Chapter 20
Sullivan didn’t say anything for a long moment, but the blood drained from his face and one hand twitched, as though reaching for something before being pulled back.
“Mr. Cunningham,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, “if you’re fucking with me, you will regret it.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Sam didn’t look away, even though his heart felt as though it might beat out of his chest. “And I can’t make any promises.
But Vic—Mr. Nagorski—he brought something back into Bobby Watts’s body, and I don’t have any reason to think it wasn’t Bobby.
I never got to see all the hexes or steps, but I did work on the final few, and based on that, I think Neferneferuaten was onto something. ”
Something shifted in Sullivan’s eyes, a tiny spark that might have been hope. “Tell me everything.”
Sam did, as best as he could, even though at times he felt like he was rambling. He had to pause on occasion to go back and explain what Doc had told him, in order to clarify why he thought the hex inscribed on the Aten Disc might work.
Might. He tried to stress that part as much as he could without undercutting himself. There was no way to know for sure until the hex was activated.
Sullivan listened intently, absorbing everything Sam told him. When Sam was done, he sat for a long moment in silence, eyes focused on his desk as he pondered.
“If this works…” he said at last, and there was a raw edge of emotion to his voice Sam had never heard before.
“I’ve lost people, too,” Sam said. “My family…if I could give them back Mom, my brother Jake…”
He’d fix all the mistakes of the past. Everything would finally be okay. Including The Pride.
“If it works,” he went on, “I’d like to ask a favor, Mr. Sullivan.”
“Anything,” Sullivan said, with no hesitation.
“My friends at The Pride…they don’t want to be mixed up in this war. I know they turn into big cats, but they’re not soldiers, they’re ordinary people. Just trying to get by.”
“Your boyfriend was a soldier,” Sullivan pointed out, but held up his hand before Sam could object.
“But that situation was different, I get it. All right. I would have liked to have their help against Fabiano, but if that’s your favor, consider it granted.
” He paused. “You won’t tell them anything about this. ”
“Of course not.” Sam didn’t think they’d be happy if they knew he was making bargains on their behalf.
“Not even your boyfriend.”
“Especially not him,” Sam agreed wryly.
A smile cracked one corner of Sullivan’s mouth at that.
“Then we have a deal. Your only job right now is to work out the details of this resurrection hex, understand? If you need to delegate some of your other responsibilities at the hexworks, do it. I’ll put Doc at your disposal—it sounds like you might need some of the other materials from the tomb, so I’ll have my boys move everything from the butcher’s shop to the hexworks.
It’ll be more secure there, anyway, and I don’t want you to have to take the disc anywhere. Is there anything else you need?”
He’d done it. The bands around Sam’s chest eased slightly. “Your, um…your son’s body will need to be there. To cast the hex on, when the time comes.”
Sullivan paled…but then his jaw firmed, and he nodded. “I understand. If we can pull this off, Sam…Just to talk to Junior again would be something, but if I can hold him…”
He trailed off—then gave his head a quick shake, as if bringing himself back to the present. “You have your job, and I have mine. I’m not bringing my son back into the middle of a war. By the time the hex is ready, Fabiano will be dead, and Chicago will have peace at last.”
* * *
“What do you mean, Sullivan’s letting us go?” Alistair demanded.
The day had been boring as fuck, which was fine, since it meant Fabiano wasn’t trying to murder everyone in the hexworks.
Teresa had struck up a conversation with a couple of the other guards, but Alistair remained aloof.
He didn’t want to get to know anyone, just in case someone made the mistake of thinking he actually wanted to be there.
So in theory, he should have been happy Paladino told them not to come back tomorrow morning. In reality, it just made him suspicious.
Paladino shrugged. “The big boss doesn’t share his plans with the likes of me. All I know is, word came down that you lot aren’t needed here anymore, and you can trot back to your speakeasy and get back to whatever it is you normally do.”
“Thank God,” Teresa said, looping her purse over her arm. “I’m not cut out for standing around all day.”
A knot was forming in Alistair’s belly. “I want to talk to Sam.”
“Sure, but I have to accompany you,” Paladino said.
Teresa hesitated. “You want me to come with?”
“No.” This sudden change of heart on Sullivan’s part had to have something to do with the meeting Sam mentioned earlier. “You head on back to The Pride with Doris. I’ll catch up later.”
Paladino led him upstairs to the lab. Alistair had never been there; the place had plenty of light, worktables, and supplies.
Sam bent over a mortar and pestle as he ground something up.
The woman who worked there—Glenda?—must have left already, but there was a man Alistair didn’t know, holding a papyrus scroll.
This must be the Egyptologist Sam had told him about.
“Mr. Gatti wants a word,” Paladino said. Sam started and looked up, having clearly been lost in his own world.
“Oh. Okay,” Sam said.
Paladino remained just outside the door, hands folded in front of him. Alistair stepped inside and shut the door in his face.
“Is everything all right?” Sam asked cautiously.
No sense in beating around the bush. “Why is Sullivan suddenly letting us go, after we’ve only been here a day?”
The Egyptologist—Doc— didn’t say anything, only walked to the door and let himself out.
Sam watched him go, then turned back to the mortar and pestle. “I guess he already has all the people he needs after all.”
“Bullshit,” Alistair snapped. “Men like Sullivan never have enough of anything. Was it him you were meeting with today? What did he want?” He swallowed against a sudden constriction in his throat. “What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything!” Sam spun around, holding the pestle in his hand. Its end was covered in a deep blue powder.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Sam hesitated long enough Alistair knew he’d been right. “I’m fixing things,” he said at last. “Starting with you and our friends.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“Obviously not, since you ended up here,” Sam shot back.
