Chapter 9 #2
“You don’t have to give me anything. You’ve already given me so much, more than I could have ever asked for.”
“I want to.” He pressed a pendant into my palm, an ankh, wrought in gold so pure it seemed to glow with its own light.
The metal was warm, almost alive, and covered in hieroglyphs so tiny I had to squint to see them.
“This is not a gift you can refuse. It is a protection, a ward. As long as you wear it, no harm will come to you. No illness, no accident, no malice of mortals or spirit.”
“Anubis, that’s too much.”
“It is not enough. It will never be enough.” He closed my fingers around the pendant. “But it is all I can give you. Wear it and you wear my protection, across any distance. Even when I cannot be with you, you will be safe.”
The moment my skin touched the metal, his essence poured into me like liquid sunlight.
It was almost as if he had become part of me, or I had become a part of him.
I felt the fierce, protective love of a god who had sworn never to care for a mortal again.
It was overwhelming and perfect, and it made me start to cry all over again.
“I can’t accept this. It’s too much,” I said, even as I clutched it to my chest.
“You must. I cannot bear the thought of you in danger, and this token at least gives me peace because I know it protects you, even after we part.”
I let him fasten it around my neck. The metal settled against my skin as if it belonged there. Like it had always been there, waiting.
We didn’t sleep that night. We talked about everything and nothing. As dawn approached, we made love again, slower this time. Our hands were everywhere, caressing, gripping, holding on for dear life. Every kiss and whispered word seared into my mind.
The next day passed in a blur. We went back to the felucca on the Nile one last time and ate at the restaurant where I’d first propositioned him - the one where he’d tried pizza and enjoyed it.
We walked through the Khan el-Khalili market again, where he bought me a bronze cat that matched the one I’d purchased that first day.
“So you remember,” he said, pressing it into my hands. “So when you look at it, you think of me.”
“Anubis, I don’t need a bronze cat to remember you.”
“Nevertheless.”
That evening, as my flight time approached, we returned to the hotel. I showered and changed while Anubis sat on the bed, watching me with an expression that made my heart break.
“I should call for the car,” I said, checking my phone for the hundredth time. “I need to be at the airport in two hours.”
“Not yet.” He stood, crossing the room to pull me into his arms. “Not yet. Please.”
We held each other, and I felt him trembling. Or maybe it was me. Probably both.
“I love you, Jessica Thomas,” he said against my hair. “I need you to know that. Please carry that with you. In all my existence, across all the ages I have lived, I have never loved anyone the way I love you.”
“I love you, too.” The words came out choked. “God, Gods, Anubis, I love you so much and I don’t know how to leave you. I don’t know if I have the strength.”
“Then don’t.”
I pulled back to look at him. “What?”
“Stay. I know I asked before, and you refused, but I must ask again. Stay with me. Bring your daughter here if you must; find a new life in Cairo, let me build you a palace or a simple apartment, whatever you desire, I will provide it. Just... stay. Stay with me.”
It was tempting. “I’m tempted. So tempted to say yes, to choose this, to let myself have something I wanted for once in my life.”
My thoughts turned to my daughter, crying in her dorm room. I thought of my life in New Jersey, how imperfect and messy and uncertain it was, but it was mine. I thought about what it would mean to uproot everything for a relationship that had existed for less than two weeks.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “You know I can’t.”
His face crumpled, just for a moment, before the divine composure settled back into place. “I know, but I had to ask. One last time.”
The car arrived too soon to take me to the airport.
Anubis carried my suitcase down to the lobby while wearing his glamour like a true gentleman while I checked out, my every movement mechanical.
The driver loaded my luggage while we stood on the sidewalk, neither of us willing to say the words that would end this.
“I wish things were different,” I said finally.
“I wish for a great many things. But wishes are for mortals and children. Gods deal in certainties.” He cupped my face in his hands. “One certainty: I will love you until the stars burn out. Until the pyramids crumble to dust. Until the universe itself ends and begins anew. That will never change.”
“Don’t.” I was crying again. “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Then I will say thank you. Thank you for seeing me, the real me, and for choosing me, even briefly. Thank you for making me remember what it feels like to be alive.”
