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It kind of freaks me out that I'm graduating in a few hours. I mean, I can't be sure if my feelings about this are actually because I'm graduating or because we didn't find any pyramid pieces last night, which means Victor still has a chance of finding them—and our time at Anubis House is nearly up. After catching us, Sweet escorted us back to the house and actually waited until we were all in our rooms. I assume he locked us in afterwards, so I could only hope that Eddie and Sophia made it back here before us. Last thing we needed is them wandering around the grounds, locked out of the house.
Breakfast on the morning of our graduation is the same as always, but just a touch more chaotic. Everyone's talking over each other as various bowls and plates are passed around. When Alfie's not looking, I reach forward and take three muffins from the plate that he so rudely took before anyone else got a chance, offering one each to KT and Fabian. Fabian declines it, but KT takes one. So I get two muffins this fine morning, which is good because the last thing I need is to pass out in the middle of graduation.
I mean, it probably wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen during graduation (considering the whole Pyramid of Ra thing) but still.
"We should sneak a look at the jar," Fabian whispers to Mara, KT, and myself at the end of breakfast. "If it is the alchemist's, it might be able to tell us something about the pyramid."
"Sweet's upstairs with Victor," Mara points out. "Now's our chance."
"Maybe Eddie's there, too, at the school," I remark, sighing deeply. No one's seen Eddie and Sophia since last night—they've both disappeared. As has Dexter, but he's none of our concern. For all we know, he's gone into town to buy out the sweets' shops. As I follow Mara and Fabian out, KT falls behind. "And he hasn't texted you at all?"
"Well, I don't think he could've," Fabian says. "He left his phone in our room when we left last night. Look, they couldn't have gotten in a lot of trouble. I'm sure they're fine. And you haven't heard anything, which means he hasn't had a vision."
"A vision?" Mara questions, eyebrows furrowed.
"I'll explain later," I promise. "First, we need to get that jar."
—
The classroom Sweet locked the jar in is fortunately open and empty. The school, for the most part, is empty. "Coast clear," Mara whispers. I step into the classroom, barely past the threshold when Mara shoots her hand out. "Careful!"
I follow her eyesight to a group of shattered pottery on the floor, my eyes widening as I realize. "The canopic jar! Fabian, it's shattered," I tell him. Fabian steps past me and kneels by the pieces. "How? It was in that case last night."
"It's got hieroglyphs on it," Mara points out. I notice that next, the hieroglyphs on the inside of the jar. "Can you read those symbols? Ashley, I heard you talking about hieroglyphs in a diary. Could you?"
Fabian lets out an almost incredulous scoff as he glances back at Mara. "This is kind of what I do," he answers. "Maybe you could go and get us some hot chocolate?"
"So I'm your sidekick now?"
"No, no. You're the valedictorian, and I'm the hieroglyph guy," he says, being quite petty. Mara rolls her eyes, exiting the classroom. I look down at him, crossing my arms as I narrow my eyes. "What?"
I shrug innocently. "Oh, nothing. Hieroglyph guy."
"Ashley, that's not what I meant—I didn't mean to exclude you—"
"If you need any help," I comment, gesturing to the pieces, "I'll be getting hot chocolate with Mara. I've got a Sibuna catch-up to do, remember?" I wave mockingly at him before leaving the classroom, following Mara around the corner. "Hey, Mara! Wait up."
Mara comes to a stop in the middle of the hallway. "You're not staying with him to translate those hieroglyphs?"
"You kidding?" I respond. "Would rather be with you, catching you up on all things Sibuna." I throw my arm around her, leading her into an empty classroom. "Should I go chronological for us or chronological for everybody involved? Ah, never mind, I know exactly where to start. So, Nina Martin..."
I explain to her how it all started for us: Nina befriending Sarah Frobisher-Smythe, who gifted her a locket in the shape of the Eye of Horus. I always have it on me, so I show it to her while I explain, telling her about my charm and about how it and the locket were connected in ways we still don't know about. I tell her about Lily Henry, how her parents were put in jail for stealing from the tomb, how the Frobisher-Smythes adopted her after that. I explain it all in the timeline I learned it all, which means Mara doesn't yet know about the Henry curse that's since been broken.
