Patricia

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT. Quick question for my readers at the end of the chapter.

When Nina and Eddie had described Nepthys, I feel like they may have overplayed her. They'd mentioned dark skin, blue braids and a lot of gold jewelry, but they had neglected to mention the angry red marks on her temples that looked suspiciously like bruises, as well as the way her clothes were a bit too big for her body.

The wall had slid apart in the last room to show only darkness, and we'd immediately fought over who was going first. Eventually Amber volunteered Alfie, and he reluctantly walked through, complaining loudly about how nobody loved him.

He'd let us wait in silence for a full thirty seconds before a panicked Amber called out for him at which point he laughed and said it was payback for making him go first. Afterwards we'd all stomped into the room, some like Nina and Amber overcome with relief, some like me intent on murder, only to be greeted with a blinding flash of light just like the last room.

When it died down, this time we were all in the same room. However, we weren't alone.

It was a small, cushy room, with a soft, rose colored light cast over the plush cushions scattered around the carpeted floor. In a chair in front of us reclined an absolutely gorgeous woman that Nina addressed as Nepthys. I eyed the woman critically. If we were supposed to save her, then did this mean we were done? We'd found her and now this ordeal was over? Something told me it wasn't going to be this easy.

"You are doing so well my children." She gave us a tired smile and gestured at the cushions. "Please, sit. We have much to discuss and very little time, for soon you will awake and I will be back in my prison."

We all glanced at each other before unanimously shrugging and picking a seat.

"You have no idea how grateful I am for all you are doing for me." Nepthys looked around at us. "Especially those not touched by gods of Egypt." Nina and Eddie shifted uncomfortably but if Nepthys noticed she ignored it. "I know you have many questions, but first you must know that after tonight you will not be able to come back here for a few weeks of your time."

"Why not?" asked Joy.

Nepthys waved a limp hand in the air before dropping it back onto the armrest. "The astral planes are shifting, and the barriers are about to close. You will not be able to enter this world, just as she will not be able to pull you into it. Nor will either of us be able to appear to you."

"Who is she?" demanded Nina. "Are you talking about the woman who tortured me and Eddie?"

The woman nodded gravely. "It is she who holds me prisoner. She who is meant to watch over the realm of dreams, but has instead abandoned her sacred post in favor of power. She who betrayed me, imprisoned me, she who means to expand her reach to the farthest corners of the earth!" As she spoke, Nepthys sat up straighter and electricity seemed to crackle throughout the room as her voice steadily grew louder.

"Who though?" pressed Nina, and Nepthys immediately whirled on her.

"We do not speak the name of the traitor!" Nepthys cried, and Fabian reached a hand to cover Nina's as she flinched. Suddenly though, the fight went out of Nepthys and she slumped back into her chair. "Apologies, Chosen One. I do no mean to yell. These past weeks have been… difficult for me, cut away from the air and my sister, and you still have ways to go."

"What is she trying to do though?" asked Amber.

Nepthys pressed her hands to her temples. "She means to destroy the barriers between the worlds, she means to expand her reach."

"Yes but — "

"Silence!" Nepthys suddenly leapt from her chair, looking terrified. "She comes! Swift as the wind, dark as the night, she knows I have reached out to you and she is coming!" As she spoke, the walls began to shake.

Nepthys dove towards to Nina and grabbed her hands. "Is the Book safe, Chosen One? The Book of the Dead is it hidden? Protected?"

Nina nodded, looking alarmed. "Yes."

"You must keep it safe, her earthly servants mean to recruit the Protector's father, they mean to steal the Book of the Dead, you must protect it!"

"I will," Nina insisted.

The room started shaking even harder and Nepthys glanced towards the ceiling. "She is nearly here! Quickly, you must awaken! Now go!"

Nepthys waved her hands in some sort of motion and∞

∞I jerked upright, my eyes flying open, breathing hard. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw that Joy was also awake and looking just as out of breath.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded.

Joy shrugged, wiped some sweat off her forehead and promptly flopped back down onto the pillows.

I frowned as I lay back down. Sure Joy was tired, but normally she'd at least want to discuss what had happened. Maybe it was because Mara was asleep right next to us and Joy didn't want to wake her?

But no, I realized suddenly. Joy had been acting strange for a while now. Snapping at me, spending most of her time either in school or alone somewhere, wanting to break into Mr. Sweet's office.

Hold on.

Wanting to break into Mr. Sweet's office.

Mr. Sweet's office had been broken into, when, the day after Joy told me she needed to get inside? I racked my brains, trying to remember if he'd said what had been taken, but I didn't think Mr. Sweet had ever given it a name.

