Soul Reborn (Key to the Cursed Book 1) Read Free Page A

absent minded professor. Smartest girl in
the world, but no common sense. Apparently a PhD didn’t have a disqualifier for
being oblivious, so Kit looked after Kendra, and Lilly looked out for all of
them. It had been that way since they were born, and more so now that their
father was dead and they had no mother to speak of.
    “I’ll go check on
her. I need to see if she can identify the symbols tattooed on the reven’s body.
Maybe it will give us a clue as to what exactly it is and where it came from.”
    After an hour and a
half debriefing with her boss, Lilly finally changed her clothes to go over to
the museum. She still had the cold sensation crawling against her skin and
needed to burn off the edge. Despite being utterly exhausted, she decided to walk
and get a little vitamin D in the process. With her night time occupation, she
rarely saw the sun. These were sleep and recovery hours for the Nehebkau.
    In more appropriate
civilian attire of jeans and t-shirt, Lilly weaved her way through the busy New
York City streets. With her ball cap pulled tight and low over her shades, she scanned
the crowd.
    Most civilians in
the city didn’t make eye contact, just scurried to their next destination.
There was limited amount of daylight now that summer had come to an end and the
days were getting shorter and shorter—not good for a city experiencing reven
outbreaks. The sirens would sound off an hour before twilight. Any civilians
unable to make it to safety had to report to a shelter with steel shutters, and
remain there until morning. Quite an undertaking for a city of this size.
    Not everyone made
it.
    Within a few blocks
of Fifth and Eighty-First Street Lilly felt the fine hairs stand up on the back
of her neck. Even in this large crowd she knew she was being followed.
Purposefully slowing her pace, she stopped at one of the stores that had a
window display. Behind her shades, she could easily track the flow of
pedestrians in the reflection of the glass, looking for the one who stopped or
hesitated.
    The civilians moved
like a bubbling river.
    Lilly shook her
head. Her paranoia had gotten the best of her, and rightly so, considering the
encounter with the dark reven. She glanced briefly again at the crowd before
jogging the rest of the way down the street and up the steps of the museum.
    Perpetually holed
up in a dungeon full of artifacts, Kendra was the Egyptian antiquities
specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She walked in her father’s
footsteps with a love for archeology and had completed her doctorate at the age
of twenty-two. The smell of dusty old books choked Lilly’s fine senses as she
approached her little sister’s office.
    The room under the
stairs had the same amount of space as a walk-in closet. At six-feet–tall,
Lilly had to duck to make it through the unusually small door. The desk was
covered with stacks of books so high she didn’t see Kendra sitting behind them.
    “Kendra?”
    She couldn’t help
but laugh when her sister’s head popped up, barely clearing the height of the
stacks.
    “Is it dusk
already?” Kendra asked, bouncing around the edge of her desk.
    Lilly looked down
in amusement at her barely five foot three sibling. Kendra’s long, auburn hair
was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail in a miserable attempt to keep the curls
contained. Hair stuck out everywhere.
    “It’s ten in the
morning.”
    Kendra frowned. “Oh.
I can never tell. As you can see, no windows.” She looked around with a
perplexed look on her face.
    “I need your help.”
    “Oh?” Kendra’s eyes
widened. Lilly rarely asked for help.
    She slipped Kendra
the sketches she’d drawn of the reven’s tattoos. “Think you might recognize
these symbols?”
    Taking the paper
from Lilly, Kendra squealed with delight. “Where did you find these?” She didn’t
even wait for an answer. Mumbling to herself in a string of phrases Lilly
couldn’t even begin to comprehend, her sister disappeared behind the stack