Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(72)

“Oliver.” Jie smiled—a strangely happy crinkle around her eyes.

He sauntered into the hold, an unmistakable pink flush on his cheeks as his eyes dragged to mine. “There are a lot of mummies to be found, Eleanor, so if you are finished dillydallying here, I think we ought to get started. An army of Dead won’t raise itself.” He stalked to the exit hatch, and Jie skipped off her crate after him. Then they both shinnied down the ladder.

I glanced at Joseph, who merely nodded his approval. Though there was a confused furrow on his brow.

And Daniel’s face was drawn. There was no doubt we all wondered the same thing: what had Oliver done to Jie? He had healed her body . . . but was there something more? While she and Oliver had reached a tentative alliance before, this was entirely different.

“Here. Take these,” Daniel said to me, though his gaze stayed on the hatch as he offered me a jar of glowworms. “It’ll be dark soon,” he added. “So be careful . . . and keep an eye on Jie.”

“Of course,” I murmured. Then, with Milton’s book and the glowworms, I set off after Oliver and Jie in the sand.

“Oliver said we’re gonna raise old mummies to make an army.” She squinted into the darker east. “Where will we look first?”

“You, uh . . . don’t mind if I raise the Dead?” I asked.

“Not if it will stop Marcus.” She cracked her knuckles on her jaw. “Besides, Oliver won’t let anything go wrong, will you?” She punched him fondly in the bicep.

He gave an uncomfortable grunt and looked at his toes. “Let’s start our search over there.” He waved east, toward the rest of the ruins. Far in the distance, palm trees and cornfields were alight with a flaming sunset, and if I looked hard enough north, I could see the Giza pyramids reaching for the sky.

Oliver and Jie trekked ahead of me, hopping walls and dunes with the ease of desert cats. I, of course, was boiling and coated in sticky sweat before we’d even reached the nearest, lumpy pyramid—a spot where Oliver thought there might be a catacomb of mummified birds. Yet after poking through the sand and crumbling stone for what felt like hours, we found nothing.

By the almost-vanished sunlight and rising moon, I consulted Milton’s booklet.

“There ought to be a temple devoted to Anubis,” I said. “If we continue east, we’ll hit a series of columns that were once his temple. Below that, we should find some tunnels.”

“I see columns,” Jie said. She pointed ahead, to a sad set of spikes surrounded by slanted dunes. Without waiting to see if we followed, she kicked into a jog.

Oliver moved to follow, but I snagged his sleeve. “Wait a moment.” I let Jie step out of earshot. Then I hissed, “Why is Jie acting like this?”

His yellow eyes shuttered. “I haven’t the faintest idea to what you refer.” He tugged free and stomped ahead.

But I simply scurried after. My boots kicked up sand and pottery, but with long enough strides, I managed to keep pace with him.

“Did you do something when you healed her?”

A single pulse of unease flashed through our bond—but instantly cut off. “I did what needed doing,” he mumbled. “That was the command you gave me.”

“It was,” I admitted, “yet why is she acting so . . . affectionate? She was tolerant of your presence before. Friendly, even, but now . . . now she seems to adore you.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Oliver glared daggers at me. “I merely . . . Well, I showed her who I was. Just as I showed you. I suppose she saw something in me that was acceptable.”

“Will this last? Or is her interest in you simply some magic that will fade—”

“I don’t know.” Oliver sidestepped before I could grab him and make him stay. “She decided she liked me because she wanted to. Now it’s her choice to continue liking me or not.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “I . . . I guess . . . Thank you. For making her . . . happier.”

He groaned, his gaze very focused on the dunes ahead, and for several moments our trek was filled with crunching footsteps and wind.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he muttered at last. “Whatever happened to Jie’s mind was entirely by accident. You seem to think I am a good person now that you have seen my soul, but you’re wrong, El. I care for no one but myself, and I care for nothing but going home.”

I did not believe him in the slightest. Especially now that Jie had also seen his soul and deemed him worthy. Yet before I could speak, Jie shouted, “I think I found it!”

She stood before the columns, a shovel in her hand. Oliver and I darted to her, and sure enough, only a few feet from where Jie stood (and from where she had found the rusty shovel), there was a hole in the dune.

With a determined slant to her mouth, Jie dug up the sand while Oliver and I tried to paw our way in. . . . And eventually we managed to clear away enough of the dune to reveal a gloomy doorway—and a set of stairs descending into blackness.

Withdrawing the glowworms, I slunk inside. Oliver crept behind me, while Jie took up the rear. The narrow stairwell only dropped thirty steps before opening into an intersection of three tunnels. The air was too warm, too dry. The darkness too complete. Within a few moments, however, my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light and the green shadows of the glowworms.