Chapter Twenty-Nine
I hurry to the next window to get a better view, but the woman disappears behind one of the arches. It’s hard to tell from this height if it was Inanna or not.
Marek shuffles up to my side. “That’s a long way down.”
The woman walks across the next window, holding the hand of a little girl who resembles her. It’s not Inanna.
“Any idea where your grandfather would hide the clue?”
“Nope.” He backs away from the arch. “Maybe if we walk around, something will come to me.”
A few hours pass and still nothing jogs Marek’s memory. Every sign and marking we pass, we look for clues. Something to decipher. But there aren’t any.
I’m about to tell him we should give up when he suddenly halts in the middle of the walkway.
“The Forum,” he says. “We were bored out of our minds. My grandfather played a game with us once we went to the Roman Forum. A treasure hunt for coins. It had to be secret. If we were caught, we’d get kicked out, and that would’ve pissed off my mom.”
“Okay. So let’s go there.” Even though it’s a chilly day in April, the bright sun beating down on me heats my skin. It’s hot. I’m thirsty and hungry.
The Forum is a vast graveyard of crumbled buildings with some columns and arches remaining intact. A pathway for tourists snakes through the ruins. Marek stops every few feet, examines the area, sighs, and moves on. It continues like this until we come to a large complex beside the Forum. We learn it’s the House of the Vestal Virgins and where priestesses lived.
“This is it.” Marek’s pace quickens, his head turning right and left, searching the grounds. In the middle is a grassy yard with a square pond. Marble statues of women, many missing their heads, line one side of the path.
I follow close behind a tour group, curious about the place. The woman speaks in an accent thickened by her excitement, explaining every tiny detail. Six virgins lived at the temple, keeping the sacred fire lit. If the flame went out, whoever was on watch would be beaten. One priestess was buried alive after being accused of losing her purity. When the tour guide notices me, I pretend to study one of the statues.
Marek is staring at one of the statues with a missing head. I double back to him.
“Whatcha doing?”
“This,” he says. “Tell me when the coast is clear.”
He checks up and down the pathway, then whispers, “I got upset. My brother kept finding his hidden treasures and had more coins than I did. My treasures were more difficult to find. It was right in this spot. I yelled at Gramps. Said I quit.”
“He was harder on you ’cause you were older?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He glances over at me. “This is the spot. Where I wanted to give up. Gramps told me it’s when people are closest to reaching their goals that they give up. It’s why so many fail. Then he walked off. Joined the rest of the family. He just left me there.”
I try to picture a twelve-year-old Marek standing in the exact spot we’re in now. “What did you do?”
“I kicked some dirt around. Tried to hide the fact I was crying.” He chuckles. “I must trust you enough to tell you that.”
I laugh. “I’ll take it to my grave.”
He moves the soil around with the toe of his shoe. “So I was kicking around in the dirt, and I see it.” A smile tips his mouth, and he motions to the wall with his head. “One of the bricks, behind that bush, is missing mortar.”
From where I’m standing, I spot him, but he hasn’t noticed us. “We need to go. Now. Horus found us.”
Marek doesn’t care who’s around now. He darts around the statue and searches behind the bush. He’s struggling with something. Horus is about to turn the corner and will see us.
“Hurry,” I urge, my heart racing as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. “What are you doing?”
“It won’t come out. I need a tool or something. A knife or screwdriver.”
I roll my eyes. He knows we don’t have that stuff with us. My stomach is bouncing—rise, fall, rise, fall—and my hands are shaking. We need to get out of here, and fast. I frantically search the ground. A stick. No. Doesn’t look strong enough. Rock? No. Too thick. A rusty nail. Yes! I hurry to his side and hand it to him.
People walk by, but they don’t say anything to us. Horus is at the end of the row, about to come on this one.
Marek abandons his work on the brick, and we hide behind the statue.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I do anyway. “I’m going to lead him away. You get whatever is hidden behind that brick. We’ll meet…” I’m not sure where the safest place would be.
“Meet me at the Mercure Hotel,” he says. “When you leave, you’ll see a cluster of hotels. It’s a few buildings down. Only place I know around here. It’s where we stayed with my grandfather.”
“Okay.” He catches my hand before I go out from behind the statue, and I glance at him.
He’s worried. “Be careful. If they—”
“I will.” Before I can freak myself out of doing it, I nonchalantly move around the statue, pretending to study it, folding my arms and tapping a finger against my lips.
