I know, it took me so long to update! But, I'm here now, and that's all that matters, right? I made this a pretty long chapter, and I'm pretty sure I put everything in there that I wanted to put in there...enjoy!
"WHAT?!" Amber shrieked.
"No, that's not right…Eddie and I had the same dream. The treasure was supposed to be a crown." Nina shook her head.
"Well, look at that, Nina, it's nothing." Jerome grumbled, moving closer to Mara, feeling extremely crowded at that moment where everyone was pressed up against each other so they could see into the empty casket.
The stone was hollow and empty. Nothing was hidden beneath the lid. Sibuna nearly had a heart attack when they didn't find anything and the same thing was going through each of their minds, we went through all of this, for nothing?
"But, that makes no sense." Eddie protested, eyebrows drawing together.
"Yeah, Eddie's right, there should be a crown here…or something…." Nina muttered. She looked like she was about to cry. Something wasn't right. They spent all that time to find that the crown had already been found? It did seem right. She kept thinking that the crown might be hidden but there wasn't anywhere in that room that looked like it would lead to more tunnels or have a secret compartment.
"Wel-p," Stevie mumbled, looking at the floor. "That's that. Since we never found it, I think we should focus on the fact that Victor has the TOG and we need to find out if he he's finished the elixir yet."
"TOG," Alfie asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Tears of Gold," She said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it sort of was when the others thought about it.
"I agree with Stevie." Jerome spoke up.
"Well, we can't go look now, we have to make sure Victor isn't in the cellar." Fabian stated, rubbing Nina's shoulder comfortingly as she looked down at the emptiness with a perplexed expression. "And we can't do it all at once, that's too dangerous. Who wants to go down there tonight?"
"I will," Stevie raised her hand after a second.
"So will I," Jerome said after a moment of silence.
Stevie's head snapped away from Fabian to look at the tall blonde. His back was to her as he wrapped his arms around Mara's shoulders from behind and held her to his chest. Stevie's blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. Why did he want to go down there? Didn't he want to know why she wanted to go? Taking a deep breath, she turned away from the back of his head and looked at Nina. Her fellow American was still staring at the stone box.
"Um, can I go down too?" Patricia asked.
"Sure, Patricia; you three will go down there tonight. Nina and I will work on translating the hieroglyphics from the journal. Amber and Alfie can take care of keeping Victor distracted and away from the cellar. Joy, Eddie, do you guys want to help out with the journal?"
"Um, yeah, sure," Eddie nodded, picking at the sleeve of Patricia purple sweatshirt. She batted his hands away and he pulled back before reaching for it again when she turned to the others.
"Yeah, that sounds good." Joy replied, cupping her elbow.
"Okay, let's go, come on, Nina."
Nina took a deep breath and turned around, running a hand down her face in exhaustion. She nodded and headed down the tunnel with half closed eyes.
"Or maybe you should sleep." Amber suggested.
"Yeah, I was just gonna say, you look like you're going to face plant any minute." Eddie gripped her arm so she'd stop walking.
"No, I'm fine, I just…" she yawned.
After a minute as she swayed on her feet and everyone watched her with raised eyebrows, she rubbed her eyes and nodded.
"I'll go to sleep."
"Good."
The group trekked through the tunnels and cautiously peeked out of the bottom of the book case. When they didn't hear or see anyone, they carefully crawled out and left the building.
"Okay, how do you guys feel about 11:30?" Patricia asked.
"Sounds good," Jerome confirmed and Stevie nodded beside him.
"Alright, we'll meet in the kitchen and Nina can leave the secret passage way open for us. Then, we'll go down there when Alfie and Amber let us know that the coast is clear. We won't have a lot of time to do it though."
The other two nodded and left the room.
Stevie's phone buzzed in her back pocket and she unlocked it, reading over the text she got. Her heart skipped a beat. What's that about? An unknown number and it's wasn't Rufus', but someone else's. She swallowed and slipped out of the house, following the text's instructions. She didn't have a really uneasy feeling like she usually did about these sort of things, but she didn't find this a good thing. She was still going to go though.
Meet me at the school.
That's all it had said. Why did someone want to meet her anyway? Rufus would have wanted it to be at that clearing, and he didn't want her to talk to him until she had information on the elixir. Then a thought hit her as she jogged up the steps to the front door of the school. The teachers, they wanted to talk to her, or something else. But it was too late; she was already in the school.
She rounded the corner and cautiously made her way down the hallway. She spun around, curly hair whipping around behind her, as a door somewhere in the building. She crept closer to the end of the hall and was suddenly pulled into a nook that led nowhere. She opened her mouth to scream but a strong hand was clamped over it and she was pushed up against the wall. She strained her blue eyes to see the person that held her captive in the dark school but the corner was just shadow.
