Her Kind Of Trouble

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.