s address,” she said, meeting confounded stares. “He lives with her. They’re married, remember?”

Raven, remembering no such thing, stared at Rebecca as if she were insane. Jonas, who had heard the story of Sharif ’s adventures, became reenergized by Rebecca’s idea and started the engine. Lightning blazed over the lake. The storm shifted off over the water. Time to move.

“Okay,” he said. “But at this hour, we may have to break in.”

“That’s no problem,” Raven said. “I know how to do it.”

Rebecca threw her an incredulous look, but Raven ignored it and fished around in her purse until she gave a mischief-filled smile and produced a set of picklocks. Jonas let out a low, appreciative whistle.

“Brothers,” Raven said. She shrugged.

It was a dream Neferet didn’t want to leave. She had been dancing, not the sort of ritual dance she performed for Amun but a wild, abandoned movement that sent her flying toward the constellations. All the while, that person, the Other, stood behind her shoulder. The dance made her stronger with each leap, and soon, she spiraled through the heavens, nearing Sopdet, the sacred star where the souls of the gods lived.

Tiny bits of light poured forth, liberated from the first gleam of Ra’s birth. They swirled in a field of flashing effervescence, eternally young, moving in an instant. She dashed among them, and they sat on her hair, her shoulders, her arms until she felt ignited with starlight.

She awoke invincible, and when she pondered the events of the day before, she knew that anything could be overcome — even Zayem and his nasty plans. She threw off her sheets and arose from bed, still moving in the dance of the dream.

In a bubble of joy, she dressed herself and entered her living area where a servant had prepared a breakfast of breads and various cheeses. She selected the goat cheese and thought of how she would soon alarm the priestly community, telling them Zayem had returned. Even Meryt could not stand up to the might of the priests of Karnak.

As she nibbled on a crust of sesame-flavored bread, a servant appeared with news of a palace messenger at the door.

Not again.
Neferet indicated he should step forward, and the youth in the royal uniform produced a papyrus scroll with the seal of the palace on it. Neferet recognized the seal as Meryt’s. She let out an audible sigh, tipped the messenger a deben and, when alone, broke the wax seal.

Inside lay a letter in demotic, a casual script that developed from formal hieroglyphics and the priests’ hieratic writing. Trained in the classical tradition, Neferet had trouble with demotic, especially when the handwriting straggled in every direction as did Meryt’s poor penmanship. Her mother had no ability to draw the beautiful, symbolic characters of hieroglyphics and settled on demotic as her easiest of form of expression. It was a mess to look at.

Neferet blew a puff of air as she began to decipher the first few lines of the missive.

“Daughter,

The conversation and events in yesterday’s throne room disturbed me greatly.”

Neferet looked up.
It disturbed
her
, did it?
She read on in annoyance.

“I’m the one who put you in the role of God’s Wife after the untimely death of Maya. I could have chosen someone else quite easily, but I felt that my own daughter would be dutiful to me in all ways.”

The handwriting became more haphazard and Neferet had to sound out the letters to make sense of the note.

“Your arrogance shocks me. If I could take the appointment back from you, I would. But the priests are insistent that you stay. If you are to remain in my good graces and in my protection, and should anything happen to your father, you will heed my orders.”

If anything should happen to father? Is that some kind of threat?
Neferet put down her sesame bread and held the note with both shaking hands.

“I now proclaim that Zayem will be your escort. It is important to form an alliance with him at this time. He will be waiting for you at your apartments this afternoon. Please give him all the love a sister owes him.

Your mother”

A cartouche of her mother’s name stood out, impressed on the letter, most certainly from Meryt’s own royal ring. Neferet threw the letter on the table, troubled by things unwritten: Menace against her father, another command that she should unite with Zayem — probably in marriage — and a lingering sensation that what happened to Maya could happen to her. What had happened to her father to make him looked so sickly yesterday? Meryt’s plans were about to rock the whole kingdom.

Neferet put her head between her hands and tried to clear her head. What had happened to Maya? It certainly looked like murder.

Maya had been another of Neferet’s half-sisters, this one the daughter of a foreign princess sent to Pharaoh as tribute. He considered Maya not politically important, for he neglected her mother — not out of spite, but merely disinterest. She wasted away in the vast palace harem. Still, Meryt named Maya as God’s Wife when Neferet was fifteen. Was she just a placeholder, always meant to die when Neferet came of age? Neferet rocked her head. Even she could not see her mother acting with such viciousness. However, the crime made sense when lined up in time to Neferet’s own rape. Zayem had created the false entrance to the Holy of Holies by that time. It would have been easy for him to slip in and snap Maya’s neck.

Neferet shivered and went back to eating. The force of her dream filled her body again, and she decided to fight back the only way she knew how.

#

Several palace girls stood in a group at Neferet’s front door, insisting to the servants that they be allowed access. Young priestesses in training hardly ever encountered her anymore, yet she had been one once. She missed the company, so Neferet called out to the servants to let the girls come forward.

They climbed the stairs to the formal living area, giggling among themselves, moving as one being. After much whispered argument between them, one girl stepped forward and explained their visit.

“We were here when Maya served as God’s Wife,” the stoutest girl, with a loud voice and a peculiar way of jutting her chin forward as she talked, said. “We knew her and knew her habits — even though she stayed with us only a few weeks.”

Neferet nodded. The girl rushed on.

“She had been given didi by the temple priests before each audience with Amun, but on the night she died, the Great Wife herself arrived there to offer the drinking bowl.”

“The Great Wife? She has no business at the ceremony.”

“We wondered, as well. Maya also looked extremely flushed after drinking the drug. We all wondered,” she turned as if to urge on her fellows for support. “We wondered if there was something else in it.”