Teaser Tuesday: Angst and Egyptology

His yellow eyes glared through the dim as he watched the jackal army descend the mountainous sand dunes beyond. He clutched his staff, claws digging into his hand as he braced himself.

Their leader was in view now; his feral eyes met the cat’s as he gave a toothy grin. The golden wristbands a contrast against his sun-warmed skin, his dark hair smoothed back from his forehead, held in place by a black and gold circlet.

“You will never defeat us, warrior,” the cat hissed, crossing the staff in front of him as if to bar the enemy. “You will return to the world of beyond.”

The leader of the jackal army smiled. “We will see who our Goddess favours.”

With a clang, the battalions met under the hot sun. An epic clash between light and dark. A battle the world would forget. For a while.

3, 350 years Later. Give or take.

On the morning of my 23^rd birthday, I woke up, rolled over and came face to face with a grinning male. Sure, it wasn’t the one you’d think, and I groaned at the flickering image of my ghostly roommate, James.

“Salutations, Con.”

“Ugh.” I rolled back over and tried to cover my head with the blanket, snuggling back down into the warmth of my crisp-sheeted bed.

“Nice try, Con. You’ll be late for work.”

With that, my ghost of a friend whipped off my silky yellow duvet and flung it across the room. I was suddenly hit with an icy draft that had me gasping and protectively springing into foetal position.

“James..!”

I blinked my eyes open in the weak February light streaming in through the open window and stared in abject horror at the numbers taunting me from the levitating alarm clock in front of my face.

“Argh! It’s 8.54! I really am going to be late!”

I bolted out of bed, shucked my warm fuzzy sushi pyjamas and dived for the shower before it even occurred to me what day it was. February 23^rd. Tuesday. My birthday.

I showered up and stepped outside with a grin. “James! Guess what day it is!”

He drifted past the door from my room on the way to the kitchen. “Your birthday. As if you’d let me forget, it’s all you’ve fretted about the past week; if that American would forget or not.”

Wrapped in my bathrobe I stomped out to rustle up some cereal. “I have not been fretting! I just wasn’t sure if it was something that we’d talked about or not, I just want to spend the evening with my fabulous boytoy...”

And really, who could blame me?

Eric Stanhope, my adorable fuzzy new boyfriend, had moved over to the United Kingdom last November after we’d gotten back from Cairo. Before that he’d lived in New York working in the Metropolitan museum under the psychotic guidance of the now incarcerated Dr Kieran ..., who’d made it to jail after nearly killing both my boss, Frank, and colleague, Harry. But it was a whole lot complicated than that when you threw an ancient curse and a couple of canopic jars into the mix.

Initially, Eric and I had detested each other – doing our best to outdo and outsmart each other before an argument of ours got out of hand and nearly cost us our lives, not to mention the likely international incident that would have arose, too. So, Eric and I had come to an impasse, that before long gave way to the attraction that we’d really been feeling the entire time.

Our brief interlude was interrupted by the evil Julian Harrison, also known as my cheating ex-boyfriend, before we were back and better than ever.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with my boyfriend, James.” I harrumphed, adding milk to the sugar-coated cereal I’d chosen to start the day. “I’d say you’re just jealous, but unlike you I no longer live in the 3^rd grade.”

The ghost rolled his eyes, something he’d picked up from watching television with me and decided to use against me. You see, being terminally deceased, James’ eye rolling went the whole 360. In the middle of the night when you were half asleep this was not something you wanted to see in the bathroom mirror, trust me.

“Urgh! You know I hate it when you do that!”

James flashed a charming grin and manifested his old pipe back into his hand. “No better reason to do it, Con.”

James had died in the 1920’s when he was about 25 or 26 – he’d never told me exactly which. He’d been murdered by the same cursed spirit-witch that had nearly killed us in Cairo, after removing artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen with Howard Carter’s team, and for a long time since had haunted my flat with his ghostly presence, scaring people away.

That was until last year when I’d come along and refused to go. Together, James and I had figured out the mystery to why he’d died and come face to face with his killer, Ye Vanck Amun, the spirit-witch.

There was one final thing there, something that I didn’t even know: On the night that we’d met Ye Vanck Amun, the spirit-witch had whispered something to James about his greater purpose and his reason for still existing in this world. I’d asked him about it, curiosity getting the better of me, but James had refused to tell me what she had told him. Today, James was here for a purpose – I just wasn’t sure what that was.