A chill ran over me. Joy didn't take risks like that, and I certainly doubted Mr. Sweet would be acting the way he was for a single student's attendance record. Joy had only said she needed to adjust the records anyway, not take them.

What had she done?

I glanced at my alarm clock and groaned when I saw I still had an hour left before my alarm was due to go off. Sleep was no use now, not when I was berating myself for having not realized it was Joy sooner than this. What was so important that she'd break into Sweetie's office, alone, risking serious punishment? Not her attendance record, that was for sure.

I lay awake in bed, tossing around and turning the problem over and over in my head, trying to figure it out. When the alarm finally went off my mind was exhausted, and I could already tell this was going to be an unproductive day.

"Hamlet is such an idiot."

Without looking up from his copy of the play Eddie replied, "He's the titular character of a Shakespeare play. There was a 99% chance he was either an idiot or an asshole. Given the choice I'll take the former, they're more fun to mock."

"Still," I groused. "How can they justify making us read an entire play about this guy? He knew from the beginning who killed his father, but because he didn't trust himself he had to go through this shitlong process of confirming it, getting like fifty billion other people killed as a result and eventually losing his country. Id. E. Otic."

Eddie waved a hand in my general direction. "I present to you, A Hamlet Summary, by Patricia Williamson."

"Don't try to pretend you're actually enjoying this crap," I snapped.

Eddie raised his face to mine with a pained expression. "How dare you. I happen to be a diehard Shake and Baker ever since the warm fall day of September 30, 2006, when my English teacher had the class do a live reenactment of Romeo and Juliet. I was the guy who gave Juliet the poison. Changed my life."

I rolled my eyes. "You can't stand it."

"This unit cannot be done soon enough!" I laughed as a phone near my foot started playing the Imperial March.

I picked the phone up, checked the caller ID, and reached over to hand it to Eddie. "Please tell me you didn't make your dad's ringtone Darth Vader's theme song."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Ignore it."

I frowned. "It could be important."

"I said, ignore it."

My frown deepened but I tossed the phone back onto his pillow, letting it go to voicemail. I dearly wanted to return to our conversation of moronic sixteenth century characters, but Eddie's entire posture had shifted. Before, he had been sitting on the ground at the foot of his bed, legs splayed out and leaning back against the mattress, holding his book propped up on one of his knees, with the other hand at the back of his head. Now his back was rigidly straight, his knuckles white, and his entire body had seemingly tightened up. Feeling as though there was a good chance I would deeply regret the next words out of my mouth I braced myself before asking, "Do you want to talk about it?'

"No."

Leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it al – "We don't even have to talk. You could talk, and I could… listen."

"I'm good."

"Great." There was a bit of a tight, hot feeling in my chest that I ignored, turning back to Hamlet. It was none of my business anyway, I reminded myself. The atmosphere of the room had changed though, and there was a tense, charged silence to it. I was grateful Fabian was somewhere else.

After a few minutes of an increasingly strained silence Eddie sighed. "I'm struggling to come to terms with a few things."

My chest immediately loosened. "What sort of things?"

He was still staring at his book. "The kinds of things he and his 'society' did a few years ago that I only recently found out about."

With startling clarity, I suddenly recalled a conversation Eddie and I had had over the telephone early in July. I'd told him about Victor's group and their quest for immortality, how they'd abducted Joy and nearly made me think I was going crazy. I hadn't even mentioned his father was part of it till the end.

"That is some messed up shit," he laughed. "Who the hell did Victor even convince to join him?"

"Let's see. There were seven of them. Victor, obviously. Some police officer, a nurse, Joy's dad — "

"Joy's dad?"

"Well of course Joy's dad was a part of it. How else were they going to make her disappear without raising panic if neither of the parents knew about it?"

"Fair enough. Who else?"

"Um, Joy's dad, the history and drama teacher from two years ago Mr. Winkler, Mrs. Andrews — "

"Mrs. Andrews?"

"Would you stop repeating everything I say?" I demanded.

He laughed. "Sorry, sorry. Ok who else?"

"Let me think." I counted off in my head. Mrs. Andrews made six, number seven… "Oh yeah, and your dad was a part of it also."

There was a short silence on the other end of the phone. "My dad?"

"Yeah, he was in on it from the beginning, he was the one who got Joy out of class and gave her to the others. Oh, and he also helped out Victor last year."

There was a slightly longer silence on the other end of the phone. "Hey, Nina needs something, can I call you back?"

I frowned. "What's Nina doing there?"

"What? Oh, right, um. Long story short, her gran moved into a retirement home last week so Nina's spending the rest of summer with me. I'll call you later. Bye."

