The Serpent's Shadow

13. A Friendly Game of Hide-and-Seek (with Bonus Points for Painful Death!)

I SEE. LEAVE OFF WITH THE AX-MURDERING DEMON. Trying to make my part of the story seem boring, eh? Carter, you are such an attention hog.

Well, as you were cruising down the Nile in a lavishly appointed riverboat, Walt and I were traveling in a bit less style.

From the realm of the dead, I ventured another conversation with Isis to negotiate a doorway into the Nile Delta. Isis must have been cross with me (I can’t imagine why) because she deposited Walt and me waist-deep in a swamp, our feet completely stuck in the mud.

“Thanks!” I yelled at the sky.

I tried to move but couldn’t. Clouds of mosquitoes gathered around us. The river was alive with bubbling and splashing noises, which made me think of pointy-toothed tiger fish and the water elementals Carter had once described to me.

“Any ideas?” I asked Walt.

Now that he was back in the mortal world, he seemed to have lost his vitality. He looked…I suppose the phrase would be hollowed out. His clothes fit more loosely. The whites of his eyes were tinted an unhealthy yellow. His shoulders hunched, as if the amulets around his neck weighed him down. Seeing him like this made me want to cry—which is not something I do easily.

“Yeah,” he said, digging through his bag. “I have just the thing.”

He brought out a shabti—a white wax figurine of a crocodile.

“Oh, you didn’t,” I said. “You wonderfully naughty boy.”

Walt smiled. For a moment he almost looked like his old self. “Everyone was abandoning Brooklyn House. I figured it wasn’t right to leave him behind.”

He tossed the figurine in the river and spoke a command word. Philip of Macedonia erupted from the water.

Being surprised by a giant crocodile in the Nile is something you usually want to avoid, but Philip was a welcome sight. He smiled at me with his massive croc teeth, his pink eyes gleaming and his white scaly back floating just above the surface.

Walt and I grabbed hold. In no time, Philip had pulled us free of the muck. Soon we were perched on his back, making our way upriver. I rode in front, straddling Philip’s shoulders. Walt sat behind at Philip’s midsection. Philip was such a roomy crocodile that this left considerable space between Walt and me—possibly more than I would’ve preferred. Nevertheless we had a lovely ride, except for being drenched, caked in mud, and swarmed by mosquitoes.

The landscape was a maze of waterways, grassy islands, reed beds, and muddy shoals. It was impossible to tell where the river ended and the land began. Occasionally in the distance we saw plowed fields or the rooftops of small villages, but mostly we had the river to ourselves. We saw several crocodiles, but they all steered clear of us. They would be quite insane to bother Philip.

Like Carter and Zia, we’d got a late start leaving the Underworld. I was alarmed at how far the sun had already climbed in the sky. The heat turned the air into a soupy haze. My shirt and trousers were soaked through. I wished I’d brought a change of clothes, though it wouldn’t have made much difference, as my pack was damp, too. Also, with Walt around, there was no place to change.

After a while, I got bored with watching the Delta. I turned and sat cross-legged, facing Walt. “If we had some wood, we could start a campfire on Philip’s back.”

Walt laughed. “I don’t think he’d like that. Plus, I’m not sure we want to send up smoke signals.”

“You think we’re being watched?”

His expression turned serious. “If I were Apophis, or even Sarah Jacobi…”

He didn’t need to finish that thought. Any number of villains wanted us dead. Of course they’d be looking for us.

Walt rummaged through his collection of necklaces. I didn’t notice the gentle curves of his mouth at all, or how his shirt clung to his chest in the humid air. No—all business, that’s me.

He chose an amulet shaped like an ibis—Thoth’s sacred animal. Walt whispered to it and threw it into the air. The charm expanded into a beautiful white bird with a long curved beak and black-tipped wings. It circled above us, buffeting my face with wind, then flew off slowly and gracefully over the wetlands. It reminded me of a stork from those old cartoons—the birds who bring babies in bundles. For some ridiculous reason, that thought made me blush.

“You’re sending it to scout ahead?” I guessed.

Walt nodded. “It’ll look for the ruins of Saïs. Hopefully they’re close by.”

Unless Isis sent us to the wrong end of the Delta, I thought.

Isis didn’t reply, which was proof enough she was miffed.

