Chapter 2
Alice dragged the supercan over to the pale, battered Cadillac.
Elizabeth surveyed the trash-filled trunk. "It's a good thing these have got great big trunks. If Marla'd had a Honda she wouldn't have had enough room for herself in it. Not in the trunk, I mean, for her be in the front seat and drive."
"Yeah. I can't believe how much junk is in here. I'm just hoping there isn't a body under it." Alice pushed up her sleeves and gingerly reached into the trunk.
After the disappearance of Marla, an avatar of Death, through the agency of Bob and a bucket of water, Alice had diddled the DMV records and transferred the title of Marla's Cadillac to herself, but that didn't mean the heap would run for her. It hadn't run very well for Marla, after all, and Alice, despite her claims of mechanical talent, couldn't even get it started. She'd had to have it towed from behind the Drastic Steps shoe store in Carytown and instead of carrying it to a garage, she'd had the tow truck guys bring it home. Now it was tucked beside the carriage house near the gate to the alley. The car was even less prepossessing than the carriage in the carriage house, which would theoretically function if they could lay their hands on a horse. For now the Cadillac only took up space. Alice had spent a few weekends hunched over the engine, replacing sparkplugs, sparkplug wires, and all the other easily removable parts she could identify.
"Maybe you need to date a mechanic," Elizabeth said.
"I did, for a while," Alice said, shaking out a few yards of black fabric. A cloud of dust billowed around her and induced a coughing fit in the twins. Alice held out the fabric. "Geez, this is a cloak, look at the hood. Marla took this avatar of Death thing a little too seriously. I wonder if we could get this cleaned?" She draped it over the edge of the supercan.
Elizabeth pulled a long stick from the trunk. It had a curving blade attached to one end. "And a scythe too."
"Cool!" Alice took it from her and held it up. "If Bob ever let us let the grass get too long, we could use it in the yard. Too bad Halloween's over."
"Put some tinsel and mistletoe on it."
"Hah." Alice placed the scythe by the door of the carriage house, where they kept all the yard implements.
Elizabeth opened a cardboard box. "Books?" She pulled one out. "Hey, it's the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Marla was at least consistent. Creepy as hell, but definitely consistent. And goth-y comic books and CDs. Deicide and Dirtball."
"Hey, Dirtball's a good band. Or at least they were. Any of these suck, we can take them to the used record store."
They continued to rummage around. They found a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad and empty Camel Lights cartons. Lots of stuff was on its way to becoming dirt. They assisted the process and pitched it all in the supercan. They emptied the trunk of everything but three spare wheels, a tire iron, and some black tarry smears, then moved on to the interior, which reeked of cigarette smoke and spilled soda.
"There are no seatbelts," Elizabeth said. "No headrests, nothing. You couldn't drive this even if you got it started."
"I can add those," Alice said. "Check this out. There's a suicide knob on the steering wheel. Damn."
Creepy crawlies marched up Elizabeth's back. "Sell this car now. Don't bother to fix it up. Sell it and donate the money somewhere."
"To what? The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Delusional Goths?" Alice adjusted the front seat and pretended she was driving. "This car is an antique! And a convertible. I always wanted a convertible. I know I can get this thing running."
"Yeah, but you might have to sell your soul to do it." Elizabeth climbed out of the car and wiped a paste of dust and mildew from her hands onto her jeans. It was an early December morning, one of the odd warm days that they'd get in Virginia which was thirty degrees warmer than the day before. The sun was creeping down the alley and she turned her face to the light and closed her eyes. Slowly, she turned to face the car again. In the ethereal plane, she could see Alice, all sparkly-poo and dark purple sitting in the car which actually showed up in a negative kind of way. A car-shaped darker black than the rest of the darkness behind her eyelids, and unrelieved by any pink the electronics might have shed.
"Hey, Alice, did you check the battery?"
Alice cranked the ignition. "It doesn't even spark. You know what a low battery sounds like."
"Yeah, but that sounds like no battery. Have you thought about having Miss Price look at it? for hexes or curses?"
