Page 28 of Marked by the Pack (Crooked Point #2)

Wednesday

Emma

“And what exactly is your sudden interest in all this?” Callum asked as he pulled a key out of his desk drawer.

“Zoey, actually. She’s a history buff and she’s starting to rub off on me.” Eh. Not really. But these relics were old and Zoey was technically interested in them. And I was definitely interested if one of them was a certain coin that happened to have an Anubis head on it.

“Is she really? Huh, I didn’t realize. Did you want to ask her to come take a look too?”

“Maybe a different day.” I wanted to spend time alone with him.

I’d spent all day at the house painting by myself.

And he’d spent all day with Kebe. After our talk, I really should have been fine with him showing Kebe houses.

But it was odd that Callum hadn’t mentioned a single thing about his day with Kebe ever since I arrived.

“Well, you can invite Zoey over anytime too.” He walked around his desk. “As long as she leaves her boys at home.”

“Callum.” Maybe that’s why his day with Kebe hadn’t come up yet. Because I’d spent the whole time filling him in about Zoey having four boyfriends. And probably soon to be five .

“What? I don’t want them in my house.”

“Zoey’s my best friend. Which means we need to be friends with who she’s dating.”

“No.”

I laughed. “You can’t just say no. This isn’t up for negotiation.”

“Everything’s up for negotiation, baby.” He pulled me into his arms.

“Not this.” I booped the tip of his nose.

And he looked absolutely astonished by the action.

I started laughing.

“What did you just do to me?” He let go of my waist and rubbed his nose.

I couldn’t handle his look of bewilderment. It just made me laugh harder.

“Stop laughing,” he said. But he was smiling now too.

“I booped your nose. Because you were being terrible.”

“I think a spanking would be rather more appropriate.”

I shook my head. “That feels more like a reward.”

He raised his left eyebrow at me.

I laughed and grabbed the key from his hand. “Now please show me your secret room full of magical things before I have to boop you again.”

“Magical? There’s nothing really that useful. At least…not that I’ve been able to deduce.”

So that meant that it was possible that the Anubis coin could be in there. And that Callum just didn’t know how to use it. I needed in this room. I walked out of Callum’s office, down the hall, and up the stairs.

His footsteps followed behind me .

I put the key into the first door I found, but the lock didn’t turn.

“It’s that one,” he said and pointed to one of the other doors in the hall.

“What’s in this one again?”

“Some stuff from my past.”

Well, now I was interested in that too. “Like what?”

“Old paintings and things. Stuff I’d like to go through with you to see what we can salvage for our new house. Here, let me go get the key to that room.” He stepped around me to go back downstairs.

I needed to focus. We’d have time to decorate after I cured him. I grabbed his arm before he could descend the stairs. “Actually, can we look at the relics first? I’m so curious.”

He nodded and gestured back to the door he’d pointed out.

This time the door unlocked with a satisfying click.

I flipped the light switch and just stood there staring.

It was the most beautiful walk-in closet I’d ever seen.

But instead of shoes in the glass encased shelves, there was an assortment of everything from vases to folded cloth.

And the middle of the room had an island with a glass top.

I stepped forward and stared down into the contents of the drawers beneath the glass.

Most of it was jewelry. Beautiful jewelry, that normally I would have been a little distracted by, but I was a woman on a mission.

“See anything you like?” Callum asked.

“No.”

“No?” He laughed. “Nothing at all?”

I smiled at him. “It’s all lovely. But I’m looking for something more…ancient. ”

“Here,” he said and pulled out one of the drawers. “These are from the early 1900s. They’re black opal. One of the rarest gemstones in the world.” He held out one of the earrings for me to see.

I would have thought black opal would be black. But each gemstone was an array of beautiful colors all cascading together. The earrings were beautiful. And not just the black opals, but also the long gold chain that connected each gem.

I usually wore studs. I reached up and touched the cubic zirconia earrings I was currently wearing.

“How about you try them on.” Callum grabbed the other opal earring.

“No, that’s okay. I’m looking for something older than that. Really, really old. Definitely older than you.”

He smiled. “I just want to see how they look on you.”

I couldn’t wear one of the rarest gemstones in the world.

It wasn’t just the expense of them. It was the fact that I didn’t think I could pull them off.

