Read Online The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) by E. Catherine Tobler - Free Book Online Page B

open, but nothing was disturbed, as if they had never moved from the room.
    Anubis lifted his own cup of tea and drank from the cup as a dog might, his shockingly pink tongue lapping at the tea. Eleanor stared, unable to fit this image with those she had just experienced. She set her cup down and crossed to the balcony doors, to open them wide and peer outside. The stars were as she remembered, bright and constant. Back inside, she picked up the box of rings and lifted the one of corroded iron.
    “Are you telling me this ring comes from the stars?”
    Anubis only stared at Eleanor until she began to wonder if she had hallucinated the entire thing. What if Anubis was not Anubis, but merely a server and she was dreaming still?
    She reached out, to press a finger against Anubis’s broad nose. He did not move. Sleek black fur covered him as it might a Labrador Retriever, and his nose was wet as any dog’s would be. His whiskers were prickly, his mouth damp from the tea. She smoothed her fingers upward, toward his eyes. They closed and he leaned briefly into her touch as her fingers rounded his velvet ear. How like a dog, she thought, she drew her hand back.
    “Not dreaming.”
    Never dreaming, daughter. You are as I am—not a god, but of this body, of my children. And that ring, not mine, but of this land, of those stars. It will carry you.
    Eleanor closed her hand into a fist. “Carry me? As did your rings?” When Anubis made no reply, she said, “And the ring left in Paris? Don’t tell me there are four rings I must find. I am well and truly tired of questing for rings.”
    Anubis’s laughter was like falling stone.
    This is not that, daughter.
    Anubis stood and walked toward the open balcony door. Eleanor followed, latching the ring box as she did, but when his feet crossed the threshold to the balcony, it was as though the pre-dawn sky swallowed him entirely. He did not vanish so much as he became the lapis-dark sky, stretching over the whole of Alexandria. If she looked closely enough, she thought she could pick his eyes out of the stars. Eleanor clutched the ring box against her chest, certain she would never grow accustomed to his arrivals or departures.
    It was strange, how the jackal within her calmed in his presence, how it became more a part of her with Anubis near, and not a separate entity trying to claw out of her throat. She exhaled and turned to the empty room.
    There came a knock at the door.
    Eleanor did not startle, only glared at the door, wondering if it was Anubis again, come with a fresh tray of tea. Opening the door, she couldn’t help show some caution; she peered out between door and jamb, relieved to see Cleo’s face. But hers was the face of a person who had not slept well; Eleanor knew this look, given that she wore it as well.
    “Good morning,” Cleo said with an anxious smile.
    “And to you, though I can only actually confirm it being morning. My mind isn’t yet decided as to the quality of the morning.” Eleanor opened the door to allow Cleo entry, latching it once she was inside.
    “I don’t mean to interrupt…”
    Eleanor followed Cleo’s gaze to the table, where the teapot and its two cups sat, one cup still half full of steaming tea. Eleanor bit the inside of her cheek. It was a small room and they were plainly alone, unless Mallory were secreted away in the bath or under the bed.
    “That… Isn’t exactly easy to explain,” Eleanor said.
    She wasn’t sure where to begin, in fact, given that Cleo didn’t know that Eleanor could shift into a jackal. Eleanor had found no good way to share this information; it wasn’t that she believed Cleo would think any less of her once she knew, it was rather that it was a difficult thing to explain. Cleo had traveled backward in time with them, thanks to the rings of Anubis, but learning that one’s friend was also a jackal? Eleanor continued to hesitate. In that moment she completely understood Mallory’s own difficulty in telling