Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/literal corpse is.
Tag Line: Back from the dead?From the Back of the Book: A lost love. An ancient curse. From the moment Lana sees the mummy of the incredibly handsome Prince Nefra at the Egyptian exhibit, she gets an eerie feeling. She is unexplainably drawn to him when she hears him whisper, "Come back, my princess! Come back!" One misty night, she sees the mummy in the park, chanting the same mysterious words and reaching toward her. Lana knows it's impossible. The mummy has been dead for thousands of years. Soon Lana is shrouded in a web of horror and longing that traps her between fantasy and reality. Who is really hidden behind the mummy's gray, musty gauze? And why is terrorizing Lana?
This book was published in 1995 and
it's my first time reading it. I've read Steiner before, though, and
I've pretty much hated them across the board so I don't have high
hopes for this one. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I'm not
going to hold my breath.
(((Note from future me: it's a good thing I didn't.)))
We begin with our protagonist Lana on
some kind of museum tour. I think she's one of the volunteers??? Dr
Walters is explaining how a particular tomb is empty because the
mummy of Princess Urbena was stolen. There's apparently a curse that
will only be lifted once her body is found and returned to Egypt. Everyone on the dig
where her coffin was found has died. It's a very dramatic story and
his listeners are pretty rapt.
An older volunteer named Marge whispers
to Lana that the dig was back in 1937 so it's likely most of the
people died from old age and not something mystical.
So the tour is apparently to promote a
new traveling exhibit at the museum. The exhibit centers around
ancient Egypt and has already caused a bit of a buzz in the
community. Lana is particularly stoked to be volunteering as a guide
through it because she's obsessed with Egypt. In fact, she's so
obsessed with Egypt that she's cut her black hair to look like
Cleopatra and she's learned how to read and write hieroglyphics. Her
big dream is to go on a dig in Egypt someday.
Lana takes half a minute to tell us
about her boyfriend Josh who thinks history is boring and then she
moves on to telling us about the exhibit. It's all really boring and
I'm hoping most of it is unimportant because I don't really want to
type any of it in here. But I guess the stuff about Prince Nefra is
going to come up so I'm just going to give you the short version.
Prince Nefra died at the age of 19 on
the eve of his wedding to Princess Urbena. Mystery surrounds his
death because he had not been ill prior to getting violently sick and
dying. My original thought was this:
Odds Princess Urbena killed Prince
Nefra to avoid marrying him: 60%
But after reading a little further I'm
pretty sure that's not the case. Still, I'll let that stand since it was my
first thought.
Lana is drawn to Nefra's coffin. It's
one of the ones with his face carved into the front of it. She
thinks he's incredibly handsome. His actual corpse is there too but
she just stands and stares at the carving of his face on the coffin
lid for an indeterminable amount of time. She completely loses all
sense of her surroundings and is surprised with the lights in the
room flick on and off a couple of times to indicate that the museum
will be closing soon. Still, she can't break her gaze and she
continues to just stand there. Eventually all the lights go off and
she's left alone in the dark. She hears a whisper....
“Princess Urbena, come, come to me!
You are mine! You must come to me! Come back you belong to me!”
Lana is sure that the whispers are
coming from the mummy itself (himself?). She can't see to run away and this is
a new exhibit so she isn't super sure of the layout yet to attempt to
maneuver around in the dark. This just seems like a plot contrivance
to me because most museums have low lighting in the exhibit areas so
security personnel can see to do their jobs. Can you imagine them having to patrol around with flashlights? It wouldn't happen because there'd be too much risk of them bumping into something priceless.
Lana eventually stumbles her way into
the next room without causing any major damage which also seems
pretty unlikely to me since they keep saying these rooms are pitch
black and packed with artifacts. The lights come back on as soon as
she gets there. Marge rocks up to see if Lana needs a ride home
since it's so late. As they leave, Marge tells Lana that some people
think Nefra was murdered and Urbena committed suicide soon after in
grief. The ancient Egyptians believed that if two people died close
together, then they might be reincarnated together as well and be
able to find each other again.