Alistair swayed as if he’d been slapped. “What the hell, Sam?”
Sam started to put a hand to his mouth as if to catch the words, then remembered he was holding the pestle. “I didn’t mean that. It’s not true—it’s my fault you’re here, not yours.”
“You—”
“I helped figure out the look-away hex,” Sam said over him. “I didn’t notice that Luke, a man I sat beside almost every day for months, was killing people. I—” he caught himself. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, you’re in this situation because of me, and now I’ve fixed it.”
Every instinct screamed at him that this wasn’t leading anywhere good. “What did you promise Sullivan?”
Sam shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
The gulf of air between them suddenly felt impassable. Alistair wanted to demand the truth, insist Sam tell him everything, no matter what trouble it might cause with Sullivan. But from the stubborn look on his face, he knew Sam wasn’t going to give in.
“Fine,” he said.
“Please.” Sam took a step forward and stopped. “For once in your life, you just have to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Alistair protested.
“Then prove it.”
Fur and feathers. Alistair took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to loosen the tightness in his throat and chest. “All right. But if…I don’t know, if things get bad, or you need help, come to me.” He turned toward the door. “Before it’s too late.”
* * *
Sam didn’t have long to recover from his argument with Alistair.
Almost as soon as he left, Paladino returned with some other men, all of them carrying the crates holding the assorted tomb-loot of Neferneferuaten.
It took up most of the lab; tomorrow, he’d have to tell Glenda to join the rank and file of the hexmen in the scriptoriums for a bit.
She might even be relieved. Her nerves hadn’t faded from the encounter with Turner, and though she hadn’t said anything, he could tell she wasn’t happy with the job anymore.
He couldn’t blame her. She must be shaken from Luke’s betrayal—she’d known him far longer, been much closer to him, than Sam had. And she knew that put her under suspicion, that her life depended on whether a bunch of violent people believed her story or not…
Yeah. Sam wasn’t the only one seeing the dark side of their jobs right now.
She’d be all right. He’d make sure of it.
Doc reappeared as the last of the crates were being put in place. Once everyone else had filed out and Sam locked the door to the lab, he said, “So all of this is a joke, right? Sullivan doesn’t actually want us to make a resurrection hex for him.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Doc flung up his hands. “I know rich people aren’t like the rest of us, but he can’t seriously believe in any of this!”
If not for the panacea hex, Sam wouldn’t have either. But he couldn’t tell Doc about it—and Doc certainly wouldn’t want to hear, given his aversion to getting drawn any farther into the gangs than he already was. “Just look at it as an opportunity to recreate a ritual long lost to the world.”
“One that I can never tell anyone about.” Doc sighed. “Maybe if I write everything down and put it in a safety deposit box, only to be opened after my death…”
Sam gestured to the crates. “So where do we begin?”
“I’ll look for anything else that might be related to the ritual. You just…keep working on the hex, I suppose.” He spotted the mortar Sam had been using when Alistair came in. “Is that lapis lazuli? You’ve already started, then.”
“I’m gathering the components, but I still don’t know how to decipher the disc. In a spiral? From inside to outside?”
“Right.” Doc ran his hand through his hair, putting it in further disarray. “Let’s get started.”
They worked for hours, sorting through the crates and organizing any contents that seemed relevant. Papyrus fragments, for the most part, though there was also a wooden object like a crooked wand that Doc seemed intensely interested in.
“A ritual adze, used in a funerary rite called the ‘opening of the mouth,’” he said when Sam asked him about it. “This could be important.”
Sam had only seen a small portion of the crates’ contents at the butcher’s shop.
Most of the items were everyday objects: a disassembled bed, cosmetics palettes, parts of a chariot—all covered in gold and semi-precious stones and inscribed with hieroglyphics.
All of it was extremely fragile, though preservation hexes had helped the wood, papyrus, and textiles stay in one piece through the passing of the millennia.
At last they came to the largest crate of all, which had been brought in only with a great deal of sweating and swearing. When they removed the lid and pulled back the straw packing, a face stared up at them.
Sam’s breath caught in his throat. The features were sculpted from solid gold and surrounded by a headdress bearing a vulture and cobra. And what features they were—even he could tell the woman depicted had been stunningly beautiful.
“The innermost coffin,” Doc said reverently.
He gently brushed away straw packing to expose yet more gold.
“She’s holding the flail and the heka—magic—scepter, just like Tutankhamun was.
Judging by his burial, this coffin would have been contained in two outer ones, which in turn were held inside a sarcophagus and series of shrines.
Though things might have been done differently in Amarna.
Or more likely, they were too heavy to move and are still sitting in her tomb, wherever it is. ”
“Is she…inside?” Sam asked, then immediately felt stupid. It was a coffin, after all.
“Yes,” Doc said. “It looks unopened—see the seals here and here?” His eyes gleamed for a moment with a combination of admiration and something else—desire, perhaps, to open the thing and look upon the pharaoh’s actual face.
Then he sighed and stepped back. “Nothing in here will tell us about her plans for her hex, though.”
Doc went to the papyri they’d collected, but Sam lingered by the coffin. Inside, mere inches away, lay the remains of a woman who’d lived more than three thousand years ago. She’d ruled a mighty kingdom, been buried with unimaginable wealth, and yet…
And yet she’d cared about her husband. Had his children. Eaten and drank and made love.
Been a human being, just like he was.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t bring your husband back,” he said, quietly so Doc didn’t overhear. “I don’t know if I can do any better. But I’m going to try.”