“What does it say?” Jarvis asked, squeezing past Suri to get a better look.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to flip the page over.”
“Do it,” Bast urged, her tail flicking dangerously close to my nose as she stood up.
“All righty, then,” I said. “Here goes nothing.”
I reached out to pick up the flimsy piece of paper, but just as I grasped its razor-thin edge, a giant sneeze I didn’t even know was inside me escaped my sinuses and sent the piece of paper wafting off the desk and onto Tanuki’s side of the floor.
Tanuki, the mischievous grin back on his moon face, bent down and picked up the piece of paper and put it, right side up this time, on the desk.
“Told you red folders were bad news,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. I returned his grin before looking down at the paper.
“That makes absolutely no sense, Suri,” Jarvis said as I let my eyes scan over the words that he had already speed-read ahead of me. I had no idea what Jarvis was talking about. What was written on the paper seemed pretty straightforward to me.
“What makes no sense?” Suri asked as she, too, stepped up to the desk. I moved out of her way—and out of Bast range—so that she could see the paper better.
“Oh, but that can’t be,” she said after a few moments of consideration. “There must be some mistake.”
She went around to the other side of the desk, so that she stood beside Tanuki, and started haphazardly opening every drawer in the apothecary cabinet.
“Tanuki, help me, please,” she said as she yanked one of the drawers out of its slot.
“I can’t help if I can’t read it,” he said, another broad smile on his face.
Suri sighed, looking heavenward.
“You have my permission.”
Tanuki greedily reached for the paper, almost inhaling the words that were inscribed on it. Satisfied, he sat back in his chair, as unhelpful as he had been before he’d read what was on the paper.
“Well?” Suri said. “What do you make of it?”
“Is it a mistake?” Jarvis chimed in.
I was starting to feel totally left out of the loop here.
“Is
what
a mistake?” I asked, but my request was greeted only by silence. Annoyed by everyone’s lack of explanation, I picked up the paper and started walking back down the hallway.
“Hey, does anyone here know where I can find the Jackal Brothers?”
“Calliope Reaper-Jones!”
Jarvis’s stern tone followed me down the hallway, but I ignored it, just like he and everyone else had ignored me earlier. I know I was acting like a petulant child, but sometimes I’ve found that the louder the fuss, the more people do what you want them to do.
“I’m looking for the Jackal Brothers,” I continued. “Any takers?”
I felt something small yet sturdy pressing up against my leg, and I looked down to find Bast rubbing herself against me.
“Please don’t do that,” I asked as nicely as I could muster. “You’re gonna give me a respiratory attack or something.”
Bast ceased her rubbing and sat back on the Oriental carpet, waiting.
“I can take you to them, if you would like,” she said.
It was really strange to see the English language spoken via a cat’s mouth, but I supposed it was good practice for when Runt started talking.
“I would like that,” I murmured, looking down the hall where Jarvis and Suri were steadily gaining ground on us, Jarvis moving as quickly as his little faun legs would carry him. I thought my dad’s Executive Assistant looked pretty pissed off, but since I didn’t know Suri that well, I couldn’t
imagine
how she was taking all this.
“They can’t come with us,” Bast said, her tail twitching excitedly as she spoke, her eyes ratcheted to mine.
I’d had a feeling that that one was coming.
“Okay,” I said.
“Good,” she purred. “I’m glad you agree. It’s so much easier when you do what I want.”
It’s not like you gave me much choice,
I thought to myself.
“Follow me,” she said as she got up off her haunches and started sashaying toward the knight, cat, and unicorn tapestry that was fast becoming a favorite of mine.
As I stared at the tapestry, something niggled at the back of my brain. When I realized what was bothering me, I almost choked. The small golden cat that had been in the tapestry when I’d first encountered it was missing. I gave Bast a questioning glance, but she stared back at me, mute. I wanted to ask if she was the cat I’d just seen hanging in the woven panel, but before I could form the words, Bast picked up her gait and disappeared into the tapestry. Let me repeat: She disappeared
into
the tapestry, not through it, not around it, but
into
it.
I stopped, shocked as I watched the image of a cat begin to weave itself into the fabric.
I guess that answers my question.
I knew that I was supposed to follow her, but it seemed like such an alien thing to do that I was having a hard time making myself do it.
This is craziness,
I thought to myself.
Who follows a cat into a medieval tapestry without the proper vaccinations and visas? Anyone ever hear of the bubonic plague? Anyone?
I swallowed hard, fear tiptoeing up my spine as I finally made my decision. It was now or never—and I wanted Runt as a permanent member of my family, so I was left with no other choice. I took one step, then another and another, until I was mere inches from the tapestry.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, closing my eyes and trying to make my fear disappear. I took a long, deep breath, letting it out slowly, then lifted my leg and took a final step forward, half expecting to run into the cool limestone wall that I knew
intellectually
was waiting only a foot or so in front of me. But instead of slamming headfirst into the wall, I felt only calm and the sense that my body was being enveloped in a welcoming warmth.
I wonder what I look like as a tapestry princess?
I thought curiously as the warmth overwhelmed my senses and I felt my body disintegrate into nothingness.
sixteen
I opened my eyes to find myself in what I can only call a medieval torture chamber.
I knew that it was a torture chamber primarily because there was a stretching rack in one corner of the cold, stone room; a Catherine wheel directly across from that; and a big bronze pot—which I assumed was used to dunk people in boiling oil—making up the vertex of what could only be termed a “torture triangle.”