I barely had time to get out my own goodbye before he hung up and I stared at the phone in bafflement. What had just happened?

Looking back on it I nearly kicked myself. How could I have been so stupid? I knew Eddie and his father had a fragile relationship, how could I have just dropped all of that on him with no warning?

"You mean those things I told you about."

He nodded, a jerk of a movement. "Yeah. To summarize, every time I look at him I have to fight back the urge to get a paternity test to make sure I'm really his kid."

I was overwhelmed with guilt. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. He and Mr. Sweet had been doing so much better at the end of last year, how could I have destroyed it like that? I tried to reason it away. His father had done some pretty horrible things, was it really so bad if I'd told Eddie about them? As his son, he had a right to know. "So what, you're just going to never talk to him again?"

He turned to me angrily. "Patricia, you were kidnapped, and he very nearly did nothing to help you."

I was taken aback. "I never told you about that."

"Yeah I'm aware. After you told me about what my dad did I had Nina fill in some of the blanks. And please," he held up a hand, "don't be mad at her. I convinced her I already knew most of it."

I bit my lip. "Eddie, look. Is your dad a saint? No. Yes, he made mistakes, but that's it." Eddie scoffed but I pressed on, unsure of why. "Look he screwed up is all, alright? Should he have done a bunch of stuff that he did? No. But you two were doing so much better, I don't want to be responsible for screwing that up."

"Responsible?" Eddie's face filled with disbelief. "Patricia, this has everything to do with my father," I nearly winced at the pure revulsion in his voice, "and his actions. You didn't do anything other than tell me the truth."

That may have been the case but I still felt horrible. The feeling lasted with me the rest of the day and into the next until I couldn't stand it anymore and cornered Joy where she was doing homework in the laundry room.

"Ok I'm not going to ask what you're doing in here but I need to talk to you."

Joy glanced at me before returning her to calculus problems. "What's up?"

I took a breath. "I think I did something terrible."

Joy closed her notebook. "You'll have to be a little more specific."

I glanced toward the doorway. "Yeah, ok, but do you think we can go somewhere else?"

Joy shrugged and leapt lightly off the washing machine, following me into our room. Mara was currently deep in discussion with Fabian over the history assignment in the living room, so we probably had a good hour or so before she came back in.

"Patricia I don't understand the problem."

My jaw dropped. "What do you mean you don't understand the problem? Eddie hates his father and it's all my fault."

"No, it's Mr. Sweet's fault. Patricia, you didn't do anything wrong."

"I shouldn't have told him. Eddie's probably never going to speak to him again."

"Again Patricia, that's Mr. Sweet's fault. Not yours."

"How are you so calm about this?" I demanded. "I destroyed their relationship."

Joy sighed. "Patricia did you kidnap me?"

"What? No."

"Did you join a secret society chasing immortality and screw over anyone who got in your way?"

"No," I said suspiciously.

"Did you lie to your kid about it?"

"I don't have a kid!"

"Exactly," Joy said, as though that cleared everything up. "You didn't do anything. Eddie was going to find out sooner or later, especially if Sweetie eventually teams up with Victor and whoever that other lady was."

I'd nearly forgotten Eddie and I had told Joy about the conversation we overheard. We'd needed an extra set of ears and figured there was no way Joy of all people would possibly tell Nina. It hadn't come to anything though. Halloween was in four days and we still had no clue what they were planning. We'd originally planned to tell them a few days ago, but the younger French classes had taken about a dozen tests lately, and Nina had been running herself ragged trying to assist the teachers in addition to keeping up with her regular schoolwork. As a result, Eddie had convinced us to wait a little while. We planned to tell the others what we knew in about two hours, during a Sibuna meeting.

Shoving my guilt aside for now, I blew out a breath and gave Joy an appraising look. "I don't suppose you ever found out what they were talking about?" She shook her head and I scowled. "Wonderful. The others will all really enjoy the extra stress we're about to dump on them."

Joy shrugged and I took the opportunity to open up another conversation, simultaneously wondering what was wrong with me. "Hey Joy."

"Yeah?"

I hesitated. "Is… is everything all right?"

If I didn't know her as well as I did I would've missed the way her hand clenched in the covers before immediately relaxing. "Course it is. What are you talking about?"

"You've been acting…" I scrounged for a word. "Odd. You never do anything anymore, you don't talk to anyone." A short laugh escaped my throat. "For God's sake Joy, you're doing your homework in the laundry room. What's happening?"

She shook her head. Too quickly. I didn't know if anyone else would've caught the look of despair that briefly flashed across her face. "Nothing. Nothing's happening."

"Joy." I made a concerted effort to make my voice sound as gentle as possible. "I just want to help."

