Witch Risen: A Paranormal Adventure (Bad Tom Series Book 2) (16 page)

I cut in. "Do it. Anything we can add to our store of knowledge is important. How do you work one of those computer things, anyway? Could I figure it out and help?"

Gillian looks at me the way she'd look at an overeager child. "Truthfully, Tom? Nobody has time to teach you right now. I don't need a student with the attention span of a cat."

I start working up a head of steam but get off the anger train before I blow it out my smokestack. This isn't the time to get into a fight over something stupid like my pride.

Gillian adds, "I didn't mean that as an insult. It came out wrong." She gives me the I'm-sorry face with the big eyes and exaggerated frown. "I just meant that you don't really seem to like technology, and since you act like it takes a techno-mage to operate a phone, you'll really be done in by the internet."

I concede. "Sure, whatever that is. You probably have a point. I got shocked hard when I got anywhere near Eunice's computer because she didn't want me using it. At least I have an excuse."

I think for a moment about what I do have to contribute, and I realize we're going to have to break our promise to Simmons and get a look inside that box.

It's easier to refuse a caller than it is to refuse someone who's standing right in front of you.

There are still lights on downstairs when we cruise up to Dash's house in Robert's big SUV. We discuss our strategy as we walk up the long sidewalk to the porch.

"I'll field this one," Robert offers. "It's just like a politician to break a promise, isn't it? He isn't going to be happy that we want to do our prohibited tramping in and out in the late evening hours."

I lift my chin to acknowledge his offer and say, "Thanks, but this is my fight. And it's my promise we're breaking. It's enough that you came along."

When Dash opens the door, peering out above the inside chain lock with a hint of an embroidered red silk robe showing through the slit, I say, "I'm sorry, Dash. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't important. We need to take another look at the item the ladies and I left at the shop."

"I knew it. I knew you'd continue to have demands. That's how it works with you people." He glares at Robert. "You said you'd let me run the shop like I always had after you took it over, but Kevin was constantly having me hide things for you. Plus having to put the prices up so you could take a cut off the top, and threatening it would go badly for me if I didn't."

I exchange another quick glance with Robert. He looks as surprised as if he'd just been slapped. I can tell he had no idea what Kevin had been doing.

Dash unchains the door and opens it wide, apparently resigned to our request. "Step in, then. I'll get dressed."

A white-haired man in a matching red robe walks into the foyer behind him with a questioning look on his face. Dash looks back at him and says, "I have to go out for a while, Jon. You might as well watch the rest of the movie. I doubt I'll be in the mood for it when I get home."

Jon shrugs and goes back to where he came from. We wait while Dash goes upstairs to change.

Still looking down the hall, I say, "I think I'm beginning to understand how you got such a bad reputation in town despite turning out to be such a solid guy."

We don't turn to each other. Guys of our generation don't. There won't be hugs all around, but I can see his head bob slightly in acknowledgment in my peripheral vision.

The last of the guard I'd put up against the man dissolves as I realize Kevin blamed his own strong-arm stuff on his father. And I'm betting Robert had an inkling of that. My dad would have taken the hit for me while he tried to straighten me out. As far as I can tell, the only thing Robert is guilty of is being a caring father.

I really hope I'm right to trust him. If he doesn't deserve it, it could endanger Cassie. But if he does deserve it, and I don't give my trust, it could turn out just as badly.

It doesn't take long for the three of us to travel to the gallery and get into the vault. Dash stays upstairs at Robert's request. If all hell breaks loose, we don't want him getting caught in the demonic crossfire.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself against the possibility that opening the box will touch off a firestorm of consequences.

I use a pocket knife to pry around each side of the lid, making sure I don't hold it with the sorest parts of my wrapped fingers as I work. It's a little awkward that way, but the waxy substance that seals it cracks, and the box opens.

Nothing happens. I hear Robert's whooshing exhale behind me. He's remained so calm I didn't realize that, like me, he'd been holding his breath.

I set the lid aside so that we can see the contents. It's just like the article said: the box contains a dark, dried out lump that could definitely be a heart.

"It's not beating. I'll take that as some good luck," I say, glancing over at him.

"Yes. That may mean something. It may not." He starts taking pictures. There are symbols written on the inside as well, so he walks around the box to capture those, too.

"Could you flip the lid over, Tom? I want to see if there's anything written on the inner surface."

I do as he asks, but the lid of the box doesn't reveal more writing. It might have at one time, but the inside of it looks sooty or scorched, as though it's been subjected to fire at some point during its existence. I think about trying to brush the soot away, but I can't bring myself to touch it. There's some terrible magic involved with this, and it makes me uncomfortable being near it. I want it sealed back up as soon as possible.

It's pretty clear Robert agrees with me when he says, "Get the lid back on that thing. It gives me the willies."

"Can you send those to Robert's friend?" I ask Gillian in the morning after she transfers the pictures on his camera to her laptop.

Robert dials his cell as she gets to work. "Doug, got a couple more questions for you. And some pictures I think you're really going to want to see…yes, related to the Egyptian artifact."

Gillian taps away at her keyboard, then tells Robert, "Done."

