Before she could ask, lightning struck the oak tree in the backyard, splitting the trunk. The night glowed orange, pulsing with spectral brightness, before fading back to gloom. Thunder shook the house. The vibration rumbled up Meri’s legs and through her body.
Outside, sparks sputtered and swarmed around the branches, igniting twigs. Small fires spit more embers into the wind as rain quenched the flames. After that, the security lights went out. Immediately, the alarm system began bleeping, signaling that it had switched to battery power. Then the sound died.
For the second time that night, Meri had an eerie sense that the storm’s fury was directed at her. Warmth left her as fear took over, and the strange internal cold made her shiver. She eased in front of her mother, trying to shield her from the swelling shadows.
“Why didn’t the backup system work?” her mother asked. She grabbed Meri’s hand and pulled her down the hallway and into the kitchen.
Moments later, a match flared. Her mother lit a candle and handed it to Meri, but as she started to light a second one, something banged against the back door.
Meri jumped, almost dropping the candle. Wax dripped onto the hardwood floor.
“Was that the wind?” her mother asked, whipping around.
The knocking came again, in a steady, loud beat.
“It’s probably a neighbor,” her mother said, heading for the door.
But Meri had something more deadly in mind. “Don’t answer it.” She grabbed her mother’s sleeve, pulling her back. Meri feared the storm had brought more than thunder, lightning, and hail.
The pounding continued, more urgent than before.
“A power line could be down,” her mother said. “Maybe they’ve come to warn us.”
“Mom, please don’t,” Meri said. She couldn’t tell her mother about the real dangers facing the nation. She imagined the look of surprise and disbelief in her mother’s eyes if she did. She doubted her mother would believe her. No one would.
She tried to think of a way to begin, but before she could, her mother had turned the dead bolt and opened the door. She peered outside. The chain lock, still engaged, jangled loudly as wind shrieked into the room, whistling around Meri and making the copper pans hanging from an overhead rack clang against each other.
A shadowy form slipped between her mother’s feet and wiggled outside. Her mother squealed and slammed the door.
In the stillness that followed, her mother turned and faced Meri.
“What kind of animal was that?” she asked breathlessly. “Did you see it?”
Meri shook her head. “I only saw a tail.”
The knocking came again, and before Meri could stop her, her mother opened the door. This time she said something to the person on the other side. When she shut the door and turned back, her eyes looked different, widened with shock.
“Please go to your room,” her mother said. Her smile might have convinced the American public that she was calm and in control, but Meri didn’t buy it.
“Who’s there?” Meri asked, disobeying her mother.
“We are not going to discuss this,” her mother said. “You don’t have a need to know.”
Her mother was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and had been called away before in the middle of the night because of urgent matters involving national security, but Meri didn’t think an envoy from the president or the secretary of state stood on the other side of the door. Neither office could have inspired the dread she saw in her mother’s eyes.
“I think I better stay,” Meri said, feeling a rising need to protect her mother.
“Please,” her mother added with a strange desperation in her voice. “I must speak to this visitor alone.”
Reluctantly, Meri left the kitchen, but in the hallway she paused and listened, hoping to find out more.
“I said, your room,” her mother’s voice came from the kitchen.
“All right,” Meri answered, already forming another plan. If she sat by her window, she’d be able to see the visitor when the person left.
The candle fire spit fitfully as she raced up the stairs.
In her room, she blew out the flame. Then she sat on the tufted seat in the bay window and stared out at the dark, caressing the birthmark on her scalp, near her temple and beneath her hair. She had always thought the mark was no more than an oddly shaped mole, until she had met Abdel. After that, she knew it was the sacred eye of Horus. It stood for protection, healing, and perfection, but also identified her as a Descendant of the royal throne of Egypt.
She thought of Abdel again. Her stomach fluttered pleasantly whenever she pictured his face. A dreamy smile stretched her lips as she traced his name on the window with her finger, then encircled it in a looping heart. Too often she daydreamed of kissing him, hugging him, and more.
She sighed. He was probably annoyed with the way she stared at him and giggled when he spoke. Her crush was pointless, because they could never be together. After all, he was her mentor and guide; at least, he was supposed to train her in the old ways. So far, he hadn’t taught her how to handle her powers, or speak an incantation correctly. She didn’t understand his reluctance.
Sometimes she had a feeling that he couldn’t stand to be around her, and that made her long for him even more. Maybe something was wrong with her, she thought. Love wasn’t supposed to hurt, but she couldn’t help the way she felt.
The night she’d met Abdel, he had told her that he belonged to a secret society called the Hour priests. Back in ancient times, the goddess Isis had given them the Book of Thoth and instructed them to watch the night skies. When the stars warned of danger, the priests were supposed to give the book to the pharaoh. Nowadays, the priests found the next Descendants and gave them the ancient papyri.
Meri had thought the story was interesting, but she hadn’t understood why Abdel was telling it to her until he added that he had been sent to the United States to find her. She was descended from Horus, a divine pharaoh of ancient Egypt, Abdel told her, and like all Descendants before her, she was being called to stand against evil and protect the world. Only the divine heirs to the throne of Egypt had the power to use the magic in the Book of Thoth to stop the dark forces.