We glided upstream on Crocodile Cruise Line. Normally I wouldn’t have felt uncomfortable having so much face time with Walt, but there was so much to say, and no good way to say it. Tomorrow morning, one way or another, our long fight against Apophis would be over.

Of course I was worried about all of us. I’d left Carter with the sociopathic ghost of Uncle Vinnie. I hadn’t even got up the courage to tell him that Zia occasionally became a fireball-lobbing maniac. I worried about Amos and his struggle with Set. I worried about our young initiates, virtually alone at the First Nome and no doubt terrified. I felt heartbroken for my father, who sat on his Underworld throne grieving for our mother—yet again—and of course I feared for my mother’s spirit, on the verge of destruction somewhere in the Duat.

More than anything, I was concerned about Walt. The rest of us had some chance of surviving, however slim. Even if we prevailed, Walt was doomed. According to Setne, Walt might not even survive our trip to Saïs.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. All I had to do was lower my vision into the Duat. A gray sickly aura swirled around Walt, growing weaker and weaker. How long, I wondered, before he turned into the mummified vision I’d seen in Dallas?

Then again, there was the other vision I’d seen at the Hall of Judgment. After talking to the jackal guardian, Walt had turned to me, and just for a moment, I thought he was…

“Anubis wanted to be there,” Walt interrupted my thoughts. “I mean, in the Hall of Judgment—he wanted to be there for you, if that’s what you were wondering about.”

I scowled. “I was wondering about you, Walt Stone. You’re running out of time, and we haven’t had a proper talk about it.”

Even saying that much was difficult.

Walt trailed his feet in the water. He’d set his shoes to dry on Philip’s tail. Boys’ feet are not something I find attractive, especially when they’ve just been removed from mucky trainers. However, Walt’s feet were quite nice. His toes were almost the same color as the swirling silt in the Nile.

(Carter is complaining about my comments on Walt’s feet. Well, pardon me. It was easier to focus on his toes than on the sad look on his face!)

“Tonight at the latest,” he said. “But, Sadie, it’s okay.”

Anger swelled inside me, taking me quite by surprise.

“Stop it!” I snapped. “It’s not anywhere close to okay! Oh, yes, you’ve told me how grateful you are to have known me, and learned magic at Brooklyn House, and helped with the fight against Apophis. All very noble. But it’s not—” My voice broke. “It’s not okay.”

I pounded my fist on Philip’s scaly back, which wasn’t fair to the crocodile. Yelling at Walt wasn’t fair either. But I was tired of tragedy. I wasn’t designed for all this loss and sacrifice and horrible sadness. I wanted to throw my arms around Walt, but there was a wall between us—this knowledge that he was doomed. My feelings for him were so mixed up, I didn’t know whether I was driven by simple attraction, or guilt, or (dare I say it) love—or stubborn determination not to lose someone else I cared about.

“Sadie…” Walt gazed across the marshes. He looked quite helpless, and I suppose I couldn’t blame him. I was being rather impossible. “If I die for something I believe in…that’s okay with me. But death doesn’t have to be the end. I’ve been talking with Anubis, and—”

“Gods of Egypt, not that again!” I said. “Please don’t talk about him. I know exactly what he’s been telling you.”

Walt looked startled. “You do? And…you don’t like the idea?”

“Of course not!” I yelled.

Walt looked absolutely crestfallen.

“Oh, come off it!” I said. “I know Anubis is the guide for the dead. He’s been preparing you for the afterlife. He’s told you that it’ll be right. You’ll die a noble death, get a speedy trial, and go straight into Ancient Egyptian Paradise. Bloody wonderful! You’ll be a ghost like my poor mother. Perhaps it’s not the end of the world for you. If it makes you feel better about your fate, then fine. But I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t need another…another person I can’t be with.”

My face was burning. It was bad enough that my mother was a spirit. I could never properly hug her again, never go shopping with her, never get advice about girl sorts of things. Bad enough that I’d been cut off from Anubis—that horribly frustrating gorgeous god who’d wrapped my heart into knots. Deep down, I’d always known a relationship with him was impossible given our age difference—five thousand years or so—but having the other gods decree him off-limits just rubbed salt in the wound.

Now to think of Walt as a spirit, out of reach as well—that was simply too much.

