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“Certain people don’t know I’m going this time.” Or… Old suspicions settled in my chest. “Do they?”
Lex took his hand back and released the parking brake in an angry movement. “You’ve really got this not trusting me business down, haven’t you?”
Again—crap. I reached awkwardly across my lap to reengage the brake, since my left hand was still fisted to keep from losing the ring. “Hey. I wasn’t saying you told them. Did you hear me saying that?”
Then again, if they learned about my quest some other way, I wasn’t sure he could have told me, either.
When Lex turned back to me, his expression was impassive—and his eyes desperate. “We really don’t communicate well, do we?”
I might not be able to tell him that it would all work out, not with any certainty, but I could at least reach for him, cradle my palm across his clean-shaven cheek. If words couldn’t ease his uncertainty, maybe simple touch would.
As if I’d drawn him, Lex leaned nearer, braced his forehead lightly against mine. “I can’t lose you again.”
Which on some levels was so tender, so vulnerable, that I felt half-ready to ditch everything, just to taste his lips, just to ease some of the uncertainty from this man’s deep, golden eyes. When I looked at him I saw too much—a boy dying of leukemia, a teenager grieving his dead mother, a man determined to keep promises he should never have had to make….
But on some levels, intentional or not, his words were manipulative as hell.
“You first,” I whispered, turning my head to rest it on his shoulder. Lex really had great shoulders, solid and strong, even without the crisply tailored suits. He would make a really great leader of warriors.
“Me first, what?”
“You promise to stop doing dangerous things, taking transatlantic flights to unsafe places—”
“Mag.” The sardonic note he put into my name told me we were done with the puppy-dog eyes for now.
“…move to the suburbs, ditch the sports car….”
He sighed and leaned his weight into me, hard enough to nudge me fully back into my own seat.
“Then maybe,” I finished, silently laughing at his scowl as I straightened, “maybe we’ll talk a deal.”
The scowl didn’t falter. “I know you can handle yourself, but I’m just not hardwired to leave it at that. Maybe it goes back to cavemen killing saber-toothed tigers that threatened the camp, but there’s something in men that makes us want—need—to protect our women.”
Our women? Instead of jumping into that frying pan, I chose the proverbial fire. “A lot has changed since then. For one thing, those cavemen probably worshipped a goddess.”
“In the good old days before testosterone screwed up the world, right?” Sarcasm clearly intended.
“I never said testosterone didn’t have its uses.” And whoa—I sure didn’t mean that to sound quite as seductive as it did. I saw it immediately in the way his expression stilled, his eyes darkened to a whiskey color, his breath caught. He glanced quickly toward the tiny clock display over the rearview mirror.
Worse—I did, too.
The heat that washed through me had nothing to do with summer in the city, and everything to do with my body’s dissatisfaction at having gone so long without his kisses. Maybe my heart was wary. But the rest of me…
“I’ve gotta go,” I murmured, turning the air conditioner dial to full blue.
To his credit, Lex managed in three long, deep breaths to regain his mask of disinterest. He released the parking brake and shifted into Drive. “Yes. Security gets more complicated every day.”
“I’ll call you when I have a hotel room.”
“Please do.” But before he pulled out of the space, he turned his head to look at me full-on again. “And wear the ring, Maggi. Let me do that much for you.”
And really, what could it hurt? “‘Wear the ring,’ please,” I prompted softly.
“Please,” he repeated, and the edge of his mouth quirked before he eased onto the gas. “With sugar on top.”
So what the hell? I slid the band fully onto my finger, as if it belonged there. “Fine. But it’s all about not rocking the Egyptians’ boat, right?” I clarified. “It has nothing to do with making Rhys Pritchard uncomfortable?”
“I like Rhys.” Lex sounded waaay too innocent for my tastes. “I’m sure neither of us would want to make the other one uncomfortable.”
Yeah. Like guys thought that way. The same gender that came up with the concept of a pissing contest. “Uh-huh.”
But I was stuck. I’d already agreed to wear the ring.
The other player in this triangle, Rhys Pritchard, was my prize at the end of the long process of my arrival in Cairo—a metal staircase onto the hot tarmac, a bus to the terminal, customs, a temporary visa, and an increasing awareness of all the head scarves and galabiya and Arabic being spoken around me.
It was great to see a familiar face.
