The stranger’s hulking body loomed, and the sharp tip of his scimitar hovered a mere breath from my throat….

“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated. “Today.”

With a rush, air filled my lungs.

“You will not interfere in matters that do not concern you.”

Even as he said it, my fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, they sure as hell concern me now.” And I swung.

Praise for Evelyn Vaughn

“Evelyn Vaughn delivers thrills and chills in a true battle of good versus evil.”

—Romantic Times

“Evelyn Vaughn takes us on an exciting journey of bone-chilling suspense and enjoyable romance.”

—Tracey West, The Road to Romance

Dear Reader,

We invite you to sit back and enjoy the ride as you experience the powerful suspense, intense action and tingling emotion in Silhouette Bombshell’s November lineup. Strong, sexy, savvy heroines have never been so popular, and we’re putting the best right into your hands. Get ready to meet four extraordinary women who will speak to the Bombshell in you!

Maggie Sanger will need quick wit and fast moves to get out of Egypt alive when her pursuit of a legendary grail puts her on a collision course with a secret society, hostages and her furious ex! Get into Her Kind of Trouble, the latest in author Evelyn Vaughn’s captivating GRAIL KEEPERS miniseries.

Sabotage, scandal and one sexy inspector breathe down the neck of a determined air force captain as she strives to right an old wrong in the latest adventure in the innovative twelve-book ATHENA FORCE continuity series, Pursued by Catherine Mann.

Enter the outrageous underworld of Las Vegas prizefighting as a female boxing trainer goes up against the mob to save her father, her reputation and a child witness in Erica Orloff’s pull-no-punches novel, Knockout.

And though creating identities for undercover agents is her specialty, Kristie Hennessy finds out that work can be deadly when you’ve got everyone fooled and no one to trust but a man you know only by his intriguing voice…. Don’t miss Kate Donovan’s Identity Crisis.

It’s a month of no-holds-barred excitement! Please send your comments to me, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Ste. 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Best wishes,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

Her Kind of Trouble
Evelyn Vaughn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

EVELYN VAUGHN

has written stories since she learned to make letters. But during the two years that she lived on a Navajo reservation in Arizona—while in second and third grade—she dreamed of becoming not a writer, but a barrel racer in the rodeo. Before she actually got her own horse, however, her family moved to Louisiana. There, to avoid the humidity, she channeled more of her adventures into stories instead.

Since then, Evelyn has canoed in the east Texas swamps, rafted a white-water river in the Austrian Alps, rappelled barefoot down a three-story building, talked her way onto a ship to Greece without her passport, sailed in the Mediterranean and spent several weeks in Europe with little more than a backpack and a train pass. All at least once. While she enjoys channeling the more powerful “travel Vaughn” on a regular basis, she also loves the fact that she can write about adventures with far less physical discomfort. Since she now lives in Texas, where she teaches English at a local community college, air-conditioning still remains an important factor.

Her Kind of Trouble is Evelyn’s eighth full-length book for Silhouette. Feel free to contact her through her Web site, www.evelynvaughn.com, or by writing to: P.O. Box 6, Euless TX, 76039.

To Toni

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

One moment I was studying the five-thousand-year-old statue of a husband and wife, one of several in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sprawling Egyptian wing. What kind of romantic problems had they faced, I mused. Deception? Cross-purposes? Old wounds? Had love won out?

The next moment, I sensed someone behind me, all size and impatience and body heat.

And not in a nice way.

“So you decided to be good, huh, Maggi?” The voice was too thick to be pleasant even if its owner tried.

He didn’t.

I recognized billionaire slimeball, Phil Stuart, even before I turned. And here I’d thought that this one-thousand-dollar-per-plate event was exclusive.

“I’m always good,” I told him, masking my unease as I turned anyway. Phil was nobody I wanted at my back. “But if you mean well-behaved…maybe not.”

“You gave up on those stupid goddess cups, right?”

Gave up? It hadn’t been two months since I’d rescued the antique chalice of my ancestors, a holy relic called the Melusine Grail, from thugs sent by this guy. Since then, I’d been preoccupied helping nurse my sometimes-lover Lex back to health after a vicious knife attack.

By more thugs.

Probably sent by this guy.

Supposedly the two incidents were unrelated. I didn’t need psychic abilities to doubt that. Either way, I’d had an excellent reason for not seeking out a second chalice.

Really.

I didn’t need Phil tossing out double-dog dares.

Phil Stuart always looked a little off to me. Like a poor imitation of something better. Other than to check for the bulge of a gun—or a ceremonial knife—under his tux, I barely glanced at him before noting the two suited gentlemen lurking by the ancient stone archway. Was he kidding?

“Bodyguards, Phil?”

“Right?” He leaned closer, into my personal space. “You’ve given up on those stupid goddess cups?”

“Not your business.” I knew how to stand my ground, even in two-inch, ankle-flattering heels. “Back off.”

“Or what?”

He wasn’t an immediate danger to me. This may sound weird, but…ever since I’d drunk from the Chalice of Melusine—my family goddess, a goddess renowned for her prophetic scream—my intuition had sharpened to the point that my throat tightened whenever something threatened me. And my throat felt fine just now.

Then again, Phil rarely did his own dirty work.

He raised his voice. “Or what?”

A smooth voice beyond him said, “Or you’ll make your date jealous.”

Speaking of deception, cross-purposes, and old wounds…

Lex, my sometimes lover and current escort, had returned from fetching champagne. Beside him stood a small, blond woman in an expensive gown. A black gown, naturally—this was a New York arts event. But Lex, healthy again and wearing a tuxedo with an ease GQ models would envy, was the one on whom my gaze lingered.

Alexander Rothschild Stuart III wasn’t so tall he towered, nor so athletic that he bulged. His ginger-brown hair sported an expensive but conservative cut. His face revealed generations of upper-class ancestors, all pulling together in the sweep of his jaw, his cheeks, his nose, understated and yet, well…perfect.

Maybe too perfect. But, good or bad, it was him. Lex was what Phil, his cousin, could never copy. When I wanted him, that was great. When I felt unsure of our relationship, it really complicated matters.

Lately, things had been very complicated.

“Maggi,” Lex said coolly, passing me a champagne flute, “have you met Phil’s new girlfriend, Tammy?”

“Let’s go,” said Phil—but I was already taking Tammy’s manicured hand in my own.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’m Magdalene Sanger. Are you sure you know what you’re doing with this guy?”

“Hey!” Phil protested.

Tammy’s eyes widened. Her lips parted. “Why do you…?” Then, quickly, she looked down at our hands.

I’m not psychic, sore throats aside. I just knew Phil.

“Now,” Phil insisted. But this reception was for patron-circle members, on a Monday night when the museum was normally closed to the public. If he made a scene, he would do so in front of the crème de la crème of city society. I hadn’t pushed him that far. Yet.

Then again, this was my first drink of the evening.

Tammy slid an annoyed glance toward Phil, then said, “Pleased to meet you, Magdalene. That’s a fascinating necklace you’re wearing.”

“Thank you. It’s called a chalice-well pendant. It—”

“Enough!” At Phil’s exclamation, several patrons turned to see who had been so gauche. Even Lex’s lips twitched, which is about as close to a guffaw as my ex-lover is capable. “Stop talking to her, damn it!”

Tammy blinked, as if seeing him for the first time, then laughed. “Why in the world should I not talk to her?”

“Probably because his wife left him after talking to me,” I guessed. That had been shortly after Lex landed in the hospital. The woman had good reason to be concerned.

Now my throat tightened in warning.

I spun in my heels and nailed Phil with a glare that stopped him cold, before he’d surged forward an inch. Everything about his posture said he’d meant to strike out at me, public place or not. And so it began.

Or continued.

“Here, Phil?” I warned softly. “Now?”

And since most bullies are cowards, he said nothing.

This time when someone stepped up behind me, the sense of solidity and body heat belonged to Lex. So was he backing me up, or readying to help his cousin?

Either way, my bare back welcomed his nearness.

“You know,” murmured Tammy into the uncomfortable silence that followed, “perhaps I’ll catch a cab home. Thank you for the invitation, Phillip, but—”

“You can’t leave,” protested Phil, and Tammy arched an eyebrow at him in challenge.

“Thank you, Magdalene,” she said as she turned away. “It was a real pleasure to meet you.”

“For three minutes?” Phil’s heavy head swung back to me for one last glare before he trailed his girlfriend from the gallery. “You met her for three freakin’ minutes. Tammy!”

His bodyguards trailed after them.

“I hope she’ll be all right,” I murmured in their absence. I’d felt jittery all evening. Not sore-throat jittery, but still…

“Phil’s made mistakes.” Lex took a sip of his champagne. “But he’s a Stuart. There are lines even he won’t cross.”

I did a double take. Did he honestly believe that? Did he mean it as assurance?