"So Joy's not the Chosen One," I begin the end of the Cup of Ankh mystery, "Nina is! They've got the same birthday—it's only that they needed someone born at seven in the morning, not the evening. So anyway, Rufus threatens us, we all live, we find an obituary under his alias so we think he's dead—he wasn't..."
Next: the Mask of Anubis. I decided last night to leave out the whole 'Anubis in my head' thing because of how wild that would be, and considering how weirdly she looked at me when I told her what Rufus had said re: the Bringer of Death, it was a good idea. To be fair, I didn't elaborate much on that. I just told her I'd give her more info when we got to this year's mystery, seeing as how I learned more about it this term than then. So as best I could, I explain the search for the Mask without mentioning him.
"So flash-forward to the library," I say, dramatically moving my hands, "Eddie's actually the Osirian, which means he's my cousin—insane, right?—so anyway, defeating Senkhara-in-Nina's-body was the first time we used our powers together. Crazy, right?" Mara's looking at me like I've grown three heads. "Right, so we did that, and it wasn't the last time. So now we're at this year..."
Finally, our most recent mystery. Nina left, KT took her place. I don't mean that to sound like KT replaced her, just that we had an empty bed now and KT took it, even if it wasn't actually Nina's bed. This mystery, though, is the clearest of them all in my memories. I doubt it's because of how recent it is. It's because of how much I was involved.
Because of what I did.
"So you can imagine our shock when we look in the tank," I state, "and it's Robert Frobisher-Smythe, straight out of the twentieth century. He wasn't decayed or anything, he was, like, comatose. He got cursed by Anubis."
Mara's eyebrows furrow. "But Robert Frobisher-Smythe's been dead since the 1920s."
It occurs to me then that as normal as this all sounds to me, Mara's literally just found out that Anubis House isn't what it seems. Right. I may have forgotten that. "Uh... not really. But more on that later. So in time we find out KT's Frobisher's great-granddaughter—he was married twice and had a son from the first marriage—and that the Evil Ones—"
"Victor, Sweet, and Denby?"
"Right, yeah. They needed a descendant to wake him up, so we assumed it was KT. We also assumed that I was gonna be a back-up plan for them, seeing as how Lily was adopted by the Frobishers. And I was one hundred percent willing to let them use me, because we were pretty certain it wasn't going to work, 'cause I'm not blood-related to him. We were wrong. KT and I weren't the descendants they needed to wake him."
"Who were?"
"Joy, Patricia, Jerome, and Alfie."
"How's that possible?"
"Their great-grandparents stole from the tomb like mine did," I answer, shoulders drooping as I speak. I understand everything that happened then, why only mine went to prison. The truth makes it worse. "They were all on the expedition, But Frobisher took the fall for everyone except mine because they wouldn't let him. So Frobisher got cursed, fell into a coma... until the eclipse. They succeeded in waking him up, but he wasn't... who he was supposed to be."
Mara looks at me, head tilted. I can practically see the gears turning in her head, trying to understand. "What do you mean?"
"He was evil," I recall quietly. A flash of Frobisher holding me in a death-grip runs through my mind, like I can still feel his fingers around my arm. "He wanted to bring the soul-devourer Ammit to earth, and he needed sinners to do that. It had to be a major sin and he had to catch them at exactly the right time and... he did. Do you remember how strangely people were acting earlier this year? Fabian, Patricia, Alfie?"
Mara nods, slowly beginning to understand, judging by the look on her face.
"He caught them at the right time," I inform, biting the inside of my cheek. "He took them as sinners, and they were... really horrible." Closing my eyes, I see those red eyes on Patricia and Fabian. Fortunately, I was lucky enough not to run into Sinner Alfie alone. I don't know how I would have handled that. "Uh, that's—that's why Alfie broke up with Willow."
Her eyebrows raise. "Oh!" Her voice is deep with understanding. "I was there, he was truly horrible to her. He even tried flirting with me and Joy—right in front of Willow. I can't believe how much is making sense now."
"It should," I tell her. "And something you've probably been confused about since it happened—when we defeated Ammit, the rest of you were destroying the school."
"I can't remember what happened," she says. "One minute I was in our room, studying, and the next, I was at the school. It was like I sleep-walked. It's all a blank."
"Yeah... we're pretty certain Frobisher took the whole of Anubis House as sinners for Ammit's power to grow, so she'd be able to actually cross over. Sorry about that. It was just KT, Eddie, and me, and our priority was saving the world. Fortunately, saving the world meant saving everyone who'd been turned into sinners."