"No, she doesn't even know that I've got this car. When the tow truck showed up, I told her that it was the city impounding the car. I don't want to get her involved. She'll just tell me to get rid of it, or exorcise it and then get rid of it. This is a cool car and I'm sure I can get it fixed up," Alice said. "Hey, could you ask Tom to check it out? Can he get this far away from the house?"
"He can't come this far out back, but if you could get the car out on the side street, then maybe. I don't think he'll be any more pleased about it than Miss Price."
"Yeah," said Alice, "but if I tell Miss Price about it, she'll fuss at me. If Tom fusses at me at least I won't have to hear it. Or has he already? Anyway, the most he can do is type at me."
"No, it's not," said Elizabeth. "He can stand next to your computer so it crashes every time you want to use it. He can haunt you. He can be a real pain, you have no idea. Anyway, it's probably the battery."
"And since I can't even get it started, I can't drive it out to the side street for him to see, so it doesn't matter anyway."
"Hi, Elizabeth, Alice." Their neighbor's head popped up over the garden wall.
The twins turned and said, "Hi, Trip."
Trip had almost recovered from the events that had taken place around Halloween, about six weeks ago now. He'd been a tool of both sides in the battle to bring about and prevent (depending on your perspective) the apocalypse, and both sides had subjected him to a form of mind control which had left him rather spacey. Elizabeth had worried about him in spite of herself, but in the last week or so, he seemed to be back to normal, although he still flinched whenever Bob and Dirk spoke to him. He hadn't asked Elizabeth out lately either, for which she was glad enough, but she knew that he was still dating Titania, who might very well decide to use him for some kind of ritual sacrifice, to pay a debt to the devil, or whatever other use the Queen of Faery might have for a hunky blond lawyer.
"Cool car," he called. "Are you going to fix it up?"
"That's the idea," Alice said shortly. She popped the hood and got out of the car.
"That looks just like Titania's sister's car," he observed. "It was a real beater, but worth keeping just for the fins."
The girls made noncommittal noises and exchanged a nervous glance. They hadn't considered what Titania might do if or, more likely, when she found that Alice had taken her missing sister's car. On the other hand, Elizabeth thought, as she considered the elegant, immaculate Titania and her pearly white Escalade, Titania probably wouldn't want to get within ten yards of this disgusting car.
Alice leaned under the hood and prodded various parts of the engine. "It's like it's totally inert," she said.
"Does it have gas?" asked Trip.
"Yes, I checked that first thing. It might be the battery though, I'll get a new one after work today and try installing it."
"Maybe you just need to add water to the battery or something," said Trip. "I've heard of cars needing that."
Elizabeth doubted Trip had ever had to keep a beater running in his life. If his car ever broke down, which it wouldn't, he would call roadside assistance and let them deal with it. As Trip went on making all the obvious suggestions and Alice responded in monosyllables, Elizabeth closed her eyes and looked around. She could see Trip's aura right through the brick wall and was unsurprised to find that it was a bland, unidentifiable color. Even in the ethereal plane he looked easy to manipulate, sort of doughy, though his physical body was anything but. She opened one eye and found she could see both aspects of him, the tall, blond, lantern-jawed outside and the insipid, mushy aura inside.
She wondered what Titania's aura would look like. Elizabeth had hardly seen Titania, except when they occasionally passed each other in the street in front of the house, and even then Elizabeth pretended not to see her. Titania ignored Elizabeth as well, which suited her fine, though she'd been waiting for the other Manolo to drop since Titania had vanished when her sister's attempt to take over the house had been utterly foiled. Alice had better pick up a car cover, Elizabeth thought. It was unlikely that Titania would come all this way out back, but you never knew.
Trip might know if Titania was up to something, she realized, even if he didn't know it. All she had to do was ask. "So, Trip, what are you doing for Christmas this year?"
He blinked at the abrupt transition from oil filters. "Oh, not the same old thing for once. My family is doing what they always do, but I'm spending the holidays with Titania this year. She has plans, but she won't tell me what they are, she says it's a surprise."
"Really? I'll bet." I'll bet on human sacrifice. Titania's idea of holiday fun would be have more than a little touch of that Old Time Religion. In an earlier incarnation she had been involved with Thomas's ensorcellment, not that he would ever talk about it. Whenever she asked Thomas for details, he told her not to worry. Experience indicated that some intensive worrying was in order.
