When it All Comes Crashing

Chapter 16

The town car was gone when I woke up, so I packed up quickly and hit the road myself.

The crossing was nerve wracking as always, but I didn't have to hide Lo this time, which gave me a little pang of sadness as I pulled through customs. Overall, things went smoothly, and Sarah Grant recrossed the border without mishap, heading west toward Otay Mountain.

The pearly white, if now a bit dusty, town car was parked not too far up the truck trail, just out of sight from the graveled park road. I pulled up and got out, stretching with a wince.

It was Marc leaning against the car as I walked up. "Any problems?"

"Smooth as can be expected," I answered

"Jake is pissed about having to drive the car up here."

"Hey, I knew enough to not suggest meeting someplace on the truck trail. He'd have a fucking aneurysm."

He smirked. "True."

"No sign of Jack?"

He shook his head. "Wouldn't be me waiting if there was."

"Fair enough." I turned back toward the van. "I'm gonna make a sandwich. You want one?"

"Sure."

We sat in the doorway of the van, watching the sun sink in companionable quiet, each with a sandwich and a beer. "Are you worried about him," Steven asked after Marc and I had eaten.

"I'm worried about a lot of people."

"I guess you would be." He reached out and took my hand. "He'll be here."

"I hope so, Steven. I really do." I squeezed his hand in mine. "But, people come and go all the time in life. For all kinds of reasons."

"You think he'll choose not to come back?"

"Jack?" I huffed. "Absolutely not. If he misses us, he got caught. That's what I'm trying not to think about."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. Hey, I wanted to ask you. Last night, you were talking about how you kind of got thrown into all this. You mentioned something called a Duat?"

And, he was off and running. In true infodump style, I got an entire dissertation on the Egyptian afterlife, and found out that Tawaret is a pretty cool hippo lady, very down with protecting women and children but does a little sidework now and again weighing hearts for Osiris. Steven was actually quite the engaging speaker, and as someone who likes to know at least a little about a lot of things, I'm generally down for a subject I knew very little about. Ancient Egyptian mythology is definitely one of those things, though I hadn't ever needed it before finding myself in the regular company of an avatar of a once major god in that pantheon who had evidently taken a shine to me.

By the time he was wrapping up, I was yawning, but I assured him it was the long drive and not him, pointing out several bits I found particularly compelling, including my hypothesis of Tawaret, goddess of women and children, having a side job with death because of the historically dangerous state of being a childbearing person or a child. He seemed satisfied that I wasn't getting rid of him and said good night, but then I felt a shift and knew my evening wasn't quite finished.

"Evening, Jake."

"Did you think you would say goodnight to them and not to me?"

I shrugged. "You weren't around."

He sat next to me again. "I'm always around."

"You weren't in the front," I corrected. "Too busy being surly about your dirty car?"