Please don't let this be a reincarnation story, Steiner. Please.
Marge tells Lana that several people
commented on her resemblance to Urbena. So I guess they have some
kind of representation of what Urbena looked like. They aren't going
from the carving on the coffin are they? Because those things don't
even look like real people half the time. Does Lana look like a wood
carving? I'm just going to assume she does from here on out.
When Lana gets home, she finds a sleek,
black cat in her room. Her mom says it just showed up at the house
and I guess she decided to keep it despite not knowing if it had an
owner out there somewhere. You know what we call that? A thief. That's what we call that.
Lana decides to name the cat Seti which
is an Egyptian name. I mean.....okay. But his name is probably
Boots or something stupid like that. That night Lana dreams that she
is an Egyptian princess thinking of how Prince Nefra will love her
for all eternity.
So I'm guessing Urbena probably didn't
kill him then? If she was excited to marry him. Or is she just
gloating that Nefra will love her into eternity because she's about
to stick an ice pick into the base of his skull? I don't know,
y'all. You tell me.
The next morning Lana decides to leave
her bedroom window open so Seti will be able to go in and out as he
pleases. So....no screens? Won't she just come back to a room full
of bugs? By the time she gets to the museum, lines are already
forming around the block. She's excited that she'll get to interact with so many people about the exhibit.
A dude named Rod greets Lana at the door. She tells
us that he's young, cute, dark-skinned and he grew up in Cairo which
fulfills her Egypt lust. He invites her to have lunch with him later
at the museum cafe and she's flattered. Apparently Rod has shown her
some interest before which makes Josh really jealous but Lana enjoys
that. It makes her feel special.
I'm hella bored with this book so I'm just going to do some odds even though there's no real reason to do them yet.
Odds that Josh is our eventual bad guy:
50%
Odds that Rod is our eventual bad guy:
50%
Odds that Nefra is our eventual bad
guy: 0% (I HOPE)
Lana is stationed near the mummies at
the jewelry exhibit for the day so she can answer any questions that
the guests might have as they go through. The morning passes pretty
fast but Lana keeps wandering over to look at Nefra. Rod has been
assigned to the mummies so she doesn't linger but eventually she
lucks out and gets to the area while Rod is on his morning break. As
she gazes raptly at the mummy, she notices that both arms are down to
his sides instead of one being folded across his chest like it would
be traditionally.
Lana goes to find Antef who is the
person traveling across country with the exhibit. By the time she
drags him back to Nefra to show him the arm that's been moved, it's
back where it should be. She tells him that the hand was down before
and he suggests that she's just been working too hard lately. He
offers to buy her coffee at the cafe and flirts with her a little.
On the way into the cafe, they run into Rod who abruptly cancels
their lunch date and then literally runs away.
We skip to closing time. Lana finds
Seti waiting outside of the museum to walk her home. She doesn't
find this nearly as weird as she should. How did the damn cat know
where she worked???
Later that evening, Josh comes over to
pick Lana up for a date. They go to a movie and then to TGIF for a
coke. I mean......there are cheaper places for teenagers to get a
coke, Steiner, but whatevs. Rod comes into TGIF with a date, shocking
Lana because she was under the impression that he was obsessed with
her and no other woman would ever be able to measure up to her in his
eyes. The date is an exchange student from..........can you guess?
I bet you can't. It's CAIRO!
I know. I was shocked too. I might
never recover.
The Egyptian girl's name is Darrah.
She's beautiful but a bit of a bitch and she thinks all Americans are
spoiled little princesses. There's some awkwardness with Josh
peacocking in front of his potential rival and Darrah acting like
Lana is something she stepped on and can't get off her shoe and then
Josh takes Lana home. Seti completely cock blocks him on the front
porch and Josh doesn't even get a kiss.
Sigh. This cat is not very cat-like.