"Doug, they're sent. If you could take a look and give your first impression that would be great." Robert listens then, nodding his head and interjecting a "hmmm" and a "huh" every so often as the man on the other end of the line speaks. "No, that's exactly what we need. As for a viewing—I'll ask. I don't know if the owner wants to let anyone see the find right now. Thanks, Doug. Yes, send it along when you get it. Sure, just do a reply. I'll get the info."

Robert puts his phone back into his blazer pocket and leans in onto his hands on the back of the couch, looking over Gillian's shoulder as she brings the pictures up on her laptop screen.

As he looks at the pictures, he says, "So, according to Doug, the only organ the Egyptians left in place inside the mummy was the heart. The rest of them got pickled separately and placed in jars near the sarcophagus."

"Gross. But, they used canopic jars like the ones Eunice sold for pet funerals, right?" I ask.

"Yes. Now we know why Eunice had a weakness for them."

"But why did they leave the heart in?"

"Vessel of the soul, Doug says. They believed removing the heart would cause the body to arrive in the afterlife soulless."

"What we locked up under the gallery was made to hold Anat's soul?"

Robert nods. "It's looking like that."

"So all we have to do is destroy the heart, and we destroy Anat!" I gesture a little too enthusiastically and spill my tea. Great timing. I leap up and head for the kitchen for paper towels, calling over my shoulder, "Then that's it. Because I would be happy to rip that nasty lump of gristle apart with my own two hands. We'll go after I clean up this mess."

The two of them continue murmuring as I walk away, but I can't hear them from the kitchen. When I get back and start soaking up the spilled tea, Gillian says, "We don't think it's going to be as simple as destroying the heart, Tom. If the heart is just a vessel and she's not in there, then Cassie is her vessel now. We'd have to get Anat's essence back into the box before we destroy the heart."

My own heart sags. "Damn. That's why it wasn't beating. No one's home. Of course it couldn't be that easy." I finish sopping up the mess and take the wad of wet towels out to the kitchen trash. I stand there for a minute, looking down into the silver trashcan with its lid standing open to all the trash of the day. Everything we learn is just another dead end. None of it brings me closer to having Cassie in my arms again. I move my foot and the lid falls with a thunk.

When I head back to the living room, my burned hand brushes against the doorway. I wince against the sudden pain. The burn. What was different about the other box? And then it hits me. "Do you think the reason the other box burned me when I tried to pick it up is because it's inhabited?"

Gillian's eyes flit away from mine, and she turns back to sit forward on the couch as my question ends. It hangs there in midair until I sit in the chair across from her and she quietly answers, still not looking at me. "Cassie told you what Eunice had planned, I mean she said it, that Eunice has plans for you and that box. Robert and I think…if that second box contains Ba'al's heart…well, why else would she be so concerned about getting Cat back if not that she needs you…your body?"

"Of course she does." I stand up and circle them as what that means hits me. "I mean, why not? Two weeks ago I was almost back to a semblance of a normal human life. But then some randy Egyptian goddess steals my girlfriend. And why wouldn't she want to stick her dead lover-boy in me? Because that's just the wacky kind of life I lead." The old me, the selfish Tom finds his opening and takes over. "I used to think that I got what I deserved for cheating on you, Gillian, when Eunice stuffed me into a cat, but I'm not sticking around for this."

I can be out of town before the sun comes up tomorrow. I bolt out of the room and run to the kitchen door, not even bothering to close it so I can shift and disappear into the night.

I don't even get ten feet out before I realize that the Tom who runs away isn't me anymore. I have someone to stay for. Someone who needs me. Someone I love more than myself.

I turn and lope back to the house. Gillian is just closing the door as I slink back in. I'm not proud of my impulse, but at least I can hold my tail high instead of between my legs.

Whoever that Tom was, I'm done with him.

I step onto the headboard of my red-silk-clad bed and remove the vent cover. With Ba'al so near now, I think of him more and more. This silly modern life is meaningless. I long for him. But soon, very soon, I will gift him his new home and the entire world will be ours again.

I reach in for the boxes, but my hand explores farther than I need to and pulls Ba'al's box out first. Mine should have been on that side. I stand on tiptoe and peer into the vent for the box's mate.

It's gone.

My Ab Khr is gone.

The scream keens out of me into the night-time silence of downtown Giles as I crumple to my knees.

Gillian is even more of a nightmare at seven in the morning than she is later in the day. With her hair down and a flowery, summer-weight robe barely covering her bulk, she looks like a garden threw up on her. She's blank for a moment when she sees me, then gives me a broad smile. I'd like to slap it off her face.

"Cass, what a nice surprise. Come in, I'll pour us some coffee." She leads me into the living room and flaps a hand toward the couch. "Take a seat, take a seat. I'll be right back out."

"Thank you," I say, trying to sound friendly but knowing I sound stiff instead. How do these people manage all that bright, yappy joy? "I just stopped by to see if you'd heard anything around town about any thefts—other than Natalie and her sleight of hand, of course. It seems that my shop was broken into again yesterday."

"Really, sweetheart?" She bustles back into the room, hands me a cup of coffee, and pushes the sugar and cream across the coffee table to me. "Was it very bad?"

"Of course it was bad! Can there be a good break in? The thief took something of my grandmother's that was precious to her. Something that would probably be of great interest in the local community—you know what I mean…something that could place the thief in grave danger if he or she attempted to use it in the wrong way."