The Fortune Teller(13)

Semele locked the door and moved the dresser to block the entrance. If an intruder tried to come in again, they’d find a wall of fake oak. Still frantic, she checked her things and found her purse, wallet, computer, and iPad all where she’d left them.

She sat down on the bed and let out a shaky breath, trying to calm down.

Had she imagined it? Had someone been in her room at all?

At this point, she was willing to believe she had been mistaken.

It was almost eleven now and she had to be up early to make her flight, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Between the image of Theo looping through her brain, her anxiety about Bren, and now fending off a phantom intruder with a bathroom appliance, she just wanted to get the hell out of Switzerland and go home.

She was about to turn off the light when she looked at her laptop and froze. Her computer was on, which was impossible. She had turned it off before she’d left the chateau. She remembered doing it in the kitchen. But now the screen was lit and staring back at her.

The manuscript file was open.

Someone had been looking at her scan. They knew she had a copy.

Semele stared at the ancient Greek script glowing on her computer screen like puzzle pieces waiting to be fit together.

This entire trip she had sensed an invisible shadow following her, and now it had showed itself. She didn’t understand what was happening. The only thing she was certain of was that this manuscript was more than it seemed.

Marcel had tried to warn her.





I must share with you my last days in Alexandria before I can tell you a different tale. For there is more to this story. My journey as a seer truly began when I read the Oracle’s scroll. The day Ariston gave me his translation was also the last day I would see him in Alexandria.

I found him waiting for me in the library, in a reading room that held works on anatomy. He was usually in that chamber.

Ariston had come to Alexandria to study the great works of Herophilus, the physician who founded Alexandria’s school of medicine hundreds of years ago. The library housed all his research. Herophilus had devoted his life to dissecting the human body to gain knowledge of its inner mysteries, and he had written countless texts on the subject. Ariston had been studying Herophilus’ collection so he could take the knowledge back home. Ariston’s father was a renowned physician in Antioch, and Ariston was expected to follow the same path.

Each year thousands like him made the pilgrimage to Alexandria to research and leave their work alongside masters. They were honored to have their names printed in the library’s illustrious registry. The prestige carried weight, even back in their homelands. Soon Ariston’s time in Alexandria would be over. I could not bear to think of life without him.

When I met him in the reading room that day, he gave me such a perplexed look, as if I had suddenly become a mystery to unravel. Then the question in his eyes vanished and he smiled.

We went outside and headed toward the harbor, which had earned Alexandria its reputation for being the grandest port in the world. The market of vendors with wares from faraway regions stretched along the seawall like bands of colored thread. Spices wafted and danced in the air, obscuring the smell of livestock. We passed by stalls where artisans performed their trades and musicians played for coin.

Ariston bought two roasted dates and we strolled south toward the Gate of the Sun. Lake Mareotis glistened in the distance.

I didn’t think the moment could be more perfect, but when I looked over at him, he was staring at me strangely again.

“I finished the translation,” he said after a long pause. “The scroll was written by the Oracle of Wadjet.”

He let this news hover in the air. For a moment I couldn’t speak.

The Oracle of Wadjet existed thousands of years ago. Wadjet was a goddess, one of the earliest deities ever recorded. She had been the daughter of Atum-Ra, the creator Sun God, and as legends went, she had been transformed into a cobra to protect the pharaohs, the land of Egypt, and the all-seeing Eye of Horus. Regarded as the world’s first seer, Wadjet influenced every oracle to come, including the Greek Oracles of Delphi and Dodona over a thousand years later.

Oracles supposedly had a direct connection to the divine, and the Oracle of Wadjet had been a powerful beacon in the ancient world, but her writings and her prophecies had become lost three thousand years ago when Egypt moved its epicenter to Memphis. Ariston’s discovery was beyond incredible. We had found a set of symbols she had used and a scroll written by her hand.

“She wrote the scroll knowing…” He trailed off.

“Knowing what?” I asked. I was filled with trepidation. He had read something in the scroll that changed the way he looked at me.

“It’s not for me to say. Read my translation when you get home.”

Part of me wanted to go home and read it right away. But that would cut short our afternoon together and I didn’t know how much longer Ariston would remain in Alexandria. I had a sinking feeling his time at the library had come to an end.

“You promised to show me your uncle’s newest invention,” I reminded him, trying to dispel the gloom that had settled over us.

“Are you sure you still want to see?”

“Of course I do!”

We tacitly agreed not to discuss the scroll any further. Instead we took off, hand in hand, toward the Royal Quarters and Emporium, where countless temples encompassed the heart of the city. On any one street people could pray to a variety of deities, Zeus and Jupiter, Isis and Osiris, the Jewish god Yahweh, the Persian god Mithra, or Serapis, a god the Ptolemies introduced to bind themselves to the Egyptians and their mysticism.