We're getting a supernatural story aren't we? I was so hoping for a
Scooby Doo instead where the bad guy would be revealed to be Josh or
Rod or even that museum guy I've already forgotten the name of.
The next day, Lana makes sure Seti
can't get out of the house and follow her to the museum. As if
that's what happened. Lana is drawn to Nefra again. She tells us
that he makes her feel special and she wants to be with him all the
time because she's just filled with love when she gazes at him. A
literal 💀CORPSE💀. There are laws against that in almost every state,
Lana.
Just before closing, the lights go out
again but this time someone pushes Lana to the ground. Lana
immediately jumps up and pushes the mystery person back. They
scuffle in a room filled with borrowed priceless artifacts and she
ends up being shoved to the floor again. She hears glass breaking
behind her. When the lights come back on, the necklace she has been
stationed beside is gone. It was the wedding necklace for Princess
Urbena.
For some reason, a famous archaeologist
named Blair is at the museum at just that moment and she blames Lana
for not protecting the artifact with her life. Lana is stung because
she really admires Blair. She wants to be Blair when she grows up.
Kind of literally. The police are called and they accuse Lana of
stealing the necklace but Dr Walters (THAT'S HIS NAME!!!) backs her
up and vouches for her.
Lana is dismissed and she walks home
alone in the dark because she's too embarrassed about being a suspect
to ask anyone for a ride. As she walks, she hears someone
whispering: “Lana, Lana, give it back, Lana.” She turns to see
the mummy of Nefra walking toward her. The mummy tells her to give
back the necklace. She staggers backwards in fear and trips over
Seti who launches himself at the mummy. The mummy turns and runs off
all sprightly for someone who's been dead for thousands of years.
I'm taking this as a good sign, y'all. Anthropomorphic cat notwithstanding.
Odds mummy is an actual mummy: 20%
Odds mummy is an actual human: 80% (I
hope)
In the safety of her home, Lana decides
someone is pulling a Scooby on her and I hope like hell she's right.
But then in the next sentence she decides she has a psychic
connection to the cat so I lose all hope again.
The next morning she hangs up her
volunteer vest and finds a button in the pocket. She assumes that it
came off in the scuffle and checks her vest but hers has all the
buttons still present and accounted for. She decides the thief had
to be another volunteer because apparently only museum volunteers use
those particular buttons???? How likely is that? Unless they have
the name of the museum or logo or something stamped on them and can
you imagine how expensive that would be to do? Whatevs. We're
getting good at suspending our disbelief.
So what does our intrepid heroine do
with this key piece of evidence? Does she run it right to the police
station?
Of course she doesn't. She sticks this significant piece of evidence of a major crime in the pocket of her jeans like you do.
You know.....this brings up a HUGE
FUCKING PLOT HOLE. Clearly the police didn't check her fucking
pockets before they let her leave the museum. If they had, they
would have discovered the button and they could have searched for a
volunteer who was missing one. So a necklace disappears and she's
the #1 suspect and they DON'T SEARCH HER POCKETS? You've pushed me
past the limit, Steiner. My disbelief will not suspend over that
giant fucking chasm of a plot hole.
So I guess I have to do one of these
because Steiner forced my hand.
Police force is made up of bumbling
idiots? Check.
Lana goes to the museum after school
even though she's not scheduled to work. She can't stay away from
Nefra. She's fallen in love. With a LITERAL 💀CORPSE💀. She says she's
never felt this depth of emotion before. While she's mooning over
the mummy, Antef comes in and she immediately realizes he's missing
the button off his vest.
Odds that Antef is a red herring: 60%
Lana asks about the button and Antef
says he left his vest in the employee's room the night before. He
went back to get it but it had disappeared. It was back when he came
in today. Lana is skeptical. She goes in to talk to Dr Walters and
hand over the button. She completely throws Antef under the bus and
Walters says he'll take care of it. He doesn't want to involve the
police which sounds like a huge red flag to me and he just shot to
the top of my list.