I looked up at him, afraid my bratty behavior would have made him feel even worse.

To my surprise, he broke into a smile. Then he laughed.

“What?” I demanded.

He doubled over, still laughing, which I found quite inconsiderate.

“You find this funny?” I shouted. “Walt Stone!”

“No…” He hugged his sides. “No, it’s just…You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”

“Well, then, what is it like?”

He got control of himself. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts when his white ibis dived out of the sky. It landed on Philip’s head, flapped its wings, and cawed.

Walt’s smile melted. “We’re here. The ruins of Saïs.”

Philip carried us ashore. We put on our shoes and waded across the marshy ground. In front of us stretched a forest of palm trees, hazy in the afternoon light. Herons flew overhead. Orange-and-black bees hovered over the papyrus plants.

One bee landed on Walt’s arm. Several more circled his head.

Walt looked more perplexed than worried. “The goddess who’s supposed to live around here, Neith…didn’t she have something to do with bees?”

“No idea,” I admitted. For some reason, I felt the urge to speak quietly.

[Yes, Carter. It was a first for me. Thanks for asking.]

I peered through the palm forest. In the distance, I thought I saw a clearing with a few clumps of mud brick sticking above the grass like rotten teeth.

I pointed them out to Walt. “The remains of a temple?”

Walt must have felt the same instinct for stealth that I did. He crouched in the grass, trying to lower his profile. Then he glanced back nervously at Philip of Macedonia. “Maybe we shouldn’t have a three-thousand-pound crocodile trampling through the woods with us.”

“Agreed,” I said.

He whispered a command word. Philip shrank back to a small wax statuette. Walt pocketed our croc, and we began sneaking toward the ruins.

The closer we got, the more bees filled the air. When we arrived at the clearing, we found an entire colony swarming like a living carpet over a cluster of crumbling mud-brick walls.

Next to them, sitting on a weathered block of stone, a woman leaned on a bow, sketching in the dirt with an arrow.

She was beautiful in a severe way—thin and pale with high cheekbones, sunken eyes, and arched eyebrows, like a supermodel walking the line between glamorous and malnourished. Her hair was glossy black, braided on either side with flint arrowheads. Her haughty expression seemed to say: I’m much too cool to even look at you.

There was nothing glamorous about her clothes, however. She was dressed for the hunt in desert-colored fatigues—beige, brown, and ochre. Several knives hung from her belt. A quiver was strapped to her back, and her bow looked like quite a serious weapon—polished wood carved with hieroglyphs of power.

Most disturbing of all, she seemed to be waiting for us.

“You’re noisy,” she complained. “I could’ve killed you a dozen times already.”

I glanced at Walt, then back at the huntress. “Um…thanks? For not killing us, I mean.”

The woman snorted. “Don’t thank me. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to survive.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but generally speaking, I don’t ask heavily armed women to elaborate on such statements.

Walt pointed to the symbol the huntress was drawing in the dirt—an oval with four pointy bits like legs.

“You’re Neith,” Walt guessed. “That’s your symbol—the shield with crossed arrows.”

The goddess raised her eyebrows. “Think much? Of course I’m Neith. And, yes, that’s my symbol.”

“It looks like a bug,” I said.

“It’s not a bug!” Neith glowered. Behind her, the bees became agitated, crawling over the mud bricks.

“You’re right,” I decided. “Not a bug.”

Walt wagged his finger as if he’d just had a thought. “The bees…I remember now. That was one name for your temple—the House of the Bee.”

“Bees are tireless hunters,” Neith said. “Fearless warriors. I like bees.”

“Uh, who doesn’t?” I offered. “Charming little…buzzers. But you see, we’re here on a mission.”

I began to explain about Bes and his shadow.

Neith cut me off with a wave of her arrow. “I know why you’re here. The others told me.”

I moistened my lips. “The others?”

“Russian magicians,” she said. “They were terrible prey. After that, a few demons came by. They weren’t much better. They all wanted to kill you.”

I moved a step closer to Walt. “I see. And so you—”

“Destroyed them, of course,” Neith said.

Walt made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a whimper. “Destroyed them because…they were evil?” he said hopefully. “You knew the demons and those magicians were working for Apophis, right? It’s a conspiracy.”