I surged toward him as best I could amid the crowd and saw that he was making the effort to shoulder his way to me, too. The closer he got, the better he looked. Rhys has a coloring I would normally call “black Irish,” except that he’s Welsh. Dark, unkempt hair. Bright-blue eyes. Lanky—what he has on Lex in height he loses in breadth. But here in Egypt, Rhys had gained a secret weapon—sunshine. His U.K. complexion, though still pale by swarthy Egyptian standards, had been gilded by the Mediterranean sun. A touch of pink on his nose and cheeks made his eyes seem to glow.
Or maybe that was just pleasure at seeing me.
“Maggi!” he exclaimed, his smile wide and welcoming. I reached for him—
But he stopped short. “Let me look at you.”
“Only if you return the favor,” I warned, eyeing him up and down. He wore his usual faded jeans and a slightly wrinkled, long-sleeved jersey that had been washed too often. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you—I dodged the car that tried to run me down.” From the scrapes on his hands, where he’d landed, I judged he’d had only modest success in that. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except for what it might signify.”
“That you’ve found a lead about the…you-know-what.”
The Isis Grail.
He nodded, a moment of complete accord—and I hugged him. After the briefest hesitation, his long arms wrapped around me, no matter where we were. Mmm. He felt stronger than he had back in France, where we’d enjoyed a mild flirtation and the start of a powerful friendship. He smelled faintly of the sea.
That was Rhys for you. No nefarious associations. Totally supportive of my grail quest, since his mother had also descended from a line of Grailkeepers. Classic nice guy. Wholly, wonderfully uncomplicated…
Except for his having been a priest, once. Actually, still—as he’d be the first to point out, ordination is even more permanent in the Catholic Church than marriage. But he no longer worked for them. The Catholic Church that is.
Okay, so that part was complicated.
He pulled back first, ducking his head only in part to take my suitcase. “Ah. That is…do be careful, Maggi. The Egyptians don’t approve of PDAs.”
I blinked at him. “Personal digital assistants?”
“They don’t approve of public displays.” Of affection.
Oh.
I looked around us and did, in fact, intercept a few glares aimed our way. I also saw a pair of men beside us, hugging and then kissing each other on each cheek. “Really?”
“Not between the sexes,” he chided, grinning. “Not even if it’s obvious that the couple’s…” His grin faded. “Oh.”
He’d just noticed the wedding ring.
“It’s fake,” I assured him, fast. “I’m supposed to attract less harassment this way.”
“Most of the women on the project do the same thing.” Rhys sounded relieved as he supported Lex’s story.
Having him there eased the foreignness of this place. Between a few necessary stops—the public bathrooms, and an in-airport bank to change money—we caught up on the basic niceties. How my great-aunt and his recent boss had been when he left Paris—she was well. How my parents had been when I left New York—also good. Everything but the goddess grails, which needed privacy, and the topic of me and Lex, which was just plain awkward.
In the meantime, for a country where we weren’t supposed to hold hands or even walk too close, the other travelers sure crowded us against each other.
“Here,” said Rhys, as another passenger bumped me in passing. “You’ll want to keep this on you.”
I took the matchbook he handed me. In swirling Arabic letters it said something I couldn’t possibly read. But in smaller text, beneath that, it said Hotle Athens, Alexandria.
“It’s for if we get separated,” Rhys explained over the bustle and push. “This is where most of the people on the project have been staying. Show it to a cabdriver or a policeman, and they can get you safely back.”
“Like a kindergartner with a sign pinned to my shirt?”
“Something like that, yes.” By now we’d reached the doors out onto the afternoon sidewalk. Despite that the sidewalk was covered, for shade, we stepped into a blast of dusty, nose-searing heat—
And chaos.
Men rushed us from five different directions at once, getting in our faces, shouting at us in Arabic with snippets of English: “Cab?”
“Good ride!”
“Take care of you!”
“La’,” said Rhys, speaking more firmly than usual.
And a dark man with a bushy moustache snatched my suitcase right out of his hands! Rhys reached for it, but I got it first, yanking with all my strength. The man let go, shouting his displeasure, and I stumbled backward from the lack of resistance—right into someone else’s hand on my butt. When I spun to face that one, he smiled proudly and held out a hand, as if for a tip. That’s when I felt someone pull at the laptop case over my shoulder.
