Recreated Read Online Free Page B

Young.”

Jerking awake, the scarab still clenched in my fingers, I scooted all the way back against the headboard and scanned the room. With the blackout curtains drawn, it was darker than the inside of a sarcophagus. I couldn’t see the intruder but I felt his presence as surely as I felt my heart slamming inside my rib cage.
    “Who’s there?” I hissed in an alarmed whisper, knocking the book I’d been reading before bed off the nightstand.
    “Have you forgotten me already?” The man chuckled quietly.
    As I groped for the light switch, I heard a dog’s whine and froze. If I hadn’t already guessed who was in my room, the dog would have given him away. Winston did not sound at all like this dog. Actually, there was only one dog I’d ever met who had a reverberating sort of power behind his woof.
    My trembling fingers finally managed to switch on the light, and there, standing before me in all his godlike glory, yet still looking like he fit in at a farmhouse in Iowa, was the Egyptian god of mummification, Anubis. In the museum, he’d worn a modern business suit. This time he was dressed in a fitted pair of jeans, a white button-down shirt that was perfectly tailored to his broad shoulders, a pair of dark cowboy boots, and a denim jacket.
    He looked like
GQ
gone country. He even had a very appealing dark shadow of stubble on his face. Anubis appeared to be a man’s man who could toss a bale of hay, ride a bucking bronco, hang with the guys at a grill, and still knock every farm girl from eighteen to eighty off her feet without breaking a sweat. I wondered if that was something uniquely Anubis or if it was a sort of godlike power to blend in and yet command attention at the same time.
    Though he was still as undeniably handsome as the last time I’d seen him, there was something in his eyes, something grave, that belied his casual, devil-may-care expression. Whatever his reason for visiting me, I was sure it wasn’t a social call.
    Clutching my covers to my neck and sliding Amon’s scarab under my pillow as inconspicuously as possible, I tried to look a little more regal and in control than a mortal girl could hope to look wrapped up in her nana’s country quilt with thick mismatched socks peeking out from under the covers and a pair of dusty overalls hanging on a hook by the door.
    “Anubis. Why are you here?” I asked, distrusting but somehow hopeful at the same time. “Did something go wrong with the ceremony? Did you decide to do a memory wipe on me after all? Are you here to make me a mummy, too?”
    The places my mind went to were a little scary, but at the same time, the knowledge that this man had the power to allow me to see Amon again trumped every frightening scenario. I didn’t dare ask the question I really wanted to know. The inquiry burning on the tip of my tongue was related to Amon’s safety, and I was fearful that in asking, I’d be giving too much information away.
    Anubis gave me a bemused look that diminished the solemnity in his eyes as he folded his arms across his wide chest. “It is only on very rare and very special occasions that I am called upon to do actual mummification, Lilliana Young. And as you are not dead, it would seem your supposition is unreasoned. Nothing went wrong with the ceremony. Seth is safely contained for the foreseeable future. And the last thing I want to do is take away your memory. If that were my intention, you wouldn’t be seeing me now.”
    “Okay. Then what are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” The black dog nudged my hand and I reached out to stroke his head. When the dog hopped up beside me and wriggled his head under my arm so I could scratch his back, Anubis moved closer and took a seat at the foot of my bed. He regarded me with a mixture of curiosity and bewilderment.
    Finally, he said, “I…we…need your help.”
    I sputtered, “Y-you, as in the Egyptian gods, need
me,
a powerless human girl, to help you? What could