Vines of At shot past me as Nik reacted, but those indestructible ropes evaporated into a rainbow mist before they even came close to touching the Netjer.

I took another step backward, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. My heart hammered in my chest as I struggled, fruitlessly, to come up with a plan. But a Netjer is basically all-powerful. There was nothing I could do to this guy that he couldn’t fend off, let alone throw back at me tenfold. There was no way for me to beat him and a gazillion ways for me to die trying.

I took one more step backward and ran into Nik’s warm, solid body. The sudden contact made nearly jump out of my skin.

“Just me,” Nik said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He rested his hands on my shoulders, and I took comfort from his touch. Drew strength from it. Maybe I couldn’t beat this guy in a fight, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to run away with my tail tucked between my legs.

I straightened my spine and locked stares with the unwelcome Netjer. He wasn’t from our universe; there were only four Netjers native to this place—the original creators of this universe, Re and Apep, and the new gods, my niece and nephew, Susie and Syris—and this Netjer was most certainly none of them. He didn’t belong here.

“Who are you?” I asked, voice hard and surprisingly steady. Go me.

The Netjer clasped his hands behind his back. “A visitor.”

“Well, you’re not welcome here,” I snapped. “Go—”

Nik gave my shoulders a squeeze, and I shut my mouth, however reluctantly. “Why are you here?” he asked, sounding a whole lot more in control than I had.

“I’ve heard much about you, Nekure,” the Netjer said, using Nik’s true, ancient name. “Re speaks of you often.”

I felt Nik stiffen behind me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

The Netjer leveled a cold stare my way, and his scrutiny paralyzed my lungs. “It would be impossible for your mind to understand my desires while in your current form.”

“Why are you here?” Nik asked, repeating his earlier question.

The Netjer’s stare shifted to Nik, and only then could I suck in a lungful of breath. “To observe,” he said and turned away to stroll toward the sealed-off wall of windows. “To learn.” He glanced at us over his shoulder. “To decide,” he said a second before he evaporated into a glowing, writhing mass and floated through the wall of windows.

“Wait!” I shouted after him.

But he—it—was already gone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“To decide,” Lex said, her brow scrunched as she studied my face. “That’s what he said—to observe, to learn, and to decide?”

We were sitting at the table tucked away in the breakfast nook, surrounded by windows giving us a view of the storm pouring rain outside and bending the trees this way and that. The manicured gardens behind the house were already covered in a bevy of pine branches and bunches of leaves, and the angry clouds in the sky only seemed to be darkening.