The Inheritor: The Legacy, #5

By Marcella Denise Spencer

*This is the fifth story in The Legacy Series.  It is a direct sequel to Lost #2 

After attending a family funeral, Donna Fletcher learns that she has inherited a house from a relative she has never met. Once Donna realizes that the legacy came from her aunt Adriana, she becomes intrigued about what happened to her aunt.  

A year ago, her father's sister returned from a six-month disappearance with a story so fanciful, the family considered having her committed.  But Donna soon learns that her aunt was telling the truth; she really was a lost Cushite princess.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcella Denise Spencer
• Release date: Jul 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393957768

Book preview

San Francisco

March 2015

1

The leggy young man had used the last of his American dollars to purchase admission to the museum. On display was a sarcophagus, a mummy coffin from 6th dynasty Egypt. The coffin had been built for the first king in the dynasty, who had not liked it and had ordered the craftsman lashed and the piece thrown into the trash.

Some hundred inundations later, after two young princes had fallen into the coffin and time traveled, the piece was viewed as an asset. Carefully, it was unearthed; the craftsman was given a pat on the back and a new mule.

Mehmet’s head throbbed. His stomach heaved, queasy. The noise and food in this time had made him ill. His summer-long training with the archivist was not enough to prepare an ancient person for this world. It was just too much. Now inside the museum, he felt light-headed.

He slapped his palm against a wall to steady himself. By the gods, I must get home!

It had taken him four days to accomplish this, his first mission for the Pathrusim Society, having got lost numerous times. The Society had sent him to San Francisco to record a birth. Unbeknownst to the new parents, who were modern Westerners, the child was the product of two ancient lineages. The Society had a continuous genealogy from both families, which dated back 2,900 years.

Mehmet had accomplished his task. Now he just wanted to go home. In his haste, he forgot to mind his way and received sidelong glances from passersby. Men who looked like him were often profiled rather negatively. Wearing a bulging backpack, where he kept his time-period attire, didn’t help.

He ignored the Old Kingdom relics on display and weaved through the ancient Egyptian enthusiasts admiring pieces that were part of the boring décor at his parents’ villa in Ankh-tawny. Mehmet, finding the Mummy Room again, sighed in relief. He entered the room, his eyes searching for the coffin.

"Neb ankh. Neb ankh..." he muttered. Where is it? Mehmet let loose an oath. How am I going to get home? A woman reading the historical summary attached to a blue-eyed bust looked up at him. A professor of the ancient Near East, she watched the lad searching through the coffins, murmuring in a language that had not been spoken in millennia.

The coffin simply wasn’t there.

Mehmet closed his eyes. Take care, he told himself. You have what is called a back-up plan. All is not lost. If the yellow-haired woman does not suspect me of wrongdoing and phone the police, all shall be well. What did the archivist say? Time and again. If a Pathrusim Society traveler becomes lost in the United States of America, he or she must flee to South Carolina, where a blood prince, a seasoned traveler, resides.

But how to get there without cash?

Use the shiny, slim tablet, the archivist had said, it has currency inside it. Just don’t lose it, or the colored book with your image inside, and you can make it home.

Mehmet exited the museum and hailed a hired car, which took him to the San Francisco Airport. It was there, as he went through security, that the sixteen-year-old lad from a noble family in ancient Egypt broke down and cried.

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York, South Carolina

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Asabi Pepi smiled and propped her bare feet on the round purple suede ottoman. The piece clashed with the living room’s 18th-century rustic décor, but she loved it. Asabi sank deeper into the matching chair and sipped her peppermint herbal tea with extra lemon.

She was pregnant. She knew it.

But when to tell Teti? And was this the best time to voice her desire to settle down in one place, no more traveling? She was twenty-nine years old, and Teti twenty-six. Was it not time?

My dear wife, you are radiant this evening, Teti said, entering the living room with a glass of wine in hand. Is it good news you have, or a rather pleasant daydream?

The first, she said, moving to sit straighter. Teti stretched his hand out, signaling her to remain relaxed. He took a seat beside her. I believe we are pregnant.

Excellent news, beloved!

