“And?”
“Oh, for the love of kibble, would you at least try to connect the dots!” Leaping to his feet, he paced to the end of the counter and back again, his tail covering twice the horizontal distance. “That mouse had his life sucked out right next to the mummy!”
“So you’re saying that sucking the life out of that mouse gave Meryat—who can barely walk at the best of times—enough energy to get downstairs and then back upstairs again moving so fast that you couldn’t see her? Some mouse.”
“You’re forgetting her visit to you. The mouse only had to get her downstairs.”
“And you don’t think I’d notice if a reanimated Egyptian mummy was su…” Cheeks flushed, he suddenly decided there’d been a little too much use of the verb to suck in recent conversations. “…absorbing my energy?”
“You spent six months not noticing a hole to Hell,” Austin muttered, “I’m not sure you’d notice if a reanimated Egyptian mummy was doing the Macarena.”
“Hey! I’d notice. Nobody does the Macarena anymore.”
“Oh, give her a break! She’s been dead for three thousand years, it takes a while to catch up.”
“If we’re talking three thousand years,” Dean snapped, “she’d be doing the hustle!”
The silence that followed was so complete, the distant sound of skateboarders in a neighbor’s pool came clearly though the open dining room windows.
“Dude, what’s with the water?”
After another long moment during which it became clear that neither skateboards nor skateboarders could float, Dean managed to find his voice.
“Did I just make a disco reference?”
Austin nodded.
“Lord t’underin’ Jesus.”
Austin nodded again. “If that’s not a sign there’s evil energies about, I don’t know what is.”
“Granted. But that still doesn’t mean it’s Meryat.”
“Why are you so resistant to the obvious?”
“Maybe I just like the thought of people being in love without any sucking going on!”
Oh, yeah. Definitely too much use of the verb to suck. He kind of wished he’d remembered that.
But all Austin said was, “I wish Claire was here.”
ELEVEN
CLAIRE CLOSED HER FINGERS just a little too tightly around Lance’s arm. They were standing at one end of a massive hall—although massive didn’t really do the place justice—on a pair of circles made of the only red tiles visible in a blue-and-gold mosaic floor. Just to be on the safe side, she looked up and breathed a sigh of relief. So far, no falling anvils. Behind them was a set of what looked like fifty-foot-high, solid gold doors. In front of them, a double line of huge pillars disappeared into the darkness above. If they were supporting a roof, Claire couldn’t see it. The walls behind the pillars appeared to be covered in tiny black dots although, given how far away they were, it was entirely possible they were covered in huge black dots. Light levels were comfortably bright in spite of no visible light source—which was hardly surprising as ambient light was the one thing pretty much every reality took a crack at. If she’d been in one cave with phosphorescent fungus, she’d been in fifty.
“So. Where are we?” she asked, a little surprised by how calm she sounded. They were no longer on the Otherside—either Otherside—that much and that much alone she was sure of. Well, that and how much she’d like to kick Lance.
“I don’t know!”
Not exactly a surprise.
“What were you thinking when we went through the door?” Maybe calm wasn’t exactly the right word. Tight was closer.
“That if I didn’t get it right this time, you were going to give me hell.”
“This isn’t Hell.”
“How can you be so sure?” Lance demanded, turning to stare down at her with wide eyes.
“It’s my job to be sure.”
“Of Hell?”
“Of what isn’t Hell.” While he was thinking about that, she turned to face the doors. Doors were doors. Fifty feet high and solid gold, two feet high at the end of a rabbit hole—it didn’t matter. If she could get them open and fit through over the threshold, she could use them. In this particular instance, getting them open might be tricky since the doorknobs were a good twenty feet above her head.
A quick glance around determined the area was unfortunately empty of a small table holding a bottle and a note that said, Drink me.
“Incoming!”
Does he have to sound so cheerful about it? Claire turned again and watched as two figures approached from the far end of the hall. Of course, since she couldn’t see the far end of the hall that was an assumption only. Wherever they’d come from, they were moving fast.
Very fast.
Impossibly fast.
One moment they were barely visible in the distance. The next, they were standing barely two meters away.
On the left stood a cat-headed woman, barely covered from neck to ankles in a sheer linen shift. Her fur was pale brown with darker fur outlining golden eyes, lighter fur around the mouth, and two large pointed ears; both pierced, with a small gold ring in each.
On the right, a jackal-headed man, naked to the waist, wearing a pleated linen skirt held in place by a wide leather belt. Two small metal disks, stamped with hieroglyphs, hung from the front of the belt.
Do not go there, Claire warned herself. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, just do not go there.
“I know where we are,” Lance offered helpfully.
“So do I.” When PhD candidates in Egyptology thought about Hell, they didn’t think about Dante. Granted, neither did Keepers, but that was mostly because they preferred not thinking about hell at all and they sure as…heck…had no intention of handing it helpful definitions.
“They aren’t dead,” Anubis growled.
Bast shot him a disdainful golden glare. “And once again I marvel at your grasp of the obvious.”
“If they aren’t dead, why are they here?”
“Since they aren’t dead, why don’t we ask them? Or maybe you could fill in the details with a little butt sniffing.”
His eyes narrowed. “It