He kissed me one last time, and I tasted salt; my tears or his, I couldn’t tell. Then he opened the car door and helped me inside.
“The ankh,” he said before closing the door. “Never take it off. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“And if you need me, if you truly need me, call my name. I will come. Wherever you are, whatever the cost, I will come.”
“Anubis…”
“I vow to you.”
He closed the door. The car pulled away from the curb, and I turned to watch him through the rear window, standing there on the Cairo street, watching me leave for the second and final time.
I watched until we turned a corner, and he disappeared.
When I couldn’t see him anymore, I put my hand over the ankh pendant, feeling the warmth of his essence still thrumming through the gold, and let myself fall apart.
The airport was a nightmare of fluorescent lights, too many people, and announcements in a mixture of languages I didn’t understand. I checked in, went through security in a daze, found my gate, and sat down to wait.
The ankh was warm against my skin, a constant reminder of what and who I was leaving behind.
I texted Sophie.
Boarding soon. See you tomorrow. Love you.
She responded within seconds.
Love you too, Mom. Thank you for coming home.
I was doing the right thing. I knew I was. Sophie needed me, and being a mother meant making sacrifices. It meant putting your child first, even when it hurt. Even when it felt like you were tearing your own heart out.
An announcement calling my flight blared through the speakers. I boarded, found my seat, and buckled in. The woman next to me tried to make conversation, but I pretended to be asleep, my face turned toward the window.
The plane took off, Cairo falling away beneath me; the Nile a ribbon of darkness, the pyramids invisible in the night, the city lights spreading like stars across the desert.
I touched the ankh and let myself cry.
It was just a vacation fling; I told myself.
Just two weeks of magical thinking, of pretending the real world didn’t exist. I’d get over it.
I’d go back to New Jersey, help Sophie through her crisis, find a new job, and rebuild my life.
In a few months, this would all feel like a dream and a precious memory.
I told myself that over and over, like a mantra, a prayer on my lips.
I told myself that, even though I knew it was a lie. I knew it because some things you don’t get over. Some people, or in my case, a god, would leave a mark that would never fade. And Anubis had marked me more thoroughly than any binding stone or divine essence ever could.
He’d marked my heart. And I had a feeling that wound would never heal.
The flight attendant came by with drinks. I ordered wine, the cheap, plastic-tasting airplane wine that bore no resemblance to the bottles Anubis and I had shared in Cairo restaurants. I drank it anyway, and then I ordered another.
By the time we landed in Newark, I’d cried myself dry, and by the time I made it to baggage claim, I’d constructed a careful wall around the pain, brick by brick like a pyramid, until I could almost pretend I was fine.
Sophie was waiting at arrivals, and the sight of my daughter, red-eyed and exhausted but smiling, made everything real.
She was the reason I left. My daughter mattered most.
“Mom!” She threw herself into my arms, and I held her tight, breathing in her familiar scent of coconut shampoo and the lavender detergent I’d bought for years.
“Hey, baby. I’m here. I’m home.”
“I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too.”
We drove back to our house, and Sophie talked the whole way.
She vented about the asshole ex, about her terrible roommate, about Organic Chemistry and how the professor was impossible and the teaching assistant was worse.
I listened and made sympathetic noises and gave advice, falling back into the role of mother like putting on a familiar coat.
But underneath it all, I felt his absence; the empty space where Anubis had been, where golden light and impossible love and the weight of eternity used to fill me up.
That night, after we had pizza and ice cream, Sophie fell asleep in her childhood bedroom. I lay in my own bed, my boring, normal bed in my boring, normal house, and touched the ankh around my neck.
It was still warm.
Somewhere, across an ocean and several planes of existence, I hoped a god missed me as much as I missed him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the darkness. “I’m so sorry. I hope you know how much I wanted to stay with you.”
The ankh pulsed once, warm against my skin, and I could have sworn I heard his voice. It was distant and faint, but unmistakably his.
Do not apologize for being who you are.
I closed my eyes and cried myself to sleep, the pendant clutched in my hand, and dreamed of golden light and ancient gods and a love that should have been impossible but had felt more real than anything else in my entire life.
It was just a vacation fling.
I’d get over it. He’d get over it.
I told myself that lie one more time, and then I passed out.