As Dawn Maxwell surveyed the Nevada desert around her, she let her mind untether from her body, floating up into the clear blue sky, soaring over the landscape for a bird’s-eye view. Though she’d first accomplished this feat while dead, her mummified body rotting in a tomb, the ability still felt strange. Her body seemed to fade away, no longer tying her down, and she flew weightless above the desert, able to scan the surroundings better than even a satellite could.
Watch out, freaky resurrected mummy girl on the loose.
“Are you soul-journeying again?” The voice of her husband, Jake, penetrated the surreal haze around her mind, but she did not want to come down yet.
“Yes,” she said, her own voice distant and oddly flat. “Looking for the bunker.”
“It’s not here. We’ll have to check Vahl’s other properties.”
Circling around their physical location, where their Jeep Cherokee sat parked in front of a metal shed, she gazed down on her husband and her father. Unease prickled her incorporeal skin. Father. Though she’d tried really, really hard to think of Ralph Westenra as her dad, she had trouble accepting the idea. Until a couple months ago, she’d had no one except Jake. Now she had a reincarnated father to go along with her reincarnated husband — except they hadn’t been married back in ancient Egypt. Anton Vahl — known as Setka in those days — had murdered her before they had a chance.
Despite being detached from her body, her head throbbed anyway. Keeping everyone’s names straight, when each of them had at least two, always gave her a headache.
Maybe she should refer to Westenra as His Majesty, since he’d been a pharaoh in his past life. But that seemed even weirder than Dad.
Her attention wandered to the horizon where the first smudges of storm clouds clung to the tops of the distant mountains. She couldn’t hear thunder, but somehow its faint vibrations rumbled through her.
“Come back,” Jake urged, a note of distress in his voice. “Please, Dawn.”
She swooped down toward the ground, toward her body, and sank into it with a tingly rush of energy. Her vision switched back to the real world, her gaze swinging to Jake. His chestnut hair glistened in the sunshine and his cinnamon eyes were fixed on her. Lips parted, forehead crinkled, he let his shoulders sag. “You’re back.”
Dawn moved to him, sliding her fingers into his hair. “I’m fine. It’s perfectly safe, really.”
Not exactly a lie. She didn’t know if it was safe or not.
He turned his head, nuzzling his cheek into her palm. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. We can find other ways to search.”
Jake still didn’t like her soul-journeying. He’d told her several times she might get stuck like that one day, but she kept laughing it off as paranoia. Truth was, she didn’t know if she could get stuck in her out-of-body state. Never would she admit that to him, though, because he’d forbid her to do it. And right now, they needed all the help they could get.
“Relax.” She took her face in his hands and pressed her lips to his. “See? I’m one hundred percent in-body again.”
