Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (13 page)

I took off my shoes and unzipped my jacket, shivering when cold air touched my exposed stomach. Discarding the jacket, I swiped a T-shirt off the floor and pulled it over the torn tank top, frowning. I had really liked that tank.

With a series of gentle tugs, I wriggled the pillow from my brother’s hold and slid under the blankets to cuddle up with him. The room might be cold, but he was warm like a little radiator. He hadn’t even stirred.

Good thing you sleep like a rock, Chazzy
. I closed my eyes and yawned. It felt as if I had just fallen sleep when I became aware of being jostled.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Chazz sang, shaking me. “Time for school.”

“Stop,” I complained, swatting blindly at his hands. I couldn’t peel my eyelids apart.
It can’t be six fifteen yet.

“Mommy said to get up.” He yanked the covers back.

“Knock it off!” I groped for the blankets.

Chazz pulled them completely off my bed and ran.

“You’d better run!” I yelled after him, curling into a cold, coverless ball. A few seconds later, I gave up and threw myself out of bed. There’s a reason my family calls me Sunshine in the morning.

~~~

Everyone was in the kitchen, including Ben. He, Dad, and Nate sat at the table, reading an article on Dad’s laptop. Chazz, who sat on Dad’s lap, glanced at me briefly as I entered the room, then looked back at the screen as he pretended to read along.

“Done,” Ben said. Stretching, he noticed me standing at the island, about to pour Cheerios into a bowl. A huge grin stretched across his face. Only one thing would make a passionate conspiracy theorist and believer of all things mythical this happy. I had made the headlines.

“Cassy girl, weren’t you just at the Denny?” Ben’s amber eyes sparkled.

I willed my face into a mask of innocence. “Yeah, why?”

“The curse—it’s aliiiiiiive!” Nate threw his head back, laughing maniacally like Dr. Frankenstein.

“Well,
something
is alive,” Dad said, frowning at what I assumed to be an article about an ancient mummy on the loose. I wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment.

“What’s going on?” I asked grudgingly. Deceiving my family was really getting old.

“A miracle!” Ben answered. He urged Dad, “Go back to the video. Wait till you see this, Cassy girl.”

I moved to where I could see the laptop screen and avoided looking at Mom, who was preparing sack lunches at the counter. I especially hated lying to her.

With my arms crossed, I waited for the video of the museum’s security footage to load with a mixture of excitement and dread. This would be the first time I saw myself in action.

“Yay!” Chazz clapped his hands when the video started to roll. He tossed me a smile.

I smiled back, crossing my fingers that none of the mummy’s red hair had gotten loose.

A slender mummy with a bullet-torn midsection came onto the screen. Luckily, the black-and-white image was grainy and hard to make out. Not that there was anything to make out. Cool as a cucumber, Mr. Phillips robotically dropped the Glock and yanked the Saiga 12 to his eye, aiming steadily at me. Behind him, Moreau collapsed to his knees.

“Whoa!” Ben hollered. “Will you look at that?”

I cut my eyes back to the mummy, but I was no longer in the frame. Camera frames shifted to a white blur in the next exhibit and debris flying in my wake from bullets as they struck the walls. The video ended. I wondered if this was only the footage released to the public, or if this was all that had recorded. Emery did say camera connections had been lost.

“Is this all?” I asked, thinking about the hooded figure. Today, I questioned whether he had been real. Considering how traumatized I was, could I have cooked him up?

“That’s all that’s posted from
inside
the museum,” Ben said, flying high. “But check this out. Drake, click the second tab—Nate, dude, you haven’t seen this yet, either. Some guy caught this on his cell. The comments on YouTube say he started recording when the alarms went off in the Denny. He didn’t expect to have his mind totally blown.”

I frowned. I hadn’t noticed anyone on the street when I jumped through the window. In fact, I hadn’t thought of it until that very moment. The broken glass could have injured an innocent bystander.
You have to think, Cassidy
, I chided myself as we waited for the video to load.
You could have killed someone.

The wobbly view of a quiet Fifth Avenue, lit by streetlights, came on. The man filming the scene obviously didn’t have a steady hand. There were only a couple of cars on the street, which appeared to have slowed down while the drivers gawked at the museum, trying to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, there was an explosion of glass from the left, and a white figure with outstretched arms, straight legs, and pointed toes appeared in the air. The cars jerked to a halt. Incredibly, the man didn’t drop his phone. How shocked he must have been!

“Holy crap!” Nate shouted.

Pride welled up in my chest. I looked so graceful—sleek, tough, and powerful, like an action heroine in a movie.

“Badass,” Nate breathed as I landed in a crouch, shards of glass striking the cement around me.

I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

“I can’t fathom this,” Mom said, leaning over Dad’s shoulder and squinting at the laptop, as if squinting would help make sense of what didn’t make sense.

On the screen, I shot off in a white streak. My smile grew. I was badass.

“Do you think it’s some kind of special effect?” Mom asked.

Staring at the laptop, Dad rubbed his chin. “I don’t know what this is, Lizzy.”

“It’s as plain as day,” Ben said, beaming. “It’s an honest-to-goodness miracle—a mummy from ancient Egypt. I talked to Leroy on my way over. He’s already all over this.”

Leroy Rays had been the host of a big-game hunting show. After a run-in with a certain Sasquatch, he’d become the host of a new cable show called
Monster Hunters
.

Yet another person I’ve led astray
, I thought, discreetly observing Ben’s shining face. I had single-handedly dismantled any doubts he’d had that the stuff of urban legends wasn’t real. With supernatural ninjas rising from the dead, Sasquatches protecting old women from hungry tigers, and now ancient Egyptian mummies jumping through plate-glass windows, he’d become a true believer.

“That’s a trip.” My sour mood had returned. Then I noticed the number of views for the video, and my jaw practically slammed to the floor. “One hundred twelve thousand people have watched this already?”

“It’ll be one hundred twelve million by the end of the week,” Ben predicted.

You’d think this would cheer me up, but it had the opposite effect.
I’ll be famous. Woo. Hoo.
How would being a YouTube star solve my problems, including Emery and Serena’s imminent heartbreak?
It won’t do squat.
Nothing will.

“Ten minutes before you have to leave,” Mom’s voice interjected into my angry thoughts. She squeezed my shoulders, and I stiffened, gritting my teeth with annoyance. “Get some breakfast.”

I was only too happy to down some breakfast and then get the heck out of there.

