Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(33)

Before I could offer a response, Jie made a guttural sound. Her face was unusually pale. “I don’t feel good,” she said.

Allison whipped an apple from her pocket. “Because you must eat.”

Jie accepted the fruit, and I cleared my throat. “So you learned about this”—I motioned to the thimble filled with blood that now rested in Allison’s palm—“because of your father?”

“Yes. Our doctor insisted it would get rid of his . . .” Allison hesitated, as if searching for a delicate word. But she gave up and shrugged. “Violence.” She scoffed, and after capping the used thimble with rubber and placing it in her medical kit, she muttered to herself, “It didn’t work.”

And with those three words the world shifted. My view of Allison came into such a clear, sharp focus, I stopped breathing. I had spent my entire childhood envying her. Everything always seemed to come so easily—from friendship to comfort. When I had scrimped and saved, she had flaunted her wealth in my face.

But I had never—not once—considered what happened inside her home.

I gulped, suddenly hot and uncomfortable. Maybe Allison and I were not so different. Maybe we both had nightmares in our pasts.

And maybe all that time I had hated Clarence for bullying Elijah, I should have considered who might be bullying Clarence.

“Land.” Jie’s voice broke through my thoughts. She pointed. “Look—land!”

Allison darted to the glass, and I rubbed my palms on my pants—physically pushing away my distress. Then I moved to the windows as well and squinted into the bright morning light. I could just make out a shift in the horizon to our left—due south.

“Daniel!” Jie shouted, scrabbling toward the hall. “We’re approaching land!”

“Shhhh.” Joseph’s voice hissed into the pilothouse as he entered. “Daniel sleeps, and I believe I can manage to get us aimed for Cairo. “His eyes landed briefly on me. “Am I correct in assuming this is where we must go?”

“I . . .” My mouth bobbed shut. I did not know—Oliver had not yet told me.

Fortunately, Joseph did not wait for an answer. He strode to the left table of charts and thumbed through pages.

Giza. Oliver’s thought flashed in my mind. Startling and clear. We must go to the pyramids. For half a breath I saw through Oliver’s eyes—through his porthole. He watched the approaching craggy, yellow land. . . .

And then a sharp stab hit my lungs. Aching, wrenching pain impaled me. Impaled him. For this was the place where Elijah had chosen power and revenge instead of Oliver.

I held my lips tight and tamped down on our bond. Shoved it deep inside until I could not feel how much Oliver hurt.

“Giza,” I ground out. “We must go to the pyramids.”

“Which are beside Cairo,” Joseph said, tapping at a map. Then he spun around and moved to the steering wheel. “We must head farther south then, and less east.” With great care and a pensive expression, he shifted the wheel right, shoved in two of the levers, and then waited. . . .

We all waited, feeling the airship adjust its course . . . and then aim us directly for long strips of beach.

Minutes trickled past until at last the turquoise water vanished beneath us, and we puttered into a flat country, as smooth as glass.

We were in Egypt.

The airship left a perfect, egg-shaped shadow on the barren sands below, and for a time it seemed this desert land must be empty . . .

Until Allison spotted the first mud village. We all crowded against the right side of the pilothouse and stared while robed figures came out, hands over their heads, to gape up at us. When Joseph pointed out the first mosque, we rushed to the other side to stare at its elaborate minaret. And at the first string of camels, led by the nomadic Bedouin, I ogled with as much wonderment as Allison. Even Jie managed a twitch of a smile.

Over the dry earth we traveled. We passed fields of colorful corn and groves of green dates, tended by women and donkeys and irrigated with long channels that eventually wound and snaked like silver threads to the mighty Nile.

“I have always wanted to go to Egypt,” Allison said in a reverent tone as we floated over a waving field of wheat. “Ever since Father invested in an expedition when I was a little girl, I have dreamed of seeing it.”

“What was the expedition?” I asked, watching the cloaked women and donkeys move through the field.

“It was led by a professor at the University of Philadelphia. Rodney . . . Milton—yes, that was it.” Her lips slid into a frown. “Do you recall him? They made a big fuss over him in the local paper, and I think they had one of his mummies on display at the Centennial Exhibition. He found some special burial ground a few years back. Since Father funded the trip, we were supposed to receive half of whatever treasure he uncovered.”

She paused for a dramatic eye roll. “Of course, we never received anything, and Mother still complains of it. Clarence even hired a detective to find Milton, but when a man is all the way in Cairo, it is hard to actually demand a debt be paid.”

“You could try to find him now,” I offered, fighting to ignore the way Clarence’s name made my chest squeeze with guilt. “You are near to Cairo now.”

“Perhaps,” Allison mumbled, her attention already focused back outside. Then she gasped. “Look! It’s the Nile!”