The Chaos of Stars (20 page)

Then I notice there’s a section of the sky, not dark but empty, not a glimpse into the eternities, but an endless hole in the sky. It surges forward, swallowing my mother’s stars one by one.

I watch.

No. I will not watch anymore. I have watched this happen time and again, and this time I will not. “Stop!” I scream, punching my fist upward to make it change course.

It does.

It covers my hand, crawling down my wrist, along my arm. It is cold, and hot, and neither. It makes me want to shake out of my own skin, to run screaming, to curl into a ball and let it overtake me, uncreate me, scatter everything I am and could be into the cosmos to feed its own endless entropic hunger. It is despair.

There is no one to help me, no one to protect me. I will be undone, and then it will finish its work on my mother’s stars.

I’ve failed.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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At last the gods were settled, formed into the roles they would have until they fell out of power and out of memory. Osiris, god of the underworld. Isis, dominant queen of magic and motherhood. Horus, god-king of Egypt. Hathor, boozed- and sexed-up wife. Set, tamed god of chaos. Nephthys, companion to Isis. Anubis, assistant in the underworld. Thoth, gentle god of wisdom. Others lost along the way, their dominions taken over by stronger gods. But such is the nature of time.

The kingdom developed, left behind constant strife and conflict. And with movement came a gradual fading. A slipping away, as people moved on from the turbulent, violent eras that required turbulent, violent gods.

And Isis proved, yet again, her fierce adaptability to any situation. Some women have babies to save marriages. My mother started having babies to quite literally save the lives of her family.

“NO, NO, NO NO NO NO NO,” I MOAN, GRABBING
fistfuls of my hair and staring up at the new ceiling. We planned meticulously for overhead lights, and they hang perfectly, spotlighting where the freestanding pedestal pieces will go. The stars installed perfectly. Even the electrics have all worked. But I had counted on the lowered ceiling resting against the tops of the new walls and blocking out the light and . . . it doesn’t.

They match up. Almost perfectly.

Almost.

Almost perfect takes this room from awesome to amateur.

Little cracks of light seep through here and there from the now-blocked windows, and it makes the whole thing look cheap and thrown together.

“We’ll fix it,” Ry says.

“Yeah, it won’t be that hard. Right?” Tyler answers, her voice drifting on into almost a plea at the end.

“We can’t do it. We have to be done in twenty minutes for the moving guys and security to come install the pieces. Only Michelle and I can be here while they do that, and it will take them until tomorrow morning to set it all up and get everything wired for alarms.”

“So that gives us eight hours until the gala?” Ry asks. “We can do a lot in eight hours.”

“That’s assuming they get it done in time. And besides, I need those hours to fix whatever the movers screw up, to deal with anything that might need last-minute attention! All that time you bought us, Ry.” I shake my head, feeling sick to my stomach. It was going so well. “It was for emergencies. It gave me time to deal with emergencies.”

“Well, say hello to your emergency.” Tyler squints up. “We could line it with black electrical tape or something?”

“You’ll be able to see it. If we caulk it and then—”

Ry shakes his head. “It’ll never dry in time to paint it.”

“What if we do the tape and then paint over it?” Tyler says, walking into the middle and swinging her arm in an arc over her head. “If we do a smooth line of black paint, you won’t be able to see the tape, right?”

I bite my lip. It’s not a permanent solution. If any of the walls get shifted, it could rip away and damage the paint underneath, causing an even bigger problem. And it’ll be a nightmare working in here tomorrow, because everything will be set up and we won’t have much room to maneuver, and we’ll have zero room for error with the paint.

“It doesn’t have to last forever.” Ry puts a hand on my bare shoulder and I close my eyes at the sensation of his skin on mine, momentarily lost in the heat and feel of him. Amun-Re,
Focus, Isadora
. “It can be good enough for now, and if we have to fix it later, we fix it later.”

“I don’t like good-enough.”

“Good-enough can always be made better. Later. Right now we’re going to take good-enough and we’re going to be happy about it.”

I nod, not missing the fact that his hand is still on my shoulder. All day we’ve worked side by side, and he hasn’t pushed anything from last night. But his eyes seem bluer, and I can’t ignore that even disasters feel more manageable with him here, and when he’s next to me, my traitor body reacts in ways that I definitely did not give it permission to, and I don’t know what to do with these feelings or where to put them or if I want them or why I should or why I shouldn’t.

It’s been a complicated day.

“Good-enough is good enough.” I take a deep breath. “I have to stay here to make sure they put everything where it’s supposed to be. You two be in charge of getting tape?”

“Me! Me! I want to be in charge of tape on my own.” Tyler bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, her shoulders twitching to a beat I can’t hear.

I smile. “Okay! And it’s a good idea, too. I never would have thought of it. You’re brilliant.”

“All my ideas are good, Isadora.” She looks pointedly at Ry’s hand and I want to shrug it off I’m so embarrassed, but then that would mean I actually noticed and cared that it was there, and . . .

I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, and it’s driving me crazy. Grinning, Tyler runs out past us, leaving us alone. In the room. Alone.

“I was thinking last night,” Ry says.

Yeah, I was, too. So much I thought my brain would pop. But I have no conclusions, and I don’t want to know what he was thinking about. But I really, really do. Chaos take me, I kind of hate him. “Oh?”

“You know the story of Persephone, right?”

Ooookay, not what I was thinking he’d be thinking about. It wasn’t Greek mythology keeping
me
awake. “Um, yeah.”

