They smuggled Mum-I into their hotel in a garment bag. Marc stood with it slung over his shoulder as Layla enquired with the front desk about upgrading their room for the remainder of their stay, both of them as casual as you please.
The price hike to a suite with doors that locked between the living area and the two bedrooms was extravagant, but oh well. Taweret – as was usually the case, in marked contrast to Khonshu – was perfectly understanding and patient about the fact that divine blessings were no longer considered an acceptable form of payment, by the skeptical public or the secretive Ennead, and as such her avatar needed a day job. She also happened to think Layla’s line of work was terribly exciting and, though naughty, ultimately morally admirable. So, thanks to her help, business had never been more booming.
Sneaking mummies into fancy hotels had nothing on the fact that an ancient goddess of mothers and children (and slightly more recently, the afterlife) was helping them play cultural heritage Robin Hood and get rich through only occasionally legal means. It wasn’t that Marc was complaining. Not in the slightest. His own lack of resistance still terrified some cautious, wounded thing deep, deep inside him, but compared to the ‘waking nightmare of religious guilt’ that was life with Khonshu, everything was an improvement, and this was an improvement on even... whatever a normal, Khonshu-free life for him and Layla might have looked like. The only thing was, he was having to build the mental muscles to deal with the ‘funky blasphemous fever dream’ Taweret experience from scratch.
Beating sex traffickers to death with his bare hands? Yeah, made sense. Giving murdered girls a second chance at ‘life’? Wild.
Once in the elevator, their new mummy friend still in their possession and the hotel staff none the wiser, Marc and Layla high-fived.
"Now if only it were this easy to smuggle a dead body past airport security, huh?"
"No worries, I’ll think of something. I’ve smuggled weirder," Layla said, with a cocky smirk he wanted to kiss until it was engraved into her gorgeous face forever.
"No you haven’t," he said nonetheless. (He hoped his smile looked more ‘teasing back’ than ‘hopeless sap’, but Steven’s hooting laughter in the elevator mirrors at catching that thought told him all he needed to know.)
Layla considered it. "Alright, I haven’t. But if we get her home, I can say ‘I’ve smuggled weirder’ about everything else for the rest of my life."
"As long as you don’t actually say it, because that’s just inviting the universe to crank up the weird-o-meter again."
"You say that as if it isn’t welcome to."
"Please, go easy on my squishy mortal heart. I’m just a vulnerable old man now, remember?"
"I’ll show you old and..." Layla purred, leaning in –
– when Mum-I wriggled on Marc’s shoulder and made an indignant noise.
They jumped apart.
Right. Maybe they shouldn’t flirt in front of the mummy with thousands of years of ‘must marry man with two faces, STAT’ complex just yet.
"Sorry, Mooms," Steven took over to say. He stumbled a little as he adjusted her weight draped down his back, scant though it was. She was either fed up with being in a bag and trying to get out, or attempting to kick him. He quickly took the brakes off his Don’t Babble instincts as a distraction. "Can I call you Mooms? I like nicknames, I can’t help it. It’s a British thing, I think. We’re almost as bad about silly nicknames as Aussies are about their diminutives. Or so I’ve been told! Though personally I’ve only ever gotten nicknamed by people who just seemed to want to have a laugh at me with it, so I totally understand if you don’t like it or you think it sounds stupid. Just say the word and I’ll –"
Quieting down, Mum-I moaned something.
"...bollocks. Sorry, I have no idea what you meant by that. Allspeak, shmallshmeak. Could you, uh, bend your knees for ‘yes, Mooms is fine’ or your ankles for ‘no, that’s rubbish’?"
She wriggled behind his back.
"That’s a yes," Layla translated. (And added a quick slap to his rear.)
"Aces!" Steven squeaked.
Suddenly, the elevator doors opened, and a trio of older women bearing an unmistakable familial resemblance to each other entered. Marc and Layla had been flirting for so long they’d missed the ding for their own floor; now, it turned out, they were on a completely different one. The women chattered animatedly amongst themselves, and Steven and Layla could only wait in awkward silence until the trio got off and they could go back to the floor they needed again.
Silence, that was, until Steven hurriedly took a step backwards to avoid an overly wide hand gesture from one of the women, and Mum-I let out an inhuman noise of surprise as she was knocked into the hand railing below the mirror. Everybody turned to look at him. Layla’s eyes were wide with alarm, and the women, in their bewilderment at what could possibly have prompted him to make such a sound, were suddenly paying far too much attention to him.
And then Marc started frantically gesturing over his shoulder from the mirror opposite Steven, because Mum-I was squirming in discomfort.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, Steven stood frozen like a deer in the headlights. It wasn’t until he opened his mouth and choked on his own spit because no excuse or diversion would come to him, that he realized the obvious solution.
"Hey, baby – ?" Layla started, raising a hand towards him –
– right on time to go with the ridiculously over-the-top coughing fit Steven feigned.
"– are you okay?!" she finished, squeezing past one of the women in between them. She placed one hand on his chest and one in a firm grip over the handle of the garment bag. "Oh no, not again. Deep breaths, babe, try to take deep breaths."
The women gave them space and made sympathetic tutting noises until the elevator reached the lobby. For the sake of appearances, Steven kept up the fake cough for a while even after the doors had closed behind them. Meanwhile, Layla lifted Mum-I from his shoulder and gingerly set her on her feet, the arm not holding the bag upright slung around it at waist-height. She was making jerky movements and little sounds of distress, so Layla spent the rest of the elevator ride soothing her, apologizing, and explaining what had happened and everything that was still happening.
Steven held the doors open and kept watch for company while Layla coaxed Mum-I into the last step of her unpleasant journey.
"Can you poke a hand out in front of you for a second so I know for sure which side – great, thanks. I’m going to lift you in my arms now, okay? Bridal style, if that translates. We only have one hallway left to go, and then you can get out of this thing. Okay? Give me one poke for ‘no’ and two for ‘yes’."
Two pokes.
"Great. You’re doing great. Don’t startle now, I swear I won’t drop you..."
Bending a knee, she tilted Mum-I back a bit, got a grip around her knees and shoulders, and lifted her up in one fluid, effortless movement. Like the superheroine she was, Steven thought. (Never mind the fact that the human body was on average sixty percent water, and Mum-I didn’t have a drop of the stuff left in hers. He and Marc’d been on the receiving end of this move soaking wet often enough for him to know weight had nothing to do with it.) His chest filled with a warm mixture of pride, affection, and sheer horniness. If it weren’t for the poor girl all this was for, he would have started flirting the literal knickers off Layla right then and there.
Instead, he preceded her to their new suite, unlocked the door, and stepped aside to let her carry Mum-I over the threshold. Their old room was still theirs for a few more hours, so getting their things could wait too. First, their contraband friend.
"Welcome to the new world, Mooms," he said, and closed the door to their sanctuary-for-now behind them.