Then he distracted me by sliding a hand across the small of my back and murmuring, “Why do you keep doing that?”

So he’d noticed, too. Phil’s wife. A nurse who stood up to a condescending doctor. A waitress who suddenly found the strength to take down a rowdy customer.

A little girl, whom I’d helped to her feet when Lex and I were jogging in the park, who finally hit her brother back. She never does that, exclaimed her surprised mother….

“And don’t say, doing what,” Lex continued, his voice mild but his hazel, almost golden eyes demanding.

“I’m not doing anything. Not deliberately.” That would mean I had some kind of…well…magic. I didn’t, sore throats aside. I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility.

He looked particularly inscrutable.

“But maybe,” I admitted, mulling it over. “Maybe the Melusine Grail is.”

In a nearby display case sat a small, ornate goblet of blue faience. It wasn’t a goddess cup, but I turned under Lex’s hand and escaped for a closer look anyway.

My name’s Magdalene Sanger. I’m a professor of Comparative Mythology at Clemens College outside Stamford, Connecticut. And as it turns out, I’m descended from goddess worshippers. Long ago, when such beliefs became a burn-at-the-stake offense, women across the world hid their most sacred relics and taught their daughters and their daughters’ daughters where to find them.

Grailkeepers. Like me.

Until recently, guarding the knowledge of these lost chalices had been enough. But Phil Stuart and a secret society of powerful men had gone after my family’s cup. I’d rescued it—and learned the truth, which was this:

After hundreds, maybe thousands of years, mere knowledge was no longer enough.

Lex’s reflection appeared in the glass case, over my shoulder. “How’s an old cup that’s not even here making women more—” he frowned, at a loss “—more.”

“Legend says the goddess grails will increase the power of women a hundredfold,” I reminded him. “And I do still have the Melusine Grail. Sure, it’s hidden away for now…”

He didn’t ask where. I definitely didn’t tell him.

“But still, I drank from it. I took the essence of goddessness into me. Maybe that connection is what’s empowering other women…at least when I touch them.”

“So you don’t need to go looking for more cups?”

“Of course I do.”

His ghostly image scowled. In some ways, I thought, he’s more dangerous than Phil.

At least I felt certain about where Phil stood.

Even when I turned and looked at Lex straight on, I knew damned well I wasn’t seeing all of him.

He breathed out his next question. “Why?”

“You know as well as I do. Because a secret society called the Comitatus are after them. They destroyed the Kali Grail in New Delhi—”

“You can’t know that was…them.”

“You’re right, because they work in secret.” I frowned into my champagne. “But I know some of them went after the Melusine Chalice. I know they came after me. Is there any reason I should give them the benefit of a doubt?”

Lex’s mouth flattened as I kept talking.

“That’s the problem with secrets,” I continued. “I could have been dating a member of the Comitatus for years—hell, I could’ve dated one of its most powerful members—and never known it. I could have considered marrying him, and because of some stupid vow of secrecy, he would never have told me who he really was.”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” Lex’s reflection turned away from mine and faded, like a ghost’s.

Whether I wanted it to or not, my heart lurched. I turned after him. “That’s our problem. You can’t talk to me.”

Because that whole previous speech had been a big, fat load of sarcasm.

Turns out, Lex was one of the most powerful members of the Comitatus. From what I’d pieced together, the only reason he wasn’t in charge was that a childhood illness had taken him out of the running as a leader of supposed warriors. More’s the pity.

Despite our own problems—previous deceptions, and cross-purposes, and scars that might or might not yet heal—I had to believe things would have been different with him as the leader.

I had to.

I caught up to him and put a hand on his arm, hard and fit beneath his tuxedo jacket. “I have no reason to trust them. And since you can’t talk to me—”

“I can,” Lex insisted. “About anything but that.”

“It’s a hard thing not to talk about. You must know something good about those men, something worth saving, but I haven’t seen any proof of it. And now—”

Now Phil Stuart scowled at us from across the room, bodyguards instead of a date at his side. His fear of me, of what he couldn’t understand, made him dangerous. I looked from him to Lex again, noting how tight Lex’s jawline had gotten with the strain of his own secrets, and I consciously chose against fear.

“I trust you,” I vowed softly, hopefully. “I trust that you know what you’re doing, that it’s something honorable and right. I’ve got to believe that, for both our sakes….”

My voice faded, the closer his face leaned toward mine, the more intently his golden eyes focused on my lips. The nearer he came, the shorter my breath fell.

But again, not in a good way. I wasn’t ready.

The last time we’d been lovers, before his attack, I’d known nothing of his involvement with the Comitatus. Learning the truth had just about broken my heart. I did want to trust him…but maybe hearts are slower to heal than knife wounds.

He must have seen something in my eyes, in my posture. We’ve known each other since childhood, after all. He reads me pretty well.

Abruptly, he turned away. “I’ll get us another drink.”

And then I was alone in the crowd, feeling cold and foolish and more than a little frustrated…which is when I saw it.

It was another glass case, another small sculpture in blue faience, apparently the Egyptians’ earthenware of choice. This one wasn’t a cup but a tiny figurine, a woman on a throne with a child in her lap.

I could have looked away, if I’d wanted to. But, pulse accelerating, I did not want to.

The size of the figurine, perhaps six inches, in no way matched the scope of its subject. But from the headdress, I recognized her—or should I say, Her—all the same. Isis. Goddess of Ten Thousand Names. Oldest of the Old. Sitting there amid relics from her ancient, half-forgotten world, nursing the tiny god Horus on her lap.

This Grailkeeper business would be so much easier if she spoke to me, even in my head—if she flat out said Maggi, this is your next assignment. It didn’t work that way, of course. So far, a sore throat in the presence of danger was as tangible as the magic of the goddess got. Except…

Something vibrated against my fingertips. I nearly dropped my purse before remembering my cell phone, tucked inside it. I drew it out, saw an international exchange on its display.

I thumbed the On button. “Hello, Rhys,” I said softly, and not just out of politeness for the other museum patrons. The moment felt almost…holy. “Tell me you know where the Isis Grail is and I’ll believe in magic.”

“I do not know for certain,” came the lilting Welsh voice of my friend, an archeology student at the Sorbonne who was interning with an expedition to Egypt. “But someone seems to think I do.”

My sense of unease returned—and only partly because I’d just seen Lex, across the room, conversing with his cousin Phil.

“Why do you say that?” I deliberately turned my attention back to the statuette. I trust him, I trust him, I trust him.

The tiny blue Isis wore a crooked smile, as if to say, “Gotcha.”

“I say it,” said Rhys, “because somebody tried to kill me today.”

Chapter 2

When we reached JFK, Lex turned the car into an open space at the far reaches of the Central Terminal Area lot and shifted into Park. August sunlight bounced off a stretch of windshields and rearview mirrors between us and the terminals. His engine idled almost imperceptibly, to keep the cool air blowing.

He unfastened his seat belt and turned to me.

Here it comes, I thought. Until this moment, Lex’s only reaction to my announcement that I was flying to Egypt had been three words: “I’ll drive you.”

I expected a protest.

I didn’t expect him to take my left hand in his.

“Mag,” he said. And he slid a gold band onto my ring finger! “Wear this?”

Gold band. On the finger reserved for engagement and wedding rings.

And I’d thought concern for Rhys and last-minute flight plans had been stressful? This sent the day’s pressure into heart-pumping overdrive.

Damn, I thought, staring at the ring. And we were just starting to get along again. Except for the panic attack at the thought of kissing him, that is. Still, I’d already refused to marry Lex Stuart, several times, even before this business about chalices and secret societies had come up.

The timing hadn’t exactly improved.

“It’s company policy,” Lex explained with his usual composure, drawing his thumb across the band. “Women wearing wedding rings invite less harassment in Arab countries than women who are recognizably single.”

“Policy,” I repeated numbly—and the world shifted back into place again. Policy. The ring meant nothing. Then the rest of his statement caught up with me, and I regained my full voice to challenge it. “Invite harassment?”

“Attract less harassment, then. Point being—”

“Point being you think I need the illusion of a man to protect me.” I started to tug the ring off.

He closed his hand around mine, stopping me. “I didn’t say that. God help any Egyptians who try to harass you.”

Appeased, I waited for him to explain himself.

“I just wish you weren’t going,” he said softly.

Which, as far as ways for him to explain himself went, sucked. “Well that’s not your call to make.”

“Did you hear me asking?”

Actually, no, I hadn’t.

Lex opened his hand enough to look at mine, at the ring that now loosely circled the top knuckle of my finger. “You’re the one who complains that we don’t talk enough.”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. I had to get rid of nervous energy somehow. “I complain that you’ve taken a vow of secrecy to an organization that’s tried to kill me. And you. More than once. That’s not the same as whining that you don’t tell me often enough that you love me.”

He said, “I love you.”

