A second morning had dawned without a word from Hecate, and Qebhet was sick with dread at what that sudden silence might portend.
Each day since the goddess had set out on her cross-country search, Hecate had been keeping Qebhet informed of her progress, the messages arriving like clockwork on the cusp of sunrise. Each day, until yesterday, when the sunrise had brought only deafening silence and Qebhet's own anxious text had gone unanswered, perhaps unread.
And meanwhile, a triumphant Ares was returning to the city with the child that Hecate had sought. One of the children. As to the other...
Qebhet had slept poorly last night, wracked with worry, haunted by guilt. She'd promised Marcie that she would try to help Kaden; the same promise she had made before to Hecate, and afterwards to Ronan's silent body.
She had promised to help, just as she had pledged to help Marian in her peril and Marcie in her sickness and Luna in her strife, and what had she given them each, in the end? A little luck, a momentary peace, an easing of pain. Well enough for the dead, to see them on their journey, but for the living – Qebhet had been wrestling with the thought all through the restless night – for the living, it was a paltry comfort. Too little, and too late.
She'd come into work early, retreating to the familiar quarters of her father's office, with its aged cedar desk (the same one that he had used in each of his offices, under each of his changing guises in this building for the past century) and comfortable leather-backed chair. The paperwork had been piling up while Anubis had been away and Qebhet had been distracted, and so she'd sought to bury her agitation in dry admin.
It was a slog. The pages couldn't hold her concentration, not when he gaze kept wandering across the desk to where her phone sat dormant, not when her mind kept wandering to broken bodies and shallow graves and a skinny teenage corpse with Ronan's blue eyes.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to will herself to refocus, when she caught a snatch of song, muffled through the door.
She hadn't realised anybody else was here yet. Curious, she rose from the chair and slipped out of the office, following the sound of singing along the passageway. It was a spiritual, a familiar one, a song she'd always loved for all it praised the God of another religion.
O, sister, let's go down, down to the river to pray.
When Qebhet had sung it – more times than she could count, at more funerals and memorial services than she could count – it had always been her river, her Nile, that she'd been singing to.
Somebody else was singing now, in rich, beautiful tones. She didn't recognise who until she had rounded the open door of the prep room, and she paused on the threshold, not wanting to break the spell. She'd never known Genesis was a singer.