A picture of a crowd of men with a white straight jacket barging into her room took hold of her thoughts. Natti, the mental case. She thinks a boy can charm and heal her through his touch, his friend apparently has unusual strength, and that a beautiful stranger had a power about him could almost manipulate her thoughts. Yeah, just perfect.
Trying to shake free from the image, she looked around, searching for anything to get her head wrapped around. Her eyes landed on the adorned wooden box, and the necklace puzzle ensnared her full attention. She slid from her bed, into her desk chair, and opened her notebook to look at her progress. Along the pages of inked and re-inked hieroglyphs copied from the original necklace scribe were red marks grouping several symbols in wild circles. Several English translations lined perfectly under their appropriate hieroglyphs. From what she figured out so far, she couldn’t be sure what secret the locket contained or how it even linked to her family. It almost seemed like utter nonsense, not something worth murdering for.
“‘Travel.’ ‘West.’” She read each translation aloud. “‘To.’ ‘Of.’ ‘Protect.’ ‘Hides.’ ‘By.’ ‘Sacred lake.’ ‘Of.’ ‘Protect.’ ‘Wings.’ ‘Isis.’ ‘Of.’ ‘Moon.’”
Still determined, Natti picked up her pencil and began to piece what she could together, though half the words were still missing. “‘Travel.’ ‘West.’ ‘To,’” she repeated the first three words, tapping the correlating hieroglyphs. She paused on the symbols between ‘Travel’ and ‘West’, completely puzzled. “Travel what exactly? And west to where?”
She sighed, frustrated, and moved on. “Something ‘hides by.’ The ‘sacred lake of’ someplace.” She linked the two statements together. “Something ‘hides by’ the ‘sacred lake of’ someplace. And . . . ‘Wings Isis’? ‘Isis’s Wings’?” It made more sense as she scribbled it down in her notes. “‘Isis’s wings protect’ something ‘of the moon.’”
Seth stepped from the cool water of the sunken, purification basin. He was a hundred feet under the town hall and fair grounds, hidden inside the underground temple. The only light came from the burning fire pots in each corner of the room, and the only oxygen supply filtered in from the heavy machinery above. Smoke and incense choked the air around him. And the stone walls, floors, and ceiling added little comfort. It was like being buried alive in a tomb.
He picked up a clean linen towel from the ground and began to dry himself off. The servant girl who had bathed him quickly jumped out of the basin, confused. She looked at him with worried eyes, her pupils were dilated like the eyes of all the other girls living in the temple. Trying to reassure her, he waved her back.
She gulped and bowed. “H-Have I have d-done something w-wrong, my Lord?”
“No,” Seth told her. He stroked her bare skin, spreading a little of his charm. “Everything is fine.”
The girl sighed with relief and bowed again before moving for the shendyt and the ivory belt resting on a long stone slab. Tossing the towel aside, Seth reached for the garment. The girl retreated, scared out of her wits. Seth rolled his eyes, letting her slowly approach and wrap the cloth around his waist. He watched closely, keeping focus on her young face. She had to be about sixteen and no more. Seth shook his head. He wondered what dreams the girl had before she was brought here, what life his father had stolen from her.
The girl tied off the belt perfectly and hurried to a shelf of clay jars, cedar boxes, and perfume bottles. Seth took a seat in a chair carved from stone. The girl brought some black kohl placed inside a smoothed out sea shell. She placed herself in his lap; the short, modest linen around her hip was the only article of clothing separating her skin from his. Seth held completely still while the bone stylus moved across his vision, the kohl weighed heavy on his inner eyelids. The girl checked her work, comparing them to the depictions that adorned the walls. Her dark eyes then settled on his, letting herself be drawn into their gaze. She inched closer to him, her bare chest rubbing against his. The predator growled with delight, and Seth wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, drawing her lips to his mouth. He wanted to taste them, to feel them move with him. Yet when their lips touched, Natti returned to his mind. Her sad eyes had been haunting him since she left the café. The hunger vanished in an instant, and Seth leaned back, pushing the young girl away. She stared at him in shock and fear. Her breathing became rapid, and her body trembled.
“I-I’ve displeased you! O mighty Set, forgive me!”
She fell to the ground, hiding her face. She muttered prayers of contrition to the stone floor. The scene made Seth sick with guilt. Kneeling beside the girl, he ran his fingers under her chin and lifted her face up.
“No. No, you did not displease me.”
“But you pushed me away! Have I done something wrong?”
“No. It has nothing to do with you. I just . . . I just can’t . . .”