I sank back into the leather seat and closed my eyes, still anchored by his hand holding mine. My reaction to that really shouldn’t have been to think, Crap, should it?

I mean, this was Lex—my first date, first love, first time. My first, second, and third heartbreak.

But damn it, my plane was leaving soon, and I still had an international security check to get through. “Lex…”

“I love you, and I hate that you’re leaving. This is the Middle East you’re talking about, Mag.”

When I opened my eyes, there that ring sat, peeking loosely through our fingers, undecided. “Egypt isn’t the same as the Gaza Strip.”

“It’s not the same as Cleveland, either,” insisted Lex. “Less than a decade ago more than fifty tourists were massacred in the Valley of the Kings.”

“I’m not going to the Valley of the Kings, I’m going to Alexandria. It’s the other direction.”

Lex stared at me, unswayed.

I fisted my hand in his, ring and all. “I’ll be fine.”

“Like you were the last time you went after a chalice that certain people didn’t want found?”

“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.”

People shouted. Chickens squawked. Children laughed and dodged past shoppers—or begged. The way both handcrafted and plastic-wrapped merchandise spilled out into the already littered streets, and bright banners draped across the open area above us to provide shade and color, I found myself increasingly glad I didn’t suffer claustrophobia. With claustrophobia, this would be hell.

Instead, it was fun, if ovenlike. The smells of spices, incense, perfumes and produce—mountains of oranges and bananas and white garlic bulbs—overwhelmed the lingering scent of diesel like an exotic time travel. Quite a few merchants dressed as their predecessors must have for hundreds of years.

“Welcome to Egypt!”

“Where you from?”

“No charge for looking!”

Leaning close to Rhys, I raised my voice. “Are you sure they sell swords here?”

“I’m told they sell everything here.” He readjusted the laptop case, which we’d decided not to risk leaving in the car. “Legend has it some of the most ancient Christian scrolls were recovered at a bazaar like this.”

I smiled at his clear envy; he’d become increasingly interested in the early history of the church since he’d gone civilian. “Good luck finding some more of them.”

“You want swords?” asked a little boy with huge black eyes, suddenly ahead of us. “Here was once the metalworker’s bazaar. I show you swords—come!”

So what the hell, we followed.

The first shop he brought us to had only swords with animal-horn handles, not exactly what I wanted. The next sported highly decorative weapons that looked fit for Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights, but were actually letter openers made out of tin. And the third one—

Just right. The third souk displayed a collection of real blades laid on silk-lined tables and hung from rope outside the shop. The inside walls displayed them one above the next.

Steel blades. Fighting swords.

Rhys slipped our miniature guide some coins—baksheesh, don’t you know—and I went shopping.

It’s not like I’m an expert on swords. Most of my experience before this summer came from practicing tai chi forms with a straight, double-edged saber. It’s used not so much for fighting as for an extension of one’s self in a fluid, moving meditation. But that practice came in damned useful when the Comitatus attacked Lex and me with ceremonial daggers.

Apparently society members had nothing against guns for your average peons, but knives were used for attacks of any ritual significance. I hoped I’d risen to that much esteem, anyway.

Mainly because I hate guns.

Some of the swords inside this hot little souk I could immediately reject. Almost half of them were just too large for me to comfortably wield, much less carry with any discretion. Just as many were curve-bladed scimitars, high on style, low on personal practicality. But some…

Several dozen straight-bladed swords beckoned me to pick them up, test their heft, swing them.

The grizzled shopkeeper stepped back to give me as much space as he could, which wasn’t much. Luckily, tai chi is all about control over oneself and, when swords are involved, one’s blade.

I barely heard the merchant’s explanation of the benefits of this piece or that—Toledo steel here, Damascus there, replicas of swords belonging to sheikhs and knights. I was too busy listening to the swords themselves.

I tried a sword with too thick of a grip, then one with a basket hilt, like a rapier, which felt awkward to me. I tried one that turned out to be way too long, and another that weighed too much. Rhys said something about being right back, and I nodded, but mostly I was lifting swords, holding them over my head, spinning with them, thrusting them at full arm’s length…trying to find my perfect extension.

For the first week or so after Lex’s attack I’d avoided practicing, and not just because I’d wrenched my wrist in the fight. Every time I’d picked up my sword, I would remember exactly what it felt like to thrust a blade into another human being. Through skin. Into muscle, ligaments, bone. And yes, it was sickening. That’s the point. It’s not that I regretted doing it—those men had given me no other choice when they tried to kill someone I cared about. But I regretted having been in a situation that demanded it.

Then my sifu had suggested that I either choose to swim across the blood or to drown in it. That was when I’d reclaimed my practice, my extension. It didn’t happen right away—but by now, I could lose myself in the slow dance of forms that is pure tai chi without the guilt.

Embracing the moon.

Black dragon whipping its tail.

Dusting into the wind.

I was halfway through a routine, stepping slowly from one movement to the next, before I realized this was it. The sword I held had great weight, great balance. It was the one I wanted, the one that wanted me. Lowering it, I saw that it had a slim blade with a stylish brass S hilt and, intriguingly, a pattern within the hand-beaten steel that reminded me of snake scales. Snakes are a universal goddess symbol, not just for Melusine or Eve or the Minoans. This was perfect.

Wiping my face on my sleeve, I turned to ask the shopkeeper the cost—and was surprised to see that sometime during the last couple of swords, he’d vanished.

How odd. Worse, my throat tightened in warning. Because of that, I had my blade up and ready as I turned toward the front of the shop—and stopped short.

The sharp tip of a scimitar hovered, a mere breath from my tardy throat.

The man who held the sword, swarthy and square-shouldered, was the man who’d helped us at the airport. He still wore the suit. But now, weirdly enough, he had a protective, Eye-of-Horus design painted in blue on his cheek.

“Well, witch,” he said. “Let us see how good you are.”

And he swung.

Had he just called me a witch?

Thank heavens for practice. If I’d had to actually think about anything at that moment, I may have ended up as shish kebab.

Instead, my new sword leaped upward almost before I knew I was moving it. The two blades collided with a steel clash that echoed through the souk.

One steel clash.

That was all I needed.

Tai chi is all about passive resistance, resolving everything into its opposite. Softness against strength. Yielding and overcoming. To meet this man’s force with more force would be foolish, him being so much bigger and clearly more aggressive than me. Instead, I met it with concession, sliding my blade around his.

He did the work of thrusting. His mistake, since my blade remained in the space he was thrusting against. The only reason it merely scratched his arm, instead of stabbing him, was my reluctance to have it yanked from my hand.

I’d drawn first blood, all the same.

He drew breath in a quick hiss. “What kind of fighting is that?”

“Maybe I fight like a girl,” I said. Warned.

When he drew back to swing again, my blade continued to rest against his. When he sliced the air with his scimitar, my sword coiled around his and struck a second time across the light sleeve on his forearm.

Another stripe of blood.

I was the one who demanded, “Would you stop that?”

“I?” The bastard groped outward with his left hand, picked up one of the display swords and, with a sharp jerk, flipped its scabbard to the stone floor. Such a guy. When in doubt, up the weaponry.

Crap.

Now I had two blades to deal with, using only one. My sword couldn’t flow around both of them, and I’m no two-handed fencer, so I had to make myself flow around the man instead. Try to. Wouldn’t you know I’d be wearing a skirt for this, gauzy but long—dress is very conservative in Arabic countries. At least I had on boots.

The cluttered walls loomed in, too close.

When the man rushed me, I had no choice but to back up—fast—rather than take the full force of his attack. Even as I pivoted out of his way, letting him push past me, I stumbled against another table of merchandise. When he charged again, I dived under his weapons to avoid them both.

Gauzy skirt material twisted around my legs, and sand from the floor grated across my skin. Luckily, I managed to roll to my feet—barely—before hitting the opposite wall of this small souk. My skirt tore under one foot. A dagger fell behind me. “What the hell is your problem?”

He swung with his right-hand sword. With my empty hand, I caught his from behind and encouraged it in the direction it was already going as I dodged, throwing him off balance.

He stumbled.

“Why did you call me a witch?” I demanded.

Catching himself, he now sliced the left-hand blade toward me. I blocked it with my own weapon, one ringing impact and then silent adherence, sinuously winding my blade about his.

That didn’t protect me from the first sword, his scimitar. It flashed upward too quickly. To dodge it, I would either have to drop my sword or—

No way was I dropping my sword. Instead, I sank into an almost impossibly low crouch—without having stretched first, which I would regret—and ducked under his elbow. The scimitar whipped through the air above me. But it missed.

I tried to bob quickly back to my feet, behind my attacker and away from the immediate threat and his weapons, but I’d stepped on my damn skirt, which yanked me off balance long enough for the bastard to bodycheck me.

