As soon as I’m free, I slide between my father and Paul. “I need to get out of here,” I gasp. Sand is heavy in my boots, and right now I just want to breathe fresh air again.
“Go right along, sweetheart.” Dad only has eyes for his new skeleton friend. “We’ll be here for hours.”
Paul’s body brushes mine as I scoot past him. His eyes glance toward me, electric with both uncertainty and hope. He says—his voice thickly accented, like he left Russia yesterday—“You’re certain you are well, Mar—Miss Caine?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” I smile for him as best I can. Even in the reddish firelight, I can make out his blush of pleasure. So we’re not together in this world. Not yet, anyway. But we’re thinking about it. As beautiful as that is, his bashful hope only reminds me of the despair within my own Paul. . . .
Time to deal with that later. I crawl toward the ladder and start up it, grateful to see a sliver of night sky above. The stars shine brightly. Must not be much electric light around here.
I emerge from the tunnel and gasp. The moonlight illuminates a vast desert, several tents—and the Great Pyramids, towering majestically against the night. In the distance I can make out the profile of the Sphinx as it stares into the distance. Although the city of Giza is very close to the Pyramids in my dimension, it doesn’t seem to have been built yet. There’s nothing but rolling sand for as long as the eye can see—well, besides the tents, the ancient monuments, and various shovels, pans, and tools I recognize as ones for an archaeological dig.
They’re Egyptologists. Mom and Dad went into archaeology. That wasn’t just a dead body—that was a mummy.
I remain frozen at the top of the ladder, caught up in astonishment and awe, until I hear a rifle being cocked. Turning, I see Josie and Theo standing behind me. Armed. And ready to fire.
6
AT FIRST I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEAD WITH MY sister not to shoot me? I find myself raising my hands in surrender, like I’ve seen on TV.
Josie and Theo simultaneously groan as they lower their weapons. “It was you down there?” Josie’s rifle remains in one hand, pointed at the ground but obviously still ready for action. She’s wearing khaki jodhpurs and a white linen shirt not quite as frilly as my own. Her hair hangs in a long braid that nearly reaches her elbows. “We thought we had a tomb raider on our hands.”
Can’t quite see myself as Lara Croft. I’d have a lot of trouble filling out her tank top. “Sorry, guys. Didn’t mean to raise a false alarm.”
“You could’ve gotten hurt.” Theo sets his rifle down. He seems less comfortable with his weapon than Josie is. “What were you doing?”
“I got mixed up. Confused. That’s all.” I brush more sand from my skirt. By now the grit has burrowed into my boots, my blouse, even my huge, old-timey underwear. The physical irritation only aggravates my inner misery. “Can I apologize tomorrow? Right now I need to lie down.” Which is code for I need to be alone so I can try to leap into the next universe.
Josie, obviously, does not know this code. “You can do your drawings in the daytime, Marguerite. When it’s safe, and you have someone with you.”
She looks more annoyed than concerned, although that’s pretty much how Josie is. Don’t get me wrong. My sister can be sympathetic and caring when people need her. But she expects you to watch your own butt. Carrying that rifle—well, for her, it looks natural.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”
Will it? Will Wicked ever backtrack and make a second attempt on a Marguerite’s life?
Yes. Of course she will.
It finally hits me then: It’s not enough to chase after Wicked, fixing everything she’s broken. I have to protect the other Marguerites, every single one that could be in danger from Wicked’s schemes. Not only to mess with Triad’s plan for destroying the universes—though that would be reason enough—but also because this is my responsibility, the most sacred one I can imagine.
My travels have endangered many Marguerites. Affected some of their lives forever. But Wicked is attempting a mass murder of countless Marguerites, and it’s my job to save them.
I have to follow Wicked into her traps. Face danger after danger. Complete rescue after rescue. Failure means the deaths of billions.
“Come on.” Theo steps closer. He’s dressed more rakishly than any of the others I’ve seen in this dimension so far, with a brightly colored cloth tied at his neck and a wristwatch glittering so much in the moonlight that it betrays the diamonds set in the hands. He helps me up the final rungs of the ladder. “Go gently, Josephine. Can’t you see Marguerite’s shaken up? She’s pale as a ghost.”
Josie sighs. “I know. I’m sorry, Marguerite. Are you certain you’re all right?”
“I just need to lie down. I promise.”
“You want to walk her to her tent, Theo?” Even in the darkness, I can see the glint in Josie’s eyes as she points toward the tent that must be mine. Maybe she thinks something’s going on. Oh, please, not this world too—
Yet Theo doesn’t leap at the suggestion, only looks awkward. That means we’re not an item here either. Thank God. “I’m all right.” I start walking, not waiting for any escort. “See you tomorrow.”
“Only if you promise not to go crazy again,” Josie calls after me. Her tone is different now, though. She’s only teasing me.
Never have I felt less like joking around—but I have a role to play. So I glance over my shoulder and stick out my tongue. “Crazy, huh? Then how come I just discovered a mummy?”
Both Josie and Theo are instantly galvanized, dropping to their knees to call down into the passageway where Dad and Paul are hard at work. Me, I’m grateful for the chance to be alone.
The splendor of the Egyptian night is almost overpowering. A shudder ripples through me as I look once again at the Pyramids on the horizon. Their majesty blinds me to everything else at first, in the most comforting way. Sometimes, a truly beautiful painting or sculpture calms my spirit when nothing else can. Artwork can lift us up like that if we let it. The stark nightscape around me has the purity of art.
But as I walk on, slowly I begin to take in more details of our encampment. We have at least nine tents set up around here, plus a central fire over which a cooking grate has been set. The tents aren’t the small nylon pop-up types I remember from the few times Josie convinced me to go camping with her; these are enormous, each of them the size of a large room, and they’re sewn of thick white fabric that sways slightly in the night breezes. In the darker distance beyond the tents lie several woolly shapes that I suddenly realize are sleeping camels.