She glanced at the ceiling and when she looked back down at me her eyes were suddenly shining. "I'm going to get in so much trouble," she whispered.

I was taken aback. Joy normally had a tighter hold on her emotions than I did, except when it came to Fabian. But I had a feeling this had nothing to do with him. "Joy, is this about you breaking into Mr. Sweet's office?"

Her face went slack. "How did you know that was me?" she breathed.

In a great display of self-control I resisted rolling my eyes. "Joy, you asked me to get Eddie to help you break into his office. The very next day, someone broke into his office. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots."

Her breathing had turned very shallow. "I'm going to get in so much trouble," she repeated, tears starting to make tracks down her face. "I didn't even want to do it, he just did it, I didn't want to but he made me and now I'm going to get in so much trouble."

"Joy," I said in alarm, but before I could continue prodding the door opened and I spun around.

Trudy poked her head in the door. "Supper time lovelies, come on down."

She smiled and I turned back to Joy only to practically reel back in shock to see that Joy's face was suspiciously dry and she was grinning at Trudy. "Coming!" Joy slid to her feet and quickly headed out the door. Trudy gestured at me and I slowly slid to my feet, still trying to comprehend what had just happened. Joy probably wouldn't get in that much trouble for breaking into Sweetie's office. A few weeks detention at most. Nothing worth getting terrified over. And who was this 'he' that had made her do it anyway?

When I reached the table Joy was making determined conversation with Jerome and so I sat at the end of the table between Eddie and Nina. Eddie grinned at me, having apparently not lost any sleep over yesterday's conversation, and promptly engaged me in a discussion of the bands 'Killers' versus 'Skillet'.

Once everyone had finished, we all gave each other looks and one or two at a time, all the Sibuna members headed up to Nina and Amber's room. A couple minutes after Alfie and Amber went up, Eddie and I, careful to keep talking lest Victor get suspicious, followed them.

Upon getting there we sat down next to Alfie, Amber, Fabian and Nina, all of us seeming to lose some tension in our muscles when Joy walked in without Victor right behind her. It had been a lot easier to sneak around when it was just four of us.

Nina, ever paranoid, did a quick check that no one had been getting sucked back into their dreams in the week since our last visit, seeming immensely relieved when all of our answers were unequivocal 'no's'. "Ok, now that that's out of the way, Eddie, you said you had something to tell us?"

She and the others turned expectantly towards Eddie who sat up. "A couple weeks ago, Patricia and I overheard a conversation between Victor, Mr. Sweet, and some other woman we didn't recognize. We've tried to find out more, but all we know is that they're planning something big for Halloween. We don't know what it is, just that they wanted Mr. Sweet's help with it."

"Also Victor seemed pretty stressed," I added. "So we're betting whatever it is it's important."

Nina had gone very still. "You've known about this for over a week now?" Eddie nodded, suddenly looking slightly terrified. "And you're just now telling us this? Now when Halloween is four days away?!"

"Erm, Nina?" Fabian placed a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder and her glare became slightly less furious. "Maybe ask why?"

Nina huffed before plastering on a tight smile. "Ok. Fine. Eddie. Patricia. What demonic presence possessed the two of you to make you think this was in any universe a good idea?"

Fabian muttered that wasn't what he meant while Eddie held out his hands in supplication. "Nina. Come on. Have you looked in a mirror lately? Even without the tasks, you've still been stretching yourself pretty thin. We didn't want to add to the stress."

The scowl on Nina's face downgraded into a dissatisfied frown, and Eddie relaxed. I smirked. "You don't know anything else?" Fabian pressed.

Eddie opened his mouth but Amber cut him off. "Well it's obvious isn't it?"

We all turned to Amber in surprise. When she didn't elaborate Alfie gave her a gentle prompting. "What's obvious Ambs?"

Amber tossed her hair over her shoulder. "They're planning to steal the Book. There's that big Halloween party for the whole school, and as of Wednesday it's mandatory remember? Plus there's a bag search at the door to make sure we're not bringing anything we're not supposed to. Victor will have the house to himself and be able to search the place once we leave it, and thanks to Sweetie the teachers probably have orders to confiscate the Book if they find it. Damned if we do, damned if we don't."

We all stared at Amber until she grew impatient. "Oh come on people. Like I said. It's obvious."

"Amber," said Nina, "You are a — "

"Genius," the blonde smiled. "Yes. I know. But let's move onto the important things shall we? Like how we're going to hide the Book?"

For the next half an hour we tossed around ideas. Alfie was in favor of someone faking an illness and staying home with the Book under their bed. Fabian didn't like having just one person watching over it though, and it would be too much to hope that Victor wouldn't be suspicious if two of us suddenly came down with a mysterious illness.