Stevie's eyes widened when Victor walked past her and the man that held her tightly, pressing her between the wall and him. Then, it hit her; she knew who this person was. And then, she did the stupidest thing she could have done; she huffed a relieved breath out of her nose. For someone so old, Victor's hearing must have been pretty darn good, because he froze and looked around, his permanent scowl plastered on his wrinkly face.
His eyes narrowed as he turned to the nook she was shoved into. Before he could peer farther into the darkness she was hidden in, someone whispered his name and he forgot his task with one last glance at the corner. He trudged down the hallway, a door slamming shut a second later, and the hand over her mouth was warily removed.
"What the heck is wrong with you, Charles Cooper?" Stevie growled in a frantic whisper, pushing him away from her.
"I wanted to talk to you." he defended himself, holding his hands up in a way of saying that he'd surrendered.
"Well, I have to go pee now, thanks to you." she rolled her eyes and tiptoed out of the nook, scurrying to the girl's bathroom. "Thank you, Trix." She whispered and pried the tile with the blue flower off the wall, peeking into the hole that allowed her to see into Mr. Sweet's office.
"How far are you into perfecting and finishing the elixir, Victor?" Eric asked, hands clasped in front of him as he sat at his desk.
"Not far; I've been putting all of my effort into finishing it. It should be done in a matter of days." Victor replied. He stayed standing, arms at his side.
Stevie's eyes widened.
"Good, good," Eric nodded and then looked up at the man with a raised eyebrow. "What do you know about the Osirian?"
"Why would you ask such a question, Eric?"
"I'm just curious as to what the Osirian's purpose is and of his powers. When he should receive them, what happens when he does? Just out of curiosity, Victor," He assured his friend.
"I'll repeat my question, Eric; why would you ask such a question?" he sneered.
Stevie saw Eric swallow. "No reason."
"I would like to know."
"I don't have an answer for your question, Victor. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to my work."
Victor's eyes narrowed suspiciously and he left a minute later, reluctantly. Eric blew out a breath of relief and wiped his face with his hand-dandy handkerchief from his coat pocket.
Stevie replaced the tiled and leaned back on the counter, brain swirling with thoughts of what had just gone down with Vic and Sweety.
"You alright?"
"Charlie, this is the girls' bathroom, get out of here, you creep." Stevie rolled her eyes.
"Stevie, what's going on?" he asked, ignoring what she said and advanced toward her.
"I don't know what you mean…" she drifted off, eyebrow arching.
"What's going on at this school? You were at the library, looking for a book, and when you leave, you disappear and I don't see you for the day. Then, when Nina and Eddie and the others went to the library, and when I followed them into the building, they weren't there. There's no backdoor or other exit in that building. Unless, they went through a window, but all of them were locked. No one was there, even after I watched them go in there."
"You sure you didn't just dream it all up?" she shrugged as if it was nothing, but really, it was definitely something. It was a major problem if she couldn't get her own boyfriend off her back, as well as Sibuna's. They were lucky he didn't see the secret passageway.
"Yes, I am positive, I couldn't have. It doesn't make any sense. How could they have done that?"
"Alfie's been working on his magic tricks."
"Alfie can't make a pebble disappear, much less nine teenagers."
"I don't know okay, why don't you ask them? The people that disappeared," Stevie raised both eyebrows at him, hands clenching into fists by her sides.
"Because you hang out with them, and I thought you might know something about this. Maybe, you're a part of it?"
Stevie watched him blankly for a second before brushing past him and walking to the door.
"Stevie, I want answers." He gripped her elbow and pulled her around to look at him.
"Charlie, I don't have answers." She retorted.
"But—"
"Do you not trust me? Because you're acting like you don't. I don't have anything to do with the disappearance of our friends. Why don't you ask them? They've got to have all the answers." She jerked away from him and stalked out of the bathroom.
"Stevie…" he sighed and ran a hand through his black hair in frustration.
As Stevie left the building, ignoring the Idiot that was most likely following her, she texted Patricia and Jerome quickly, telling them to go ahead without her and then texted Rufus, instructing him to meet her at the clearing where she'd give him her information.
"Okay, I've translated some of these hieroglyphics, right here." Fabian mumbled, jotting down a few words he found among the symbols in his notebook.
He, Joy, Eddie and Mara were seated around the boys' room, each trying to decode the hieroglyphics from the journal. Nina was in her room. That was why Mara was there and not Nina.
"What do they say?" Joy asked, looking up from a hieroglyphic translation book.
"Well, Robert just documented what he and the rest of the expedition team found on their trip. According to this page, which is the only one I've translated so far; they found the cup and the mask within the first two treasure chambers. The crown, apparently does exist, Robert claims that it hadn't been with the mummy though. It was in a completely different room—"
"But in Nina and Eddie's dream the mummy had a crown." Mara said, turning to Eddie.
