Only one person I talked to figured it out, and that was with a bit of prodding. Will be interested to know if you guys saw this chapter's twist coming. Tell me what you thought :)
12: Beautiful Silence
Imhotep sat back in his chair, sighing. The Book lay on the desk in front of him, sharp corners gleaming, ancient letters beckoning to be read. Imhotep stared at the phone next to it, willing the damn thing to ring. He'd sent Izzy to fetch Rick almost twenty-four hours ago. The priest hadn't given Izzy any details--oh, no, he could just imagine how that would turn out--he'd just told him to get Rick here as soon as possible. "Tell him," he'd said, "that everything is okay. He just has to trust me."
Now, though, Imhotep was getting worried. Maybe Izzy had had trouble convincing Rick to come back. Maybe he hadn't been able to find him; maybe Rick had disappeared... Maybe he was dead. Wouldn't that be poetic justice! Imhotep's perfect, foolproof plan, reuniting the lovers not in life, but in death.
Maybe he should just go get Evelyn now, without waiting for Rick. Then where would she go? Evelyn couldn't get out the city without her husband's underground knowledge, even when she was supposedly dead. No one else could know, obviously. Besides, Imhotep wasn't sure he could handle the ceremony alone. He was scared he'd screw it up; he wanted someone else there to watch his back. Rick should be there when she woke up. She needed him to be there.
As if answering his prayers, the door flew open as if someone had kicked it. Imhotep was too relieved to see the man alive to worry much about the gun he held in his hand. "Thank Osiris," he said, standing. "Are you okay?"
Rick's eyes narrowed, and he cocked the gun. "No," he growled. "Surprised you're looking so chipper, in fact."
"I don't know what you're planning to do with that gun, but we both know you're not going to shoot me. Why don't you put it down."
Rick shrugged, but the gun lowered a bit. "Oh, I don't know. My plans for this gun have changed a lot in the past hour."
Without asking, Imhotep knew what he meant. "What's different?"
"How could you?" Rick ignored the priest and pressed on with his own line of questioning. "How could you let her do that?"
"Just let me explain--"
"What I don't understand is how nobody's put it together by now. Any of it. It's a wonder my stepmother didn't jump on it. No way Evelyn could have obtained a poison that strong on her own."
"Just put the gun down, Rick. I know what I'm doing--"
"I wasn't even going to bother, you know," the young widower continued. "I didn't figure accusing you of anything would do any good. Nobody who knew the truth would have been left but you. But then..." He took something out of his pocket and tossed in on the desk in front of the priest, finally lowering the gun. "Something came up."
Imhotep's stomach flipped as he picked up the locket, saw the yellowed picture inside. "Anck's locket..."
"How could you let her do that? You were supposed to protect her. You were supposed to keep her safe. How could you let..." A choked sob slipped from Rick's throat, hindering his words temporarily and betraying the stone wall he'd built around his emotions. "How could you let your own daughter do that?"
Imhotep closed his eyes. "Did she know?"
Rick's gun lowered just a fraction as he wondered exactly where this confrontation was going. "No. You must have hidden it very well."
Imhotep seemed to have retreated into himself as though he were only a shell. "It wasn't easy. You'd know that. People have figured it out before. Seti found out. Not about his...daughter, but...about...."
"You and his wife?"
If it was possible, Rick could actually see the color rising in Imhotep's cheeks. "Well, yes," he stammered. "You understand..."
"And yet he didn't kill you?"
Imhotep's face was bleak, traced by deeply-worn lines of pain. "I was too high up to just get rid of based on a dalliance such as that. It would have been too scandalous; Seti wouldn't risk me going to the press. He was too aware of his own hypocrisy to punish his wife publicly. We were watched very closely for a while. He was happy as long as he thought it ended."
Rick could read the bitterness in Imhotep's voice, but also a touch of triumph, as if he'd held onto these words for so long he could no longer resist spilling out the truth. "It didn't end, did it?"
"No. Not for a moment. You understand," he repeated, softly. "Of anyone, you'd understand."
"Oh, I don't know." Rick remembered the gun in his hand, remembered his purpose in coming here. "I've just found out that the man who is actually my father-in-law killed my wife, it's a little hard to be sympathetic."
"Hey!" Imhotep seemed to come alive again, the mention of Evelyn shaking him from his stupor. "For Osiris' sake, she'll be fine!"
Rick had absolutely no idea what to say, except the obvious: "Uh...she's dead."
"Exactly!" Imhotep leapt up, the Book in his arms. "Now we're on the same page."
Rick took a minute to process the object the priest held, the wheels turning slowly, but not quite yet up to speed. "Is that..."
"Yes."
"And what do you plan to do with it?"
Imhotep paused, a silence as loud as anything Rick had ever heard. "Give you back your wife."
Stories from childhood, legends he'd heard in church, flooded Rick's mind. Imhotep couldn't mean... Those stories couldn't possibly be true, could they? Such ancient magicks, even if they did exist, were certainly not meant to be used in the literal sense...
"I'm sorry," Imhotep was saying, breaking into Rick's spinning thoughts. "It's a huge risk, but the only other option she had was to marry the weas...Parris. Trust me, Rick." Imhotep placed the locket in Rick's hand and closed the younger man's fingers tightly around it. "We're going to get her back."
Before Rick could respond, the phone rang, and Imhotep snatched it up. "Hello?" he squeaked, and not for the first time Rick noticed the strain in his voice. The priest was nervous, and showing it. Funny thing was, though, Rick did trust him...if all he said was true, if he could really have Evelyn back, if all this really did turn out to be one long living nightmare...