"So what are you doing?" asked Trip.
"Oh, we'll probably go visit our parents out in the county," Elizabeth said. "Eat turkey, open presents." Rescue your sorry ass from the Faery Queen. The usual.
"Sounds nice."
"Elizabeth, look at the time!" Alice exclaimed. "We've got to get ready for work. Miss Price gets extra picky about punctuality in December." She closed up the car and the girls waved goodbye to Trip as they ran into the house to get cleaned up.
"What was all that about?" asked Alice. "What do you care what he does for Christmas?"
"I don't," said Elizabeth, "but I wanted to try and find if Titania's got something going on. Any Christmas surprises she comes up with might possibly involve his head on a pike. Or maybe our heads?"
Alice snorted dismissively. "I don't think she'll do heads on pikes, it's too messy. She's more likely just to shove us into the next dimension and make us slaves of the elves."
"And that sounds so much better."
"Well, less boring," Alice pointed out.
The girls quickly washed their hands and faces and changed into work clothes. In Elizabeth's case this meant jeans and a sweater. In Alice's case this meant something a little more dramatic. Still riffing on Egypt, she had dug a pith helmet out of the attic and was wearing her idea of Victorian lady desert explorer gear: a long split khaki skirt and a tailored jacket over a high-necked white blouse. On her feet she wore a pair of snug, low-heeled boots. As Elizabeth came downstairs, she stood at the hall mirror and bundled her long blonde hair into a bulky chignon. Anyone else would have looked costumey, but Alice carried herself so that the world looked out of place around her.
"Did you find all that in the attic?" Elizabeth asked her as they left.
"Yes, in one of those trunks there were all these clothes. And some old books and little Egyptian gods. I think they're all totally fake," Alice said. "I'm going to show them to Museum Boy next time he comes over. He might know whether it would be worth taking them to an appraiser or something. Of course it's not like we could sell them, since everything belongs to Tom, but I don't think he knows how much some of this stuff is worth."
Miss Price was unlocking the front door when they came in the back. She wore her usual severe gray skirt and jacket. She would decorate the store, she had declared, but not herself, and delegated all personal ornamentation duties to Alice who, one had to admit, had the flair for it.
Although Christmas gift books had been on display for months, Miss Price did not allow Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. This meant most of the decorations had been hastily thrown into place on the morning after Thanksgiving, minutes before the expected rush. In the weeks since, they had put the decorations in better order and now the store reeked of understated holiday cheer. They had purchased real pine garland from the greenhouse and cut holly from the trees in Miss Price's yard. Elizabeth and Alice wanted to make strings of popcorn and cranberries, but Miss Price vetoed that idea because it would attract rats. Alice insisted that rats could be festive, if dressed in little red and green coats. Miss Price observed acidly that Alice had obviously never had to deal with rats in person. Thus they had no edible decorations beyond a bowl of peppermints by the cash register.
Normally the bookstore was fairly quiet for the first hour, but today customers drifted in almost immediately. Elizabeth ran upstairs to her mail-order department and left Alice to explain her costume to Miss Price.
Behind on filling mail orders, Elizabeth heaved books and styrofoam worms into boxes like there was no tomorrow. If she didn't get through the current stack of orders in time to open the day's mail and get the next stack ready, Miss Price might very well ensure that there was no tomorrow as far as she was concerned.
The mail-order part of the business was still in the stone age, Elizabeth had not gotten the web-based system fully ready before the rush of Christmas orders. She was frustrated enough with her interface design that she had even considered trading Alice for her place at the register. Elizabeth had a more than sneaking suspicion that Alice could resolve all her problems, the code-related ones anyway, in minutes if she were plied with the right incentives. Chocolate, maybe, or ice cream.
Elizabeth checked an order against the order form. One of the books marked as backorder had been in a shipment received a few days ago. She wandered into the stock area to try and locate a copy, "try" being the operative word. In the rush to log shipments and keep books on the shelves downstairs, the new books weren't necessarily getting shelved in the right places.
