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"Ready for the big reveal?" Jacki opened the box and pulled out a cloth bundle.
"Very much so." Syssi's father pushed to his feet and walked over to look at it over Jacki's shoulder.
She put it on the dining table and carefully peeled off the layers of fabric without touching the object itself.
It was a big piece, definitely not something that would be comfortable to wear around the neck, but it was impressive, and Kian could imagine a male priest wearing it over his bare chest.
The opal in the center was the size of a large potato, and it most likely weighed two pounds or more. The color was magnificent even as it lay dormant on top of the fabric wrapping, and Kian was sure that if he dangled it from its chain, he would see even more colors as the light hit its polished surface. Most of it was orange, making it appear as if it contained fire, but there was also red, green, and yellow.
Holding a napkin, Adam reached for the amulet and lifted it by its chain. "It's heavy."
Jacki nodded. "It is."
As the amulet swung from Adam's fingers, the opal reflected the light as Kian had expected, and the colors seemed to swirl like there was something alive in it. A pulsating heart or a vein.
"Creepy," Andrew murmured, echoing Kian's thoughts.
"What's written on the edges?" Amanda turned to Toven. "Can you read that?"
The disgusted expression on his face indicated that he wanted nothing to do with the artifact, but he leaned a little closer, squinted, and then pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. "It's been a while, and I'm rusty. I'll try to decipher the writing from the photo, but I can guess what it says. It's something along the lines of beseeching the gods to accept the sacrifice, and in exchange, grant the wearer either prophetic powers or victory against their enemies. It's always the same. Blood and more blood." He leaned away.
"I don't sense anything nefarious from it," Syssi said. "Maybe it was drained after the vision?"
"That's possible." Jacki sat down, leaving the amulet in Adam's hands. "When I touched it, I felt as if I was being zapped by a bolt of lightning, and I let go of it immediately. I held it for no longer than a split second. The vision appeared right away, and in my head, it lasted a long time, but I was unconscious only for a few moments. Then, when I wanted to find the victims, I put it around my neck, and it was more of a hum than a zap, a steady flow of something that communicated in sensations of hot and cold. If I was on the right path, it felt warm, and when we veered off, it cooled down." She chuckled. "An ancient GPS."
"Then it's probably safe to touch." Leaning over, Syssi started to reach for it, but Kian grabbed her shirt from behind and tugged her back down. "Don't touch it without protecting your skin." He took his folded napkin and handed it to her. "Use this."
"Fine." She cast him a glare.
"In fact, there is no reason for you to touch it at all." He was still holding on to the back of her shirt. "You can see it perfectly well from where you are right now."
"Here." Adam walked around the table and laid the amulet in front of Syssi. "Now you can examine it to your heart's content without touching it."
"Thanks, Dad." She peered over the thing as if she was trying to decipher all of its secrets. "It's gaudy, but I don't sense evil. Not that I know what evil feels like."
"It gives off a sense of foreboding," Nathalie said. "When you feel anxious for no reason and think that you are going crazy, there is evil nearby."
As everyone turned to look at her, Kian wondered if there was anything to that. Nathalie had described how he felt on most days, so did it mean that evil was lurking nearby all of the time?
Yeah, it kind of did.
He had Doomers to worry about, missing Kra-ell twins that were so powerful they could enslave the entire planet, Kra-ell assassins that were after his mother and the twins, and the Eternal King and whatever he would do to Earth once he discovered that the human population had grown to eight billion people and that their technological advancement posed a threat.
"Is this something you learned from the ghosts?" Amanda asked Nathalie.
Nathalie nodded. "The first one, Tut. He said that evil was everywhere, hiding in plain sight and pretending to be something else. Evil is a great liar because it has no scruples, so it can be very convincing." She sighed. "As a kid, I thought that he was mean, and that he wanted to scare me so I would be dependent on him, but he was right."
"What kind of a name is Tut?" Sari asked.
Nathalie chuckled. "Tutankhamun, but I think he lied about it. There is no way Tut was an ancient pharaoh."
"Who knows?" Annani said. "He might be. Tutankhamun was an interesting fellow. Very smart and pragmatic even though he was just a kid at the time."
"You knew him?" Sari asked.
"Of course. I knew most of the world's great leaders."
Syssi
