Rose tracked him. “That’s hundreds of years ago, right? Why are they hunting you now?”
Ranth shook his head. “They’ve been hunting the gold all along. The bearers of the bracelet or anklet have died by demontouch. But now it is different. I am more visible, and they are hunting both of us because—” Ranth laid a hand on my arm. “Sorrel is unique.”
Shivers crossed my shoulders like spiderwebs.
Rose replied, “No arguments there.”
“Why do they want the gold?” Freddie asked. “The demons, I mean. I assume that is who is after it?”
“It appears so, though we can’t be sure who directs the Derellers and Essifers. The gold came from another world and holds traces of power. Collected, it may be of use to them, a source of energy.”
“Energy is what brings them here in the first place,” I added, marveling at how my friends were dealing with everything like a game puzzle we needed to solve. I turned to Ranth. “How about you explain what you’d need to get back to wherever or whenever you came from?”
He sat down on the arm of the couch next to me, his heat tracing my side. “The ritual would be the same as that which sent me to the Garden. Three gold items. This”—he held up the bracelet—“and the two others to represent the other Keepers. Then we would have to travel to the dome with the sky scene.”
“The what?” Rose asked.
“In our temple, the stars are painted on a dome. The ritual is done in the center of the golden triangle. When complete, the sky opens and we enter.”
“Constellations, then? What season?” Ori asked, typing.
“The first day of Epip in summer,” Ranth replied.
“In Egypt, right? Or thereabouts?” Juke asked, swiping through her phone screens.
“But we have no idea what stars?” Ori interjected as she typed. “The Coptic calendar has an Epip in roughly July.”
“Midsummer, yes. The stars are the Serpent or crocodile body and tail. But it is called the head of the Serpent,” Ranth said, peering down at the screen as Ori clicked.
“You mean Alpha Draconis?” Freddie had been leaning on the wall with his arms crossed.
“Are you secretly an astronomy buff?” I asked.
“No secret. I like stars, always have,” Freddie replied.
Ranth straightened up. “Draco is the Serpent. It has other names.”
“Got it,” Ori said, turning her screen around. “It also ties up the Serpent and at least the idea of a tree. The Norse had that myth with Yggdrasil.”
Juke fondled the rhodochrosite worry stone around her neck, lost in thought. She was all about crystals. The link between their modern use in technology and ancient ritual intrigued her, and Rose kept her hooked up with the best ones. “That should be easy to superimpose on a screen. I can put it at roughly Egypt time in the sky, and that should work, right?”
“It’ll have to,” I replied.
“We’d need a sky stone, though. I don’t have one,” Ranth said, staring at the wall.
“A sky stone?” Juke asked, suddenly focusing on Ranth.
Ranth rubbed his chin. “They fall from the sky. A large flaming sky rock.”
Ori had already begun to type. “Okay, so a meteorite? What’s the stone look like?”
“It’s green and shines,” Ranth replied.
“Meteoric glass. He’s talking about moldavite, a form of tektite,” Juke replied. “It’s usually a groovy shade of mossy green.”
Rose smoothed one of her buns. “I can get that. My friend Sascha is a jeweler, and she’s used that before. She sources stones from all over the world online.”
“I’m on it,” Ori said, switching to her tablet. “How much do we need?”