That was unexpected—which was why it worked. He rushed at me, filling my vision with his shoulder, his elbow. I meant to dance backward myself, like riding a wave. Let him do the work. Let him expend the effort.

But wham! Too soon, my back met a sword-covered wall. The back of my head slammed against a hard scabbard. And Sinbad’s swinging elbow knocked the breath right out of me.

I sank, fingers curling desperately around the grip of my own sword. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it.

As if lifting it were even possible, at that moment.

My damp knees hit the gritty floor, and I folded forward, catching myself with one hand, one fist.

Don’t drop it!

Breathe!

My body obeyed the first command, but not the second. I fought the physical panic that comes from having breath knocked away and arched my neck, straining my face upward.

The stranger’s hulking body loomed above me.

“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated in his impeccable British. “And you will take your friend with you.”

My chest tightened, and my view of him began to waver. Goddess help me….

Maybe it was Isis, or Melusine, or just that universal, maternal force of goddessness that answered my prayer. Or maybe it was just timing.

Hot, exotic air filled my lungs with a rush. And with it came power.

Even as he said, “You will not interfere in matters that do not concern you.”

My fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, it sure as hell concerns me now.” And I swung. A quick, angry arc across his ankles. Not enough to cut anything off—I doubted I had that strength, or this new sword had such sharpness.

But definitely enough to bite. And unexpected.

That’s why it worked.

With a startled cry, the man jumped back. I surged up onto one knee, capturing my gauzy skirt with my free hand, and swung again while he was still off balance. It forced him back a few inches, which was all I wanted.

Before he could stop me, I ducked under his weapons, right past him and toward the front of the shop, no longer trapped.

He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.

“Do you really plan to take this into the street?” I asked. “With all these nice bystanders and policemen?”

The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.

He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. “You have no business here.”

But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a personal power that was uniquely feminine. “You just made sure I do.”

When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.

Then I heard Rhys’s distinctly Welsh voice. “Uffach cols!” he swore. “What’s this? Aren’t you that fellow—”

“From the airport,” I said, not looking back. “Yeah. Now he thinks he’s Sinbad.”

The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, “Shorta! Shorta!”

I hoped that meant police.

My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.

I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“I only knew I was coming to Egypt last night…I guess that’s night before last, now,” I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. “How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me? At the airport!”

“I didn’t tell many people.” Rhys hadn’t lost the crease of concern between his blue eyes. Not while I talked to the police, and not while I bargained the merchant down to a third of his asking price for the sword that had protected me.

Normally I’m a wimpy barterer, but after the merchant’s earlier vanishing act, I was in a combative mood.

Now I wore the sword’s wooden scabbard slung innocently over my shoulder, a recent tourist’s purchase. I hadn’t decided on a name for the blade, yet. I would worry about concealing it later.

“It’s not your fault,” I assured Rhys.

“I told the hotel, to get you a bed. I told my friend Niko, when I asked to borrow the car. A group of people working on the project own it together, so it is possible one of the others know.”

“I never said to keep it a secret.”

“I told Tala, the woman I wish you to meet—”

“Rhys.” I stopped and fixed him with my best scowl, swordfight-proven. “Let’s not empower fear. The man didn’t even use my name. He may not have even known who I really am.”

“Then how is it that, so soon after the airport, he found you here?”

I looked around us, at a rope of guitars hanging outside one souk and a rainbow of glittering material draped before another, at the press and flow of people all around us. “Well…we wouldn’t have noticed anyone following us around here, that’s for sure.”

“But how is it the man could have followed us in this crowd, and in Cairo traffic? And Maggi, why would he?”

Yeah, that one had me stumped, as well.

“Rings for rings,” called the veiled woman working at the jewelry counter nearby, which made me look down at my left hand.

My breath caught in my throat, stopping as surely as it had when Sinbad shoved his elbow into me. “Unless…”

I could barely form the words. But the sudden rush of possibility was too horrible to keep to myself. “Unless I’m wearing some kind of tracking device.”

“But who could possibly—” Rhys apparently saw how I was staring at the wedding ring.

The one Lex had given me.

Lex, one of the lead members of the Comitatus.

That’s the problem with old wounds. They reopen.

“The guy attacked me with a sword,” I whispered.

Rhys grabbed my hand, PDA or not. “Now wait a moment, Maggi. You were in a shop chockablock with swords. Just because this stranger used one does not mean he’s a member of that secret order.”

Yes, Rhys knew. I hadn’t taken any vows of silence.

“They used ceremonial daggers, didn’t they?”

“There is a difference between the two. Even if there were not, even if the man were—” he lowered his voice “—Comitatus, that could mean Phillip Stuart sent him, not necessarily Lex.”

“But Lex is the only one who could have told Phil, and how else did that man follow us from the airport?” I freed my hand from his and waded through the crowd to the jewelry counter, where I could see the female clerk’s smile in her eyes, over her veil. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes. Rings for rings.”

“I don’t want to buy—well, not a ring,” I decided, since if I wanted help, I couldn’t expect her to give it for free. I glanced impatiently at the cluster of cheap pewter pendants and quickly chose the horned disk that symbolizes Isis. “But I was hoping you could check this ring and tell me if there’s anything strange about it. Anything like a…a tracking device?”

The clerk stared at me blankly, as if disappointed. Apparently her English wasn’t good enough to include tracking device.

Great. “Is this a normal ring?” I tried, tugging the wedding band from my finger and sliding it across the counter toward her.

Then I froze, because of what she’d just slid hopefully across the counter toward me.

A brass chalice-well pendant—two intersecting circles, also called a vesica piscis. Similar to the pendant I already wore, had worn in one version or another since I was fourteen, except for the Arabic flourishes.

Symbol of the Grailkeepers.

Chapter 4

When the hopeful clerk repeated, “Rings for rings,” I finally understood her. I’d simply known the childhood rhyme as Circle to Circle.

But circles, rings…they were all eternal loops. It lost little in translation. And it was a recognition code.

“Never an end,” I greeted softly, purposefully giving the next piece of the Grailkeeper’s chant.

She clearly recognized it. She beamed. I even caught a pale hint of white teeth behind her veil as she reached across the counter and grasped my hand. Her grip was firm. Then her eyes closed and she drew in a long, deep breath, as if savoring…

What? Was she sensing the essence of goddessness that seemed to empower women whom I touched, of late?

It wasn’t like I expected her to rip off her veil and head scarf and demand equal pay for equal work. But when she opened her eyes, all she said was, “It is you!”

Uh-huh… “What is me?”

“You have come to reclaim the sultana’s magic,” she continued. “As in the tales.”

For a moment I had the sick feeling that there was an actual sultana out there somewhere. One more responsibility I hadn’t meant to take on. Then I realized that my word for the position would be queen.

“You mean like the fairy tale, about the queen and her nine daughters?” I asked.

“Seven,” corrected the clerk—but as surely as I’d heard different versions of the story, I’d heard different numbers. Sometimes the queen had as many as thirteen daughters, sometimes as few as three. “Seven beautiful daughters.”

Rhys, behind me, asked, “Does she mean the story where the queen gives her daughters magical cups?”

The clerk’s eyes widened. She backed away two steps, making what I assumed was a protective gesture.

“It’s all right,” I assured her. “His mother is a Grailkeeper.”

She stared at me blankly.

“A…Chalice Keeper,” I tried.

She nodded slowly and said, “A Cup Holder.”

“Um…yeah. A Cup Holder.” Now that one suffered in translation. “He knows the story.”

Pour your powers into these cups, the queen instructs. Hide them so that your energy can live on even though you be forgotten.

The veiled clerk continued to eye Rhys as if he meant to attack her. Or me. With his big, manly hands and all that…testosterone.

“Perhaps I should go look at…yes, there,” said Rhys, choosing the first thing he noticed. “One can’t have enough T-shirts, can one?”

Only after he’d backed away did the “Cup Holder’s” shoulders sink in relief. Poor, gentle Rhys.

“Let me try again,” I said. “Hello. My name is Magdalene Sanger.”

“I is Munira,” said the clerk, clearly pleased. “It is…honor…to meet champion.”

“To meet what?”

“Champion of the Holy One.” She opened her arms toward me, like a tah-dah move. “It is you, is not?”

“I’m looking for goddess cups, but I wouldn’t call myself a champion.” Certainly not the champion.

Even factoring in the number of women who’d forgotten or dismissed the legends, I suspect the number of hereditary Grailkeepers had to count in the hundreds, if not the thousands. The whole world had once worshipped goddesses, after all. We’d just kept such a low profile for so long, we’d lost track of each other.

There still had to be a handful who understood what the stories meant. Not just me.

“Blessings upon you, Champion,” said Munira.

I gave up arguing with her, in favor of better information. “Well…thank you. Would you happen to know where a goddess cup is hidden?”

Like the Isis Grail?

She stared, brow furrowed.