“I was thinking about framing, and how so much of what we think about our lives and our personal histories revolves around how we frame it. The lens we see it through, or the way we tell our own stories. We mythologize ourselves. So I was thinking about Persephone’s story, and how different it would be if you told it only from the perspective of Demeter versus only from the perspective of Hades. Same story, but it would probably be unrecognizable. Demeter’s would be about loss and devastation. Hades’s would be about love.”

I frown. “Yeah, I guess I see what you’re saying.” I just don’t get
why
you’re saying it, you psychotic, maddening boy.

“It’s all a matter of perspective. And maybe we thought we were living one story, when if we look at it a little different, we can reframe everything—all our memories and attributes and experiences—and see that we’re actually living a different story.”

I cross my arms and shrug out from under his hand. “Are you lecturing me again, Orion? Is that what this is?”

He grins, white teeth blinking their innocence. “I would never dream of lecturing you. I just thought it was interesting to think about.”

“Mmm-hmm. And how many times did you practice how you’d phrase this little gem of wisdom when you told me?”

He runs a hand through his thick, dark curls. “Ah, umm . . . who says I practiced it?”

I raise a single eyebrow at him.

“Two. Maybe three. Five. Not more than five.”

My phone rings, and Ry looks relieved. “I’ve got to go before they start unloading the stuff. Plus I am so far behind on my poetry it’s not even funny.”

“It’s kind of funny, actually,” I say, before answering my phone. I wave to Ry as he leaves, my heart doing a funny, not entirely unpleasant flippy thing as he smiles, then say, “Hello, Mother.”

I don’t know how to feel about talking to her, not after my dreams last night and my conversations with Ry and Sirus. Maybe I really have been framing my entire life wrong. Maybe she isn’t a villain. Maybe I’ve been too hard on her.

“Isadora, you’re coming home. Right this instant.”

Then again . . .

I wave frantically at the short, stocky man with a bushy mustache wheeling in a box. “There! No, not there. There! Under the large light. Yes. And the narrower pedestal goes immediately opposite.”

“Stop ignoring me, young lady!”

“I’m not ignoring you, Mother.” I step aside as they use a dolly to maneuver another huge crate in. “I am, in fact, doing the job you made me take.”

“No. Go back to Sirus’s house right now; he’ll book a flight for you. Today. Immediately.”

I roll my eyes, then shake my head at the poor mover who thought I was annoyed with him. “I’m not coming home today. Why are you freaking out?”

“The dreams changed last night. You were in them again. Something happened, something changed to make the darkness focus on you, too.”

I shudder involuntarily, remembering my own dreams. She is right. Ever since I came here, my dreams have been about her in danger, not me. What changed?

Oh. I’d actually cared this time.
I
changed. I didn’t stand by and watch my mother get eaten by darkness. But if I admitted to her that I had the same dream, I was admitting that they were real. And I wouldn’t put it past her to get the embassy involved. Send someone to kidnap me and forcibly bring me back. Come here herself. . . .

And there’s another shudder. My mother, here. Talk about a nightmare. “No, Mother, listen.” I weave through the wooden crates and men coming in and out of the room until I get out into the hall to a quiet corner. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About a lot of things. And . . . it’s good for me to be here. I’m not ready to come home yet.”

“I thought you said you were never coming home again,” she says, her voice edged with both anger and sorrow.

“I know. And to be honest, I meant it. But now . . . I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out, and I need time. Plus I have worked my freaking butt off on your exhibit and I am not leaving before I finish. Besides which, no one from Egypt knows where I am—only Sirus does, and you know I’m safe with him. I think I’d be in more of this mysterious danger if we were together. So”—I take a deep breath—“I’m asking you.
Please
. Let me stay.”

She’s quiet on the other end for a long time. Too long. “I think that’s the first time you’ve sincerely asked me for anything in years.” She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears, and suddenly it hits me how much the last few years must have hurt her, too.

This is stupid, and hard, and I hate it. I hate Sirus and I hate Ry and I hate having to change and realize that I was wrong. Being wrong
sucks
. “I know, Mom.”

“Okay. You can stay to open up the exhibit. But I want you back as soon as I have this baby. Then I won’t be vulnerable anymore, and we can get to the bottom of this together.”

“I’m . . . I’m really happy here, though. I’d like to come back again.”

“We’ll talk about it—Isadora! There’s a boy, isn’t there?”

“What? I—no—I didn’t—no, there is no boy!”

I can feel her smug smile through the phone. “Is he kind? Does he come from a good family? Does he treat you well?”

“
Mother.
I have to go. They’re bringing in your bust and I’d hate them to damage it.” Actually maybe I can convince them to accidentally knock off one of her nipples. Preferably both. “We’ll talk later.”

“Very well. Be safe, Little Heart.”

I almost hang up, but I pause. “You, too.”

A crash and a litany of swearing from the movers saves me from the helpless feelings welling up in me. Work now. Emotions later.

The next morning Ry texts me at six a.m. to come down and let him in. I’ve been at the museum all night, touching up paint where it got dinged, adjusting placement, and so on and so forth. It’s not easy working with this junk, either, because even though I know we’ve got a ton exactly like it at home, here it’s all invaluable,
priceless
junk. So everything had to be done in gloves and with the utmost care, under the watchful eyes of two security guards.

I push open the back door and Ry’s there, illuminated by the pale morning light and the overhead lamp that hasn’t turned off yet. He’s wearing a blue sweatshirt jacket with the hood up, and it makes his eyes an impossible color. If I were an artist, I’d spend all day mixing paints trying to capture it. If I were a normal girl, I’d want to lean forward and trace my finger down his face and get lost in that blue.

Oh, idiot gods, this is what lust feels like. I guess I finally understand.