“Of course it’s a conspiracy,” Neith said. “They’re all in on it—the mortals, the magicians, the demons, the tax collectors. But I’m on to them. Anyone who invades my territory pays.” She gave me a hard smile. “I take trophies.”

From under the collar of her army jacket, she dug out a necklace. I winced, expecting to see some grisly bits of…well, I don’t even want to say. Instead, the cord was strung with ragged squares of cloth—denim, linen, silk.

“Pockets,” Neith confided, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Walt’s hands went instinctively to the sides of his workout pants. “You, um…took their pockets?”

“Do you think me cruel?” Neith asked. “Oh, yes, I collect the pockets of my enemies.”

“Horrifying,” I said. “I didn’t know demons had pockets.”

“Oh, yes.” Neith glanced in either direction, apparently to be sure no one was eavesdropping. “You just have to know where to look.”

“Right…” I said. “So anyway, we’ve come to find Bes’s shadow.”

“Yes,” the goddess said.

“And I understand you’re a friend of Bes and Tawaret’s.”

“That’s true. I like them. They’re ugly. I don’t think they’re in the conspiracy.”

“Oh, definitely not! So could you, perhaps, show us where Bes’s shadow is?”

“I could. It dwells in my realm—in the shadows of ancient times.”

“In the…what now?”

I was so sorry I asked.

Neith nocked her arrow and shot it toward the sky. As it sailed upward, the air rippled. A shockwave spread across the landscape, and I felt momentarily dizzy.

When I blinked, I found that the afternoon sky had turned a more brilliant blue, striped with orange clouds. The air was crisp and clean. Flocks of geese flew overhead. The palm trees were taller; the grass was greener—

[Yes, Carter, I know it sounds silly. But the grass really was greener on the other side.]

Where the mud-brick ruins had been, a proud temple now stood. Walt, Neith, and I were just outside the walls, which rose ten meters and gleamed brilliant white in the sun. The whole complex must have been at least a kilometer square. Halfway down the left wall, a gate glittered with gold filigree. A road lined with stone sphinxes led to the river, where sailboats were docked.

Disorienting? Yes. But I’d had a similar experience once before, when I’d touched the curtains of light in the Hall of Ages.

“We’re in the past?” I guessed.

“A shadow of it,” Neith said. “A memory. This is my refuge. It may be your burial ground, unless you survive the hunt.”

I tensed. “You mean…you hunt us? But we’re not your enemy! Bes is your friend. You should be helping us!”

“Sadie’s right,” Walt said. “Apophis is your enemy. He’s going to destroy the world tomorrow morning.”

Neith snorted. “The end of the world? I’ve seen that coming for eons. You soft mortals have ignored the warning signs, but I’m prepared. I’ve got an underground bunker stockpiled with food, clean water, and enough weapons and ammunition to hold off a zombie army.”

Walt knit his eyebrows. “A zombie army?”

“You never know!” Neith snapped. “The point is, I’ll survive the apocalypse. I can live off the land!” She jabbed a finger at me. “Did you know the palm tree has six different edible parts?”

“Um—”

“And I’ll never be bored,” Neith continued, “since I’m also the goddess of weaving. I have enough twine for a millennium of macramé!”

I had no reply, as I wasn’t sure what macramé was.

Walt raised his hands. “Neith, that’s great, but Apophis is rising tomorrow. He’ll swallow the sun, plunge the world into darkness, and let the whole earth crumble back into the Sea of Chaos.”

“I’ll be safe in my bunker,” Neith insisted. “If you can prove to me that you’re friend and not foe, maybe I’ll help you with Bes. Then you can join me in the bunker. I’ll teach you survival skills. We’ll eat rations and weave new clothes from the pockets of our enemies!”

Walt and I exchanged looks. The goddess was a nutter. Unfortunately, we needed her help.

“So you want to hunt us,” I said. “And we’re supposed to survive—”

“Until sunset,” she said. “Evade me that long, and you can live in my bunker.”

“I’ve got a counteroffer,” I said quickly. “No bunker. If we win, you help us find Bes’s shadow, but you’ll also fight on our side against Apophis. If you’re really a war goddess and a huntress and all that, you should enjoy a good battle.”

Neith grinned. “Done! I’ll even give you a five-minute head start. But I should warn you: I never lose. When I kill you, I’ll take your pockets!”

