Better Off Undead Page 6

  “Nothing.’’ Ashley wasn’t just saying that to be polite. The little dab of drool at the corner of her mouth testified to her sincerity.

  “And yet, would you believe that it has now been over four thousand years since the skilled professionals of the Beautiful House removed my brains through my nose and fed them to the sacred cats?’’

  Ashley let out a yelp and ran out of the living room.

  Chet smacked his palm with a fist. “Curse it, I moved too fast again! I was sure I had her, and then I had to go and say the bit about feeding brains to cats. May the dark god Set be my witness, compared to some of the stuff these people plop into their cats’ feeding bowls, brains are a step up. A whole flight of steps! When will I learn?’’ His scowl deepened and he muttered, “It had better be soon. I’m running out of time.’’

  “Chet?’’ Ashley’s timid voice sounded from just beyond the doorway. She edged back into the living room. “I think I’ve changed my mind. I’m not interested in becoming a mummy any more. Ever. Please don’t take it personally. It’s just . . . just . . .’’ She scanned the air for a cue card that wasn’t there. “It’s just that I’m not worthy of that sort of eternal life.’’ She sounded relieved.

  Chet shrugged. “The customer is always right,’’ he said, apparently untroubled at the abrupt loss of a potential client. “It’s quite true: eternal beauty and fame isn’t for everyone.’’ He popped his promotional disc out of the DVD player and headed for the front door.

  Her hand closed on his shoulder before he’d gone three steps. “I said eternal life. What did you say?’’

  “I said beauty, Ms. Cyprien.’’ It was all he could do to suppress the urge to smirk in triumph when he turned to reply. In his boyhood days he’d been one of the best anglers on the Nile, as many an unwitting perch had found out just one tug of the hook too late. It was always simply a matter of using the proper bait. “Eternal beauty and—for those whose chosen careers are enhanced by such things—the fame that logically accompanies imperishable loveliness.’’ He caught sight of her perplexed expression and simplified his pitch. “Mummification has always been about preserving the body. When that body is supremely beautiful—as yours is, if you don’t mind my saying so—our process freezes that beauty in time. It will not fade. It cannot. Ms. Cyprien, once you agree to undergo the transformation, you will always be as young and exquisite as you are now.’’ He took a step closer, lowered his voice to a seductive purr and breathed in her ear: “Always.’’

  She made a small, helpless sound. “Oh, I’m so confused! I mean, what you’re saying, what the DVD said, it all sounds so wonderful, but—’’ She looked ready to run away a second time. “—but don’t I have to be dead first?’’

  He was pleased to notice that, for all the signs of impending panic and flight, she was making no immediate move to step away from him. “We prefer the term Eternity Enhanced. And really, how dead is this?’’

  With the skill born of thousands of years of practice, he slid his arms around her and kissed her, warmly, deeply, and thoroughly. When a man has walked the earth for millennia, he gains a certain level of adroitness at reading the subtlest signals of amatory encouragement and waiting willingness that women sometimes send out. From the moment he’d walked into her home, he’d noted the way Ms. Cyprien looked at him. She’d been broadcasting on the Wow-You’re-Hot-Take-Me- Now Channel from the get-go. Once in his embrace, she didn’t put up even the pretense of a struggle. When he eventually tried to break the clinch, she clung to him and would not let him go.

  Finally, she collapsed against him, panting. He stroked her hair with adept fingers. “I’m sorry, Ms. Cyprien,’’ he said. “That was inappropriate. I hope you won’t report me to my superiors?’’

  She shook her head weakly and pressed her face into his chest. Her hands became talons, clutching his shoulders. “I want—I want more proof,’’ she murmured.

  “Proof?’’ he asked innocently.

  “That you’re not dead.’’ She raised her head and looked him in the eye, her face flushed and slack with lust. She began dragging him toward the open spiral stairway. She hadn’t given him a tour of her Beverly Hills home when he’d arrived, but it was fairly obvious that where there was an upper level, there were bedrooms.

  His lips twitched into a fleeting smile. “The customer is always right,’’ he repeated softly.