Horus comes around the corner. He doesn’t see me at first, but when he does, I act as though I don’t notice him. I stroll down the path and catch up with the tour group. Not daring to look back, I can feel him behind me. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck prickle. When the tour group leads me around another corner, I lower my head and peek through the hair draping my face. Horus goes right by Marek. He’s following me, and my stomach flips.
How am I going to get rid of him?
As soon as I’m out of Horus’s sight, I sprint-walk for the almost two or so city blocks of the Forum. Wherever Horus is, usually Inanna and Bjorn aren’t too far behind him. Every movement in my periphery makes me jump a little. I pass the Arch of Constantine and end up on a busy road that runs in front of the Colosseum. I’m not sure if the hotel is right or left.
I spin around to see what is nearby. Maybe some sort of landmark or hotel signs. To my right, the way everyone is going, where the gelato and food trucks and buses are lined up, is Inanna. Her back is turned. I take off in the other direction up the sidewalk. There’s a slight incline, and it kills my legs.
Bjorn towers over the tourists he’s trying to mix in with, but I spot him from my position down the sidewalk. I cross the street. His head snaps in my direction. He sees me, too. The road I’m on has restaurants and bars on one side, and a fenced-off area with ruins on the other, which doesn’t give me any cover.
When I reach the top, I go right, then I take a left. I need to hide, but the cut-through I’m on only runs along the back of buildings. My heart thumps hard, in sync with my pounding feet. Turn after turn, and I’m getting lost. Not that I know where I’m going in the first place. I’m on a road with a parking lot on one side that ends at a broader street.
Traffic zips back and forth. I wait with an older couple for an opportunity to cross. My heart leaps into my throat. With their backs to me, Inanna, Horus, and Bjorn head down the street in the opposite direction. Just one of them has to turn around, and this cat-and-mouse chase is over.
I shadow the couple to the other side of the road, keeping them between the gods and me. The building in front of me is ancient. It’s made of brown brick and has a large arched door with a tiled mosaic of a saint and a cross above it.
The couple goes into the next door over. I keep going through an arched tunnel that leads to a thin road between two high walls. The stucco is marred and showing the brick underneath it. Dark water stains drape the tops. I come to a square. Cobblestones cover the ground and cars are parked against the buildings. Potted palms line one side.
The wind stirs dried leaves around my feet.
Analiese, it seems to whisper, and I pause, whirling around on my heel. I’m alone. There’s no one there.
I pass under several more arches. Tiny cars line the road, and it ends at an expansive three-level staircase that leads up to a commanding Roman-style church.
The soles of my feet burn. My legs are about to fall off, so I sit down on the steps. I’m definitely lost. I place my elbows on my knees and rest my chin in my hands. No phone, maybe thirty euros to my name.
“I’m so screwed,” I mumble to myself.
A cool breeze ruffles my hair and pushes a discarded Styrofoam cup across the ground in front of me.
Analiese. That doesn’t sound like the wind. It’s a voice. A woman’s? I shoot to my feet and walk in a small circle, searching everything that comes into view as I go—the steps, trees, the parked cars, more trees on the other side, and back to where I started.
Analiese. It’s in my head. The voice. And it’s not my internal thoughts. It’s too feminine and soft to be.
I feel a presence behind me. It’s just the whispering in my head freaking me out. I stay forward, not sure if I want to see if something’s really there. No one’s there. Only my shadow stretches out before me.
A pungent smell wafts past me. It’s sort of a cross between the mothballs in Safta’s attic and sulfur. The crunching of gravel under heavy feet causes me to choke on my breath. A hulking shadow joins mine on the steps of the chapel.
I spin around.
Pazuzu’s menancing glare could turn me to ash. My skin’s suddenly hot, like that time when my fever was so high Dad had to rush me to the emergency room. I back up on trembling legs.
“Wh-what…” I can’t find the words. He looks like an ordinary man in some ways. A little unkempt, but dressed nice. Except for those eyes.
Eyes dark and rimmed red.
I back away and trip on the step. He snatches my arm before I land, his tight grip cutting off the circulation. It hardly takes him any effort to drag me over to him.
“Let me go,” I say, finding my words, but they’re weak and not threatening at all.
He stares down at me. “Where is it?”
I can’t speak. There’s movement in his irises. People. Thousands. Millions. Bodies writhing in a sea of molten tar. Faces contorted in pain. Eyes pleading for help.
“You have it,” he says in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard. “I sense it on you.”
Tears run hot down my face. I can’t pull my eyes away from his. Away from the people drowning in dispair.
He could easily crush my head in his hands. I’m pretty sure he will.
I don’t want to die.