Odds Walters is the bad guy: 50%
Odds Josh is the bad guy: 10%
Odds Rod is the bad guy: 10%
Odds Antef is the bad guy: 20%
Odds Nefra is the bad guy: 10% (I hope)
Lana goes home to do some homework.
Later that night she dreams she's Urbena again and she's being buried
alive.
The next day Lana runs into Darrah and
she tells her about the dream. Because.....reasons. I guess. Don't you tell random people you've only met once who appear to hate you for no real reason what you dream about at night? I mean this is totally #relatable. Darrah says it's a warning and that Lana is fucking around with
something she doesn't understand.
That's also #relatable because I don't understand what Steiner is trying to do with this fucking book.
A week passes and nothing really
happens. Lana is a little butthurt that Antef has stopped flirting
with her but maybe it's because she threw him under the fucking bus
with her boss. On some random Thursday, Blair the archaeologist
invites Lana to have coffee with her at the museum cafe. She
apologizes for accusing Lana of theft and then asks her if she thinks
Rod might have been involved. Lana is shocked at the idea and asks
Blair why she suspects Rod. Blair says that she knows Darrah's
parents are quite poor and she wondered if Rod stole the necklace to
help Darrah out financially.
Blair goes on to tell Lana that Rod's
dad died in an archaeological dig near Urbena's tomb. There was a
cave in and the local diggers refused to dig anymore thinking that it
was Urbena's curse that had killed Rod's dad.
That night Lana dreams she's Urbena
again. She can't wait to marry Nefra but she feels like something
might be wrong.
These dreams are just annoying as hell.
When she wakes up, the mummy is
standing at the foot of her bed professing his love and asking her to
come in his arms. Um.....what kind of book is this? Did I switch
blogs without knowing it?
Turns out that was a dream too.
The next day her history class takes a
field trip to look at the museum exhibit. Steiner really wants to
show off that she did some research so we get FOUR PAGES describing
the mummification and burial practices of ancient Egyptians. It's
riveting. And I'm sure you already know all of it. Afterwards, the
class leaves but Lana stays since it's the end of the day anyway.
Lana stops to talk to Marge, describing
all her dreams and her theory that Nefra is somehow connecting with
her psychically. Wait. I thought the cat was connecting with her
psychically. Is EVERYONE connecting with Lana psychically? Is she some kind of psychic ho? Marge
thinks Lana is really “going off the deep end” because I guess
people who dream things are automatically crazy??? Regardless, Lana
thanks Marge for listening to her and Marge says: “I could hate
you because you're beautiful and intelligent and weird, Lana. But I
like to think I'm fairly free of prejudice.”
Um.
What?
What the hell was that?
Seti is waiting for Lana after her
shift. They walk home together and Lana is glad for the feline's
company because she's pretty sure she's being followed. Seti doesn't
seem alarmed so Lana takes comfort in that but she can't help yelling
into the night that she's not afraid. She swears she hears someone
laugh.
Lana leaves her window open when she
goes to sleep that night because she's just an idiot. She dreams
about being in some royal procession as Urbena and Seti is there as
well because he's Urbena's cat. When she wakes up there are
scorpions in her room. She screams and her mom comes running.
Together they sweep the scorpions into a dustpan and then flush them
down the toilet. So today I learned you can flush scorpions down the
toilet. Honestly I'd worry about them crawling back out and biting
me on the ass but whatever.
Lana finds a note in her room
afterwards and assumes that someone pushed the scorpions and the note
through the open window. The note reads:
“Admit you are the princess. I
wouldn't want to make a mistake. Nefra.”
Lana fills her mom in on everything
that's been happening. Her mom is understandably confused by all
this. But nothing else happens.
The next morning must be Saturday or
something. Lana has the first shift and is surprised to see Rod
sitting outside the exhibit when she gets there. He says he's there
to sketch the artifacts but Antef hasn't unlocked anything yet.
