After waking from a fitful nap, Waxman unbuckled his seat belt, stepped into the aisle and made his way toward the back of the plane. Caleb was sitting in the row behind him with Phoebe, whose wheelchair was stored up front. He had his eyes closed and headphones on, listening to one of the in-flight music stations.
Cocky kid, Waxman thought. It’s about time he contributed. And now it’s Phoebe’s turn. Time for the cripple to pull her weight. Their last hope was that this damned scroll could be opened, and that it had something useful on it. But he had to be careful; lately it felt like he was on shaky ground with Helen. Every day, everywhere he went, it seemed he trod in Philip’s shadow. Several times he had caught Helen staring at the photographs in her room, the ones she would never remove, the ones he would never again make the mistake of asking her to take down.
All in all, it could be worse. She was still a beautiful woman, and she let him have his hobbies, tolerated his absences and asked no questions. In many ways, she was the perfect wife. And what better way to keep an eye on the project? To fan the flames of Helen’s obsession with the Pharos Code, and to be ready to pounce at the moment of revelation. In one fell swoop, by marrying Helen, he had ensured himself access to vital information before the Keepers could ever learn of it.
And that was all that mattered-that, and finding the treasure. Soon. Whenever he felt like they were losing ground and would never succeed, he closed his eyes, imagined the vault opening for him.
In the lavatory, after squeezing through the narrow door and sliding the occupied slot over, he took a deep breath and stared in the mirror, right next to the No Smoking sign and its vapid threat of fines and jail time.
He reached into his shirt pocket for his pack of menthols, turned on the water, took out his lighter and pulled one cigarette from the pack with his teeth. When he looked up, the mirror had fogged over, thick puffs of steam exhaling out of the sink. Odd that the water could be so hot…
Waxman was about to wipe the mirror clean when lines started appearing on the glass. Smears and curves formed as if a finger slid along the surface.
MAMA
Cursing, Waxman put out his cigarette, then smeared the fog clear off the mirror with his jacket sleeve. “Leave me alone!”
Something in the drain gurgled and bubbled up with the steam that promptly fogged up the mirror again.
I WILL DO NO SUCH THI Waxman wiped the mirror clean again and turned off the water. “I’m done talking to you. We’ve found what we needed, and soon I’ll do what I was born to do.”