  Afterwards, he traced hieroglyphs on her stomach with trickles of the excellent California merlot she’d brought out halfway through their passionate encounter. “Well, now I really hope you won’t report me,’’ he said, licking wine off his fingertip.

  “What’s it worth to you?’’ she asked lightly, attempting to interest him in a romantic rematch.

  To her chagrin, he sat up and turned away from her. “What do you think it’s worth to me, Ashley?’’ he asked. His voice shook just a bit, striking exactly the right note of male vulnerability without doing a nosedive into wimphood. “Because if you guess it’s worth anything less than my life—my continued existence—you’ll be wrong.’’

  Her felt her cool fingers close on his arms but he refused to face her. “What do you mean, Chet?’’ she asked. There was genuine fear in her voice. He bit his lower lip. Really, it got harder and harder not to smile when they danced so prettily at the end of his line!

  “If I do anything—anything of which my superiors disapprove, they will . . . kill me.’’

  She nestled her chin on his shoulder and put her arms around him. “But they can’t do that! It’s not fair! This is America! You’re already dead!’’

  Steadfastly he refused to meet her gaze directly. He knew exactly how noble and long-suffering he looked in profile and he was going to use it. “I may be . . . dead, as you choose to put it, but I assure you, this is as dead as I wish to be. There are greater deaths. I have already experienced one of them, and as dreadful as it was, compared to my present condition, it’s nothing next to the even worse death I would have to endure if my superiors find any fault with me.’’

  He felt Ashley’s arms slip from around his neck as she sat back on the bed. “Chetsy, I’m a little, you know, confused?’’ she said in a daddy’s little girl voice entirely inappropriate to her age. “I mean, I know you’re not dead dead, and that you could be, sortakinda, deader than now, but the way you’re talking, it sounds like you could actually get to be even deader than dead dead. I don’t get it.’’

  Chet pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered a prayer to Thoth, the god of wisdom, to lend him patience. “Ashley, do you want to know how I came to work for the Beautiful House?’’ he asked, giving her the slightest of glances. When he saw her nod, he went on: “You know what I am. You know when I died.’’

  “Um, a long, long time ago? Like, when Cleopatra was doing Marc Antony?’’

  “When Cleopatra reigned over Egypt, I had been in my tomb for at least two thousand years.’’

  “In your tomb?’’ Ashley’s voice shrilled with alarm. “I thought—I thought that after you got made into a mummy, you didn’t have to stay in a tomb. You’re not in a tomb now. I don’t want to go into a tomb! I hate cemeteries! I can’t wear my favorite shoes there because the high heels keep sinking into the grass.’’

  He had her in his arms again so quickly that she didn’t see him move. “Hush, my darling, hush. I promise you, this lovely body will never see the inside of a tomb. You must let me explain. You must . . . trust me. Will you do that? Can you?’’ She nodded again, and he rewarded her with a kiss, and then something more than a kiss.

  At the next intermission, he resumed his story. “Progress is a marvelous thing, beloved. It is a kind of magic, and it works its spells upon the dead as surely as upon the living. The art of the priests who prepared me for the grand voyage into eternity did everything within their power to ensure that my soul would reach its destination, the Field of Reeds, which is what we call the blessed realm where the god Osiris rules. They gave me the scripture
s of the sacred Book of the Dead to take with me on that journey, as a part of the linen strips they wound around my body and as inscriptions on the walls of my tomb and written on papyrus scrolls sealed inside clay jars near my golden sarcophagus.’’

  “Ooooh, gold?’’ Ashley’s eyes shone with a fresh love-light. Chet barely suppressed his annoyance when he noticed that it was several hundred watts brighter than any of the burning looks she’d given him. “Were you, like, a prince or something?’’

  “What I was is all in the past,’’ he replied. “I would rather not speak of that now. It is the future that concerns me, as it should also concern you, my adored one.’’

  “Then why are you telling me all this other stuff about the past if you say you don’t care about it?’’ Ashley pouted like a cranky four-year-old.

  “Ah, now it seems you wish to argue with me,’’ Chet said smoothly. “How sad. I must be boring you, or why would your divine face now be touched by—is that a wrinkle?’’ He kissed her right between the eyes with the swiftness and venom of a cobra’s strike.

