Page 41 of Marked by the Pack (Crooked Point #2)

Thursday

Zoey

I tried to ignore the way that my heels clicked on the marble floors. I hadn’t noticed how much the bank echoed before. But now that we were robbing it? Every little noise seemed magnified. Especially Emma’s breathing.

“Stop breathing so loudly,” I whispered.

“I’m not.”

“You’re literally panting,” Kebe said. “Shh.”

Emma glared at her. “Why am I the only one worried we’re going to be caught?”

“Shh,” Kebe said again as we all made our way toward the vaults. “Wow, I’m surprised at how clean it is in here.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know…I just always heard that werecats were kind of sloppy. But this bank is pristine.”

Even their house was pretty tidy. They just needed to do dishes a little more often. “They’re definitely not sloppy.”

“First Huxley with the great taste. And now this?” She pressed her lips together as she continued to look around. “I bet Huxley picked out some of these finishes,” she said and ran her hand along the sleek counter. “Huxley is one of the twins, right? ”

“Yes?” Emma said. She seemed as confused as I was about Kebe’s question during the middle of our very serious bank job.

What exactly had Kebe’s professor father taught her about werecats?

That they were slobs with poor taste and bad tempers?

I shook my head. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that it seemed like Kebe was starting to take an interest in Huxley.

And I didn’t like that one bit. She couldn’t flirt with Callum and Huxley. That was just overkill.

Kebe cleared her throat. “Which one is it?”

“What?” I asked. I hadn’t been paying attention to her. I was just trying to figure out a way to get her to leave Huxley alone.

“Which vault has the relics?”

Oh. Right. I made my way around the counter and stopped at the second vault.

“This one.” The first vault was filled with safety deposit boxes.

I glanced to my right at the other vaults.

My boyfriends locked themselves up in the other ones so they wouldn’t hurt anyone.

I remembered how panicked I’d felt to be locked inside.

It was so much better doing the unlocking.

“You’re sure you remember the code?” Emma asked.

“Pretty sure.” I set my duffel bag down next to the vault.

“What do you mean pretty sure? I thought you knew it!” Emma groaned.

I unzipped the bag and pulled out a drill. “It’s been a while, but I think I remember it.”

“What the hell is the drill for?! ”

“In case I forgot the code. I figured I could just drill out the box and rewire it.”

Emma stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “You don’t know how to drill anything, let alone rewire something.” She ripped the price sticker off my new drill and held it up as proof.

“I do know how.” I think. Grudge had told me one time. “Besides, it’s just plan B.”

“We only ever talked about a plan A.”

“Oh, I have a plan B for everything.” I leaned over, pushed my ropes and grappling hooks to the side and pulled out zip ties, spray paint, and a gun.

“What the fuck, Zoey?! Why do you have a gun?!”

I’d thought she’d been packing earlier, so I understood her alarm. I pressed the trigger and water squirted out.

Kebe laughed.

“See…Kebe gets it.”

“I thought it was real,” Emma said.

“I know, right?” I looked down at it. Such a good replica.

“What’s all the rest of this for? I thought we were just going to go in there, grab the coin, and for some reason go to the roof and climb down the side of the building.”

“If I have forgotten the code and it takes too long to power drill into the vault, I figured we’d need to spray paint the cameras.

Halftime for the game is in about an hour.

They might check the security feed during the break.

So we’ll spray all the cameras black. One of the guys will think the power is out, so he’ll come to investigate.

Then I’ll hold him up with my water gun, zip tie his hands behind his back, and distract him while you two keep trying to break into the vault.

Or I’ll just let him fuck me. I haven’t decided yet. ”

“You’ve planned getting caught way more than you planned this actually succeeding.”

“I spent lots of time on both actually.” I pressed the trigger of the drill and the whirring sound made Emma jump. “But let’s open this vault.”

I walked up to the second vault and typed in the code. The whole display turned red and started beeping.

“Try again,” Emma said. “Is that beeping growing louder, or is it just me?”

I typed in the same code and it definitely started beeping louder. Shit.

Emma grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me toward her. “Come on, Zoey, you’ve got this. We’re great at breaking and entering. We only sometimes get caught. Try once more.”

“How many attempts do you think we get before the alarm starts really blaring?” Kebe asked.

“Not helping,” Emma said. “Come on, Zoey. You’ve got this.”

We all knew that if this alarm went off, we definitely wouldn’t have time to worry about drills.

I nodded and turned back to the keypad. Maybe I’d switched one of the numbers in my head.

I closed my eyes and remembered Bennett’s fingers against the buttons.

Bingo. He’d gone down two spaces on the right, not one.

He’d pressed the nine, not the six. I typed it in and held my breath.

The bleeping stopped and the vault door hissed.

“Oh thank God,” Emma said .

Kebe spun the wheel on the vault. It made a mechanical whooshing noise and the heavy metal door sprung forward.

A light inside automatically turned on. It was just like I’d remembered. It was almost like we were standing in the middle of a museum. Gems, fabrics, masks, primitive weapons and tools, and tons of gold items etched with hieroglyphics lined the walls.

“It’s just like a tomb,” Kebe said and ran her hand across the hilt of a sword. “Only fewer traps I hope. And dead families.”

“Um…what?” Emma said.

“Egyptian tombs.” She smiled and turned around in a circle, soaking it all in.

“It wasn’t just pharaohs in the tombs. It was all their belongings.

And their whole family and servants and pets were also killed.

So they could all enter the afterlife together.

Their bodies all embalmed for preservation. ”

“Ew.” I couldn’t even pretend to hide the look of disgust on my face.