They looked otherworldly. Someone with all the confidence in the world could pull them off.

Kebe. The colorful opals would really pop against her tan skin.

She was effortlessly cool. These were made for someone like her.

“Maybe later. After I look around.” I turned back toward the shelves. The first one was filled with ornate, hand painted vases. Or…urns? I shook away the thought as I moved to the next. I was pretty sure this one had real silk in it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever touched real silk before.

I felt Callum staring at me as I moved to the next display case. It seemed like only large items were displayed on the shelves. I crouched down and pulled out a drawer. It was filled with neatly assorted pens. I moved to the next. I didn’t see a single coin, let alone anything Egyptian.

“Aren’t you interested in the history of any of these items?” Callum asked.

I hadn’t realized how weird I was being. He was expecting me to ask questions. I cleared my throat and turned back to him. “Zoey has a sudden interest in Anubis.”

“The Egyptian god of the dead?”

“Mhm. Do you have anything depicting him?”

“Like his jackal head?”

I nodded.

“No, I don’t have many Egyptian items. The pocket watch was of Egyptian origin though.”

“The pocket watch you let the guys keep?”

“The pocket watch you made me let them keep,” he clarified. “You never asked me why they said I was a thief. When they’re actually the thieves.”

I stared at him. “Why did they say it?”

“Bennett and his friends are searching for a cure. They got cursed in Egypt. I think at first they believed that their cure was connected to ancient Egypt. So they started collecting artifacts. But now it seems like they believe that everything Egyptian belongs to them. Or more accurately…belongs to whoever cursed them. I suspect they think that if they return all the Egyptian relics from around the world to the original source…their cure may be lifted.”

“They told you that?”

“It’s just a theory,” Callum said. “I bought the pocket watch at an auction years ago. I didn’t steal it.

But to them it was stolen, because it belongs to whoever cursed them.

Possibly Sekhmet, goddess of lions. Or Baset, goddess of cats.

It makes sense that Zoey has a sudden interest in Egyptian artifacts given who she’s dating.

But Anubis? I don’t see how the god of the dead relates to their stealing. ”

He had a good point. I didn’t know much about Egyptian gods, but those other two sounded more related to werecats.

I bit my lip and stared back at the display cases.

I couldn’t believe that I actually believed any of this.

Egyptian gods were real? I guess this was my life now.

Why should I believe in vampires and not Egyptian mythology?

Callum stepped toward the next display case.

“I mostly have Slavic relics. In all my research, it seems like that’s where most of the stories of vampires come from.

Dracula was a myth. A depiction of Vlad the Impaler that glorified his lust for violent executions.

A dead end for me.” He pulled out one of the drawers. It was filled with wooden stakes.

Callum lifted one up. “He used them to impale people.”

I stared at it in horror. “Did he use… that one?”

“No. Blood doesn’t preserve wood well. But it’s from one of the trees in Romania. I got very interested in wooden stakes in general. Because of the rumors that they can kill me.” He closed the drawer.

“Can they?”

“No one’s ever tried. But I believe it has to be a certain kind of wood. That wood. From beech trees.” He tapped the drawer and moved to the next display case.

“Are there any beech trees around here?”

“Yes. But I think it’s more involved than that.

He opened another drawer full of metal crosses.

“I have theories that the wooden stakes not only need to be beech wood, but they also have to be blessed by an Eastern Orthodox priest. In that sense it’s quite rare.

And as far as a cure for vampirism…it would be from something holy from the same church.

Nothing Egyptian related. Not that such a cure exists. ”

He opened another drawer. “I also have some of the old journals of Giure Grando, the first man truly believed to be a vampire. But he doesn’t speak of a cure. He believed it was a gift. He didn’t want to change. Unless something’s been lost in my translations.”

I looked down at the leather bound journal and the loose sheets of paper beside it in Callum’s handwriting. But his notes weren’t in English. “How many languages do you speak?” I asked.

“Seven. English, Romanian, Spanish, French, German, Serbian, and Croatian.”

“Wow.” That was very impressive. I could barely speak any Spanish and I’d studied it for three years.

I turned back to the shelves. Callum didn’t believe Anubis was the answer. And he didn’t have anything depicting his head. I sighed.

“Am I boring you?” he asked.