Asabi chuckled at his exclamation. It amused her that when they spoke out in public, at the supermarket and the movie theatre, people often asked them where they were from. They spoke English like they were British born, though their accent was hard to trace.

I really would like to have the baby here, Teti. Do you think we could?

I would wish the same. But it is not to be done. My child must be born in his homeland.

What about Cairo?

It is not the same. He must see the Black Land as it was, not as it is today. I too wish to settle down, but it is as my father wills.

Asabi closed her eyes, frustrated.

Teti reached out for her hand. Asabi... The doorbell rang. A servant opened the door. The couple listened to the whispered greetings. Reluctantly, Asabi removed her legs from the ottoman then slipped her feet inside her shoes. The servant came to the living room and announced a lost traveler.

Let him in, Teti said. The servant bowed.

A harassed-looking Egyptian youth entered. Though wearied, he executed a bow to the couple.

Come, lad. Take a seat and tell us about your journey, Teti said. Police lights flashed through the window as a cruiser moved down the street, slowly. Are you in trouble with the law?

No, sir. They are suspicious of me because of my appearance. I have done nothing but get lost. I have a troubling situation to report.

Teti understood his dilemma all too well. He had similar problems living here, having often been mistaken for an Islamic terrorist or a common criminal. One time a youth had asked Teti what gang he belonged to.

The lad explained the mission given him, and his difficulty in returning home. "The neb ankh, possessor of life, has gone missing," he said.

Asabi’s jaw dropped. She looked up at her astonished husband. Modern curators knew it as an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus; however, Egyptians called it a possessor of life, or neb ankh, and knew this one as a time portal—for direct transport back to their home: 6th dynasty Egypt.

Teti rang for the servant. Get some rest, lad. We will take you home on the morrow.

Asabi suppressed a frustrated sigh. She did not wish to travel. Perhaps it is best if I remain here.

Nonsense, beloved, we travel together. What is the saying? We are a team, he said, proud of his mastery of a modern phrase. Asabi swallowed her disappointment. Time traveling no longer affected her like it used to; she no longer suffered dizziness for hours afterwards, and the nausea she felt now was due to a happy reason.

But this would be the first time she time traveled pregnant.

***

The following morning found Special Agent Tom Sykes of the FBI’s Art Crime Team sitting at his desk, frowning. He had received similar correspondence via e-mail, express courier, and now snail mail. The twenty-year veteran let out a sigh before reading the paper letter from the Egyptian Council of Antiquities. Agent Sykes knew what it would say. What he didn’t know was that this version would be worded so strongly.

He looked at his coffee mug, the steam still rising, and wondered if he had a little something-something in his desk drawer to add to it. Whiskey, Kahlua. Surely, it’s five o’clock somewhere. But no, at eight thirty a.m., it was far too early, however tempting.

Sykes winced as he read the veiled threat—because that is basically what it was—demanding the return of the relic, or else. He ran a hand across his face. The elite ACT division had been formed to quell the appetites of rich men. You’d think the bureau had more important things to do than hunt down artifacts. But it was their job to keep the items in that Egyptian exhibition safe, and they had failed.

How they had failed, Sykes still didn’t know. The sarcophagus dated 2320 BCE had had the best security available. Someone would have had to come up through the room’s floor, through a tunnel, then haul the coffin out. The San Francisco police and the ACT agents had searched for evidence pointing to that scenario, but there was none.

An inside job? Done by the museum security guards or staff? The curator, perhaps. He flipped through the reports on his desk, looking for a loose end. There was an English costume designer, a Ms. Eleanor Griffin who had traveled with the exhibit. She had reported that someone had entered her apartment and left a mysterious letter. Sykes read a missing person report taken by the San Francisco police. A schoolteacher, Ms. Adriana Fletcher, and her student had come to the museum to thank Ms. Griffin for their tour, but then disappeared into thin air.

Another mystery. Were the events connected?

Sykes rang his secretary and told her to page Collins and Dawson, two of his best agents in the Bay Area. This theft could cause a stink, possibly a political one—especially if Cairo sent their people to help with the investigation. That