Alistair cleared his throat. “We don’t have anywhere else to go, Holly.”
“Los Angeles.” She looked at Sam. “I’ve been talking about it with Sam, because I knew this was how you’d react. I’ve got a friend, Essie Wakefield, she’s starting her own movie studio and she wants me to come out and star in some of her films.”
Wanda’s nostrils flared. “And what about the rest of us?”
“Sam can invent hexes for effects. And the studios are all looking for familiars to appear in scenes.”
“Scenes where we’re depicted as violent animals,” Alistair said. “Like that shark in Feet of Clay.”
Oh. Sam felt like an idiot—of course Alistair and the others wouldn’t want that. They’d suffered for the stereotype of dangerous familiars their whole lives.
“I was thinking more Rin Tin Tin.” Holly folded her arms. “He and his witch are making money hand over fist. But if you don’t want to be a star, they need familiars as background actors and things. You’d just have to stand there in cat form.”
Wanda’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to go from owning my own business to loitering around in a background shot, doing nothing and getting paid almost as little.”
“Then open a restaurant!” Holly flung her arms up in despair. “You’re already running the next closest thing, just start up a lunch counter or something if you have to!”
“The real money is in booze, you know that,” Alistair countered.
“Money isn’t worth anything if we’re all dead!”
No one spoke for a long moment. Then Wanda shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” Tears sparkled in Holly’s eyes. “I love you, but I’m not going to stay here and watch you die.” She glanced at Sam. “What about you? Are you coming with me?”
It wasn’t even an option, not while he still needed to fix everything he’d broken. “I can’t.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for your obituaries, then.” Wiping her tears, Holly walked out of the office without a backward look.
Awkward silence filled her wake. “I’m sorry,” Sam said, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Go to hell.” Wanda flung herself into her chair and pulled a bottle from a drawer.
“Don’t talk to him like that—it isn’t his fault,” Alistair snapped.
Wanda let out an inarticulate growl. Alistair joined Sam at the door. “Let’s leave her to cool off and have some dinner.”
Sam glanced at the clock. “I don’t have long.”
An unhappy expression flashed across Alistair’s face, but he only said, “Then let’s make the most of it.”
23
Eddie Bellinowski’s viewing was the next evening, with his funeral scheduled for the following morning. The other hexworkers had been allowed to leave early so they could pay their respects, and the guards were taking it in shifts. After the viewing, there was supposed to be a wake at one of Sullivan’s clubs, though Sam couldn’t remember the name of it.
He hadn’t brought up LA with Alistair after the argument between Holly and Wanda. There was no point; neither of them were going anywhere. Maybe Sam could have used the resurrection hex to bargain for his freedom, but only at the cost of The Pride.
No, they were stuck here. Sullivan wouldn’t let him go, unless he failed to recreate the resurrection hex. Which he had to succeed at, since it was the only way he could make things right with his family at last.
“Here,” Doc said. “Take a look at this.”
He’d been poring over a small sheet of papyrus inscribed in what he said was hieratic—a sort of everyday script used in place of hieroglyphs. As with the rest of the scrolls and papers, the ancient preservation hexes had done wonders keeping it intact, the ink still as clear as the day it had been placed in the tomb.
Sam put down the photo of the Aten Disc he’d been working from and went to peer over Doc’s shoulder. In addition to the hieratic, this papyrus had long columns of hex symbols. “What is it?”
Doc sat back with a grin. “This, my friend, is a key. It was rolled up in the same jar as the designs for the Aten Disc, which I assume were used in its casting. I don’t know if it was meant to be destroyed to keep the secret, but got overlooked, or if Tutankhamun wanted it hidden but still accessible if he decided to use it. Either way, it doesn’t matter—this will tell us the order in which to read the symbols on the disc.”
Shock went through Sam. After so much time spent staring at the disc, for Doc to so casually say they now held its key felt anticlimactic.