"But I don't remember any of that. I think I'd remember seeing Robert Frobisher-Smythe in the flesh."
"Look, he didn't even remember anything he did when we finished it. It was only a few hours for you, and nothing you did was horrible. Don't fret on it."
"But... we ruined the school—"
"Does the school look ruined to you?" I inquire, gesturing to the walls. Mara looks around, shaking her head. "You didn't ruin the school. You just gave it a brief makeover."
My attempt to make Mara laugh succeeds, for she does laugh lightly. "So," she says, getting right back to Sibuna, "what happened to Frobisher? And where did Ms. Denby go? Mr. Sweet just said she'd left the school."
I inhale sharply, making a hissing sound. "About that... Denby's sort of... d-devoured. Long story. One second she was here, next she wasn't. And Frobisher, well... he aged up. Wildly. He and Harriet Denby went to Egypt together, to live out the rest of his days," I answer, a small smile on my lips. "We received—well, KT received—a postcard from Cairo letting us know they'd gotten there safely."
"Does that mean we could contact him about these pyramid pieces?"
"They didn't send a number with it. We have no idea if he's still in Cairo," I say, "or if he's even still alive. We're all we have to go on for the Pyramid of Ra. But don't worry—we've done it before without Frobisher's direct help. We can do it again."
Mara looks at me, as if she's studying me. "I feel like there's something you're not telling about Frobisher. Have you told me everything?"
"Everything that needs to be told." She throws me a doubtful look, and I can tell she wants to question me more, but what I haven't told her, I don't know if I can. So I jump up from the chair, nodding toward the door. "Come on, let's go find the others. Fabian's gonna need a while to translate all of those hieroglyphs."
Mara frowns, but follows me out of the classroom. "Ashley, whatever you're not telling me—"
I interrupt loudly as we enter the lounge, "Oh, look, it's Patricia!" But Patricia looks very unlike herself, wearing a magenta dress made of lace, looking especially Pretty in Pink. At least her black tights are her. "Oh, I'm sorry, it's Piper."
"Shut up," Patricia sneers. Mara and I share an amused smile. "Have either of you seen Eddie?"
"No," Mara answers. "Why are you dressed like a bridesmaid?"
Patricia rolls her eyes as Alfie and KT come in, the former questioning bluntly, "Whoa, somebody getting married?"
I bite back a loud laugh as Patricia threatens, "The next person who mentions this loses their teeth." Alfie shuts his mouth. "Where's Eddie?"
"We don't know," answers KT, "but we need to find him fast. Look at these." She's holding printed out photographs of other graduating classes, the years of each class listed. She points to a familiar face in the middle of the bottom row, from the year 1982.
"Oh, my God," I remark quickly, taking the stack of papers, "that's Sophia." I turn to the next page with Patricia and Mara looking over my shoulder. 1973, 1965, and Sophia's face is in every single one. If it was just one, I'd say maybe it was a relative of hers. I know better than anyone what it's like having a relative you look exactly like. But more than one? "Who is she?"
"She's in all of them," Mara says. "But that's impossible."
"Unless," Patricia pipes up, "she's been taking the Elixir of Life."
"Kooky on the outside," says Alfie, "crinkly on the inside."
Mara shakes her head. "Okay, time out. The elixir of life?"
I furrow my eyebrows and turn to her. "Remember, I told you about the Cup of Ankh? How they wanted it to make themselves young forever? That's it. Oh, I forgot to mention about Victor."
"How did you forget to mention about Victor?" Alfie questions.
Just as quick, Mara asks, "What about Victor?"
Patricia gives her the answer for me, "He's been on it for half a century. He knew Ash's great-grandmother, they were born in the same year. Sophia could be the same age as him, or even older. What does she want here?"
"The pyramid?" KT responds obviously. "The stone?"
"Like the alchemist," I remark. "She must be really determined to build it if she's been acting as a high school student for the past, what, fifty years? At least."
"Maybe she's Mrs. Alchemist," Patricia suggests.
Mara gasps, like she's just had a breakthrough. "Or his child!" The four of us stare at her, like now she's the one that's grown three heads rather than me. "Okay, clearly I'm the only one who bothered to read the whole article."