Lana goes looking for someone to unlock the exhibit room and runs
into an elderly custodian. He opens it for them and Rod goes in to
sketch while Lana checks the exhibit. When she gets into the mummy
room, she can hear a muffled scratching and thumping coming from
Urbena's sarcophagus.
I bet you can't guess where this is headed.......
Marge and Rod help Lana move the heavy
lid and surprise, surprise, Antef is inside. He says he got to the
exhibit early and someone hit him over the head, knocking him out.
When he came to, he was in the sarcophagus. Antef is worried that
something else might be stolen but that doesn't appear to be the
case. He pats down his own pockets to see if he was robbed and Lana
hears something crinkle in his vest pocket but he doesn't investigate
and she doesn't comment on it. She suspects Rod might have put Antef
in the coffin.
The morning goes by as normal and Lana
is just getting ready to go on her break when she sees Antef come
back into the room. He pulls a piece of paper out of his vest pocket
and starts to read it. Even though she's a little ways away from
him, she can tell that it looks like the same kind of note she got
with the scorpions. She confronts him about it and he eventually
hands it over. His says:
“Return my necklace. It belongs to
my princess. This is your only warning. Nefra.”
It's amazing how a LITERAL 💀CORPSE💀 keeps getting his hands on paper and pens like this. Nefra is a resourceful 💀corpse💀, y'all.
Lana accuses him of stealing the
necklace, tormenting her and shutting himself up in the sarcophagus
even though she knows that last one would be nearly impossible for
him to do. Antef denies all of her accusations and then leaves to
talk to Dr Walters.
Lana makes a list of suspects which
basically consists of every single character we've met so far except
Josh. She gives Antef the top spot on her list but I still think
he's pretty low because he's WAY too obvious.
I mean Steiner wouldn't make the bad guy this fucking obvious, right?
Please tell me we don't have an effing Justin situation on our hands. I will lose my ish.
Lunch time rolls around and Rod asks
her to take a look at his sketches so they go to the cafe together.
On the way she pretty much accuses him of stealing the necklace and
putting Antef in the sarcophagus but he just laughs it off as if she
was kidding. She looks through his sketchbook and is stunned to find
that he's incredibly talented. Rod tells her that he'd really like
to find a way to combine art and archaeology. For some reason this
makes her feel like she can trust him and she tells him about her dreams.
Rod says that he spent some time in
Egypt so he believes in the supernatural. He thinks Lana is “tapping into the consciousness of someone in
another time, another place”. Either that or she's the reincarnation of Urbena.
Fuck me.
I hate this book.
Darrah rocks up and is pretty pissed to
see Rod with Lana. She makes some snarky remark about wanting to
surprise him and takes off again. He tells Lana that they're just
friends on his side but he thinks Darrah assumes otherwise. Then he
asks Lana out. She tells him maybe even though she suspects him of
being a thief and she has an actual boyfriend. His name is Josh,
Lana. Remember???
Lana runs into Darrah on her way back
to the exhibit and Darrah threatens to put a curse on her. This book
is exhausting. As the afternoon goes on, Lana becomes more and more
convinced that she's the reincarnated spirit of Princess Urbena.
I've literally rolled my eyes so much through this chapter that I have a headache now. Thanks, Steiner.
Seti isn't waiting for Lana when she
gets off duty but she assumes he just decided to give up on walking
her home. When she gets back to the house, she discovers that Seti
isn't there at all. She tears the place apart looking for him and
then walks back to the museum, searching for the cat all along the
way. When that doesn't turn Seti up, she knocks on all the doors
in the neighborhood, asking if anyone has seen her cat. No one has. I don't know why she just didn't use that psychic connection she's been going on and on about but whatevs. She's so upset that he's missing that she decides to sleep with the window
open even though it's cold and people keep throwing scorpions through
it. At one point during the night she hears something thump on the
floor and goes to investigate it. It's a mummified cat.
Except it's not. It's just a stuffed
cat wrapped in gauze which they only discover after they've called
the police and reported that someone murdered and mummified their
cat.