~~~

Ten minutes later, Nate and I left the house. Emery waited for us at the end of our walk, as he did every weekday morning. His eyes scanned my face. He looked tired.

I attempted a smile. The result felt like a sneer. I was still fuming about all the things that I had no control over.

“Hey,” Emery greeted Nate and me. His eyes remained locked on mine. Beyond him, his front door opened, and his dad walked out.

My heart jumped to my throat.

He saluted us, smiling. “Have a good day, kids.”

“Bye, Dad,” Emery returned.

“You, too, Mr. Phillips,” Nate called back, waving.

I glared.

The lying, murdering snake headed to Serena’s car.
What is he up to?
I wondered, panic rising in my chest.

“Where is he going?” I demanded of Emery.

Mr. Phillips climbed into the car.

“A meeting,” Emery said.

“
What
meeting?”

Emery’s gaze shot to my face. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Don’t bite my head off! I was only asking.”

“Geez, Cass,” Nate said, butting in. “Take a chill pill.”

“Leave me alone!” I yelled in his face and stalked off.

Behind me, I heard my brother whisper to Emery, “Sorry, dude—”

My hands balled into fists. What made him think he had to apologize for me?

“Must be that time of the month.”

Snapping up a pinecone at my feet, I whipped around and chucked it at my brother, pegging his left shoulder.

Shocked, Nate grabbed where I’d hit him. His eyes ignited. “Get a grip!” he shouted at me. “Stop being such a psycho.”

Emery, watching me with a rare look of alarm, took a step forward so he walked ahead of Nate, as if to protect him from me.

What does Emery think I’m going to do to my own flesh and blood?
Now I was really pissed.

“Leave me alone!” I pivoted on one heel and quickened my pace. Angry tears stung my eyes.

“Give her space,” Emery advised Nate.