I awkwardly scratch at my head. Yeah, I just kinda saw the old guy with the canopic jar in the photo with Frobisher and ignored everything else about it. To be fair... yeah, there's not really an excuse for not reading the article that accompanied the photograph.
Mara takes the clipping from her bag and unfolds it, reading from the century-old paragraphs. "'The alchemist, accompanied by his devoted daughter.'"
"We should have inducted you years ago," I say.
"The alchemist had a daughter," KT states, just as the doors open, and in come the three new Anubis girls—one of them rather old, actually. Cassie, Erin, and Sophia. "In your purse, in your purse!"
Mara stuffs the clipping and the photographs in her purse and none of the three girls seem to notice as they come up to us. "We've come," says Cassie, "to help with the graduation prep." Mara utters something awkwardly and the three go over to the stage.
But there's something very familiar in Sophia's back pocket. "Wait," says KT suspiciously, "is that my key?"
"Allow me," says Patricia.
"Don't do anything stupid, Patricia," KT warns. "Not until we know more."
As Patricia waves her off, I press my hand against the faux leather of my purse to make sure the diary is still there. I can hear Cassie bargaining her way into our graduation party, but pay no attention to it, because my purse is a touch lighter than it was yesterday. This morning, even, but I didn't think anything of it. I reach inside it, rifling through the lip balms and wallet and everything else. No, no, no...
I look up just as Patricia shows us the retrieved key and the three girls step onto the stage. She returns the key to KT and then looks at me, remarking plainly, "What's wrong with you?"
"Do you guys think that her jacket is large enough to hide a diary?" I ask slowly.
"Ashley," says KT in the same tone, "what are you talking about?"
"Lily's diary is missing."
"Are you sure?" Alfie questions quickly. "Maybe you've just left it in your room—"
Mara interrupts with a shake of her head, "No, I saw her put it in her purse this morning. But you left your purse upstairs until halfway through breakfast," she recalls, "when you remembered you'd left it. But why would Sophia want your great-grandmother's diary?"
I shrug. "Honestly, I—I have no idea. There's absolutely nothing in there about the pyramid she can't already know, and everything else is—I doubt Lily even knew about the alchemist, let alone his daughter. Why would she take the diary?"
Alfie suggests, "Um, probably the same reason everyone else does. They think there's something in it that can help them. Remember, we think Vera stole it last year, and then Jerome took it to help us this year."
"Maybe Lily did know her way back when," offers KT.
"No, the name Sophia was never mentioned in the diary," I say, "and yes, I'm sure. Victor, Sarah, Rufus, and the Frobisher-Smythes were all mentioned by name at least once. No Sophia." I frown, remembering what Alfie told me yesterday. A 180 change in my demeanor, I turn to him and say, "Take it back."
"Take what back?" Alfie asks.
"Saying I'm like Sophia, take it back."
"Okay, fine, I take it back!"
KT looks between us, commenting, "I think the rest of us missed something. Alfie, why would you say Sophia and Ashley are alike? Even before this, they're polar opposites."
Alfie answers, "All I did was say something stupid about the newbies being the original Sibunas—you know, Nina, Amber, Fabian, and Ashley. I... made the mistake of saying Sophia was the new Ashley. Although I didn't realize it was a mistake at the time, so yesterday, given what I knew, maybe I was right—"
"You weren't," I interrupt sharply. The memory of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing red where blue should be flashes through as I close my eyes. "I—I'm nothing like her, she's—she's evil, she took KT's key and Lily's diary, and... I'm not like her."
When I open my eyes, four pairs of eyes are on me, all with concern. Unable to take their stares any longer than I already have, I just turn around and leave, ducking into the nearest empty classroom. I shut the door behind me, my hands shaking. The chair I pull out nearly falls over as I sit in it, resting my elbows on the desk and setting my head in my hands.
You, Bringer of Death, have done exactly what I said. You have helped me. I needed the staff for the ritual, and only the Bringer of Death could put it together, but I didn't know where it was! But I did know where you were. You have done just what I wanted you to do, Ashley Adams.
"Ashley?" says a hesitant voice at the door. Mara's soft tone compared to Frobisher's harsh, taunting one I just heard in my head is jarring, and I look at her. She steps into the room, closing the door back. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," I respond, harsher than I meant it to come out. "I'm fine."
"KT told me about the Staff of Osiris," she continues, cautiously sitting beside me. I glance at her, remaining silent. "He tricked you. It wasn't your fault."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know."