She sank to her knees and traced her fingers along the spines looking for the title. It didn't seem to be where it ought to have been, according to the esoteric alphabetical system they were using to shelve the books. Elizabeth huffed out a breath of annoyance. Sometimes she flipped letters around and had to sing the ABC song to remind herself of the order, but she did get the books into the right place. Maybe Miss Price had grabbed all the books and put them out downstairs. Actually, that was likely, considering that this book had the optimistic title Surviving the Holidays: How to Make Everybody Insanely Happy Without Losing Your Mind.
Closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against the books, Elizabeth wondered whether she should snag a copy to read during her break. Slowly, the ethereal aspect of the bookstore resolved around her. Below her knees, she could see colored bubbles moving around as customers drifted through the store. Miss Price's charmed bunches of mistletoe gave off a glittery green light and she could see Alice sparkling purple beside the pink glow of the cash register.
Gradually the electrical wiring faded into her perception and she became aware of the ley line running through the store. The ley line was not visible in the ether as a band of color. Instead, it was more like a low frequency vibration in the background which harmonized with the tingling in her fingertips. What had Thomas done to her? The wiring wasn't the only inanimate object with an ethereal presence. The books formed green, faintly glowing walls around her and she could see the cars parked out in the street in front of the store. These cars looked much different from the old Cadillac and she became more convinced than ever that Alice's standard repairs were not going to fix whatever was wrong with the Cadillac.
Elizabeth slowed her breathing and tried to go for distance. Walls did not block this type of perception and, if she concentrated, her range improved far beyond what she had been able to achieve last night in the kitchen. Outside, cars passed in smears of color. A movement in red impinged on her perception.
She focused on the space corresponding to the Drastic Steps shoe store. A human-sized red glow was moving around among fainter red smears which she realized must be the shoes and only confirmed her opinion that those shoes were tapped into dark forces. The human presence in the shoe store sparked her curiosity. She projected her reference point over in that direction to get a closer look.
No skein of wiring traced through the walls of the shoe store. The power must have been cut off. Drastic Steps hadn't been open since Marla's disappearance after Halloween. Marla's assistant Becky, who had taken the role of Pestilence in their apocalyptic efforts, had been in and out of the store, but she had not sold any shoes and evidently not paid the utility bills either.
The red shape moved furtively about in the back part of the store where the stockroom and office were located. Elizabeth flowed closer.
"Elizabeth! Get back in your body this instant!"
Elizabeth's perceptions shrank wildly and her point of reference shifted. Suddenly she was aware only of a dark green form looming beside her and a sense of pouring, like water into a glass.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor, one cheek pressed into the worn berber carpet and a bit of drool hovering at the corner of her mouth. She sat up and wiped her face on her sleeve.
Miss Price stood over her, arms folded and the toe of one shoe tapping hard enough to draw an irritated staccato right through the carpet. "What on earth do you think you're doing?"
Elizabeth stammered, "I was just working on that aura thing."
"Made great progress, have you?"
"Well, last night Thomas gave me some pointers," she said.
"Did he? And then you skipped straight on ahead to astral projection? He and I have, or had, an understanding about your education. Or so I thought," Miss Price said acidly. "Astral projection is no beginners' trick, and one you certainly shouldn't be trying unsupervised. It can be quite dangerous."
"But I was just trying to get a closer look at the shoe store," Elizabeth said, grasping at a change of subject when she saw Miss Price achieve a level of glowering which was impressive even for a former English teacher. "I could see this red glow over there. Some of it was the shoes, but I saw a person moving around in there too."
"So? It's probably Becky. She's been around more lately and there's nothing we can do about it. Last week I called our landlord to see if we could get them evicted since the proprietor was no longer in this dimension, but he tells me that the rent is paid up through the end of the year and the lease has still got a few years left to run. He's not going to bother as long as the rent gets paid."
"Were you thinking of expanding the bookstore? Or did you just want to get rid of Becky and the shoes?" Elizabeth asked, shuddering slightly at the thought of the malevolent boots on the other side of the wall.
"I wouldn't mind expanding the bookstore. Especially if we are going to be going online, we'll need more room for stock and for staff."
"Oh! Will I get minions?"
