"I see you found what you were looking for," he said softly.
Peez got into the cab without a word. Even Teddy Tumtum was silent. Sam started the truck and drove east. As they rolled down the road, he gave her a searching look. "You're all right? Cold? Want coffee? I know a place—"
"The airport, please," Peez said. Her eyes were fixed on something beyond the realm of ordinary sight. "I need to book an earlier flight to New Orleans." She turned to look at him. "It was there, Sam. It was there inside me all along. I just had to find the time and the silence before I could find the answer."
"Care to share it?"
"It's me, Sam. I'm the answer. My brother shouldn't be the head of E. Godz, Inc., but not because we don't get along or because I used to resent him or anything like that. The only reason he shouldn't guide E. Godz, Inc. is because I should. I know what the company is really about, and I've seen the best path for it to take." She blushed suddenly and added: "Wow, does that sound egotistical or what?"
"Depends." Sam regarded her with fatherly pride. "Why don't you ask the bear? He's usually got all the answers. Hey, you! Bear! How come you're so quiet all of a sudden? You have a vision, too?"
"No," Teddy Tumtum replied cautiously. "But I think I got a scorpion up my— YEEE!"
"I couldn't help it," Peez said apologetically as Sam stopped the truck for the third time. "I hate scorpions."
Chapter Fourteen
No one was waiting at Chicago's O'Hare Airport to meet Dov. That was annoying. The last he'd heard, he was supposed to be picked up at Baggage by someone named William Montrose who would be easily identifiable because he'd be holding up a sign with Dov's name on it.
There were plenty of people with signs waiting near Baggage, but not one of the signs said dov godz or any variation thereof.
"I don't like the smell of this," Dov muttered down the front of his shirt.
"You should try the smell in here," Ammi replied. "Man, if you can't shower twice a day while you're traveling, would you at least consider shaving your chest? I know we've been through this before, but come on, man, it's a jungle in here! One where a whole lot of tigers have been wrestling in dead—"
"Shut up." Dov whipped out his cell phone and fired off a ring in the direction of the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore. He wrapped an insulating spell around it so that it would cause the phone on the receiving end of the call to ring at the decibel level of a Heavy Metal band. The selfsame spell would also make Dov's summons shoot straight through any call-waiting or call-screening devices like a bullet through butter.
The phone rang once and only once before someone answered. That was usually about all it took.
"Who in the blessed Afterlife is this?" a harried male voice boomed.
"Are you Ray Rah?" Dov barked.
"I am. Who are you and what did you do to my phone?"
"Why ... don't ... you ... just ... guess?" Dov said slowly, between gritted teeth. He was feeling more than a little testy and he had no qualms about letting it show.
"Oh!" A gasp of embarrassment filled the phone. Good. Dov wanted his neglectful host to suffer.
"Is that all you can say? I've been standing in this baggage claim area for an hour," he lied.
"But the last we heard from you, your plane wasn't supposed to get in until now."
"Ever hear of someone taking an earlier flight? Or even of a flight getting in early?"
"Yes, but this is Chicago-O'Hare we're talking about and—"
"And even if I did come in at my original arrival time, which is now, so what? There's still no one here to meet me!" Dov was piling it on heavy and enjoying doing it. He had not had a good flight from Seattle. There was bad weather over the Rockies, the first- class cabin ran out of the Pinot Grigio he'd ordered and he'd had to make do with Chardonnay, and the coffee they'd served tasted so dreadfully ... weak. He knew he shouldn't have felt quite so homicidal over something as ordinary as coffee, but this was a commonplace, documented reaction among people who had spent more than fifteen minutes in Seattle. Medical journals called it "bean lag."
Perhaps it was unwise of him to take out his irritability on someone whose support he'd come here to woo. Dov was aware that his snippy behavior might alienate the leader of the Chicago group, but the possibility didn't faze him. He placed absolute trust in his own charisma, sure that no matter how badly he antagonized someone, he had the power to convert any foe into a friend by the judicious application of charm. It might take a little time to undo this bit of preliminary damage, but what was time to him? He had plenty to spare.
Besides, if you made someone feel guilty and then forgave them, even when they hadn't done anything so bad in the first place, they became a little less likely to take you for granted, a lot more likely to jump when you said "frog." By Dov's calculations, Rah Ray should be just about ready to offer an intense, humiliating apology for leaving a top executive from E. Godz, Inc. stranded at the airport in so barbarous a fashion. He grinned at the phone and waited for the inevitable groveling.
It did not come. Instead, to his shock, he heard a hearty chuckle in his ear. "Oh, I see what happened. I had Billy-hotep down to pick you up, only then we all decided to do this lovely ceremony and I sent him out for extra pomegranates. You can't have enough pomegranates when you're trying to get Isis to pay attention. You do know how important it is that the rites of Isis be properly performed, don't you, Mr. Godz?"
"Uh ... I mean, yes; yes, of course I do. What do you take me for, an ignoramus?" Dov tried to lob the guilt back into Ray Rah's court, but the man wasn't even in the game.
"Of course you do! Doesn't everyone? I guess what happened is that I just got a little carried away and double-booked Billy-hotep. I mean, you can't be in two places at once until after you're dead, right? It happens. I'll tell you what: It's too late to send someone for you now. There's so much left to do before the ceremony if we're going to have everything ready in time, and I'm a little shorthanded. This happens whenever I schedule a holy rite for the same day as a Cubs game. Okay, so you nab a cab, get a receipt, and I'll reimburse you for it as soon as you get here. Unless you want to hold onto it yourself as a business expense, for taxes?"
Dov snapped his phone shut without another word and wished it were an old- fashioned desktop model of 1940's vintage. You just couldn't slam the receiver of a cell phone in a truly satisfying manner.
All the way to the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore, Dov's cabdriver labored under the impression that his fare was one of those oddballs who had to sing along to whatever music was playing in his portable CD player. That was the illusion conjured up by the ARS Dov had invoked to veil his angry conversation with Ammi.
"The nerve of that idiot! The bloody, unmitigated nerve, giving me the brush-off like that!"
"I thought that the only thing that could ever be unmitigated was gall," the silver amulet remarked. "Gall and your chest hair."
"Does he even know who I am? Does he realize where he and his group will be when I take over the company?"
"Out in the cold?" Ammi offered helpfully. "Out in left field? Out on their butts? Out of time? Out of luck?"
"Try 'out of patience,' which is what I am with you, so don't push it."
"Hey, what's with the bruised ego?" The amulet clicked its nonexistent tongue. "All they did was forget to pick you up at the airport. You upset because no one gave you a big ol' gooey apology? That sort of thing never bothered you before. You'd just shrug it off. If it did bug you, you'd still act like everything was aces, file it away, and drag it out later on, when you could use it at the bargaining table. What's eating you all of a sudden?"
"I don't know, Ammi. I just don't know." He sounded just a little scared. "Maybe— maybe it's all that coffee I've been drinking. It's made me nervous, hypersensitive. You're right: This isn't like me."