She patted the dwarf god’s knee. “I’ll be right back, dear Bes.”
She stood, which was quite an accomplishment with her swollen belly, and steered us away from his chair. “How dare you come here! As if you haven’t done enough!”
I was about to break into tears and apologize when I realized her anger wasn’t aimed at Carter or me. She was glaring at Bast.
“Tawaret…” Bast turned up her palms. “I didn’t want this. He was my friend.”
“He was one of your cat toys!” Tawaret shouted so loudly, a few of the patients started crying. “You’re as selfish as all your kind, Bast. You used him and discarded him. You knew he loved you, and took advantage of it. You played with him like a mouse under your paw.”
“That’s not fair,” Bast murmured, but her hair started to puff up as it does when she’s scared. I couldn’t blame her. There’s almost nothing more frightening than an enraged hippo.
Tawaret stomped her foot so hard, her high heel broke. “Bes deserved better than this. He deserved better than you. He had a good heart. I—I never forgot him!”
I sensed a very violent, one-sided cat–hippo fight about to begin. I don’t know if I spoke up to save Bast, or to spare the traumatized patients, or to assuage my own guilt, but I stepped between the goddesses. “We’ll fix this,” I blurted out. “Tawaret, I swear on my life. We will find a way to heal Bes.”
She looked at me, and the anger drained from her eyes until there was nothing left but pity. “Child, oh child…I know you mean well. But don’t give me false hope. I’ve lived with false hopes too long. Go—see him if you must. See what’s happened to the best dwarf in the world. Then leave us alone. Don’t promise me what can’t happen.”
She turned and hobbled on her broken shoe to the nurses’ desk. Bast lowered her head. She wore a very uncatlike expression: shame.
“I’ll wait here,” she announced.
I could tell that was her final answer, so Carter and I approached Bes by ourselves.
The dwarf god hadn’t moved. He sat in his wicker chair, his mouth slightly open, his eyes fixed on the Lake of Fire.
“Bes.” I put my hand on his arm. “Can you hear me?”
He didn’t answer, of course. He wore a bracelet on his wrist with his name written in hieroglyphs, lovingly decorated, probably by Tawaret herself.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We’ll get your ren back. We’ll find a way to heal you. Won’t we, Carter?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, and I can assure you he was not acting very macho at that moment. “Yeah, I swear it, Bes. If it’s…”
He was probably going to say if it’s the last thing we do, but he wisely decided against it. Given the impending war with Apophis, it was best not to think about how soon our lives might end.
I leaned down and kissed Bes’s forehead. I remembered how we’d met at Waterloo Station, when he’d chauffeured Liz and Emma and me to safety. I remembered how he’d scared away Nekhbet and Babi in his ridiculous Speedo. I thought about the silly chocolate Lenin head he’d bought in St. Petersburg, and how he’d pulled Walt and me to safety from the portal at Red Sands. I couldn’t think of him as small. He had an enormous, colorful, ludicrous, wonderful personality—and it seemed impossible that it was gone forever. He’d given his immortal life to buy us one extra hour.
I couldn’t help sobbing. Finally Carter had to pull me away. I don’t remember how we got back home, but I remember feeling as if we were falling rather than ascending—as if the mortal world had become a deeper and sadder place than anywhere in the Duat.
That evening I sat alone on my bed with the windows open. The first night of spring had turned surprisingly warm and pleasant. Lights glittered along the riverfront. The neighborhood bagel factory filled the air with the scent of baking bread. I was listening to my sad playlist and wondering how it was possible that my birthday had been only a few days ago.
The world had changed. The sun god had returned. Apophis was free from his cage, and although he’d been banished to some deep part of the abyss, he’d be working his way back very quickly. War was coming. We had so much work to do. Yet I was sitting here, listening to the same songs as before, staring at my poster of Anubis and feeling helplessly conflicted about something as trivial and infuriating as…yes, you guessed it. Boys.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said without much enthusiasm. I assumed it was Carter. We often chatted at the end of the day, just to debrief. Instead, it was Walt, and suddenly I was very aware that I was wearing a ratty old T-shirt and pajama bottoms. My hair no doubt looked as horrible as Nekhbet’s. Carter’s seeing me this way wouldn’t be a problem. But Walt? Bad.
“What are you doing here?” I yelped, a bit too loudly.
He blinked, obviously surprised by my lack of hospitality. “Sorry, I’ll go.”
“No! I mean…that’s all right. You just surprised me. And —you know…we have rules about boys’ being in the girls’ rooms without, um, supervision.”
I realize that sounded terribly stodgy of me, almost Carteresque. But I was nervous.
Walt folded his arms. They were very nice arms. He was wearing his basketball jersey and running shorts, his usual collection of amulets around his neck. He looked so healthy, so athletic, it was difficult to believe he was dying of an ancient curse.
“Well, you’re the instructor,” he said. “Can you supervise me?”