Miss Price ignored her. "This store and the shoe store used to be a single space, so it would make sense to expand in that direction. If you look, and you had better not, you can find where the connecting doors are blocked up. It would be a simple matter to open them up again. But don't get any ideas about breaking into the shoe store. Not in any manner. Becky is not very powerful, but there's no point in antagonizing her. Unless, of course, you see her with chickens. I wouldn't put it past her to try and cultivate the bird flu."
"I'll listen for clucking," Elizabeth assured her.
"Anyway, I'm glad that you've made some progress, but now is not the time to practice. We have got orders to fill and I'll need you to put more stock out in the store this afternoon. Come on."
Elizabeth stood up on two wobbly legs and immediately spotted the book she had been searching for. It was shelved wrong side up and two letters further down the alphabet from where it should have been.
Miss Price walked back towards the staircase, pausing to look out the back window. She swore under her breath. "I can't believe it. There are cars out back in the employee-only parking. We only just got our space back from where Marla's car was double parked. It was bad enough being inconvenienced by the Chariot of Death, now I have to chase off the general public."
"The Chariot of Death?"
"Yes, that car was cursed. Didn't you notice?" She hurried down the stairs and pulled open the back door. Moments later, her voice floated back up the stairs, but Elizabeth didn't hear. Her mouth was still forming the words "What curse?"
Elizabeth pulled on her favorite nice sweater and checked her reflection in the mirror. She was dressed for semiformal stealth, in a long dark knit skirt, low heeled boots, and her lucky sweater which she hoped would work for once. She pulled a brush through her hair and listened to the racket from down the hall.
Dirk and Kevin were fighting over bathroom spacetime so they could comb their hair. Elizabeth couldn't see how either one of two men with such short hair could possibly take any longer than her and Alice put together, but they always did.
"Can you get this zipper?" Alice appeared in the doorway. She wore a simple stretchy sheath of black matte fabric and what were, for her, sensible shoes.
Tonight was the assault on the Egyptian collection and the execution of their plan to enter the mummy diorama using Museum Boy's access cards. Tomorrow the mummy was being removed to the medical college and the exhibit was being closed down for a complete redesign. Someone at the museum had decided that a display of human remains, even if you couldn't see them very well, didn't belong in a fine arts museum or, really, anywhere outside of a wake.
Both girls had dark circles under their eyes, although Alice's were more skillfully lightened up with concealer.
"Have you been able to sleep?" asked Elizabeth.
"I've been sleeping fine," said Alice, "except that I keep having those Egyptian dreams and they wake me up. So I guess I'm not sleeping fine, but it's okay when I'm asleep and it's really interesting and all. I'll be glad when all this mummy stuff is behind us. I bet that's what's causing these dreams. I've had about enough mummies for awhile."
"I've been having nightmares," said Elizabeth. "Of being smothered. I wish we could trade."
Thomas walked into her room and draped himself pensively over a chair. "You're still having bad dreams?"
They told him their sorry tale of woe and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe it's that cursed Cadillac. If you could get it closer to the house, I could take a look at it."
"That's the whole problem. We can't get it closer to the house," Elizabeth said.
Alice said, "I can't even get the engine to turn over. And I put in a new battery and everything."
"We need to tell Miss Price about it," said Elizabeth. "She told me it was cursed. She might know how to un-curse it or—"
"She'll just tell us to get rid of it. We ought to be able to figure out how to break the curse. Tom?" She turned to address the chair at which her sister's gaze was directed.
"If I can't get close enough to diagnose the problem, then there's nothing I can do," said Thomas.
"We could carry the portrait outside," Alice said thoughtfully. "If we can't move the car to him, then we can move him to the car."
Thomas raised his hands in a stop-right-there gesture. "Oh no! There's no way I'm letting you do that. The portrait is staying right where it is. The car isn't going anywhere. I'm more concerned about these dreams you're both having. What makes you think they're not from all the excitement over your nasty mummy viewing plot?"
Elizabeth said, "Alice said that she had this kind of dream last year about this time and she certainly wasn't thinking about the mummy then. Or about Marla's car. I think there's something else going on. Maybe this is aftereffects from all the stuff that happened at Halloween?"