"Oh, shit," Imhotep muttered into the phone. "No, Chief Bey, I'm perfectly fine. No! Don't send anyone in. No. Just let me, uh... Just let me talk to him. He won't hurt me." Imhotep nodded at the gun still in Rick's hand, eyebrows raised. "I'm quite sure, Chief. Don't send anyone in, it will just...make him, uh, angrier. I'll call you back in thirty minutes." Imhotep slammed the phone down and stalked out of the room, clutching the Book. "Fantastic! Now they think you've stormed the temple and taken me hostage! What did you do..."
Imhotep's sentence trailed off as he entered the main chapel. His daughter's body lay on the altar. She looked so pale Imhotep might have sworn she was a ghost, especially against the stark black of her dress and the marble of the altar. He'd seen the body the previous morning, hovered as they took her away, insisted the mummification process be halted until they could perform a proper autopsy. That had been the trickiest part, convincing the officials to hold off. The tidier, the better, and Imhotep didn't want to have to deal with organs and such. He'd acted the part of saddened friend and priest, blessed the vault and closed the door. She was dead, though, she was really dead, and she would remain so unless he did something about it. It was entirely his doing, and she needed him. Her very life had been forfeited because she trusted him.
"I couldn't leave her there," Imhotep heard Rick say, though the sound was muted in his ears. "I couldn't leave her behind."
Imhotep cleared his throat. "I assume the guards took issue with that."
He turned and looked at his son-in-law, who looked sheepish. "Yeah, that may be why the police are a little annoyed with me right now."
The priest rolled his eyes, deciding not even to bother. They had to get to work. "We have to start, we don't have much time until Chief Bey gets impatient and decides to send people in to collect you."
"What can I do?"
The answer came crystal clear to Imhotep, and he recalled again why he was doing all this. They deserved this chance. "Be here when she wakes up. She may be disoriented at first, it's important she sees someone familiar."
Rick placed the locket around his wife's neck, back where it belonged. "The woman that you loved," Rick said, "...she's dead."
This stopped Imhotep momentarily. "Didn't we already cover this?"
"Why don't you...resurrect her?"
Imhotep scanned the pages of the Book, though he knew exactly where the pages were. "She died in a fire. Her body is not...she's.... The ritual is very specific. The body has to remain perfectly preserved. No organs could be missing, or it won't work. For instance, if you'd blown your brains out..."
"Yeah yeah, I get the idea. Poof, gone. I'll keep that in mind."
"So to resurrect Anck the ritual would require human sacrifice...and she would not want that."
Rick considered this a moment, knowing he should probably not be asking these questions, but unable to stop himself. "What about you? Would you do that? For her?"
Imhotep looked at the dead woman on the altar before him. "Wouldn't you?" Rick was given no chance to reply as Imhotep gently pushed him out of the way, changing the subject. "I'm going to start reading the passage. It's very specific; if I screw it up...who knows what could happen."
"I'll stay out of the way."
The words swam a little in front of Imhotep's eyes as he fought the panic rising in his throat. He'd reviewed these words beforehand, but as with any test of school-earned knowledge, the anxiety was still there. Languages had never been his strong suit. But the first word focused, came out of his mouth...the second word...a third, a fourth, until he was no longer even seeing the page. The rhythm and weight of the words rolled off his tongue as easily as they ever had, coming almost out of second nature...
Something began to happen as he read. It wasn't what either man was expecting, nor were they surprised to see what they did. It was simply there, shimmering and glittering in the filtered light of the chapel, imbuing life into the body of a forgotten princess, with simply a breath and a beat of her heart.
Her eyes fluttered as though she were awaking from a dream, and immediately upon opening they caught sight of her husband. She sat up without a trace of weakness and was at once enveloped in his arms. Evelyn didn't need to ask whether she had woken in heaven or on earth, for setting had no consequence as long as he was there.
Imhotep stood back, watched them. They were silent, just holding each other like they never intended to let go. He remembered that, he remembered that feeling of beautiful silence when words would not suffice for the simple feel of someone else in your arms. He'd lost that; he'd never have it back, but he'd given it back to them. At least one of the women he loved, he hadn't failed.
The tableau was shattered only an instant later. Thump, they heard against the locked entryway, thump, thump, thump. A pause, then the noise started again, and they could hear the sound of voices from beyond the door, big, heavy voices with guns and agendas, coming to tear apart what had finally been fixed.
"We'll go through the underground exit," said Rick, lifting his wife from the altar and setting her gently on the ground. "Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you?"
She shook her head no, perfectly fine physically but still struggling to speak. "I'm okay."
"This way," said Imhotep, steering them out the back entrance as the noises continued from the other side of the room, thump, thump, thump. "Evelyn, you remember where I told you to go?"
She nodded, wondering at the pain in his voice. Somehow he looked so frayed at the edges, so sad... She felt around her neck for her locket out of habit, surprised to find it there. Rick must have put it on her...
Imhotep led them down winding corridors until they'd reached the basement access. "You can make it if you stay low. There's no rush, the important thing is to get out alive, not fast."
Evelyn turned toward him one last time as she followed Rick through the doorway. "Thank you."
Imhotep cleared his throat and nodded brusquely, waving her away. "Go."
She hesitated, looking first at Rick and then back at Imhotep. Then, she hugged the priest tightly, pressing something into his hand. "Thank you," she whispered again. "Thank you."
He watched his daughter and her husband make their way down the spiraling staircase, watched them until their figures became nothing but pinpricks in an abyss. He closed the door, and looked down at the open locket in his hand.
~*~*~*~
Still an epilogue left. :):):)