Meri hadn’t believed him, of course; nor had Dalila and Sudi, the two girls who had been summoned with her.
Even after he had given her a papyrus from the Book of Thoth, she had laughed at the idea that she could be divine. But when she started to leave, Abdel had stopped her, his expression determined and grim. He had clasped his hands around her head and recited an incantation to awaken the soul of ancient Egypt that survived deep within her.
Now she repeated the words, loving the feel of them on her tongue, the sound they made as they met the air. “Sublime of magic, your heart is pure. To you I send the power of the ages. Divine one, come into being.”
That night, a powerful feeling, both frightening and euphoric, had vibrated through her, growing in intensity, until she had thrummed with strange energy, her nerves and muscles tingling. What would have happened if her two bodyguards had stopped Abdel, or even hurt him?
The sound of the back door opening and banging shut startled her and tore her from her thoughts. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cold glass, trying to see the visitor.
Rain and gloomy shadows hid whoever walked beneath the trees, but like the pharaoh Horus, who could transform himself into a falcon, each Descendant had the ability to change into an animal. Meri could become a cat. She didn’t have control over the power yet, but she recited the incantation anyway.
As the words formed in her mouth, an ache rushed through her. Her legs trembled, and she clasped the edge of the windowsill, focusing her thoughts on remaining a girl; she needed only the night vision of a cat.
Whiskers prickled and popped from her cheeks, but then her pupils enlarged, and what had been lost in the swirling darkness below her now became visible and distinct.
She gasped.
<
br /> Abdel stood beneath the trees without an umbrella or a coat to protect him from the storm. He looked as if he had rushed out into the weather wearing only a T-shirt and jeans; she didn’t understand what he was doing in her backyard.
He looked up, and she wondered if he had sensed her watching him.
She jumped away from the window and glanced across the room. Luminous yellow eyes stared back at her from the dark. Her heart stuttered until she realized she was gazing at her own cat eyes, reflected in her mirror.
Slowly, she calmed herself and crept back to the window. Rain spattered the glass, and cold seeped over the sill, curling around her, but the draft alone didn’t make her shiver. There was no reason for Abdel to visit her mother, unless…
A dull ache throbbed inside her chest. Maybe her lovesickness annoyed Abdel so much that he had come to talk to her mother about her behavior.
She sat on the window seat, tears warm in her eyes. She couldn’t help it if she was infatuated with Abdel. Besides, she didn’t want to stop liking him. She loved the way he made her feel, all pleasant ache and butterflies. She didn’t care that her obsession was wrong.
Abdel turned and walked away, rain pelting his back, and in that moment she remembered the desperation in her mother’s voice, the fear on her face. Her mother had acted as if she knew the visitor, but where would she have met Abdel, and why would she be afraid of him?
A loud, grating noise blasted the quiet and jolted Meri awake. The high-pitched buzzing made her cover her ears. She jumped out of bed and looked out her window. Workmen with chain saws were already cutting the fallen tree into logs. From the cast of sunlight, she knew it was late and wondered why her mother had let her sleep so long.
She hurried to her closet, kicked aside the stack of new shoes, then stopped and stared at the line of muted gray and navy blue clothes in her closet. Her mother had hired a stylist to change Meri’s surf-rat look into preppy, college-bound freshness. Meri didn’t feel like herself in the clothes that Roxanne had bought, and no way was Meri going to dress boring and safe.
Then with a shock, she realized that Roxanne had taken down the photos of Meri with her friends on the beach in Malibu and replaced them with lists of fashion dos and don’ts. Meri tore down the papers with the curlicue writing and crumpled them without reading what Roxanne expected from her.
Frustrated, she took off her pj’s and began dressing for school.
On Saturday, Roxanne had made Meri take out her nose ring, and in rebellion Meri had hemmed the skirt of her school uniform. Without even looking in her mirror, she knew she had made it too short. The hemline barely reached midthigh. In the public school she had attended back in California, that length would have been fine, but at Entre Nous Academy, the shortness was going to cause a scandal. She’d probably be sent home again.
She grabbed the black-and-white oxfords and a pair of socks, then rushed back to her bed, wishing she could wear flip-flops and toe rings instead.
As she bent over to tie the shoestrings, a curious, meandering path on the carpet made her stop. She looked closer and traced her hand over a thin, opaque membrane that matted the fibers together.
A fine film came off on her fingers. The animal that had broken into the house must have left the trail, but other than a giant slug, she couldn’t imagine what kind of creature could have done it. But she didn’t have time to puzzle over it. She needed to question her mother about Abdel’s visit.
She raced down the stairs and burst into the kitchen. Warm air rushed around her, bringing the smell of fresh coffee and baked cinnamon rolls.
Ten or more candle stubs lined the sink. She didn’t understand why her mother had lit so many candles and burned them down to puddles of wax, unless she had stayed up all night.
A clatter made her turn. Georgie, their housekeeper, rolled a bucket and mop across the floor and stopped near the scattered leaves and tracked-in mud.