"Right. I was getting post traumatic stress last year from something that hadn't happened yet." Alice snorted and walked over to the vanity to fiddle with her hair. With stealth in mind, she had swept it up in a twist instead of leaving it loose as an attention-getting flag. Elizabeth's hair was shorter, so she hadn't bothered to do more than brush it smooth.
Elizabeth was relieved that they were going to this museum event dressed like normal people. For once, Alice's idea of stealth hadn't involved Ninja outfits. The housemates were dressed to blend in with the crowd at the museum open house and cocktail party. The idea was that if they were caught wandering around where they shouldn't be, they could just claim to have gotten lost.
Rififi hopped off Elizabeth's bed and slinked over towards Alice. Alice looked into his eyes as he drifted his black-and-white fluffy tail towards the hem of her dress.
"Don't even think about it," she said coldly.
Rififi shuddered and changed direction as if he had meant all along to rub white hairs on Elizabeth's skirt instead.
"Thanks, Rififi. No outfit is complete without cat hair. If you're a cat." Elizabeth leaned down and scratched the cat's chin. She went to get her lint roller and found the last sticky sheet was already fuzzy.
"Can I use your mirror?" Kevin walked into the room carrying a little hair brush in each hand. He made a beeline for the cheval mirror without waiting for an answer.
"Aren't you guys done yet?" Alice adjusted a last strand.
"I would have been ready ages ago, except that there aren't enough mirrors in Dirk's room," Kevin said, peering into the mirror and jabbing tentatively at the crown of his head. "I just want to make sure my bald spot is covered."
"What bald spot?" asked Elizabeth.
"Aha! See? My efforts are not in vain." Kevin made further invisible adjustments to his coiffure.
"Hey, highlight the bald spot," Alice said. "Male pattern baldness is caused by testosterone. Don't you want to advertise your high testosterone level?"
Dirk stuck his head around the door. "He doesn't need to advertise. So, are we ready yet? What's taking you girls so long? Let's go see some mummy!"
The boys were dressed to blend as well, in what Dirk called the uniform: fairly new jeans, immaculate work boots, and bomber jackets over crewneck sweaters. Bidding Thomas farewell, they piled out of the house and into Dirk's Volkswagen. During the short ride to the museum, they traded mummy stories.
Dirk said, "I'd bet money, actual money, that there is no mummy at all. I bet even if we get into the diorama, we won't be able to see it. I think there's a reason why they keep it so dark."
"We'll find out." Alice pulled a little flashlight out of her purse.
The museum parking lot was full. They weren't the only ones who wanted to get a last look at the mummy, but they might be the first ones to see it, ever, Kevin pointed out. They crept along the dark tree-lined expanses of the sawtoothed parking lot and finally found a space under a broken out light out in the farthest reaches of the lot.
"I didn't think we were this late," Elizabeth said as they joined the other stragglers on their way to the curving entrance of the museum, dodging the vehicles of people who were even later. In the lobby, Elizabeth noticed that the regular security guards were supplemented with some members of the city police force. She spied a familiar face. "Look, Alice, Joe's here."
Joe shot a horrified glance in their direction, then ducked his head and sidled behind another officer where he hid unsuccessfully. The other officer only came up to his shoulder.
Alice ignored her sister and emitted a ladylike whoop when she saw Museum Boy. She ran up to him, clasped his hands, and planted an affectionate smack on his lips. Museum Boy blushed furiously and tried to disengage as the others walked up. Since Museum Boy was working, he wore a dark suit and a tie printed with hieroglyphics. He had on a name badge too, but his lapel hid the part where his name was printed. He greeted the others and glanced around anxiously at the knots of other staff and trustees.
Alice was clinging to Museum Boy and pointedly ignoring Joe in a way that he couldn't fail to miss. She murmured seductively, "Do you have something for us?"
"Yes," Museum Boy said, once he regained his composure. He drew them off around a bend in the wall and slipped a few items into Alice's purse. "You'll need the access card to get through the door from the gallery into the service hall. Use the door in the room where the jewelry and little funerary items are, beyond the mummy room. Once you're in the hall, you go down the stairs. The door to the diorama is at the bottom. Here's the key. Make sure that you don't close the door behind you, because there's no handle on the other side," he whispered. "The lecture about the collection and the restoration work should last about a half hour, and there's a Q and A after. You'll have plenty of time to sneak back into the theater before it's over. And then there's cocktails afterwards."