  “What wrinkle?’’ she cried, distraught. “Oh God, please, not that! Do I really have a wrinkle?’’ She was pleading so pathetically that he almost felt real affection for her.

  “My mistake. It must have been a trick of the light.’’ Her touched her forehead with one fingertip. “There’s nothing there.’’

  “Honestly? You’re not just saying that?’’

  “I could never lie to you.’’

  “Well, okay. Go on.’’

  “As I was saying, when a person embarks upon the trip to Lord Osiris’ realm, he must pass through many challenges, encounter many perils, but the wisdom in the Book of the Dead provides him with all the knowledge he needs to come through every encounter successfully.’’

  “Oh! Like cheat codes for winning Super Mario Brothers!’’ Ashley beamed over her own intelligence.

  Chet sighed. “Sure, why not. Although I doubt Mario and Luigi ever had to confront the Devourer of Souls. She is a most fearsome beast, part lion, part crocodile, and part hippopotamus, and she—are you laughing?’’

  Ashley looked guilty even while stifling more giggles. “Hippos are funny.’’

  “You might change your mind about that if you ever saw the size of their teeth at close range,’’ Chet remarked. “However, the Devourer’s teeth belong to her crocodilian aspect. They are more than sufficient for rending unlucky souls into utter oblivion.’’

  “Oh! That’s awful.’’ Ashley shivered. “Why doesn’t someone stop her? Can’t that Irish guy do it?’’

  Chet’s thin brows drew together. He didn’t need to ask What Irish guy? He was already all too familiar with the way Ashley’s mind worked. “O-S-I-R-I-S, darling, not O-apostrophe-Cyrus. He is the ever-living god of the dead and the first to be mummified. His wife and queen, Lady Isis, did it to restore him to life after his evil brother Set slaughtered him, tore him to pieces, scattered his bloody remains across the lands and the waters, fed his manly parts to a fish, and—’’

  “Are you making this up as you go along or are you just trying to convince me there are worse things than the whole brains-through-the-nose bit?’’ Ashley demanded.

  “Love, what I tell you is as true as the final judgment that awaits each soul who comes into Lord Osiris’ presence in the Hall of Two Truths. For it is there that a man’s heart is placed in the Scales of Thoth, to be weighed against the Feather of Ma’at, goddess of Truth. The heart that is blameless is light as that Feather, but the heart heavy with sin can’t survive the test and is thrown into the waiting jaws of the Devourer. Now do you see why I prefer to stay on this side of the final journey and judgment?’’

  “Wouldn’t you pass the test?’’ Ashley asked fearfully.

  Chet shrugged. “Who can say? Can any of us know what will displease the gods, what they will consider a sin? The matter is no longer in my hands. You see, my love, the soul’s journey may be brief or lengthy. Time in this world and time in Osiris’ realm are not the same. My final fate had not been declared when I found myself brought out of the slumber of ages, my self and my body reunited by heartless beings. They used the spells of a powerful magician who had discovered the secret for making one’s existence as a mummy—’’ He spread his hands wide. “—what you see before you now.’’

  Ashley’s eyed opened wide. “I do!’’ she exclaimed. “I do see! I understand everything now. They must be the ones you work for, your superiors, the Beautiful House guys! Oh, you poor baby, if they make you do bad things, those mean old gods might not forgive you even if it wasn’t your fault at all! I mean, you didn’t ask to be born. Reborn. Whatever.’’ She flung herself upon him, a veritable tidal wave of compassion. “Such a good heart,’’ Chet murmured, smiling. “So loving, so tender. If only it could be mine for all eternity.’’

  Abruptly she pushed herself to arm’s length away from him. “Oh. Em. Gee.’’

  “Oh? Er? What?’’

  “I’ll do it,’’ Ashley said. She struck the same resolute pose she’d been laboriously coached into for her role as Mimsy Gillifoil, the blind amnesiac nurse in The Heart Forgets What It Wants. “I’ll have the procedure. I’ll go to the Beautiful House, I’ll become a mummy, and then I can become the most famous actress ever, forever, and I’ll earn so much money that maybe I can buy off your bosses and you can be free again and we can get married and be happy and—’’

  He silenced her with a kiss. “My heroine,’’ he said fondly. There was a flickering in the air, the rapid movement of his hands as a pen and a stack of legal-looking papers whisked onto the bed between them. “Sign here.’’