“You drive a hard bargain,” I said. “But fine.”

Walt elbowed me. “Um, Sadie—”

I shot him a warning look. As I saw it, there was no way we could escape this hunt, but I did have an idea that might keep us alive.

“We’ve begun!” Neith cried. “You can go anywhere in my territory, which is basically the entire delta. It doesn’t matter. I’ll find you.”

Walt said, “But—”

“Four minutes, now,” Neith said.

We did the only sensible thing. We turned and ran.

“What is macramé?” I yelled as we barreled through the rushes.

“A kind of weaving,” Walt said. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Dunno,” I admitted. “Just cur—”

The world turned upside down—or rather, I did. I found myself hanging in a scratchy twine net with my feet in the air.

“That’s macramé,” Walt said.

“Lovely. Get me down!”

He pulled a knife from his pack—practical boy—and managed to free me, but I reckoned we’d lost most of our head start. The sun was lower on the horizon, but how long would we have to survive—thirty minutes? An hour?

Walt rifled through his pack and briefly considered the white wax crocodile. “Philip, maybe?”

“No,” I said. “We can’t fight Neith head-on. We have to avoid her. We can split—”

“Tiger. Boat. Sphinx. Camels. No invisibility,” Walt muttered, examining his amulets. “Why don’t I have an amulet for invisibility?”

I shuddered. The last time I’d tried invisibility, it hadn’t gone very well. “Walt, she’s a hunting goddess. We probably couldn’t fool her with any sort of concealment spell, even if you had one.”

“Then what?” he asked.

I put my finger on Walt’s chest and tapped the one amulet he wasn’t considering—a necklace that was the twin to mine.

“The shen amulets?” He blinked. “But how can those help?”

“We split up and buy time,” I said. “We can share thoughts through the amulets, yes?”

“Well…yes.”

“And they can teleport us to each other’s side, right?”

Walt frowned. “I—I designed them for that, but—”

“If we split up,” I said, “Neith will have to choose one of us to track. We get as far apart as possible. If she finds me first, you teleport me out of danger with the amulet. Or vice versa. Then we split up again, and we keep at it.”

“That’s brilliant,” Walt admitted. “If the amulets will work quickly enough. And if we can keep the mental connection. And if Neith doesn’t kill one of us before we can call for help. And—”

I put my finger to his lips. “Let’s just leave it at ‘That’s brilliant.’”

He nodded, then gave me a hasty kiss. “Good luck.”

The silly boy shouldn’t do things like that when I need to stay focused. He dashed off to the north and, after a dazed moment, I ran south.

Squishy combat boots are not the best for sneaking around.

I considered wading into the river, thinking perhaps the water would obscure my trail, but I didn’t want to go for a swim without knowing what was under the surface—crocs, snakes, evil spirits. Carter once told me that most Ancient Egyptians couldn’t swim, which had seemed ridiculous to me at the time. How could people living next to a river not swim? Now I understood. No one in his right mind would want to take a dip in that water.

(Carter says a swim in the Thames or the East River would be almost as bad for your health. All right, fair point. [Now shut up, brother dear, and let me get back to the brilliant Sadie-saves-the-day part.])

I ran along the banks, crashing through reeds, jumping straight over a sunning crocodile. I didn’t bother to check if it was chasing me. I had bigger predators to worry about.

I’m not sure how long I ran. It seemed like miles. As the riverbank widened, I veered inland, trying to stay under the cover of the palm trees. I heard no signs of pursuit, but I had a constant itch in the middle of my shoulder blades where I expected an arrow.

I stumbled through a clearing where some Ancient Egyptians in loincloths were cooking over an open fire next to a small thatched hut. Perhaps the Egyptians were just shadows from the past, but they looked real enough. They seemed quite startled to see a blond girl in combat clothes stumble into their encampment. Then they saw my staff and wand and immediately groveled, putting their heads to the dirt and mumbling something about Per Ankh—the House of Life.

“Um, yes,” I said. “Per Ankh official business. Carry on. Bye.”

Off I raced. I wondered if I would appear on a temple wall painting someday—a blond Egyptian girl with purple highlights running sideways through the palm trees, screaming “Yikes!” in hieroglyphics as Neith chased after me. The thought of some poor archaeologist trying to figure that out almost lifted my spirits.