“Did your mother teach you a rhyme or song about where the Holy One’s cup might be waiting?” That’s how most of our knowledge had been kept. Power mongers rarely think to dissect fairy tales or nursery rhymes.

“Ah!” She nodded—and recited something singsong in Arabic.

I smiled a stupid half grin of ignorance, and Munira took pity on me, but her attempt at translating was clearly an effort.

“She…she sleeps, yes?” She mimed closing her eyes, head tipping sideways in illustration. “With no light. She is.”

“She is what?”

Munira shook her head. “She is. And much…always…will she be such.”

Then she nodded at her completely unhelpful attempt, proud of herself. To be fair, her English so far outshone my Arabic that I couldn’t do anything but thank her.

That, and make a mental note to come back with someone—a woman—who was fluent in both languages.

“May she smile upon you,” said Munira—then looked down at the wedding ring I’d set on the counter. “What is you wish for this ring, Champion? You say…trapping?”

No reason to confuse matters with the concept of a tracking device. “Is there anything unusual about this ring? Something that does not belong, embedded in it?”

I felt sick, just having to ask. Lex and I were working on trusting each other, damn it. If it turned out he’d bugged me again, the man would need more than a sword to defend himself.

Munira raised a jeweler’s loupe to her eye, a strange contrast to the veiling, and professionally examined the ring. If there was anything artificial there, she would surely see it.

“It is written,” she said. “Graven?”

“Engraved?”

Nodding, she found a pencil to trace the unfamiliar letters, right to left. They came out sloppy, like a child’s—but again, any attempt I made to write the beautiful flourishes of Arabic would have looked worse. All I needed was legibility.

That’s what I got. Virescit vulnere virtus.

Latin. Something about vulnerability and strength. I’d seen the words before—over Lex’s father’s fireplace.

It was the Stuart clan motto.

“Does this…understand…to you?” she asked, and I nodded tightly. “Is all I see. Is fine ring. Very old. Very expensive.”

So, just for giggles… “How expensive?”

She named a price—in American dollars, not Egyptian pounds—which staggered me. For just gold? No diamonds or anything?

“You have generous husband, no?” she asked.

No. What I had was a contradiction to Lex’s oh-so-casual, standard-for-women-overseas story. Was it also company policy for businesswomen to wear expensive, been-in-the-family-for-generations, complete-with-motto rings?

“We sell much fine jewelry,” offered Munira. “Very low price.” And like that the strange Grailkeeper interlude turned back to the assumed normalcy of souvenir shopping at the Khan el-Khalili.

I’d seen the Pyramids of Giza as we flew in, and caught glimpses while we were in the city, they were so close to urban Cairo. But they were the opposite direction from Alexandria.

The drive had its points of interest, for sure, like the occasional sight of fellahin, or peasant farmers, riding overpacked bicycles, donkeys or even camels down the road. Rhys pointed out the road we would take if I wanted to check out the oldest Christian monastery in existence. But contrasted against pyramids almost anything would seem anticlimactic.

Even speculating about who had attacked me with a scimitar—and what Munira had meant about me being “Champion.”

“Perhaps you’re special,” offered Rhys.

“I’m not special.”

He glanced toward me as if he wanted to contradict that but hesitated from propriety’s sake.

“I mean, I’m no more special than the next person. Certainly no more than the next Grailkeeper.”

“Perhaps you are. That is to say…perhaps you have been somehow chosen. You did find the Melusine Grail. And you did drink from it.”

“My cousin Lil drank from it, too,” I reminded him. “And my friend Sophie, and Aunt Brigitte.”

“That happened some days later, did it not?”

It did, but… “One thing I’ve liked about being a Grailkeeper, ever since I realized the concept was bigger than my grandmother’s old stories, is that there’s no hierarchy. No inner circles. No one woman—one person, I mean—is more important than another.”

“Unlike the Comitatus?” Damn, but Rhys could be insightful when he wanted.

“As far as I can see, the only difference between a secret warrior society and a pyramid scheme—the financial kind—is that nobody tries to sell you anything.”

“Instead, they try to kill you.” Rhys shared my grin, then asked, “Do you still believe that Lex was denied leadership simply because he had leukemia as a child?”

“It makes a weird sort of sense, especially if the order was established during pagan times. An ancient belief equates the health, even the virility, of the land with that of its king. Who knows? That could explain how my country has managed to prosper under presidents who were real hound dogs.”

“But surely if Lex has fully recovered…”

“Oh, he recovered all right.” But thinking about Lex and virility at the same time wasn’t going to uncomplicate anything. Besides, I was still annoyed that he’d tricked me into wearing a family heirloom—so annoyed that I’d taken it off. “I used to wonder why he was so driven to stay in shape. Now I guess I know. But no way would Phil relinquish control that easily. My best guess is that Lex will try for a peaceful coup.”

“That would be the path of a true leader, would it not?”

Depends on how you defined leadership. “He said something strange to me, Rhys. He said he needed me, needed balance, in order to do something important.”

“He needs you, and you flew to Egypt?”

“He said it a few months ago. Hasn’t mentioned it since. Besides, you needed me, too, right?”

Rhys slanted a skeptical look my direction. “I didn’t invite you here to be my bodyguard, Maggi. I do care for your safety rather more than that.”

“But if someone thinks you’re close enough to finding the Isis Grail to try killing you…”

“Then you deserve to be here for the actual discovery,” he finished. “I’ve gotten permission for you to participate. As an academic observer, that is.”

“To participate in…” Belatedly, I realized exactly what he meant. “The project? Cleopatra’s sunken palace? Really?”

He grinned. “You and she have a great deal in common, after all.”

Noting how his eyes shone at the gift he’d given me, I thought, Attracted to two men?

Or, worse, was he going to say something gushy about immortal beauty? I didn’t want Rhys admiring me that way, at least not saying so.

I was officially dating Lex, trust or no trust.

“You are both strong women,” Rhys clarified, to my relief.

That seemed the safer analogy.

Speedboats bounce. At least, they do around other boats, as in the partially enclosed harbor of Alexandria. Salt spray flew into my face, sunlight glared across the water, and I loved it. This no longer felt as foreign as Egypt. It felt more familiarly like the Mediterranean—which, just beyond the crescent of land enclosing the harbor from either side, it was.

You may have read about the discovery of Cleopatra’s Palace in Newsweek or National Geographic, or seen a special about it on cable television. I had, even before I’d started my search for the goddess grails…or learned that Cleopatra herself had claimed to be the reincarnation of the goddess Isis.

“That’s common knowledge to Egyptologists,” Rhys assured me, shouting over the engine of the motorboat we rode toward the anchored cabin cruiser where the main archeological team worked. “Pharaohs were gods on earth, or so they and their followers believed—hence that little tiff between Moses and his foster brother, before the exodus? Cleopatra VII was simply maintaining an important tradition passed down from millennia of rulers.”

“Cleopatra VII?” Had there been that many?

“She’s the one you’re thinking of,” Rhys assured me.

“Seduced Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony, heavy-on-the-eye-shadow, death-by-asp Cleopatra.”

“The very same. It’s well-known that, amid her palace complex, she had a temple to Isis. But we now assume that the same earthquake which destroyed the Pharos Lighthouse submerged the palace complex as well. It was long after that nasty death-by-asp business, though.”

I looked from the approaching cabin cruiser back toward the coastal city of Alexandria, which, from the water, vaguely resembled an especially dusty, disorganized Venice off the Grand Canal…except for the chunks of cement blocks at the water’s edge, to fight erosion. Then I turned to the medieval fortress that guarded the harbor entrance from the sea, and tried to imagine how this ancient city would have looked a thousand years before even that had been built. “And where there is a temple to Isis…”

“It stands to reason there may be a reliquary,” agreed Rhys. “And where there is a reliquary…”

“There could be relics like a goddess grail.” I shivered happily at the thought. Another font of female power, just waiting for us under the salty water. If only I could collect enough—however many that might be—then they could finally be revealed to a world in need of their balance and power.

The man we’d hired to ferry us out to the cabin cruiser steered well around what I recognized as a diver-down buoy. He cut his engine and levered the motor up out of the water for safety. Momentum carried us the rest of the way to the ship. When I saw the name of this floating headquarters—Soeur d’Aphrodite, or Aphrodite’s Sister—I felt all the more certain of the rightness of this visit.

Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, isn’t just a goddess. She may well be another face of Isis.

“Several significant archeologists have been leading the effort to explore these sites since their discovery,” explained Rhys, grabbing hold of the ladder on the side of the ship as we coasted in beside it. “Whenever they can get permission. This is one of the few places in Alexandria where the scholars aren’t having to fight developers for rights to the land. There is even some talk about creating an underwater tunnel system specifically so that tourists can view the finds—once the government manages to lessen the toxicity in the local seawater. After you.”