“See me running after her?” Nate snapped. “Dude, have you been teaching her how to pitch balls, too? At the risk of sounding like a wuss, that hurt!”

He and Emery busted up, Miriam’s voice joining them. I had glimpsed her front door opening a moment earlier.

“What’s happening?” she asked, out of breath from running to catch up with the boys.

“
Cassidy
is what’s happening,” Nate said.

I clenched my teeth.

“
You’re
the jerk,” she told my brother. “What did you do to her?”

“
Moi
?” Nate sounded amused. My eyes narrowed on the expanse of sidewalk before me as I pictured the waggish look I knew he’d have on his face. “Hey, now. Easy, girl.”

I didn’t need to look to know that Miriam had tried to hit him—playfully, of course. I knew Miriam and Nate through and through.

“
What
did you
do to make her mad?” she demanded.

“Breathing makes her mad.”

Miriam chuckled at Nate’s joke—but not the object of his joke, mind you. “Cassidy, wait,” she called.

I kept walking.

“She needs space, Miriam,” Emery told her. “Give her a chance to cool down.”

“From what?”

“Take your pick,” Nate said. “Something is always setting her off.”

Let’s see how you’d handle animal DNA being twisted into
your
cells,
I retorted in my head.
With your temper, you’d make the Hulk look like the Jolly Green Giant. Ha!

But why was I angry? Nate wasn’t the source of my anger. Helplessness was.

How could I let Mr. Phillips drive away like that, knowing he might have the microchip with him? But what could I do, tackle him to the ground and frisk him?

I recalled what he had said to Moreau in the tomb:
Drop-off has been confirmed for zero hours on Sunday.

He had obviously been referring to the microchip. That meant I had four days to find the microchip before it exchanged hands. And just how was I going to do that?

I still hadn’t come up with a solution when I entered Queen Anne High five minutes later, other than not letting Emery’s dad out of my sight, which I had already failed at.

“There needs to be twenty of me,” I muttered as I flung my locker door open.

Emery caught it. “We need to talk,” he said in a low voice.

“There is nothing to talk about.” I unzipped my backpack with a ferocious tug.

“On the contrary, we have
a lot
to talk about.”

“No. We. Don’t
.
” I wrestled my overstuffed binder from the overstuffed backpack. “I can’t believe how much work these teachers give us. Don’t we have enough going on in our lives? Why—”

Emery grabbed the backpack. “We’re leaving.”

I yanked it back. “You leave.”

“That’s not happening.” Emery flipped me around and gripped my shoulders, bringing his face inches from mine.

I glared into his eyes. No way was I letting him intimidate me.

“We need to discuss what you’re experiencing.”

“Currently—
embarrassment
,” I retorted, referring to the attention that we were drawing. Whispers had kicked up around us when he’d spun me around. Ogling eyes watched us.

“Be straight up, and the
scene
ends,” Emery said.

“Try to not be so predictable.”

“Predictable?” His mouth curved into a grin. “I think not. I suggest you humor me and listen, or I’m liable to become very
unpredictable
.”

Scowling, I jerked my head up and down, acquiescing with resentment. We had already provided enough entertainment for our fellow schoolmates, and I had no doubt Emery would follow through with his threat and give them more to gossip about later.

He pushed my hair back and brought his mouth to my ear, which didn’t help in the not-being-a-public-spectacle department, but did prevent snoops from overhearing.

“The bullet wounds may have healed, but your mind hasn’t,” he whispered, his hot breath tickling my ear. “It will take time to recover from the emotional trauma of being shot, but you don’t need to do that alone. I’m here for you.”

My eyes misted, and I let my backpack drop heavily to the floor so I could wrap my arms around his neck. Let the gossips talk.

My dearest friend
,
how am I going to tell you about your dad?

Emery continued to whisper, listing possible symptoms of emotional trauma: confusion, anxiety, fear, anger, mood swings, guilt, sadness, and hopelessness—all of the symptoms I was experiencing, but not because I’d been shot.

“I’m so sorry, Emery,” I whispered, apologizing for his dad being no good, something he would learn soon enough.

“No need to apologize. I understand why you were irritable.”