(Yune)
"I still have your key. Don't you want it back?"
"Yes," she said. "But you can slip it under my door or mail it to me."
"Then how can I be sure you've gotten it?" he asked in reasonable tones.
Angie sighed and put her head down on the desk, setting the phone aside for a moment. She remembered her mother warning her not to give her spare apartment key to just anyone. But Chris hadn't been just anyone--they'd been going out, she'd trusted him, and then he'd had to change after his trip to Egypt during spring break. She didn't want him to be able to enter her apartment anymore. He wasn't being a creepy stalker, just...different. She put the phone back to her ear to listen to the stranger with Chris's voice.
"I just want to see you," he was saying. "Can we at least talk in person once? Then I'll give you back your key and I promise I won't bother you again."
Defeated, she said, "Okay. I've got some free time tomorrow--"
"Now. Please."
"Why?"
"Because I have to see you before 2.00 pm today."
She blew out her breath. If he wanted to see her so badly, couldn't he fit his other appointments around her? "Fine. Meet me on the steps of CIS in twenty minutes."
"I was thinking we could go out somewhere."
She closed her eyes. He had used to say that before they went out on a date. I was thinking we could go to the beach, or to the movies, or anything, it hadn't mattered; as long as she was spending it with him, she'd known the night would be wonderful. The memories made her voice less sharp than she wanted. "I've got research to do, Chris. I have a whole bunch of equipment running that I can't leave for long."
"Your office, then," he said. "Somewhere private, at least."
"Fine," she said, defeated, and hung up.
In all honesty, she wanted to talk to him too. She missed him and his gentle sense of humor. She hadn't thought they would make it, a grad student in electrical engineering and an assistant professor in anthropology, but they'd done so well for the first two quarters. She'd been going to ask him whether he wanted to move in with her, since she'd given her key to him anyway. And then...
She was useless for the next twenty minutes. She wandered around her office, unnecessarily checking the cameras and computers that were part of the research project she was working on. Some impulse made her turn on one of the cameras and discreetly aim it so that it would capture the area around her desk. She didn't think Chris would do anything irrational, but something kept nagging at her.
He showed up precisely on time. He reached for her for the casual kiss of greeting they'd always shared before, and at first, pure habit led her to relax into his embrace. She missed these little shows of affection. Then she recalled herself and jerked away. She didn't miss the flash of hurt on his face before he smoothed his expression.
"Angie, what's wrong?"
"You are," she burst out. "Ever since the start of the quarter. You've been acting differently. More...resigned. Deliberate. And that's not the Chris I know."
He looked away. "Ever since I got back from Egypt, you mean."
"Yeah. Chris, what happened? When you left you were so excited about traveling through the desert, getting to see the old tombs..."
"I got to see them. That's what happened."
She shook her head. "You say things like that, too."
After a moment he said, "Angie, you're an atheist, right? You don't believe in an afterlife?"
The question was so unexpected that she actually answered it. "No."
"The Ancient Egyptians had a jackal-headed god, Anubis. They believed that when you died, Anubis would balance your heart against a feather, and if your heart was heavier, you would be eaten by a terrible demon."
"It must have been a very sated demon," Angie said after a moment. "Because, no pun intended, the game seems weighted to me. Chris, what does this have to do with anything?"
"I love Ancient Egypt. Its religion, its history, its culture... But there was so much left to learn. And when I had the chance to learn more, I took it." He smiled sadly. "I never believed in ancient curses. You can still get in trouble today, though. Even though they're fair in their own way. You get judgment under their own system."
She didn't understand. "Did you find something out there? Another tomb? Did you mess with it and get in trouble with the Egyptian authorities?"
He ignored her. "And they give you a little time first. Enough to tell the people you care about that you love them."
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Excuse me," she managed to say before stumbling out of the office and blindly making her way to the restroom, where she cried into a crumpled ball of paper towels. Then she washed her face, hoped her nose wasn't too red, and walked back toward her office. On her way back, the power went out. She cursed half-heartedly. Whenever you thought things couldn't get any worse... Just as she reached her door, the lights flickered back on.
"Chris? Sorry about that."
He was gone.
At first she panicked, but then her glance fell on the clock and she saw that it was just past two. He'd probably had to run to his meeting. She sighed. What he had said about loving her--that was the sort of thing she needed to hear before they could patch things up. Not this ancient mystical crap. And he'd had to leave without a word or even returning her key--
No, on her desk was her spare apartment key and a...feather.
Angie stood still for a moment. Then something made her turn to the camera, rewind it, and hit playback.
She skipped through until she got to the part where she ran out of the frame. Chris was left there. Slowly, he removed something from his pocket: the key. He laid it carefully on her desk, then straightened. His posture was that of a man awaiting something.
There was suddenly a shadowy figure appeared just behind him--
The image suddenly cut to emptiness.
Angie could've screamed. That had been when the power had gone out.
...perhaps because of the smothering presence of an even greater power?
She didn't believe this, she told herself fiercely. But something inside her knew. She started crying again, because although they had given him enough time to tell her that he loved her, they hadn't given him enough time for her to tell him the same.
When she groped for the box of Kleenex, her hand fell on the feather instead, and her fingers tightened around it.
It was astoundingly heavy, at least as much as a bowling ball. She ended up lifting it with two hands.
Her own heart lightened. They were fair, Chris had said. And Chris had been a good person. What if they did tip the scales one way, but not always in the wrong direction...?
She didn't need the confirmation, but she carefully clipped out the figure she had captured and sent the cropped image to a couple of zoologist friends, saying that it had been seen on her grandfather's ranch. Because it was so blurry, and because there were no jackals in California, they determined it was a coyote.