Page 7 of Sacrifice

“Rescue caffeine coming up,” he said and turned away to make it.

“Seem to need a lot of rescuing these days,” Eve muttered.

The milk steamer hissed.

She eyed the smokers huddled together around a tiny table, kidding themselves this was a comfortable place to hang out. She might not have been fully in touch with her life at that precise moment, but at least she wasn't trying to shorten it.

Or was she? Nothing made sense.

She paid for the coffee just as the sun emerged in a clear patch of otherwise cloud-filled sky. Its warmth fell upon her back, and it seemed to Eve almost like a little encouraging hug from the universe.

OK Eve, time to get your shit together.

She took a sip from her coffee and turned to face into its rays, closing her eyes.

Let's do this.

She sucked in a deep breath, took her first step, and immediately collided with the man she might have seen, if she'd just opened her damned eyes first.

The man had been carrying an armful of papers that fell from his grip in a shower of fluttering pages to scatter in a wide circle, the closest splattered with her coffee.

“Shit! Shit, I'm sorry!”

She looked at the man and saw that the white shirt he wore now sported a good deal of latte foam and was slicked to his chest. The latte was also all over her hand and scalding hot. She dropped the cup.

“Crap! Sorry! Oh my god!”

It hit the floor and jettisoned its contents over them both, boiling-hot droplets radiating from the ground up over her jeans and his smart suit trousers.

“Oh no! Oh no!” She hopped back and forth on the spot in a ridiculous attempt to avoid it. The man just stood there and stared at her.

“Your shirt, your skin, it’ll burn, pull it.” She mimed a pinching action as if pulling the scalding fabric away from her own chest. She screwed up her face, haltingly made the same motion in front of him and then, very slowly, reached forward to pinch the fabric of his shirt and peel it away. It pulled from his skin with a wet flop.

Eve bit her lip.

He stared down at her, utterly nonplussed, and Eve took a moment to look him over. Tall and broad shouldered, he had a strong jawline swept with manicured stubble. His amber eyes sparkled in the sunlight and his wavy brown hair had that just perfect tousled look. He wore a tailored black suit and a crisp white shirt. Well, it had been crisp. Now it was kind of brown and soggy.

Suddenly, she felt embarrassed by her appearance, which in contrast comprised jeans paired with the gift shop t-shirt, a coffee-soaked coat, hastily tied back hair and not so much as a hint of makeup on her hungover face.

“I, I'm so sorry,” she stuttered out. “I wasn't looking where I was going.”

He raised a single eyebrow. “Clearly.”

She released the fabric of his shirt and looked down to the ground. His papers were scattered about, some of them languishing in a puddle of coffee. She bent to start picking them up, shaking off the coffee with a wince while he did the same.The documents were a combination of text and images featuring a set of recently discovered Egyptian artefacts.

Eve recognized one of the ancient tablets. It was thousands of years old and had been discovered by an archaeologist excavating a necropolis on the outskirts of Saqqara in Egypt. She’d read about it online.

“I've heard of this,” she said, now feeling an overwhelming desire to prove herself to be more than a scruffy shop girl. “One tablet got damaged, but restoration revealed that lines from the summoning of Apophis were etched into it.” She risked a look at him and noticed that he looked surprised.

“You're a fan of Egyptology?” he said.

Eve shrugged. “It was my degree subject.” She swept a hand down her coffee-soaked front. “Believe it or not.”

“He raised his eyes and looked into the demon’s eyes,” he said, and Eve realized he was quoting from the text and joined in. They said together, “I command thee to do my bidding.”

Eve and man stared at each other. Both nodded and looked slightly bewildered.

He thumbed through the papers he now held and pulled one free to show to her. “This one was a recent discovery made beneath the flagstones of an abandoned temple some miles outside Saqqara.”

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