He had my laptop case again, so all I had to do was gather up the excess of my torn cotton skirt, twist it, and tuck it into the waistband before I climbed up. If anyone had a problem with seeing my knees, they’d just have to get over it. I wasn’t about to risk falling into water Rhys had just announced was toxic. Once I swung onto the lower deck I freed my skirts, while Rhys followed me.

What came after was a pleasant jumble of introductions and welcomes from an international assortment of divers and archeologists. The director of this particular branch of the project, Pierre d’Alencon, shook my hand but seemed busy with other matters, so I backed to the edge of the deck, out of the way, to simply observe. Rhys got permission to show me the computer programs being used to map the underwater finds, so I turned in that direction—

And faced blazing green eyes.

“You,” snarled a sickeningly familiar female voice, in French.

Right before its owner pushed me over the railing.

Chapter 5

I made a desperate scramble at the metal railing as I fell over it. But I was too surprised, and it wasn’t enough. The impact against the back of my legs, against my grasping hands, gave way to weightlessness.

Then, with a splash, I vanished beneath the surface of the toxic harbor—and quickly closed my eyes. Sinking downward, before my frantic strokes and kicks stopped my descent, I wouldn’t have seen any goddess relics even if they waited right there in front of me.

Some champion!

Only after I managed to struggle upward, boots and soggy skirt and all, and my face broke the waves into the air, did I open my eyes to the sunshine—

And behold, far above, the bitch who’d pushed me.

Catrina Dauvergne of the Musée de Cluny, Paris.

The woman who’d once stolen the Melusine Grail from me.

The willowy, tawny-haired Frenchwoman was not smiling.

That made two of us.

Once I managed to drag myself up the chrome ladder and back onto the deck, I took two dripping steps in my attacker’s direction, my hand fisting. Maybe women don’t normally default to violence as quickly as men, but this was by no means quick. This had been simmering for weeks.

Rhys shouldered himself between us. “I forgot to mention her being here, Maggi. I’m so sorry.”

He would be. “Move.”

“I will not.” Protecting people brings out the tough-guy in Rhys, even when they didn’t deserve protection.

“Yes, Pritchard,” agreed Catrina in smooth French. “This is not for you to interfere.”

“But it is for me to interfere,” insisted a new voice, that of Monsier d’Alencon—also in French. The French seemed to be running this particular show, after all. “Explain yourselves.”

I wrung out my skirt into a splattering puddle; it clung like wet tissue. “You want me to explain?”

My French, unlike my Arabic, is fluent.

“I wish someone to explain so that I know which of you two—or three—” his gaze included Rhys “—to dismiss.”

Catrina and I glared at each other. But this was a choice expedition, remember? Newsweek. National Geographic. Cable. The threat of expulsion carried weight. I could read her hatred in her narrowed gaze. She’d once accused me of playing archeologist, raiding medieval sanctuaries and stealing the Melusine Chalice instead of leaving it in situ—not that I’d had any choice! She, on the other hand, had pretended that she would put the chalice on display in the Cluny, where it might empower countless visitors with its proof of goddess worship, only to then sell it onto the black market.

Either way, Catrina and I each had enough on the other to permanently ruin both our chances of involvement with either Cleopatra’s Palace or the Temple of Isis everyone hoped to find there—and, worse, to end Rhys’s internship, which he’d gotten through the Sorbonne. I was comfortably employed, waiting only for the fall semester to start. Catrina, I assumed, still had a job with the Cluny, unless she’d quit to live off her ill-gotten gains. But after he’d left the priesthood, archeology was the only profession Rhys had found that spoke to him.

No way would I ruin this opportunity.

No way would I allow Catrina to do so.

“I apologize,” I said slowly—to the project director. “Catrina and I are old friends. Sometimes our little jokes get out of hand, don’t they, Cat?”

Catrina Dauvergne might be disloyal, dishonest and vindictive—but she was not stupid. “But of course, Magdalene,” she said tightly. “Now we are even for the little joke you played in Paris.”

Bitch.

D’Alencon glared from one of us to the other while I stood there dripping—so much for making a professional first impression. “There will be no more jokes on my time, yes? It is how injuries happen.” And, blessedly, he turned back to other demands.

“This is not over,” Catrina whispered menacingly.

“Not even close,” I answered—and deliberately turned to Rhys, who had some explaining to do about forgetting to mention this woman’s presence.

But first I needed to know… “Just how toxic is this water?”

Catrina laughed, disgustingly pleased—but turned back to her other duties.

As it turned out, the East Harbor of Alexandria was so polluted from raw sewage that the divers who went in regularly were supposed to wear cautionary headgear and dry suits, though not all of them took that mandate to heart. Locals still swam in the stuff. Brief exposure was unlikely to infest me with parasites or turn me radioactive. And in the meantime…

In the meantime, my introduction to the scope of the project quickly distracted me from any inauspicious beginning.

I’d arrived too late in the day to make suiting up for a dive practical. But more than in the relatively shallow waters of the harbor—which is maybe twenty-five feet at its deepest—most of the work was being done by computer, and much of that was on shipboard. The following few hours became an enjoyable blur of information about latex molding techniques, aquameters, nuclear resonance magnetometers and sonar scanning. The archeologists really weren’t collecting artifacts from the sea and transferring them to some museum. They were mapping them, photographing them, sometimes raising them long enough to make molds, and then leaving them exactly where the assumed earthquake and/or tidal wave had once left them.

In situ.

I was so enthralled by the catalog of watery finds—sphinxes, statues, algae-covered pillars—that I almost forgot why I was there. Almost. Then Rhys reminded me that we had a dinner engagement for which I should probably clean up, and I remembered my real goal.

Isis.

Goddess grails.

And a supposed Grailkeeper whom he’d met, who’d said she would share the rhyme she’d learned about the location of the Oldest of the Old’s chalice. Hopefully in English.

Considering that someone had tried to run Rhys down a few days ago, not long after he’d spoken to this woman, he wasn’t the only person to suspect she might know what she was talking about.

The Hotel Athens, where most of the expedition was staying, had slotted me into a plain but neat third-story room, which I would share with a fortysomething Greek scientist named Eleni. It had two twin beds, one plain wardrobe, and a window overlooking trolley-car tracks with overhead wires that sparked whenever a trolley passed. As with many midrange European hotels, the bathroom and shower were down the hall.

I dressed as conservatively as before with the exception of sandals—my boots would take a while to dry. Since this was a social call, I decided to wait on rigging up a harness for my still nameless sword and instead left the weapon under my pillow. But I put my essential belongings—cell phone, money, matchbook—in a modest leather fanny pack, to keep my hands free. My passport had its own special pouch under my long-sleeved shirt. I pulled my hair back in a long brown braid.

And, after some deliberation, I put Lex’s damned ring back on. Things can get stolen in hotel rooms.

I hadn’t even been in the Arab Republic of Egypt for a day, but already I assumed that Mrs. Tala Rachid would be wearing a head scarf at least, maybe even a veil.

I assumed wrongly.

The vibrant, sixtysomething woman who greeted us when we arrived at her beautiful villa looked more Greek than Egyptian. She had beautiful black hair slashed with gray at her temples, which she’d drawn off her swanlike neck into a modest bun. Her knee-length blue dress would have been appropriate for the museum soiree I’d attended a few nights back. And, sure enough, she wore the sign of the vesica piscis on a beaded chain around her neck.

“Circle to circle,” I said softly, upon our meeting.

“Never an end,” she greeted—the correct response—and extended her hand to shake mine. A small blue cross, tattooed inside her wrist, peeked out from beneath the sleeve of her dress. “I’m pleased to meet you, Professor Sanger,” she said warmly, her accent exotic but her English impeccable. “Or should I call you Doctor?”

“Neither, please,” I insisted, trying to hide my surprise at her appearance and poise. She was, after all, a Grailkeeper. “I’m only a postdoc, it takes a while to earn tenure. And doctor still makes me think of medical professionals.”

“As a medical professional, I appreciate your modesty.”

Now I stared. “You’re…?”

“Dr. Rachid,” she confirmed, gesturing us into a luxurious parlor. “As was my mother before me—and her mother was a midwife. There are still some of us on this side of the world, Mrs. Sanger.”

Missus? Oh…the ring.

“Maggi is fine. I didn’t mean offense.”

“Of course not.” Gracefully, she managed to seat us before settling onto a sofa herself. She kept her knees together, her ankles crossed. Her posture was excellent. “My career is admittedly less common here than in the West. But even the Muslim women can practice as doctors.”

The…? “You’re not Muslim?”

“I’m a Copt,” she clarified, extending her wrist again so that I need not sneak a peek at the tattoo I’d only glimpsed before. Definitely a cross. “Coptic Christian.”

Hello. While Christianity in Rome wasn’t sanctioned until the fourth century, it had flourished in Egypt from its very beginning—yet another reason that we’d passed the first monastery. Early writings such as the Gnostic Gospels had also been recovered here.

