05. sorry, we're dead: clover and curses.
PART FIVE:
DEAD KING'S PLEA
WARRENWICK
Maggie Belladonna stormed out not long after Virgil, radiating displeasure the way a cat does when it arches its back and puffs up its fur. You could practically see the sparks crackling in her hair. I wondered how the night's revelations would effect her relationship with my partner -- I knew Virg saw their arrangement as a bit of fun, the occasional diversion. He always balked at fixing a firm label on Maggie, and for all I knew she felt the same. But given the way she stabbed her heels into the cheap carpet of the hallway, I sorta doubted that. This might lead to a blow-out argument that could spell the end of Virgil's witchy fun.
"Should've guessed he'd have history with her," Maggie had fumed before leaving.
"Who is she?" I'd asked, feeling no little adrift. I'd had no idea that Virgil had ever gotten that serious with anyone, and apparently this long lost ladylove of his was a real mover and shaker in the witch community. How had I missed all of that?
"Witches don't have leaders," Maggie explained breathlessly. "But if we did, Mother Mason would be it. She's the most powerful practitioner in the city limits. Her coven covers most of the magic business -- there's only a handful of solitaries like me that pick up the slack."
"And how have I never heard--"
"Mother Mason specializes in fertility magic. Specifically, crossbreeding magic."
"Oh," I said eloquently, mulling this around. It was impossible for preters to reproduce with normals -- not unless vast amounts of magic were involved. That's why up until about thirty years ago there was no such thing as a preter/normal crossbreed. Some witches had somehow uncovered the secret, but very few were willing to share it. Those that knew the right spells, potions, and incantations were in huge demand in a world where preters were suddenly out in the acknowledged open, many of them marrying humans and desperate for families.
No wonder I'd never heard of Mother Mason. That kind of magic was hardly on my radar. Even if I'd wanted children, no amount of magic would've helped. Vampires are one of the few preters that absolutely cannot biologically reproduce -- we make more of ourselves through a transference of blood and energy in a process that's vaguely ritualistic. We're sired, not born. In that sense, vampirism is essentially a disease, transferred from host to host. Every vamp was born a human and converted later in life: no exceptions.
I found myself sitting at the desk with a blood 'n bourbon mulling over that -- a topic I was never wont to dwell on normally -- when someone knocked on the frosted glass of the door. I must've been deeper in thought than I'd realized: I hadn't heard them approach.
"Oh for the love of--" I muttered, throwing back the last of my drink. "We're Grand Fucking Central tonight. Come in!"
"First, I must know," a voice said through the door, an unusual accent rounding the words. "Is the werepanther in?"
"No -- you're speaking to the vamp half of the partnership," I replied with a sigh. Great. A speciesist.
"Very good. Apologies, but my kind and his do not mix well." The door swung open and what appeared to be a young man with skin a shade of bronze darker than mine and hair just as black, but shorter and curlier, stepped inside. He was dressed like a businessman: a linen shirt, tan slacks and jacket, and a simple blue tie. He had a long nose, high cheekbones, and a pointed chin.
He also had absolutely no aura.
Auras are something every living thing give off, even plants. It's a sort of faint, usually color-tinted, halo that surrounds people like ambient light. Call it spirit or life-force, its something my kind can see just as we can hear heartbeats -- another thing this man was lacking. Only another one of the undead would be missing both, and he wasn't a vampire. Our hearts still beat, albeit extremely slowly.
"I'm sorry if this comes off as spectacularly rude of me, especially considering I don't even know your name," I said. "But what are you?"
The man's smile was crooked, and his jaw moved oddly, as if it perhaps wasn't firmly locked in place with the usual sinew and muscle. "I do not take offense, Mr. Gam," he said placidly, lips parting just enough to let the words escape. "My kind is not as common as yours. I am not surprised that you do not recognize me. I am, as you may say, a mummy. And my name is Khasekhem. Pharaoh Khasekhem."
"You are definitely not what I'd imagined a mummy would look like," I said honestly.
"This is a surface glamour. An illusion. The face you see was mine, well over four thousand years ago. The face it has become beneath is not one that would be tolerated in polite society." His hand lifted to his tie, fingertips brushing the bronze and ruby pin that held it in place. "A sorcerer obliged me with some magic, so that I may come into the city."
I caught a quick flash of the teeth behind the lips and knew everything he told me was true. A face that young and unlined, there should be solid white teeth. But instead they were yellowed and brown, cracked and heavily gapped where some had fallen out.
"Have a seat," I said with a gesture of my hand. "Can I get you something to drink?"
"I thank you, but no. I cannot." He moved smoothly enough, but when he sat I heard a faint rustle and the creak of dry bones. He didn't smell of death, like some of the undead. But then he'd been dead for thousands of years, buried in a tomb of dry sand and stone. No doubt the combination of time and climate had removed any scent of putrefaction long ago.
"How can I help you, Pharaoh?"
