“Where are the lights?” he growls. His jaw snaps as he bites off the end of the sentence.
I lean down and flick them on. “You can’t take any of it. Touch anything, and an alarm will go off.” I’d briefly considered setting off an alarm myself, but I don’t want the security guard to get hurt. He doesn’t deserve it.
It’s obvious now that Anubis has been after something in this room the whole time. The break-in at Sirus’s house, the attack on the driver, the eyes I felt watching me—he was waiting for his chance to access my mother’s artifacts. I have no idea why. He’s been in our Abydos home countless times, and junk like this is all over the place.
“I don’t need to take it.” He drags me over to the largest fresco, the one of my mother and Horus with the sun god. And then he stares at it, searches it like he would devour it with his eyes.
“What are you looking for?” I try to see what he’s seeing.
A low growl sounds at the back of his throat, and his hand tightens on my skin, now stinging and cracked with dryness.
I don’t ask anything else.
Why this fresco? Why leave his base of power in Egypt to stare at this one dumb painting that tells a story everyone knows? I look from the image of my mother, to falcon-headed Horus, to prone Amun-Re. There’s nothing there!
Then I notice Anubis’s lips are moving ever so slightly, as though he’s trying to read. I’m looking at the wrong part of the picture. The glyphs that surround the figures—the ones only I can read, because only I know how to translate my mother’s writing.
This is the story of my mother learning the most powerful god’s name, written by Isis herself. Chaos. He’s here to figure out Amun-Re’s true name. And if someone like Anubis could control the sun god . . .
“Here,” he says, jabbing his finger at the beginning of the writing. “Read it.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t try to lie to me. You can live a long time with just your heart and lungs working, but it will hurt very, very much.” He leans in so close I can feel his breath leeching the moisture from my skin. I am actually cracking under his gaze. “You can read your mother’s writing. Read it.”
I don’t want to die. Not here, not like this. Not in a way that will leave my soul without a path back to my father.
Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.
I look up at the fresco. “It’s . . . it’s just the story. You already know it.”
“Read every word.”
Trembling, I start at the beginning. “Isis protected Horus, keeping him safe from the wrath of Set. But cunning Isis knew that hiding Horus would not be enough. She wanted the true name of Amun-Re, god of the sun, god of the gods. Only by wielding it together would Horus be ready to challenge Set for Egypt. She lured Amun-Re from the sky, where a child of—I don’t know this word.”
“Sound it out,” he says, gripping my arm so hard that I’ve lost all feeling in my hand.
“Ah-pep. Where a child of Ah-pep waited to bite him. Amun-Re, poisoned and dying, implored Isis to use her magic and save him. She would not until he had given his true name to her son.”
“Where is that? Where are you reading?”
I point to the section of text. He narrows his eyes, then leans back, a satisfied sneer curling his thin lips. “That’s all I needed.”
“What do you need that for? You know that story! Amun-Re, the snake, the name.” I stare, desperate, at what I’ve just read. He must see something I don’t, something hidden in my mother’s words.
He spins me around and marches me out of the room. I wish prayer worked, because I don’t have even that hope now.
“My stuff. You ripped up my stuff. And you took Sirus’s scrapbook.”
“I didn’t anticipate them valuing Isis’s things so highly. Imagine my disappointment when it wasn’t stored at your brother’s home. I’d hoped at the very least you had a key for your mother’s inane scrawlings, but no. I’ve had to wait all this time.”
He squeezes my arm as we leave the room. “I like you. You see what an insufferable worm your mother is. And you’ve finally given me what I’ve needed all these aching ages.” He nods pleasantly at the security guard and I stumble numbly beside him as we leave the museum.
He takes me down the stairs and into the canyon. It’s dark, darker than it should be, low clouds blotting out the stars that used to watch over me.
I refuse to die under a cloudy sky. I pretend to trip, throwing myself into a sprawling heap on the ground. Anubis’s hand on my arm nearly rips it from its socket, and my shoulder smashes painfully into the dirt as a sharp rock cuts my knee.
Anubis growls, his vocal cords shifting from hu