Rhys said, “The Copts, though a minority now, are the Egyptians who can most directly trace their lineage back to the Pharaohs.” Like Cleopatra?

“And to priestesses of Isis?” I guessed, with a shiver of comprehension. “That’s how you can help us find her chalice.”

Most of the Grailkeepers I’d met, myself included, had learned special nursery rhymes as children. Those rhymes held within them the riddle to where their mothers’ mothers’ mothers had hidden their ancestral grails. Maybe it was the dry heat, or the faint scent of tropical flowers in the air, but I could easily imagine this woman’s ancestors protecting holy relics in the court of Pharaohs.

“Precisely,” said Dr. Rachid. “The truth of the cup’s location has been in my family for centuries.”

“Then the divers are looking in the right place?”

She nodded, but her smile was mysterious. “One could say that. But before I share what I know…I’m afraid I must ask you for some assistance.”

I looked at Rhys, whose brows furrowed. “You said you wanted to meet her,” he protested. “You didn’t say anything about favors.”

“I apologize, but I had to make certain she is as competent as you told me.” Dr. Rachid nodded, seemingly to herself. “And clearly she is.”

My throat didn’t tighten with any premonition of danger, but my bullshit meter was sure in the red. “How could you possibly tell my level of competence just by shaking…my…?”

Oh. My hand. Whatever force the Melusine Grail had imbued me with, Dr. Rachid seemed to have sensed it.

I probably should have asked if she, like Munira at the bazaar, thought I was some kind of champion—but damned if I could force the question out. It was too overwhelming an idea, way too big a responsibility to handle while jet-lagged. Instead, if only to avoid that particular elephant in the corner, I asked, “What kind of assistance?”

“Ah.” She ignored me to stand as her maid showed another woman, holding a notebook, into the room. “Jane. I’m so pleased you’re here.”

“Tala.” If the woman’s red hair, spattering of freckles, and blue jeans hadn’t given her away as a Westerner, the blunt edge of her East-London accent would have. I guessed her to be about my age, maybe a little older. “Father Pritchard, it’s good to see you again.”

I arched a look at Rhys. Father Pritchard? And here I thought he’d stopped practicing.

“I’ve been volunteering as a counselor when I have time off,” he explained, low. “I do have training, because of my previous work, and…”

And old habits were hard to break—especially habits one should keep, like helping others. I could get that, and tried to tell him with my smile that I understood.

In the meantime, Jane was asking, “Tala, where’s Kara?”

“She will be down shortly,” insisted our hostess. “Jane, this is Father Pritchard’s friend, Magdalene Sanger. The one I told you about? Mrs. Sanger, this is my daughter-in-law, Jane Fletcher.”

“It really is Ms. Sanger.” I offered my hand. “Or just Maggie. The ring is a bluff.”

“And I’m an ex-daughter-in-law,” Jane corrected, though her grip on my hand was friendly enough.

“My ex-stepdaughter-in-law,” clarified Dr. Rachid, just to confuse matters more. “It is on her behalf that I request your assistance.”

Rhys frowned. “Dr. Rachid, Jane, I understand how desperate you are, but this is hardly fair to Maggi. This is a…a…”

“A bait and switch?” I suggested. “You get me here by promising the secret of the Isis Grail, then demand that I earn it first?”

“Please, call me Tala.” Our hostess’s dark eyes showed no contrition at all. “And is not the secret of the Isis Grail worth earning?”

Intellectually, I knew the drill—how many of the heroes in myths and fairy tales first have to prove themselves in a series of trials before they get rewarded with the golden apple, the kingdom or true love? But in reality…

In reality, my head was swimming. I’d never set out to be a hero. I just wanted to collect the goddess chalices before the Comitatus could destroy them.

And yet…. Damn it. From either curiosity or kindness—or both—I couldn’t ignore the pain in Jane Fletcher’s eyes, either.

“It couldn’t hurt to tell me what’s going on,” I said, slowly. Reluctantly, even.

Dr. Rachid—Tala’s—smile was, as ever, gracious. Jane raised a fist to her mouth in a failed attempt to smother a hopeful, desperate laugh of relief. But it was Rhys, blue eyes more solemn than usual, who worried me.

And I’d thought I was in over my head when I fell into the Alexandrian harbor!

“Have you ever fallen in love with the wrong man?” asked Jane.

The only man I’d ever loved, besides my father, had been living a secret life the whole time. The only man who’d come close to distracting me from him was sitting right here—and he was a priest. I chose to say nothing and just looked interested.

“I did,” she assured me, opening her notebook. The first page showed a color copy of a wedding photo. “Him.”

I looked. “Sinbad!”

“What?” Rhys looked, as well. “You are right, Maggi. It’s the man from the airport.”

Airport, hell. “And the bazaar!”

He looked at the other ladies. “This is Hani Rachid?”

Tala and Jane exchanged worried looks. Then Jane proceeded with her tale, flipping to more photocopied pictures and then newspaper clippings as if to prove her truthfulness.

She’d been working as a flight attendant. Hani Rachid had attended college at Oxford, the epitome of tall, dark and exotically handsome. Even now, Jane’s gaze softened as she described their courtship. “He was wealthy, and protective. He showered me with gifts and compliments. And he was such the gentleman. He waited until we were married before he would…well…” A small frown marred the bridge of her nose. “I think my virginity meant more to him than ever it had to me. He later told me that if I hadn’t been pure on our wedding night, he would have killed me. I laughed at the time, but…”

He wasn’t the man she’d thought she’d married, at all.

Relieved of the need to win her, Hani had become dominating and chauvinistic. His disdain for the law became increasingly apparent. Not long after the birth of their daughter, Kara—that picture, of course, was adorable—their marriage imploded. Jane divorced him and, because he threw such a public fit of temper over that, she got custody. Infuriated that he could only have supervised visits, Hani moved back to Egypt.

“He visited Kara twice a year, and he did quite the job at controlling his resentment, but I could tell he hated being monitored with her. And then—” Here Jane hesitated, desperation darkening her eyes. “Then, a year ago, I got called onto a flight while he was visiting. My father thought there would be nothing wrong with letting Hani take Kara out for ice cream…but they never came back. Of course my parents were frantic. The first thing I did, when I found out, was call the airlines…”

I had the strangest feeling I’d heard this story before—probably because she wasn’t the first person it had ever happened to.

“He’d taken her home with him,” Jane said, voice breaking. “She was only eleven years old, and he stole her away to Egypt—and nobody in this godforsaken country will give her back!”

A human interest article, including pictures of a too young looking Kara, and copies of letters to and from different officials confirmed this.

“Egypt’s laws do not allow a child to leave the country without her father’s permission,” Tala explained simply, when Jane’s voice deserted her. “Unless my stepson signs papers—but of course, he will not sign. He has become increasingly angry, increasingly rebellious. His business activities…” But she shook her head.

Unsure what else to do, I took one of Jane’s trembling hands in mine.

She inhaled deeply, strengthened either by the goddess energy or just the caring, then raised her face and continued. “At least tradition frowns upon Kara living with Hani, as long as he remains unmarried that is. She lives with Tala, and I spend as much time here as I can afford, more than he does! But it’s not the same as having her home, and I’m afraid…”

Whatever she was afraid of, she couldn’t make herself put it in words.

“After the divorce,” Tala said, “my stepson became involved with other men urging the return of old-world values. Particularly the domination of women. He is not,” she clarified, “a Copt.”

As if any particular religion wholly prevented male domination.

Jane turned to a newspaper article in Arabic—I recognized only her picture. “I tried to smuggle her onto a ship, to get her out of the country, but I suppose he’d been watching for me to do it. He has contacts everywhere. Suddenly the police were there, and they dragged Kara out of my arms and arrested me, and she was screaming…” Jane shuddered and squeezed my hand, as if for strength. “Egyptian jail was horrible! I’m still surprised Hani dropped the charges. I could be in prison right now.”

“It would have been even more of a scandal,” Tala explained, “for a man to need the law to control his wife.”

Jane’s chin came up. “Ex—wife.”

“Especially a man who has so little respect for the law, unless he is using it to his own ends,” Tala continued, which wasn’t encouraging.

“Anyway,” said Jane, “that’s how I met Father Pritchard. I needed someone to talk to, someone who bloody well spoke English, and he was volunteering as a counselor at a clinic here, on his off time.”

“When she learned I was working with the divers, looking for the Temple of Isis, she mentioned the possibility of finding a goddess cup,” explained Rhys. “Of course I was interested, so on her next visit she brought Dr. Rachid—”

“Tala,” insisted our hostess. “And I must take full responsibility for bringing you into this, Maggi. When I hesitated to tell Father Pritchard my ancestral secrets, he suggested that I might be more comfortable confiding in another woman. He spoke so highly of you that…Well…there had been rumors.”

