people. They gave me gold, lapis lazuli, myrrh, and pretty little paintings on sheets of papyrus. I was a giant among men, worshipped as a god.” He stood barely five feet high, shrunken due to desiccation and dehydration. “My father was Nor-Man Ho-Tep, and before him was—” The mummy rattled off a string of names, none of which meant anything to the listeners.
When the audience started to yawn, the intern/slave scurried to the front and whispered, “Maybe you should skip the rest of the family tree, Mr. Ho-Tep.”
“How did you get to be a mummy?” a girl interrupted.
“Let me tell you, young lady.” Ramen Ho-Tep leaned forward. “When a great pharaoh dies, his body must be carefully preserved for the next life. I was taken to the House of the Dead by my priests and washed in palm wine and rinsed with water from the Nile. All my internal organs were removed—liver, lungs, stomach, intestines—and placed in canopic jars. That’s why I feel hollow inside to this day. The embalmers pushed a hook up my nose to pull out my brain, since I wasn’t using it anymore.”
“Eww,” said a chorus of audience members, mainly the adults.
“Do you need your brain now?” asked a boy.
“I really don’t miss it.”
Ramen Ho-Tep regarded the audience. “I had a beloved cat. As was tradition, and because I was Pharaoh of all Egypt, my cat was also mummified. Everyone needs a pet in the afterlife. His name was”—he uttered another mishmash of odd-sounding syllables, paused, then said, “It translates as Fluffy.”
The kids giggled.
Ramen Ho-Tep reveled in the attention as questions came at him from the audience. Bram Steffords stood at the back of the room, looking haughty, but unmistakably pleased with the presentation.
“This is going to work out just fine,” I whispered to Sheyenne. “Ramen Ho-Tep is in his element.” Glancing down, I saw that her ghostly hand was resting on mine, though I couldn’t feel it. Imagining that we were holding hands did produce a surprising warm swirly sensation in my stomach, though.
After the mummy had finished, and the audience members crowded forward to ask for his autograph on their program booklets, Sheyenne and I left the Ancient Egypt wing.
Now that I had time, I decided to spend a few minutes at the Necronomicon exhibit out in the central hall. I wasn’t a scientist, nor an occultist (the two professions now had more overlap than anyone ever imagined), but this book’s strange magical powers, not to mention a ludicrous set of coincidences and a rare planetary alignment, had changed the world.
If not for the Big Uneasy, I would have stayed dead after Brondon Morris shot me, and the cases wouldn’t have solved themselves. On the other hand, without the Big Uneasy, without JLPN’s scheme to eradicate the unnaturals, I probably wouldn’t have been shot in the first place....
Near the rare books displayed in high-security vitrines, I saw the large black-gowned form of Mavis Wannovich, wearing her pointed black hat and the star-and-moon spangled scarf. She held a thick notebook in her hands, scribbling notations. Well behaved and very clean, her sow-sister Alma rooted around the displays, pressing her dark eyes close to the glass so she could read the information cards.
The witch looked up with a smile on her face. “A pleasure to see you, Mr. Chambeaux. Alma’s here under a special dispensation—I’ve gotten her classified as a service pig.” Then her expression fell. “Oh, I heard about Mr. Fennerman. I’m so sorry our protective spell wasn’t good enough. I feel just terrible. That poor vampire!”
“Your protective spell worked, but it would have taken a howitzer to drive away that monster.” After an awkward moment of silence, I added, “You’re looking good . . . much more relaxed.”
Mavis self-consciously brushed down her frizzy black hair. “Thanks. Alma and I just had the most amazing spa and mud-bath treatment. Sometimes you have to pamper yourself.”
“How are your jobs going?” Sheyenne asked. “Is the publishing house treating you well?”
“Oh, yes. Now that our dispute is resolved, Howard Phillips is a fine company, and they definitely needed someone to organize their records. Alma and I have our work cut out for us. In fact, I’m here taking notes for the special rerelease of our annotated Necronomicon. There were typos in the previous printing, if you can believe that!” She rolled her eyes. Alma let out a loud confirmatory snort.
“Any progress on reversing your sister’s condition?” I asked.
“We’ll get around to that, but we’ve both been incredibly busy.