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said.
    “You will in a bit,” Sharon said.
    “Great.” I put the earrings in the right front pocket of my blue jeans.
    Chronos approached Kelly. “Lean your head back, and open your mouth as wide as you can,” he said.
    She looked at him for a moment then did as he said.
    He took one of those hooks and jammed it into the roof of Kelly’s mouth. Kelly doesn’t feel pain, so it wasn’t a big deal to her, though her eyes told a different story. I guessed it was the guy sticking his fingers into her mouth that bothered her, though.
    He finished with her and walked over to me. “Your turn,” he said. “Fair warning. This is going to hurt.”
    “What is that?”
    “It’s a hook, but it will translate your speech so the Egyptians will be able to understand you. The magic is in the hook, so it will work for you too.”
    “Can’t you just cast a spell on an amulet? Egyptians wore a lot of amulets, right?”
    “We could but with this, you don’t need to keep track of an amulet.”
    “What’s to keep track of? You put it around your neck and you’re done.”
    “Unless it comes off and you lose it.”
    “I’ll take that chance.”
    “Sorry, we don’t have an amulet prepared for that, so you get the implant.”
    “Fine,” I said. “Are you going to wash your hands first?”
    He rolled his eyes.
    It was a fair question. I didn’t know where his hands had been. I leaned my head back and opened my mouth, and the guy jammed that hook into the roof of my mouth. The pain was intense. I clenched my fists and tensed every muscle in my body as he jiggled that thing around, clipping it to the bone.
    When he took his fingers out of my mouth, I wanted to punch him, but Rayna gently patted my arm. “Be cool,” she said.
    “That really hurt,” I said.
    “Don’t be a baby,” Kelly said.
    I probed at the hook with my tongue. That hurt a lot, but the damn thing was like a loose tooth, so my tongue kept right on probing it every few minutes.
    “Now the ears,” Chronos said.
    Kelly didn’t have pierced ears either, so she went first. Chronos did the honors. When Kelly was done, I sat down and let Chronos pierce my ears too. That didn’t hurt as bad as the implant. The earrings were small, so we put them on.
    Sharon reached down, picked up the gym bag, and set it on the chair next to me. She unzipped it, reached inside, and pulled out several packs of clothing. She dropped one on my lap then tossed one to Rayna, one to Kelly, and one to Brand. “Go get changed. You shouldn’t go back in modern clothing.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    KELLY CHAN
     
    
     
    —protect him.
    I stood in the locker room, trying to figure out how to wear the pieces of material Sharon had given me. Rayna wore a nice dress, which was a lot easier to deal with than this. I put on the first thing, which was some sort of sheath dress, but the straps left my breasts uncovered. I wasn’t sure I’d put it on correctly, so I removed it and tried the next article of cloth. I could wrap it around me like a towel, but that didn’t seem right and restricted my movement too much. I shook my head, sat down, and started writing in my journal.
    “What are you writing?” Rayna asked.
    “Jonathan asked me to keep a journal, but I hate doing it.” I tore out several pages, crumpled them up, and tossed them at the trash can on the other side of the small locker room. The ball of paper hit the rim and bounced out, rolling across the floor.
    “You all right?” Rayna asked as she picked up the paper and dropped it into the trash can.
    “I have plenty of time before basketball season starts,” I said, stealing a line Jonathan uses whenever he misses.
    “I wasn’t talking about the basket.”
    I sighed. “They healed me as much as they could. Magic has its limits. I’ll be fine.”
    “Oh, that’s not what I meant either. I was talking about the