Okay, coward or not, I couldn’t ignore that. “Rumors of what? About me?”

Rhys looked as honestly confused as I felt.

Tala motioned to a maid, who’d waited quietly in the corner, and the young woman immediately left. “Rumors that the time has come, my dear. That the goddess chalices are calling out to be found—and that a champion has been chosen to do just that.”

There was that word again! “Chosen by whom? Assuming there were such a rumor—and I never heard anything about it until I got to Egypt—why would you think I’m that champion?”

I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. Wouldn’t I have been notified about something this important?

Tala’s composure did not waver. “Because, Magdalene Sanger, you are the one who answered the call.”

Before, that had only been because armed men had broken into mine and my aunt’s offices! Only because it was our own family’s grail they’d been after. And now, only because Rhys had a lead—and because someone had gone after him. Nobody goes after my friends. Unless…

What if that had been someone’s ploy to get me here?

“Look,” I said, perhaps more abruptly than was polite. “I’m very sorry for your troubles, Jane, and I hope that you and your…your former stepmother-in-law are able to resolve them. But the fact that I’ve found one single, solitary grail hardly makes me someone who can help you. I’m neither British nor Egyptian. I don’t have an ounce of legal or diplomatic experience. I’m a professor of comparative mythology, not a soldier of fortune!”

“Yes, but—” In the midst of her protest, Jane stopped and brightened. “Kara!”

“Mama!” exclaimed a high voice—and a little girl in a white dress launched herself across the room and into her mother’s waiting arms. Kara Rachid was small for a twelve-year-old, even smaller than she’d looked in her pictures. She had olive skin, curling black hair, and huge dark eyes that reminded me of a puppy’s. Her skinny arms held her mother tightly. “When did you get to Alexandria? How long can you stay, this time?”

In the meantime, the maid had reappeared with a tray of ornate cups that reminded me of Greek kylix, though they were of course smaller than those standard offering vessels. They had wide, shallow bowls with a handle on either side, set on a narrow base. They fit this fine house, I thought, as much as I was willing to notice. They fit this woman.

The maid lay the tray on a cocktail table, and Tala brought the drinks to us. “Touching, is it not?”

I scowled. “This is manipulation.”

“I loved my husband dearly,” she said, her voice low beneath Kara and Jane’s happy reunion. “And I love my granddaughter. But I do not trust my bully of a stepson. Rescue Kara, Magdalene Sanger, and I will help you find the chalice of Isis. Refuse…”

She left the rest of the threat unspoken—but pointedly clear.

“I don’t appreciate ultimatums,” I warned, taking the cup she offered only to soften what I meant to say next.

She raised her eyebrows, unperturbed. “Who among us does?”

Annoyed, I took a sip of the wine—delicious.

But the next thing I knew, I was lying on some kind of rough wooden flooring, surrounded by absolute, echoing darkness.

Chapter 6

Had Tala drugged me?

Not just me.

“Rhys!” I shouted—or tried. Turns out there was cloth tied across my mouth. I inhaled deeply through my nose, smelling damp, musty air. It proved that I was at least alive. I also wore a blindfold. My hands were tied behind my back.

And somebody nearby was arguing. In Arabic.

Lie still, I thought, carefully testing my wrists against the strength of the fabric that bound them. Let them think you’re still out.

But footsteps sounded, hollow on some kind of wooden planking. My aborted shout must have gotten their attention.

“Tsk tsk, Mrs. Sanger.” I thought I knew that voice—deep and cultured and tinged with a British accent. “Have you been feigning all this time?”

Mrs. Sanger?

Then I remembered the damned ring I got from Lex. I should have left it at the hotel…or at least in my passport case.

Hands sat me up—my feet, at least, weren’t tied—and tugged at the gag, pulling my hair. From his voice, at least four feet away and above me, I knew the hands didn’t belong to the speaker. “My men assure me they did nothing to render you unconscious.”

They didn’t have to, if Tala had. “Where’s Rhys?”

“His safety depends on your cooperation.”

Instead of taking my cue—cooperation with what?—I took a fairly large chance. I had to find Rhys. “We might as well ditch the blindfold, too. I already know your face, don’t I?”

He laughed and said something else in Arabic. Hands pulled at the second knot behind my head—wrenching my neck slightly and taking more hair—and cloth fell away from my eyes.

Where the hell were we? It was almost as dark as when I’d worn the blindfold. Underground dark. Hugely dark. For a crazy moment I thought—a pyramid?

But I’d never heard of a pyramid in Alexandria…and I doubted one could be this roomy. Two swarthy men beamed flashlights into my face. But even squinting against yellow light, I recognized the man in the business suit, standing before me. It was Sinbad. From the airport. From the bazaar.

Hani Rachid.

He still had an Eye-of-Horus design painted on his cheek.

And he had at least four people with him I could only call henchmen. The implications didn’t escape me. It looked like Hani Rachid was some sort of crime lord.

“Imshee,” I told him, using his own word for piss off.

Again, I tugged at the bindings on my wrists. I thought I felt them give, just a little.

He laughed. “Your husband may be a weakling and a fool, allowing such disrespect. I am neither. You will stay away from my family or suffer the consequences, you and this false priest.”

Only when he pivoted and kicked did I see Rhys lying, blindfolded and bound, in the shadows near Rachid’s feet. My friend’s gag didn’t fully muffle his cry at the kick.

I feared it wasn’t the first. “Leave him alone!”

“Do not presume to order me about.”

“And you wonder why your marriage crashed and burned? If I were Jane, I would have left you, too.”

His eyes narrowed, and he took a furious step forward. Good—closer to me was farther from Rhys. But when I merely glared upward, refusing to flinch, he stopped himself—then turned and swung a vicious foot into Rhys’s ribs.

Rhys rolled back with a grunt. Another of Rachid’s men darted quickly behind him and kicked him from that direction.

Somewhere far below and beyond Rhys, I heard pebbles plop into water, as if the wooden plank we gathered on was some kind of platform. The echo was incredible. Even more incredible was a glimpse I got, when one of the henchmen briefly flashed his light across shadowy pillars and arches.

Colonnades. Definitely too roomy to be a pyramid.

So where the hell were we?

Wherever we were, it was time to leave.

With a tiny lurch, I wriggled my hands free of their ties. Now all I needed was to watch for my chance.

Five men, total. Not good odds. But if they kicked Rhys again…

“This is your only warning, witch,” insisted Rachid. Again with the witch! “You and Tala may think you are powerful, but I know ancient secrets, as well. Leave Egypt while you can, or suffer the consequences. As an example—”

To my horror, he turned back to Rhys. “This man pretends to be a priest, in order to insinuate himself with my wife. That was a deadly mistake.”

“He is a priest,” I protested, before Hani could kick him again. My words echoed back at me from who-knew-where. I usually didn’t think of Rhys that way—it sure made me feel guiltier about how attractive I found him—but it was the truth. He’d petitioned to leave his clerical duties in order to marry, a petition that was tragically granted a few days after his fiancée died. But technically… “I swear he is.”

“This does not excuse his familiarity with my wife.”

“Your ex-wife. He counseled her.” But I might as well have been arguing in a cone of silence, for all that Hani listened to me. He drew back his foot to kick my helpless friend—and I had to risk it.

I surged to my feet, stumbling slightly as circulation returned to my blood-deprived legs. Plank flooring bowed under my shifting weight—if this was a platform, it was a cheap one. I showed my freed hands. “I said, leave him alone.”

Then I bent my knees slightly, centering my balance the way I would at the start of any tai chi exercise. Tonight, however, I meant to incorporate less well-known, combative aspects of the normally gentle art.

Several of Hani’s helpers backed away, saying something in Arabic. Hani snapped back at them in the same language, then said to me, “They think this is part of your magic. I think they simply did not tie you well.”

At least he wasn’t hurting Rhys. “Who says I need magic?”

He swung—and I easily dodged the blow. When he stepped forward, I stepped back, leading him even farther from my friend. Scowling, in the darkness, Hani swung again.

Again I ducked. Once I got him far enough from Rhys, I would use the force he was putting into his punches against him, perhaps throw him across this plywood flooring, hopefully frighten the others into running. But for now…

Suddenly, unnervingly, Hani grinned—and surged forward with another punch. Again I ducked and backed from it—and stumbled off the edge of the plywood, onto crumbling rock.

And nothingness.

I went completely still, balanced on the one foot that still had purchase.

The platform seemed to stretch between rock braces, over who-knew-what kind of drop. The space beyond Rhys wasn’t the only edge.

Only my tai chi stance, honed after years of practice, kept me from falling into the surprise abyss. More pebbles plopped into water, far below.

Where the hell were we?

Even now, with at least three flashlight beams in my face, my perch was precarious at best. All my weight and balance rested, for a moment, on the ball of one sandaled foot, braced on old, crumbling stone.

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