The Chaos of Stars
Page 54

I swallow hard against the panic welling up inside me. I will not let Tyler get hurt. “I’m fine.”
“Who is that?”
“My brother,” I stutter. “Half brother.”
“Oh.” She sounds dubious.
“He’s giving me a ride home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She hesitates. “Good job tonight.”
“Thank you.” I barely manage to push out the words, my throat so dry from Anubis’s smell.
She lingers as if torn for a few achingly long seconds, then waves and walks toward the parking lot. Anubis drags me up the wooden stairs and across the street. I’d gotten so used to being tall here; he towers over me and I feel powerless, like a child.
We circle the museum to the back door. “I know you have a key,” he says.
I don’t bother pretending like I don’t. I’m too busy trying to figure out what he wants. I’d always dismissed him as a slimy lech, but I’d underestimated the cunning beneath his jackal face.
I open the door, and we walk through the now empty museum. A security guard, the one with the goatee and kind eyes, looks up from his chair by the stairs. I smile; it feels like a death mask, but does the job as I see the tension leave his shoulders.
“Forgot my purse.”
He waves us by and then we are in the pitch-black room, my room, where only a few minutes ago Ry broke my heart.
I laugh, a desperate, choking noise.
“What’s funny?” Anubis snaps, looking for a light switch.
“Guess I should have let him read his stupid poem.” Because whatever else the Greek liar is, he never made my soul clench with cold, salt-dried terror the way Anubis is. I can feel the tendrils of darkness seeping off him, clutching at me.
“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.