To add to that, there were heavy iron manacles roughly embedded into the walls, a rusty shackle affixed to each long dendrite of chain. Oh, and let’s not forget the pièce de résistance—the occasional human being tethered to said manacles like a rabbit’s foot dangling at the end of a lucky key chain.
There were no windows in the room. The only light in the place came from a half dozen torches set into the walls, each one emitting such a paltry glow that it barely illuminated what was directly beneath it. As they burned, they gave off an overpoweringly noxious stench that made my throat burn and my sinuses sting. I decided that even if they Cloroxed the whole place, whitewashed the walls, and let the prisoners out for good behavior, there was no way in Hell this place was gonna ever be up to EPA standards. I actually had half a mind to call my local environmental protection agent and complain—until I remembered that even if the EPA
wanted
to shut this place down, they wouldn’t have any jurisdiction to do it because we were in the Afterlife.
I did take note of the
one
door in the place—a big wooden monstrosity that appeared to have what looked like bloodstains splashed across its oaken mass—but the large iron lock wedged below the keyhole was more than enough to deter any burgeoning escape plan.
It was oddly silent for a place so full of human misery, I decided. I mean, I expected to hear
at least
a few moans of agony, but there was nothing, not even a snore.
I had been crouched down in my hiding place, behind the big bronze pot, for almost twenty minutes, and nothing was happening, aside from a really nasty-ass leg cramp in my right calf. I decided that if I wanted to get anywhere anytime soon, I was gonna have to make the first move.
I had expected to meet back up with Bast once we’d gotten to where we’d been going, but from the moment I’d opened my eyes and discovered all the exciting amenities my new environs held—
not
—I’d known in my gut that I was alone here in Jackal Brother land.
It was probably all my own fault anyway. I’d just
had
to be a smart-ass about the whole “spirit guide” thing, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find myself on the wrong end of a passive-aggressive payback from the überspirit guide Bast, ex- Egyptian Goddess and Queen of the Cats. I whispered a silent apology to my missing feline companion in hopes that she’d somehow magically appear beside me and tell me what to do next, but after a few tense moments of expectation, I realized she was
not
gonna be coming to my aid.
I pulled out my rubidium clock.
“How much time now?” I asked, waiting for the ticker tape of flashing numbers to stop.
“Only fifteen hours?” I said, incredulously as I read the string of numbers on the clock front. “That’s not fair!”
Well, at least I still have Senenmut’s Death Record,
I mused thoughtfully as I pulled out the paper I’d stolen from the Hall of Death.
I looked down at the almost-translucent sheet of stationary—my guess was that it was made out of rice paper, but I wasn’t an expert—and saw the same words I remembered from my last view still embossed across the page.
It read simply:
Under the remand of the Jackal Brothers until further notice.
I thought about what that meant and decided that having to hang out in this torture chamber for more than a few hours probably wasn’t a very nice fate. I’d spent some time in the company of the Jackal Brothers—and were they a laugh a minute or what?
Uhm, let’s go for the “or what.”
Seriously, they were two of the most stone-faced—and not just because of their stonelike Jackal heads—unresponsive, and lacking in any kind of a sense of humor fellows that I’d come across in a long, long time. Usually, even if someone was a total stick in the mud, they would have at least
some
sense of humor, but the Jackal Brothers were entirely devoid of wit or charm. Frankly, they wouldn’t have known a joke if it had bitten them on the butt and caused a boil on one of their cheeks. Of course, by the type of surroundings I now found myself in, it appeared my little observation about them was more than valid.
I stood up, leaving the relative security of my boiling oil pot, and stretched my legs, shaking out my right calf in hopes of getting rid of the cramp—but no luck there. I expected to get a few gasps and/or moans of interest from the peanut gallery, but of the five prisoners I counted, only one of them actually had his eyes open. The others all seemed to be in a state of heightened doze.
The one conscious fellow in the room was staring at his feet with a look of intense concentration on his face. From the way his body was splayed out on the floor, both arms stretched far above his head and cuffed to the wall, I surmised that the only freedom he had was the freedom to move his toes around.
“Excuse me,” I said tentatively as I watched him slowly move one big toe, then the other.
Feeling my stare, he casually looked over in my direction. He had a shock of white hair that pooled around him on the floor and the palest yellow eyes I’d seen outside the Big Cat House at the zoo. A long, scraggly beard went past his waist, reconnecting with the hair from his head somewhere around his hips. He blinked, his eyes more alive than anything else in that Hellhole, but he didn’t say a word in response to my question.
Finally, having sized me up—and found me wanting—he returned to his toes.
Okay, maybe he’s deaf,
I thought to myself.
I was pretty sure it couldn’t get any worse than trying to get information from a deaf prisoner while stuck in a medieval torture chamber with no means of escape.
I decided that the best course of action would be to start yelling at the deaf guy and see if I could wake anyone else up in the process.
“Excuse me!” I said much more loudly this time, my voice echoing like buckshot around the chamber.
The only response my yelling garnered was a full-on, nasty glare from my new prison buddy. I gave him an apologetic smile, but he only shook his head, his butter yellow eyes flashing like fire, and returned to examining his toes.
Great, I had just been reprimanded by a deaf-mute.
Feeling totally rejected, I leaned against the large bronze pot and rested my chin in my hands. Since no one was gonna offer up any useful information, I decided to ignore my torture-chamber mates for the time being and gingerly pick my way across the low-lying chains and exposed body parts so I could try my hand at unlocking the massive oak door.