I reached the edge of the palm forest and stumbled to a stop. Before me, plowed fields spread into the distance. Nowhere to run or hide.

I turned back.

THUNK!

An arrow hit the nearest palm tree with such force that dates rained down on my head.

Walt, I thought desperately, now, please.

Twenty meters away, Neith rose from the grass. She had smeared river mud on her face. Palm fronds stuck from her hair like bunny ears.

“I’ve hunted feral pigs with more skill than you,” she complained. “I’ve hunted papyrus plants with more skill!”

Now, Walt, I thought. Dear, dear Walt. Now.

Neith shook her head in disgust. She nocked an arrow. I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, as if I were in a car and the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes.

I found myself sitting in a tree next to Walt, on the lowest bough of a large sycamore.

“It worked,” he said.

Wonderful Walt!

I kissed him properly—or as properly as possible given our situation. There was a sweet smell about him I hadn’t noticed before, as if he’d been eating lotus blossoms. I imagined that old school rhyme: “Walt and Sadie / sitting in a tree / K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Fortunately, anyone who might tease me was still five thousand years in the future.

Walt took a deep breath. “Is that a thank-you?”

“You look better,” I noticed. His eyes weren’t as yellow. He seemed to be moving with less pain. This should have delighted me, but instead it made me worried. “That lotus smell…did you drink something?”

“I’m okay.” He looked away from me. “We’d better split up and try again.”

That didn’t make me any less worried, but he was right. We had no time to chat. We both jumped to the ground and headed off in opposite directions.

The sun was almost touching the horizon. I began to feel hopeful. Surely we wouldn’t have to hold out much longer.

I almost stumbled into another macramé net, but fortunately I was on the lookout for Neith’s arts and crafts projects. I sidestepped the trap, pushed through a stand of papyrus plants, and found myself back at Neith’s temple.

The golden gates stood open. The wide avenue of sphinxes led straight into the complex. No guards…no priests. Maybe Neith had killed them all and collected their pockets, or perhaps they were all down in the bunker, preparing for a zombie invasion.

Hmm. I reckoned that the last place Neith might look for me was in her home base. Besides, Tawaret had seen Bes’s shadow up on those ramparts. If I could find the shadow without Neith’s help, all the better.

I ran for the gates, keeping a suspicious eye on the sphinxes. None of them came alive. Inside the massive courtyard were two freestanding obelisks tipped with gold. Between them glowered a statue of Neith in Ancient Egyptian garb. Shields and arrows had been piled around her feet like spoils of war.

I scanned the surrounding walls. Several stairways led up to the ramparts. The setting sun cast plenty of long shadows, but I didn’t see any obvious dwarf silhouettes. Tawaret had suggested I call to the shadow. I was about to try when I heard Walt’s voice in my mind: Sadie!

It’s awfully hard to concentrate when someone’s life depends on you.

I grasped the shen amulet and muttered, “Come on. Come on.”

I pictured Walt standing next to me, preferably without an arrow in him. I blinked—and there he was. He almost knocked me down with a hug.

“She—she would’ve killed me,” Walt gasped. “But she wanted to talk first. She said she liked our trick. She was proud to slay us and take our pockets.”

“Super,” I said. “Split up again?”

Walt glanced over my shoulder. “Sadie, look.”

He pointed to the northwest corner of the walls, where a tower jutted from the ramparts. As the sky turned red, shadows slowly melted from the side of the tower, but one shadow remained—the silhouette of a stout little man with frizzy hair.

I’m afraid we forgot our plan. Together, we ran to the steps and climbed the wall. In no time, we were standing on the parapets, staring at the shadow of Bes.

I realized we must have been in the exact spot where Tawaret and Bes had held hands on the night Tawaret had described. Bes had told the truth—he’d left his shadow here so it could be happy, even when he wasn’t.

“Oh, Bes…” My heart felt like it was shrinking into a wax shabti. “Walt, how do we capture it?”

A voice behind us said, “You don’t.”

We turned. A few meters away, Neith stood on the ramparts. Two arrows were nocked in her bow. At this range, I imagined she’d have no trouble hitting us both at once.

“A good try,” she admitted. “But I always win the hunt.”