The next day two very big things
happen. First Seti returns home hungry and thirsty but otherwise in
perfect shape. Second the necklace is returned to the case in the
museum. No one knows who took it or why it was returned. Lana
thinks this just puts another nail in Antef's coffin so to speak.
She's convinced he took the necklace and then returned it after he
got the note. Which would just be incredibly stupid of him and
therefore can't be the case.
Unless.......
Lana works the exhibit all morning. A
woman who claims to be a psychologist trained in body language tells
Lana that she speaks of the mummies as if she is deeply connected to
their stories. Lana knows this means she's really Urbena. She asks
this random psychologist (if she is, indeed, a psychologist) if
people can pick up on the energy of objects around them and the woman
says she has extensively studied this topic as part of her profession and
can definitively say yes.
Um.
Excuse me?
I was like two semesters away from a
degree in psychology and I can definitively say that psychometry
wasn't one of the courses listed in the catalogue. I don't think
this lady is a psychologist at all.
Pseudo-psychologist chick tells Lana
that if she wears a piece of jewelry from the exhibit that she might
be able to tap into the emotions of the person it belonged to.
Particularly because negative emotions stick into metal longer. You
know.....in her I-swear-this-is-real-psychology opinion.
If this woman had claimed to be psychic
or an empath or something, I would have no issues with this
conversation whatsoever. I happen to believe in psychometry and I've
definitely gotten feelings from objects before. BUT IT IS IN NO WAY
RELATED TO THE FIELD OF LEGITIMATE PSYCHOLOGY. So it's kind of just
pissing me off at this point.
The woman gives Lana a card saying that
she's interested in “testing” Lana further, whatever that means.
If I were Lana, I would run the other way super fast.
That night at closing the lights go off
again. Lana sees a mummy standing beside Nefra's sarcophagus. It
holds it's arms out to her and begs her to come to him because he
can't live again without her. He tells her if she returns to Egypt
with him in Urbena's coffin it will break the curse and they can be
together.
The door suddenly opens and Marge and
Antef step inside. Antef apologizes for turning the lights off. He
thought she was already gone. Lana tries to tell them that Nefra is
walking around but the mummy is clearly laying in the exhibit where
he belongs and there's no sign of anyone else being in there. As
they're standing there with Lana trying to convince them that the
mummy has been tormenting her, Dr Walters and Blair rock up. Blair
is concerned that the necklace that was returned might be a fake. We
don't get any kind of conclusion to that so I don't know it her fears
are valid or not.
The next chapter starts with another
fucking dream. She dreams she's Urbena walking along with Nefra
being all in love and stuff and then he just disappears and she's
devastated.
We skip ahead to the next evening.
There's some kind of Egyptian costume party to celebrate the end of
the exhibit and Lana, naturally, is going as a queen. She's taking
Seti along with her and Josh as her date. One of them will be on a
leash. I'll let you just decide which one. Josh is dressed as a
mummy. Sigh.
Before they leave, Lana decides she has
to clip Seti's nails out of the clear fucking blue sky. She does so
with fingernail clippers and then absently drops them into her purse
instead of just setting them on a table. This entire scene felt so
out of place to me that I know Steiner is using it as a plot
contrivance to set something up for later.
When they get to the museum, Josh lets
her off at the door because it's been snowing heavily and he goes off to park
the car in the lot. Lana goes to the employee locker room to hang up
her coat so she can make a “regal grand entrance” because she's insufferable. She finds a
note in her locker.
“Urbena, my princess, you must come
back to me. I do not wish to live again without you. Tonight. The
time is tonight. It is our last chance. Please come to me. Nefra.”
Lana doesn't tell Josh what's going on
but she asks him to stay close to her all night. They run into Blair
straight away and Blair tries to pet Seti but the cat won't allow her
to touch him. Hmmm...I don't think I ever had Blair on my list.
Maybe I should have.
Wait.
Am I listening to a CAT now???
Sigh.
This book is melting my brain.