The lights in the lobby blinked a few times.
"Go on, the lecture's starting," said Museum Boy.
"So, there's really a mummy there?" asked Dirk.
"That's what they say, but I've never seen it," Museum Boy said.
Alice slithered around on him for a few seconds more before giving him another kiss, for Joe's benefit, and then they all ran down the stairs to the lecture hall.
The lecture hall was filling up with museum members, trustees, and art students who'd managed to get tickets in a way not very different from Alice. They slipped into the last row. In the front of the hall, a group of people stood talking near the steps up to the stage. Recognizing them, Elizabeth hissed slightly and elbowed Alice. "Look, it's all the Martins, practically."
Their neighbor Trip stood next to his parents. His sister dangled off to one side, looking underfed and scanning the crowd. She was almost invisible next to Trip's girlfriend Titania who shed glamour the way Rififi shed fur. With Trip's hand on her waist, she flirted with a tall, brown-haired man who left them after a moment and went to the stage.
A woman on the stage greeted him, then went to the podium and tapped the microphone, before introducing herself as the curator of the ancient art collection. She welcomed the crowd and, with frequent reference to the funding sources, especially those in attendance, described how the gallery was going to be remodeled. A PowerPoint slideshow of scale models flashed up on the screen behind her and elicited an audible groan from the audience.
She moved on before open rebellion broke out. "Now I would like to introduce Doctor Alastair Price, the man behind the plan, as it were. Back when we were redesigning the gallery, I got a phone call from Dr. Price and since we're talking about the Price Collection here, I was naturally interested in hearing the opinion of the family who brought us this marvelous collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. In addition to some great ideas about funding, he also had been thinking about the mummy, which we were considering removing from permanent display. He told me about some new imaging equipment the medical college had acquired and suggested a full scale study of the mummy. The mummy has only ever been X-rayed and that was back in the 1960's, so a closer look is long overdue. Now Dr. Price will share with us some of the history of the mummy and tell us what they hope to gain from this new examination." She stepped back from the podium and the crowd applauded politely as Dr. Price stepped up to the microphone.
"Is Miss Price one of those Prices?" Elizabeth whispered.
"I asked her if she was a Price Collection Price, but she said not," Alice whispered back.
"She's lying," whispered Dirk. "Look at that."
Dr. Price was showing his own slideshow of black-and-white photographs taken at the opening of the tomb from which the bulk of the Price Collection was drawn. One image showed a group of smiling, overdressed white people beside a gaping hole in the ground. One of them was an extravagantly hatted young woman with an ironic tilt to her head. Hardly bigger than a child, she perched birdlike on a folding camp chair. If she wasn't their Miss Price, then she was her mother.
Dr. Price finished his thumbnail history of the collection and started in on images of the old X-rays taken of the mummy.
"The alleged mummy," Alice muttered.
Elizabeth let her mind drift as Dr. Price described the condition of the alleged mummy's teeth. Here in the darkness she could almost sense the auras without needing to close her eyes. She let her eyelids droop and suddenly the room was awash with a nauseous swirl of color. Towards the front of the room, she spied Trip's bland blob and his sister, a stick-like figure of gray shot with red. Beside Trip flared a brilliant white light, so bright that she couldn't focus on it without a sharp pain stabbing at her temples. Beside such brightness, the other colors faded away. Titania's aura.
Elizabeth sensed a sudden awareness from Titania, whose aura exploded into a thousand rays. She felt a shove from a foreign mind, colder than ice, which blinded her to the ether and sent a jolt of pain flashing between her eyes. She gasped and raised a hand to her forehead.
"Now," whispered Dirk.
They rose from their seats and edged out into the aisle, Elizabeth stumbling against her sister, then slipped quietly out of the lecture hall. Out in the lobby of the lower level, where the theaters and lecture hall were located, they passed the hotel caterers setting up for the cocktail party. Carpet muffled their footsteps as they scurried up the broad staircase and past the giant pencil eraser sculpture, where they slowed their steps to a more discreet pace as they passed a knot of security guards.