"You've changed," she continues gently, "since then. Trying to understand all of this is difficult, but it had to have been a couple of days after you came home with that concussion. I remember that. It took you days, nearly a week, to be able to actually look Fabian in the eye, and sometimes I think you still seem to shrink into yourself whenever Victor comes into the room. Not to mention, that this week was the first time you've said something, well... Ashley-like in Sweet's classroom."
"What's your point?"
"You're not evil. I think that you think because you built the Staff of Osiris and didn't realize it was the thing Frobisher needed to summon Ammit, that you're a bad person. You feel guilty for what happened. You shouldn't."
"Alfie was right," I concede quietly. "In another life, I'm Sophia."
"But not this one," Mara tells me, "and this one's the only one that matters."
"You know," my voice is distant as I glance to the ceiling, "Nina's the Chosen One, Eddie's the Osirian, and I'm... the Bringer of Death. Death. Before everything that happened, I'd wondered why I'm the one who gets the super villain name. And then when I realized," my voice begins to crack here, "that Frobisher faked the recording to get us to find the pieces, to get me to put the staff together, I understood it. 'Cause I'm the reason why Ammit got as far as she did. The Bringer of Death, I get it now. It's someone who brings death and destruction everywhere they go."
"Now you're just being dramatic," she says. "You didn't bring death and destruction! From what KT said, you were the reason she and Eddie were able to put Ammit back where she belongs. You held back Denby and Frobisher so they could do that."
"KT told you all of that?"
"She did. And that makes you good, not evil."
I look at her, all the sincerity of the world in her eyes. I nod several times, leaning back in the chair. I've heard this from KT and Eddie both a million times since everything went down. But Mara saying it, someone who didn't know about any of this until just two nights ago, and could have easily made an assumption of evil from what I'm called...
"Thank you," I tell her. I wipe away tears from my eyes, not realizing I'd been so close to crying. "You are... thank you."
"I'm only telling you the truth," Mara says. "And it is. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks you're an evil person."
I squeeze her upper arm, looking straight at the blank whiteboard. "Well... I don't get why Sophia had KT's key. The diary, maybe I understand, if she thinks there's something in it that can help her. Or if she just wants to mess with me, but the key?"
"KT said the key was one half of what you needed to stop Ammit," Mara states. "What else does it do? It's a key, do you know what it unlocks?"
"The crypt," I remark off-handedly, and then I realize. Eddie's missing, and Sophia had KT's key to the crypt. "Robert Frobisher-Smythe's crypt! I know where Eddie is!" Without warning her, I jump up from the chair and run out of the classroom, hearing her shoes click on the floor behind me. I nearly run into KT and co. on the way back to the lounge, and the pair of us speak at the same time, "Eddie's in the crypt!"
"Whoa, that was creepy," Alfie comments. "We just figured it out."
Mara catches up, questioning, "What do you mean Robert Frobisher-Smythe's crypt? You just said he was alive and living in Egypt."
"But the world thought he was dead," I tell her, "so they built a crypt for him while he was taking a nap in a tank." I turn back to KT. "That's why Sophia had your key—"
KT finishes, "—to lock Eddie in the crypt! He must have figured it out."
"And there's no cell service in the crypt, so even if he had his phone—"
"—he wouldn't be able to reach us. Where's Fabian?" KT asks hurriedly. Mara and I lead them to the classroom where we left Fabian earlier to translate. "We think we know where Eddie is!" But Fabian is standing by the windows, a particularly dreadful look on his face. "Sophia had the key to the crypt."
"She's the one who took the touchstone!" I add. "She's planning on building the pyramid."
"Fabian," Mara says, out of breath, "what's wrong?"
Fabian inhales deeply, inquiring in a voice that says he's trying to stay calm, "Who has actually held the touchstone?"
"Me," KT, Patricia, and I answer at the same time.
He's still looking at us like he's found out something horrible.
"Uh, and you," Alfie lists, "Eddie, Cassie, and Victor."
Fabian steps toward the desk with the broken canopic jar pieces. He taps his finger on it. "The jar says that when the sacrifice is made, everyone who has ever touched the stone..." He pauses, and I'm not liking the direction this sentence is headed. "...turns to stone."
( i think this one is probably one of my fav ashley chapters, both in general and for this specific fic )