Odds that Blair is the bad guy: 50%
Odds that Dr Walters is the bad guy:
30%
Odds that Nefra is the bad guy: 10%
Odds that Josh/Rod/Antef/Darrah is the
bad guy: 10%
There you go, Seti. I listened.
Look at me putting Antef in there at the bottom like I'm in complete fucking denial that Steiner is putting an effing Justin in my story.
Dr Walters asks Lana to wear the
stolen/returned necklace because she looks so much like Urbena. THIS
WOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER HAPPEN. She refuses because
she's worried something might happen to it but he insists. Lana
instantly begins to feel like Urbena is trying to take over her body.
It's incredibly stupid. We get a chapter of everyone fawning over
Lana and taking her picture like she's some kind of fucking celebrity
and her wrestling to remember she's Lana and not Urbena. Finally she
goes into the other room to see Nefra because she's been drawn there
all evening. He's not in the exhibit.
Lana hears a voice behind her and
turns. It's the mummy but this time he's unwrapped a little and she
can clearly see Nefra's face beneath the bandages (not the corpse but
a living man) and she faints.
THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!!
Lana comes too wrapped in gauze trapped
in Urbena's coffin. Luckily she's still wearing her purse around her
waist and it just happens to contain the fingernail clippers she used
on Seti earlier. Boy, who could have guessed those would turn out to
be important???
She wiggles about and gets the clippers
out of her bag and then spends the rest of the chapter slowly freeing
her arms from the gauze. She hears footsteps come in and smells
Antef's cologne. She's sure he's kidnapping her and taking her back
to Egypt with him.
Lana decides that her only hope is to
psychically connect with Seti so she pushes a plea for help out of
her mind. It works. Sigh. The cat goes nuts and starts scratching
at the coffin. When Lana hears it, she starts screaming. Josh hears
her and opens the coffin. Lana tells him that she thinks Antef is
trying to kidnap her and take her back to Egypt to be his girlfriend.
Josh rather gently points out that the necklace has been stolen
again and maybe that's why Antef put her in the coffin. They go to
confront Antef and he admits to taking the necklace the first time. (((ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, STEINER?))) He says it cursed him so he returned it but someone found out and
insisted that he help her kidnap Lana. Lana tells the cat to find
the real culprit and Seti goes straight to Blair. Blair starts
screaming that the cat is Nefra and to keep it away from her.
Sigh.
I was hoping this book would get less
stupid and it just got way MORE stupid.
Blair says that Lana is the
reincarnated spirit of Urbena and if Blair returns her to Egypt in
Urbena's coffin the curse will be lifted and Blair's family will stop
dying. Dr Walters steps in and declares that Blair is simply “crazy”
and all will be fine after she gets some help.
It turns out Blair was dressing up as a
mummy to scare Lana and doing all the other things. She's the one
who put Antef in the coffin to scare him into bringing the necklace
back so she could steal it herself. This is incredibly convoluted.
The only thing Blair denies is dressing up as Nefra that night to
scare Lana into unconsciousness. She says she just happened upon
Lana on the floor and capitalized on it.
Based on this, Lana decides that Seti is the
reincarnated spirit of Nefra and that he was able to appear in human
form that evening because.......I don't know because Steiner didn't
explain that part. We're just supposed to believe it was all
mystical. The only true mystical part of this book is that it was
snowing to the point that the roads were kind of dangerous when they
went to this party but the snow was entirely gone and they were
having an “Indian summer” evening when they left. Figure that
one out.
The book ends with the exhibit leaving.
As soon as it is on its way back to Cairo, Seti also disappears,
reinforcing Lana's belief that he was Nefra. She vows to try to join
Nefra again in another life.
Y'all......this book.....I can't even formulate a thought because I have too much rage inside me. Not only did we have an effing Justin situation but the reason for everything was chalked up to "crazy" and the fucking cat was the reincarnation of Nefra. The cat was Nefra. I'm so over Steiner.
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