“La’la’la’!” said Rhys again, louder, but intimidation isn’t his thing.
Me, I spun to face the man who had my laptop and, hands full, I kicked at him. Not an hour in this country and already I was resorting to violence.
“La’!” I said, whatever the hell it meant.
Somehow he jumped clear of my kick, which was maybe for the best. Annoying or not, these men didn’t seem to be trying to hurt us, or even rob us. Even the luggage snatching seemed to be a twisted sales technique. The same thing was happening to other travelers up and down the sidewalk.
Most important, my throat wasn’t tightening with any kind of warning.
Still, I’d had enough gestures, offers, pleas and definitely enough gropes! We were surrounded, the hot, already suffocating air thick with garlic breath and sweaty bodies and pushing, grabbing men shouting foreign words with only moments of English clarity: “Give ride!” or “Help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” I insisted, first in English and then in French, and bumped into Rhys. “La’ isn’t working,” I complained. “What’s Egyptian for piss off?”
Two of the men shouted louder and gestured more rudely. Apparently they understood and disapproved, despite that they were harassing us.
I was about to show them some freakin’ disapproval….
That’s when a suited, square-shouldered, swarthy man stepped up to the fray. He made a small motion with his right hand, like scooping something away from him, and the others immediately drew back.
Why did I think this couldn’t be good?
“Try imshee,” the gentleman suggested in cultured, British-accented English—to Rhys. “It often works.”
I said, “And that really means…?”
Finally he looked at me—and smiled, charming as any sheikh hero in a romance novel. “My dear lady, it means get lost.”
Close enough. Although they’d already backed off, I glared at the remaining hawkers and said, “Imshee!”
Several turned away from us, gesturing that we weren’t worth the trouble. The ones who remained, hands still outstretched for my luggage, weren’t getting as close.
But was that because of the word, or the man?
The still-crowded sidewalk by no means became an oasis of calm. But at least I could actually look around us. A handful of mosques and minarets cut the smoggy, uneven skyline of dusty stone skyscrapers. Cement was winning the war against a stretch of grass here and a cluster of palm trees there; the plaster facade above us read Cairo Airport, followed by Arabic lettering. The stench of heat and car exhaust was dizzying. A cacophony of horns mixed with shouts and music from open car windows…but okay, that part just sounded like New York.
This may once have been the land of the goddess Isis, but it sure looked like a land of men now. Men’s values. Men’s importance. I couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.
I turned back to grudgingly thank the man who’d helped us.
He was gone.
Then Rhys caught my elbow and ran with me across a road snarled with traffic, toward an open parking lot, and I let the matter go. Sort of.
By the time we’d let the worst of the heat out of his borrowed car’s open doors, I’d made at least one decision. “Can we stop somewhere on the way to Alexandria?”
“Absolutely.” Rhys started the car, a battered, dusty, blue Chevy Metro. Something that resembled air-conditioning sputtered from its vents. “Museums? Pyramids?”
Well, of course I wanted to see the pyramids—who wouldn’t? But, “I want to go shopping,” I told him, and didn’t smile at his double take. Damn it, I hadn’t yet made it off airport property, and already I was awash in testosterone. Women with veils. Guards with assault weapons. Double standards.
Hopefully I wouldn’t run into actual violence this time around, not like my last grail quest. The Comitatus didn’t know I was here, after all.
But just in case they found out…
“I want to buy a sword.”
Chapter 3
Isis may not have been anywhere near the airport, but she made multiple appearances in Cairo’s ancient shopping bazaar, the Khan el-Khalili. The labyrinth of narrow medieval streets and plazas snaking between four-and five-story buildings burst at the seams with goods, wares and of course souvenirs. Here I saw Isis and many of her fellow gods on T-shirts and postcards. I saw her painted on papyrus and ceramics, on figurines of varying sizes, on jewelry.
“Pretty lady try on necklace,” shouted one turbaned man from outside a souk, or store, that sold jewelry. And sure enough, the handful of necklaces he held up included not only scarabs and sphinxes and Eye-of-Horus design called an udjat, but ankhs and pendants with a circle topped by a half circle, like horns. Those last two were major Isis symbols.
“Rings for rings,” called the woman behind him. Veiled. In this suffocating heat. “Pretty things.”