"You have seen the news?" he said, pointing his chin at the newspaper Virgil had left folded on the desk. -IN FOILED BY GUARDS read the bisected headline above the black and white photo of a sarcophagus standing up in a giant glass case.
The obvious struck me. "You were behind the botched robbery?"
"Robbery? No. What I attempted was not robbery. It was the reclamation of my own funerary goods!" Khasekhem said with his first display of real emotion. He reached up to his tie pin again. "Forgive me. It has just been... A very long and frustrating journey. I am weary of being ignored and denied. What do you know of mummies, Mr. Gam?"
"Almost nothing," I confessed readily. "I've heard something about your spirits being tied to your tombs, that you're only ever awakened when humans trigger the curses your subjects laid over your pyramids..."
"There is some truth in that," he said. "In my time, when a royal member of my line died, the sorcerers and priests would perform lengthy and powerful rituals to protect our physical forms so that our spirits could travel safely through the afterlife. It was only by preserving our bodies as they did, surrounded by the goods we had in life, that our souls could obtain passage to the next plane and speak to the gods. In death we would still do as we did in life: protect the kingdom and look after our subjects by speaking on their behalf to Horus and Ra. It is something I have done for thousands of years, beside my father and grandfather, my sons and nephews."
"...Until the archaeologists came," I guessed, remembering how so many of them had swarmed into Egypt at the turn of the century, eager to open every tomb they could dig up.
"Thieves and raiders. Pillagers," Khasekhem spat with a heat I couldn't blame. "There is a transition period between being ripped from the afterlife and reawakening in our mummified bodies -- many of my family were thrown into fires or ground into 'miracle powders' before they could fully reanimate. Their souls are now lost forever. And I may never be able to return." His expression was so melancholy and cold, his pain tangible. That had to be a whole new kind of hell, I thought: being wiped entirely out of existence after knowing the glory of your gods. If Khasekhem's body was destroyed now, he'd suffer the same fate.
"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it. He met my eyes and nodded, accepting the sympathy.
"My only chance is to reclaim my goods, Mr. Gam. My sarcophagi and amulets, the canopic jars and statuary. If I can return to the tomb with them, there is a chance I can go home. There are still sorcerers in Egypt who know the old ways, who will help a forsaken pharaoh."
I leaned back in the chair and tented my hands thoughtfully. "Before you attempted to break into the museum," I said. "I'm assuming you tried to go about this through legal channels?"
"Legal, diplomatic, moral," the Pharaoh said bitterly. "I went to the man himself, the one who lifted the golden mask from my face. I begged him -- me, a pharaoh! -- to rethink his choice to donate my goods to your museum. I explained everything, and he looked at me as if I were mad. Even when I dropped the glamour, so that he may see me as I really am and realize the truth of my words, he refused. He said that my things were too beautiful to be buried under sand. That the whole world deserved to admire my culture and learn about my history. I told him it was not meant to be admired in such a way! Why are the needs of people thousands of leagues and thousands of years removed from my kingdom more important than mine? Every amulet, piece of jewelry, statue, was carved for me, not them! Do they understand the significance of Ra's Eye? How important the flail and the rod are? They point at Anubis and laugh when he should be treated with reverence and awe as the judge of all souls! They are all of them blasphemers and thieves."
"Have you spoken to a lawyer named Bjørnson?" I asked after he'd had a moment to compose himself. Peder was not only Nora's boss and the reason Virgil and I were doing so well business-wise -- he was also one of the best men I knew, and the foremost lawyer when it came to preter rights.
"I have heard this name, but no. See, I have expended all of my resources," Khasekhem said with a sigh of resignation. "I may not even have the means of repaying you, should you choose to help me. I came here because I have heard many speak of you, and they say you are a good investigator and a good man. That you have helped the desperate in the past. I hope, should you be successful, to send your payment once I have returned home. The faithful will be generous to the man who assists me."
Once upon a time, I would've said no. Would've stood up with a regretful handshake and a sincere apology before walking the Pharaoh to the door. Once upon a time, I had too many bills to worry about to take pro bono cases.
But then Nora had happened, and taking that case had changed everything, not just for me. Who was to say this wasn't a similar situation, Fate throwing him my way because it was destiny? Loving an angel had taught me a thing or two about faith. And besides, Khasekhem was right: I could hardly turn him away after hearing his story. I felt for the guy -- he'd been wronged in the worst ways and he deserved justice.
"Alright," I said. "First things first, we'll stop by Bjørnson's and have a word with him, see if there isn't some legal loophole we can wiggle into."
"And should that fail?" the Pharaoh asked with interest, standing.
"...Then we take the less legal route. Don't worry, I know some people." I scribbled a quick note to fill Vera in when she got back from the D.A.'s, pulled on my coat, and flicked the light switch off. "By the way," I said as we started down the stairs. "Why don't mummies and werepanthers get along?"
"Let us just say we are not cat people," Khasekhem said almost primly.