“Embalming isn’t gross. The human body is the home for your spirit. You embalm dead bodies so that the soul can live on in the afterlife. It’s an artform. It’s very delicate and complicated. And it’s kind of romantic in a way.”

I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t say “ew” again. Embalming was not romantic in any way. “Let’s focus and find this coin.”

“Oh my God,” Kebe said and lifted up a little statue of an Egyptian pharaoh.

At least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was because of its painted blue headdress. It looked so fragile. If it was made of clay or something…one slip and it could be in a million pieces.

“I really don’t think we should be touching anything besides the coin,” Emma said.

At least the two of us were on the same page.

“These artifacts don’t belong locked up in a vault. They should be put back in the tombs they were stolen from. I should have brought a bag or something. Can we empty out your duffel and take…”

“We’re not taking anything but the coin. Focus, Kebe.”

“But…”

“Put the weird little statue back and help us search for the coin.”

She put it down and then grabbed something else. “Ah, a sistrum!”

“A what?”

“It’s an Egyptian instrument.” She stared at me like I was dense.

I shrugged. It looked like one of those devices you learned to count on.

She put that back too and gasped. “No. Way. The scales of Anubis? My dad is going to lose his shit when I tell him I found this. I have to take them. I can’t let…”

“Kebe, stop!” Emma said. “We need a coin with Anubis’ head on it, not his scales.

Come on, we need to get out of here. Climbing down the side of the building was a huge chunk of our time allotment.

And Bennett said a lot of these items are magical.

He doesn’t know what all of them do. It could be dangerous. ”

“Emma’s right.” I walked over to the adjacent wall and scanned it for the coin. But my eyes landed on a ruby sitting inside a glass container. Why was it the only thing behind glass? For some reason I couldn’t look away.

I reached out to open the lid.

Emma grabbed my hand. “It’s probably drawing you in. If you touch it you’ll probably die or something.”

I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was to die in this vault.

“Are we sure this is the only vault with relics in it?” Emma asked. “I’m not seeing any coins.”

“It’s definitely in here,” Kebe said. “I feel its aura.”

She’d talked about auras before when she said Emma had an artsy one. It was one thing to describe a person’s aura that you’d just met, but Kebe had never even seen this object. “How do you know what kind of aura it’s giving off?”

“Well, it’s supposed to be the cure for werecats and vampires. That’s good vibes. So the aura would be green.”

“Would be? You just said you could feel it’s aura. Is green not the color you’re sensing?”

“No, it is.” She shuddered. “Sorry, I just got distracted.” She reached out and touched the scales of Anubis again. There was a frown on her face.

“Stop touching that, Kebe.”

“Why is it gray?” she asked.

“It’s not, it’s gold.”

“No, it’s aura. It’s so dark.”

Why were we still talking about this?! We were running out of time!

“The scales are to measure a dead person’s heart against the weight of a feather. To see if the fallen is worthy of entering the realm of the dead. ”

“Okay…”

“The process is just. It’s good. So why is it’s aura so…not good?”

“Because it’s rigged,” I said. “No one’s heart is lighter than a feather. And why were they cutting out people’s hearts in the first place? That seems bad too.”

Kebe shook her head and just stared at the scales.

She was being zero help right now.

“I think I found something,” Emma said.

I turned around, hoping that Kebe wouldn’t break anything while I left her alone.

Emma was crouched down next to a wooden bin full of silver and gold coins. She tilted the bin to the side to move the coins around. “I don’t see anything with…”

I grabbed the bin and dumped the contents out on the floor. I reached out to sift through them but Emma grabbed my hand.

“Be careful. Just in case one of them does something.”

“Good thinking.” I pulled down my leather sleeve so that it covered my hand. And then I pushed some of the coins around.

“An Anubis head is like a dog’s head, right?” Emma asked as she kept searching.

“A jackal’s head,” Kebe corrected and knelt down next to us.

“And it should be silver,” I said. “But it’s most likely tarnished…” my voice trailed off when my eyes landed on a tarnished silver coin. I reached out and grabbed it.

“Careful,” Emma said and grabbed my wrist. But it was too late .

My sleeve had ridden up. The coin was directly against my skin. But nothing bad happened. I stared down at the Anubis head. And I couldn’t really describe it…but I felt it. The power locked somewhere deep inside. I looked back up at Emma.

She smiled. “We really did it! We found the cure for all of them!”

Callum had been searching for this for centuries. And Otto, Bennett, Huxley, Ace, and Titan had been all over the world trying to figure out how to reverse their curse.

I pictured Otto’s face when he’d told me how the curse had been his fault. I was going to take away that pain.

I closed my fist around the coin. It was warm against my palm, like the goodness was emanating out of it.

We hadn’t gotten caught. But I was pretty sure if we screwed around in this vault for a few more minutes my boyfriends would probably show up. And now that the coin was in my hand, all I wanted to do was give it to them.

“Let’s get out of here,” Emma said.

“Wait. Hold everything.” I knew how to delay our escape. I ran out of the vault and grabbed the champagne out of my duffel bag. “We need to toast to a successful heist!”

“I love it,” Kebe said.

“No, we need to rappel down the side of the building!” Emma yelled.

“All in good time. But I’m so glad you’re finally on board with that part of the plan. ”

“Zoey, we need to go right now!” She glanced at her watch. “Shit, it’s halftime!”

I ignored her and popped the bottle. My boyfriends would be here any minute. “We’ll make our sexy exit soon enough. But first, we toast.” Everything had worked out perfectly. “We found the cure!”

***

They have the cure! But…will they use it?