  While she inked the contract, Ashley said, “Wow. You are so fast with your hands. I mean, not in the bad way. Which isn’t really so bad either.’’ She giggled. “Oh, you know what I mean. It was like you made this contract appear out of thin air. How did you do that?’’

  “Simple.’’ He took back the signed papers. “I’m a magician.’’ She was in the middle of making an extraordinarily lame joke about his magic wand when he stilled her lips yet again, in self-defense.

  The waiting room of the Beautiful House was decorated in a style Chet thought of a haut Eurotrash, a palette of gray, black, and scarlet with chrome accents and furniture that oozed irony and ennui. This was no mean trick for a sofa to pull off, but the Beautiful House specialized in the impossible. Where else could a dead man sit thumbing through a copy of Vogue while studiously avoiding eye-contact with a very irked goddess?

  Chet was faking fascination in a glossy ad about overpriced wristwatches when the goddess finally lost her patience. “Oh, drop it, you worm!’’ she snapped. “You’re not fooling anyone. We both know what you want to do.’’

  Chet slowly shut the magazine and settled it in his lap. “Why, Ma’at, my dear, I can’t begin to imagine what you mean.’’

  “Don’t lie to me!’’ the goddess of Truth roared. She leaped to her gold-sandaled feet, divine wrath rendering her dark beauty almost incandescent.

  “I never do,’’ Chet said calmly. “The truth is that I can’t begin to imagine what you mean because I’ve already done so. Indeed, we both do know what I want to do, so I’ll do it.’’ With that, he tilted his head back and let loose a loud, gloating laugh. Then he raised his right forefinger and thrust it at the goddess’ face. “One more, O divine Ma’at! That’s all I need to fulfill our bargain, and then there is nothing you nor any of the gods can do to force me to face judgment in the Hall of Two Truths!’’

  The goddess gritted her teeth. “If I hadn’t witnessed it, I would never have believed it. Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine hearts! Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine souls! Ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine women without the brains that Bast gave a kitten!’’ Her furious gaze drifted toward the door leading to the treatment rooms of the Beautiful House. “When are you going to tell this one?’’ she asked.

  “No hurry.’�
� One corner of Chet’s mouth lifted in a wry smile. “It’s funny, but I rather like her. Too bad we didn’t meet after I’d met my goal. We might have had a real future together. I could have spared her, but I needed her too much. You women do have such a strange hunger to be needed. I suppose that’s what makes you such tender-hearted things.’’

  The goddess slapped the smirk from his face in two thunderous claps, forehand and backhand. “I curse the day your deceitful soul entered the Hall of Two Truths, Magician!’’ she shouted. “I condemn it to the oblivion that awaits you when the Devourer of Souls finally feasts on your wicked heart!’’

  “You’re just angry because I put one over on you,’’ Chet said, touching his smarting cheeks gingerly. “It’s not every day that a mortal manages to be quick enough to snatch Ma’at’s sacred Feather right out of the Scales of Thoth and replace it with a sorcerously crafted one guaranteed to balance against the most sin-laden heart in all Egypt.’’ He placed one hand on his bosom, bowed his head in a show of false modesty, and added: “Mine.’’

  “Gloating bastard,’’ Ma’at snarled. “Foul mage. When you felt your death approaching, you used your powers to enslave the minds of the funerary priests so that they wrapped that blasphemously created plume in your burial linens! And because you were able to switch the two feathers, Lord Osiris ruled that for my inattention to duty, I must bargain with such scum as you to retrieve my own! The stench of that humiliation still clings to me. Deceiver! Betrayer!’’ Then she added the worst insult she knew: “Liar!’’

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. If you keep misusing that word, you’re going to embarrass yourself. Have you forgotten, my lady? I touched your Feather: I cannot lie any more, lest the bargain be annulled. You were there when Lady Isis herself made that pronouncement.’’ His eyes narrowed in a sly look. “Or is that the worst humiliation of all, O Goddess? That I have been able to convince so many women to give me their hearts using only the truth?’’