Colleen Gleason - The Clockwork Scarab

“I’m glad you’re here, because I just realized I might be able to help you. I feel like an idiot for not remembering before now. Do you know where my clothes are? My original clothes?”

“Of course.” I’d brought them with me when I bailed him out of the jail, and they were in a cupboard in this very chamber. I produced the satchel and watched as he dug through it. I couldn’t resist picking up one of the very odd rubber and leather shoes. It laced up like a corset, and the sole curved up and around the sides and front of the shoe. On the back in small letters, it said NIKE.

Of course, I knew who Nike was—the Greek goddess of victory. But I couldn’t understand why Dylan would have her name on his shoe. I hoped he wasn’t part of some sort of Society of Nike that came from the future. . . .

“Yesss!” he said, drawing out the sibilance of the last consonant in a sort of victorious sound. “I thought so.”

“What is it?”

He was looking at a pamphlet of some shiny type of paper he’d just extricated from the pocket of his trousers. Although it was crinkled and worn, it was also very colorful, with the words The British Museum printed on the front, and a picture—

I reached out and touched the paper where the image was. I’d never seen anything like it. It must have been some sort of photograph, but it looked so real, so colorful, like a flat miniature of a building that I recognized as the very one in which we were standing—but different.

Dylan unfolded the pamphlet, and I could see that it was a description of the museum that came from his time. While I wanted to snatch it away from him and examine every last detail, I refrained and looked over his shoulder while he pored through it.

Then he stabbed a blunt finger at a page. “Look at this, Mina! Don’t you think this could help?”

At last I was able to take the pamphlet from him, feeling the light, smooth, shiny texture of the paper myself. When I saw what he was pointing to, my heart gave a little flip.

The Cult of Sekhmet and the Twelfth Dynasty said the heading beneath an image of a delicate, filigreed coronet that looked very much like the drawing of Sekhmet’s diadem. Excitement coursing through my veins, I read further, still fully aware of how close I was to Dylan.

The newest exhibit in the Egyptology salon (third floor, East Wing) is a collection said to belong to Amenemhat I, the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh who created a cult around the goddess Sekhmet. He was so devoted to her that when he became ruler and moved the capital, the shrines and worship spaces of her cult were also moved. Found in the late 19th century in a forgotten room at the museum, this golden diadem represents the intelligence attributed to the goddess.

“I’ve never heard of Amenemhat,” I said, my mind working through the implications. Time travel was a complicated concept. “His tomb must not have been discovered yet. There are many archaeologists excavating in Egypt right now, but it could be years. That means the Ankh couldn’t have found the diadem either, which means whatever she’s attempting to do with the legend of Sekhmet, she can’t do it without the diadem.”

“Wait, there’s more. I remember this! We saw the exhibit and the diadem—you know, when I was in my time. And I looked it up, because the story was so interesting. Wait. I might still have it.”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the sleek telephone. “The battery’s getting lower,” he said, stabbing at the face of the device with his finger. “Damn. I’m going to have to turn it off for a while. But first . . .”

I watched in awe as he poked at it, slid his finger over the surface, and made the images change. Then all at once, there were pictures on there, moving.

Tiny people, moving. “What is that?”

“Oh, I hit the wrong app,” Dylan said. To my relief, he didn’t change it right away, and I looked down at the tiny moving pictures, with sound coming from them.

“What is that?” I asked again. They were dolls or people, maybe even mechanical devices, for they had oddly shaped heads—or else wore hats—and all wore the same clothing. They had long cane-like sticks and they were moving around very fast, hitting a small black object on a white floor.

“That’s hockey, and that’s me,” he added, pointing to one of the characters moving around. “I play hockey. Back home. It’s a sport, like . . . um . . . cricket?”

“Brilliant,” I murmured, still watching the miniscule people. They crashed into each other, tumbling to the ground, and even began to hit each other. But the way they moved that tiny black disk around . . . it was almost magical.

“This is amazing,” I said when he touched the surface again and the pictures went away, to be replaced by the rows of little square images.

“It can do a lot of other things, but it needs electricity. You know, that awful contraband. Electricity.” He looked at me from the side, very close, his eyes twinkling as if it were some private joke between us.

My cheeks heated, and I found myself smiling back as my insides filled with butterflies. My organized thoughts scattered.

He returned his attention to the telephone. “I had looked up the information and I found a description . . . here it is.” He slid his finger and stabbed at the glass. “It’s still pulled up on my browser,” he explained in what sounded like a foreign language.

“They found the diadem, packed away in the storage rooms of the British Museum. It’s already here. The article says ‘The diadem attributed to Sekhmet was found in a long-forgotten crate in the Archaic Room of the museum. Tarnished and bent, its delicate gold workmanship was nearly ignored because it had been thrown in a box with pieces of ruined statues and pottery. The diadem narrowly escaped being destroyed.’ ”

“It could still be here. The task for which Miss Adler was engaged by the museum is to go through and catalog all of the crates and shipments that flooded the country during the first part of the century. Sarcophagi and statues and countless artifacts were packaged up, shipped here, and then forgotten.”

Dylan nodded. “I remember that. It was considered a terrible robbery of the Egyptian people, as well as becoming a lucrative trade for Egyptian grave robbers, who stole from their own country and sold antiquities to the Europeans. There was a show on the History Chann—uh, anyway. So that means it’s still here.”

“Or the Ankh could already have it.”

We looked at each other, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. He was so close to me, and our faces were almost at the same level, and he was so handsome, so fascinating . . .

Then I thought of my prominent nose and my too-wide mouth and how tall and clumsy I was, and the warmth that had begun to bubble hopefully inside me eased. I was an odd duckling, an awkward, plain-looking girl who didn’t know when to stop lecturing.

A handsome, unique young man like Dylan would never—

“Mina,” he said. His eyes hadn’t left my gaze, and I realized his fingers were brushing against mine. “I think you’re really cool.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by “cool”—was that good, bad, or literal? My brain seemed to freeze, being this close to him.

Although my brain was frozen (and possibly whatever other “cool” parts of me he was referring to), my cheeks were not. They felt as if they were on fire.

Before I could say anything, there was a knock on the door, and then it flew open. I was startled and leapt guiltily away from Dylan, lest someone accuse us of anything improper.

“Did you speak to Lilly Corteville?” demanded Miss Stoker as she burst in with a swirl of pale blue skirts and a flower-laden bonnet. She brandished a white parasol.