"Yeah, that makes no sense. Nina and I both saw it. It was tall and white and red."
"Right, the Double Crown was a combination of the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the White Crown of Upper Egypt. It symbolized the joining of the two lands, and the pharaoh's control over the two lands. That one exists, but it isn't the one Robert describes in his journal."
"What does it describe?" Eddie asked.
"A woman's."
"Should we go without her, though? She was the first to volunteer." Patricia pointed out, looking down at the text again.
"She said she and Charlie are going to the movies, whatever. She wants to hang with her boyfriend, let's just go already, yeah?" Jerome sighed, leaning back into the couch and shutting his eyes.
Patricia shot him a glare and turned back to her phone. It didn't make any sense to her. Stevie and she were a lot alike, though she didn't like to admit it, and since Patricia wouldn't blow off mystery solving for a movie with her boyfriend, then Stevie wouldn't either. It just didn't click in Patricia's mind. Stevie wasn't the type to like going to the movies. She'd rather wait until the movie comes out on DVD, eat her own movie theater food (which consisted of pizza, Chinese food and ice cream, the flavor changing ever movie.) and make fun of the movie to her hearts content without anyone to shush her. Why was she going now? Stevie also wasn't the type to let anyone, especially a male, to tell her what to do, and then follow the orders. Only one person could make her do anything and that was—
"Rufus," Patricia exclaimed, jumping out of her thoughts.
Jerome jumped, nearly falling off the sofa, and his eyes shot open, darting around frantically.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you, but what if Stevie isn't with Charlie, but with—" she stopped when Mick popped into the room.
"Have either of you seen Joy?"
"I think she's in your room." she replied.
"Oh, okay…" the jock left the room and Patricia resumed her explanation.
"What if Stevie's with Rufus?"
"Okay, now you're just being paranoid." Jerome rolled his blue eyes, finally calming his heart beat.
"But, think about it, why would she pass up the opportunity to snoop through Victor's things and go to the movies with Charlie Cooper. Even though they're dating, Stevie still thinks of him as a total skunkbag and an idiot."
"What's a skunkbag?"
"I have no idea, Stevie called him that, it's some American thing."
"Americans." Jerome scoffed and rolled his eyes.
"I know right? Anyway, maybe she's not even with Charlie."
"I don't know, Patricia, people can change and maybe Stevie wanted to go out with her boyfriend. Like I said, you're just being paranoid."
"No, I am not—"
"You guys seen Stevie?"
Jerome and Patricia turned to look at Charlie and the auburn haired girl's head flew back in surprise and Jerome's eyes widened a fraction.
The two shook their heads silently and he groaned, leaving the room, running his hands through his hair.
"Okay, maybe they're gonna meet each other there?" Jerome suggested lamely.
Patricia shot him a look. "Oh, come on, Slimeball! Stevie is in cahoots with Rufus! Admit it, I'm right!"
"Okay, first, never say cahoots again. Second, let's say you are right, I'm not saying you are, mind you," he said warningly and then continued, "if she is, why is she doing it? I told her that I could handle it and she goes behind our backs, betrays us, and Sibuna, and gives all this information away?"
"We did that." Patricia reminded him, stomach twisting painfully at the thought of betraying her best friends.
"Yeah, to protect our friends," Jerome retorted. "Maybe, she's trying to protect us. You, me, Eddie, Joy—everyone she's even remotely friends with. Maybe even Charlie. Who knows? We aren't thinking this through. We're jumping to conclusions and accusing her of something she probably isn't even doing."
"Say she is though, what then?"
"Then we confront her."
Patricia groaned, slouching into the back of the armchair she was seated in. She hated getting into debates with Jerome. He always got the last word. And Patricia had never seen him lose a debate either. He should be on the debate team at school.
"You should be on the debate team." She grumbled.
"Not a chance, Williamson." Jerome chuckled. His phone pinged and he reached into his pocket, took it out, unlocking it and read the text he'd gotten. "Victor's not here, according to Alfie and Amber, he left a half an hour ago and still isn't back. Let's go, this could be our only chance."
Patricia nodded and they moved from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen quickly. Jerome crouched next to the old stone 'oven' and pushed on it. It rose from its closed position and Jerome smiled, silently thanking Nina for unlocking the passage way. He motioned for Patricia to go first and she arched an eyebrow at him in return. He rolled his eyes, a habit he'd picked up whenever he was around the punk, and crawled into the small space, descending into the darkness.
You gotta love Patrome friendship! What'd you think of the recent turn of events, y'all? REVIEW? Vote the poll?
What would guys like to see happen in the story? Any ideas/suggestions?
I'll update soon (if I get reviews!)!
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. -1 John 4:4
God bless!
-Rachel