“I didn’t do it,” Meri said, answering Georgie’s scowl. She hugged the thin old woman, who grumpily remained silent. Then Meri dashed into the morning room off the kitchen.
Her mother sat at the table, dressed in a black suit, watching news programs with the sound turned off on the six televisions in the built-in cabinet that covered the east wall. The remote controls lay on the white linen cloth in front of her.
Meri sensed her mother’s tension and wondered what the commentators had said.
“Where is everyone?” Meri asked and sat down.
Normally, staffers crowded the breakfast table, taking notes and talking on phones. Most were interns eager to break into political life, but a few had been with her mother through her entire career.
“Good morning,” her mother said, but her gaze never left the screens.
“I saw all those burned-down candles in the kitchen…” Meri began as she poured Froot Loops into a bowl. “Didn’t you go back to bed?”
Something on one of the middle televisions caught her mother’s attention. She grabbed a remote and pointed it at the TV; a reporter’s voice filled the room: “Was it stress or lack of self-control?”
Meri looked up, not even sure her mother had heard her question. The news clip showed her mother walking away, surrounded by aides. The voice-over reported on her sudden weight gain.
Her mother jabbed the remote, and silence filled the room again.
“I could be the first woman president of the United States,” her mother said angrily, “and they’re focusing on my weight. Didn’t they even listen to my speech? I know the opposition party paid someone to point out the pounds I’ve put on.”
“Of course they did,” a male voice said. “What’s wrong with being full bodied?”
Stanley Keene, a reporter from the Washington Post, sat in the rattan chair in the corner, away from the sunlight. His huge belly hung over his lap. He pushed a cinnamon roll into his mouth, then wiped his fingers on a napkin and left it crumpled on the wickerwork arm of the chair.
“You know Stanley,” her mother said.
“Morning.” He smiled cheerily and brushed crumbs from his mustache.
“Good morning,” Meri answered, trying to sound polite, but she had never liked Stanley. Even so, she felt bad that she had interrupted his interview with her mother. The opposing political party had been attacking her mother in order to divert attention away from her criticism of the president’s foreign policy. Stanley had probably been giving her mother the chance to explain her views.
“Maybe we should go to my office.” Her mother picked up her cell phone without waiting for Stanley’s reply and called her driver. She grabbed her briefcase and started for the door.
“Mom,” Meri said, pushing back her chair. She couldn’t let her mother leave without finding out what Abdel had said.
Meri ran in to the living room.
“Mom,” she called again.
Her mother turned, a haggard look in her eyes, and placed a hand on Meri’s shoulder.
“Why did Abdel visit you last night?” Meri asked. Now that she had asked the question, her chest tightened in anticipation of the answer.
“Abdel?” her mother said.
“The person who knocked on the door last night,” Meri explained, with rising frustration. Why was her mother pretending she didn’t know him?
“That was my assistant, delivering a copy of a new bill for my review,” her mother said.
“You can tell me,” Meri said, her heart pounding. She was shorter than her mother and stood on her toes so she could see into her mother’s pale eyes. The color always surprised her, so different from her own. No one would have thought they were mother and daughter. Meri’s hair was black and curled in tight ringlets, her skin dark. Her mother’s translucent skin revealed the blue veins in her temples.
“You seemed afraid of him,” Meri whispered.
“What?” Her mother gave her a questioning look. “You mean last night? The storm scared me. What other reason would I have to be afraid?”
&n
bsp; “Have I been a nuisance?” Meri asked, certain her mother was hiding something. “Was Abdel complaining about me?”
“Sweetie, I don’t know anyone named Abdel.” Her mother opened the front door. “And if I did, I wouldn’t keep the conversation from you.”
Meri stepped back. Her mother was lying, but Meri didn’t know why.
“We really have to go,” her mother said and kissed Meri’s cheek. She started down the walk as the black Lincoln Continental pulled up the front drive.
“What would Abdel have said?” Stanley asked.
Meri spun around. Stanley was staring at her. A thin smile stretched his lips, making his cheeks rounder. He didn’t look away when she caught his gaze. Was he just studying her the way journalists sometimes did, hoping to find a new angle?
After all, her mom wasn’t just a candidate for office. She was also a single parent. Magazines loved to run that story. Meri had been an orphan living on the streets of Cairo before her mother had adopted her and named her Meritaten, after the daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaton and his wife, the famous beauty Nefertiti.
“What is it?” Meri asked rudely. “Why are you staring at me?”
Stanley shook his head and pushed past her, following her mother to the car.
Meri was desperate to find out more. She hadn’t given up. She sensed that her mother was keeping something from her, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with national security.
She eased back inside, already feeling the tingling in her skin as her body anticipated the change. She grabbed her book bag, clutched it close to her chest, and stepped outside, then stole around the corner to the side of the house, where no one could see her. She placed her house key safely in her skirt pocket and faced the morning sun.
“Amun-Re, eldest of the gods in the eastern sky, mysterious power of wind,” she whispered. “Make a path for me to change my earthly khat into that of your beloved daughter Bastet.”