It was Joy who came up with the solution. "What if we hid it there before the dance started?"

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "The party is in the auditorium. We can volunteer to help set up, and then on Halloween one of us can bring it to school with us and we hide it in the gym before we head back to our house to change. That way Victor won't find it in the house, and the teachers won't find it if they search us. And since the teachers only care what we bring into the dance, not out, we can just take it back to the house with us after."

"Brilliant," said Fabian, sounding impressed. "But who's going to hide it?"

Joy shrugged again. "I can do it."

I could almost feel the room hold its breath for the barest of seconds. "Ok, sounds like a plan," said Nina. I exhaled, grateful she hadn't challenged Joy. Not today. I was honestly impressed how well Joy was managing to keep it together, given how close she had been earlier to falling apart, but I didn't want to test her.

We sketched out a rough version of the plan before agreeing to fine-tune it tomorrow and heading off to our respective bedrooms.

I tried to get Joy alone at least five different times before bed, but she seemed to be making a concentrated effort to avoid being alone with me. Case in point, it was another two days before I managed to sneak up behind Joy while she was changing out her textbooks at her locker.

"You've been avoiding me," I accused.

Joy shut her locker and briefly leaned her head against it before turning to face me. "No I haven't."

"Joy," I deadpanned.

"Patricia," she mocked and I bit back a smile.

"Look, if you don't want to tell me what's going on, or who forced you to break into Sweetie's office, or even why you broke in, then that's fine. I just want to make sure you know that if you ever do want to talk, whenever you're ready, I'm ready to listen." I held my breath, hoping and praying I hadn't just made everything infinitely worse. Joy threw her arms around me and I stepped back in surprise before hugging her back. She quickly drew away though.

"If I come to anyone, you'll be first," she smiled. Joy hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder before heading over to history and I was about to follow after her before Eddie stepped into the spot where Joy had just been standing.

"What's up Yacker?" He grinned at me, leaning down to steal a quick kiss. I let him. He swung an arm around my shoulders, causing me to wonder how it was possible for me to be so calm, yet have my pulse be going so fast at the same time, and we started to walk to class.

"Nothing much. What's up with you?"

Eddie smirked. "Glad you asked. I have had an epiphany."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh really?" Eddie nodded sagely. "Dare I ask what it was about?"

"Well, you see, it was a fascinating moment. There I was, sitting in drama, ignoring the teacher and minding my own business, when all of a sudden I was struck with a vision!"

He paused and I rolled my eyes. "I can already tell I'm going to regret asking this, but tell me Eddie. What did you see?"

His smirk widened. "Why I saw you and me of course. Together. At the Halloween party." Pause. "In matching costumes."

"No."

He pouted. "Oh come on!"

"Absolutely not."

"You haven't even heard my idea for the costumes yet!"

"You can go in a garbage bag for all I care, I'm not wearing one of those cheesy couples costumes."

"Pleassse?"

"Forget it."

"Patriciaaaa!"

"Never. Going. To happen."

Eddie was relentless. He kept at it all throughout history and French, whenever the teachers' backs were turned, and once we got back to Anubis he even roped Amber into it.

At half past eight they were both standing at the foot of my bed while I did my best to ignore the non-stop pleases, and I finally agreed just to shut them up.

"Oh my god!" I interrupted. "That's enough. Let me first just say that I hate you. Both of you. And second, we can go matching, but I get to pick the costumes."

Eddie and Amber high fived as I hid a smirk. He had no idea what I was planning.

About the IMPORTANT thing. If any of my UK readers could message me, I have a couple questions about the country/school system. Also since I'm in America and sucky at research, I'd really appreciate if you could message me and help me out since I don't want to get it wrong. I promise not to be spoilery!

AN: Well me oh my, what on earth could be happening to poor little Joy? *laughs evilly*. You'll find out soon enough! Also, can I just say how goddamn excited I am for this next chapter?

SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

I know I normally tell chapters in one POV per chapter, but for the next chapter it's going to be titled Halloween, and it's going to be two (or three? Depends on how it breaks down) parts, each chapter told in multiple POVs. It will switch back and forth between multiple POVs at the drop of a hat, but fret not: I will identify who is narrating each time it switches.

I have been looking forward to this chapter since I started writing this story, and have honed it to near perfection. At least that's my opinion. I'm excited to finally put it to paper and hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've loved imagining it. Although I should probably warn you, one of my favorite things to do is cause my characters immense pain and suffering. So that should probably tell you something about what you have to look forward to.

Favorite, follow and review please. Let me know whose POVs you'd like to see.