Her Kind of Trouble (29 page)
That did seem significant, didn't it? I mean, of course it was significant that Rhys had survived! But the parallel…
For just a moment, I had a strangely surreal moment, as if I were submerged in Cleopatra's Palace.
Magic.
"When you went after the Melusine Grail," Rhys continued, "didn't you find similarities between yourself and her? Melusine's husband betrayed her, and Lex Stuart betrayed you."
It was official. I was getting a sore throat. It wasn't that sudden, swallowed-scream feeling that warned me of immediate threat, though. Instead it was a dull ache, like the need to cry, that warned of distant danger.
How distant? Danger to whom?
"I thought… I mean, he… "
Okay—just because we'd worked past that betrayal didn't diminish Rhys's point. But… "How could it not be a coincidence?"
Now he shrugged. "The Lord works in mysterious ways?"
So how about the Lady?
The idea bothered me more than it should have.
"It's not as if my looking for Melusine's Grail would have somehow influenced Lex's behavior."
"It would not."
"Besides, if my helping you was connected to the
Isis
legends, that would make you my symbolic husband."
Rhys blushed—"It's just a theory"—but I made myself consider him. I mean, when the goddess speaks…
Rhys was a good man, a good friend. I'd kissed him before and, if I weren't currently dating Lex, I wouldn't mind kissing him again. My world would be nowhere near as complicated, if I were with Rhys. With him, I didn't have to worry about vows of secrecy or Comitatus coups or the responsibility of being his goddess. We didn't have the weight of a long and complicated past tugging at us. We could avoid society functions. I could just be me, Maggi, whoever Maggi was or would become.
I considered all that—and suddenly, strangely, felt a lot better about having slept with Lex last night. Rhys was my dear friend, and that was valuable enough. But Lex…
"Besides, Osiris was ambushed by his brother," I said, hunting for contrasts. "Is there any chance that you have a disgruntled brother, or a relative, or even a friend who was driving that car or that speedboat or who works for Hani Rachid?"
"Not likely—" Rhys said with a laugh, and he kept talking, but suddenly I wasn't hearing him, any more than I would have underwater. My throat tightened with nausea, this time. I heard only a rush of fear.
Oh, no.
No
!
Rhys had no relatives to ambush him.
But Lex did.
He'd been preparing for some sort of ritual to remove his cousin Phil from the leadership of the Comitatus. And I already knew Phil rarely played fair. And if there really was something to the parallels between me and my goddesses…
I stumbled on my anonymous sword as I pushed to my feet. Rhys was close behind me, catching my arm, and I heard what he was saying now. "Maggi? Magdalene, what's wrong?"
"I've got to find Lex."
"
Now
? Why?"
I could barely swallow. "I think he's in danger. I think Phil's going to ambush him. Here. In
Egypt
."
Rhys stared, realizing what I already knew. "You think
he's
in the role of Osiris."
Meaning that he, Rhys, wasn't.
I said, "
Osiris dies
!"
"But they're not the same, Maggi." Still, Rhys was wise enough to grab our trash and open the door to the stairway as he argued. "Think this through before you frighten yourself and Lex, as well. Where would there be room for free will, if the moment you go after a chalice, you're forced into reenacting some ancient legend or another?"
I thought momentarily of the Sacred Marriage. But I was too worried to blush.
"You'd not serve such a goddess," continued Rhys—and he was right. If I'd thought that Isis or Melusine was scripting this, I would be the first to rebel. But I really didn't think that I or Lex or anybody else was being manipulated. Maybe it
was
just a coincidence. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I was prescient, and the energies leading to Phil's betrayal were what had nudged me subconsciously toward
Isis
in the first place.
Explanations didn't matter, at the moment.
My throat hurt.
"Let's just find Lex," I insisted.
But we couldn't find out crap. Lex wasn't answering his cell phone or pager, despite my keying in our personal code for emergencies. His office in
Cairo
office of Ahmed Khalef, corporate attorney, he, too, was out. Hell, I even tried calling his Cousin Phil, who "wasn't available."
But when I called Jane Fletcher, still holed up in the British Embassy, she agreed to use her airline access to do a computer search for me. It was through her help that I got my next clue.
Phil Stuart had flown into
Cairo
that morning.
"And Hani has been giving interviews," she said on the other end of the line, which at least explained one bad guy's absence. "He's trying to convince the Egyptian government to force the embassy to give me up. A BBC reporter is ringing me soon, to get my side of the story."
I couldn't manage anywhere near the concern she deserved, and we soon disconnected.
"It's an ambush," I stated to Rhys as I left the Hotel Athens, walking fast. "I've got to find them, got to stop Phil."
Rhys spread his hands as he shadowed me. "I understand your concern, Maggi, but this is the Comitatus we're talking about. What else can you do?"
Instead of answering, I broke into a run. I needed to do
something
with this helpless, nervous energy of mine. I didn't stop until blocks later, when we reached the Corniche. Then, as Rhys caught up, I stared out at the dusty, choppy waters of the Alexandrian Harbor.
If I truly loved Lex, certainly if there was even the chance our little fertility ritual had borne fruit, then Comitatus business way my business—whether they knew it or not.
Just like that, I demoted the quest that had first brought me here to little more than a means to an end—and I sure as hell made up my mind on that little
in situ
controversy.
"I can ask someone for help," I announced. Lex had admitted
he
couldn't do it alone. Why should I be different?
"Who?" Then Rhys followed my line of sight to the harbor—and his eyes widened. "
Isis
?"
I was going for the grail.
Two hours later, Rhys was still warning me about the foolishness of my plan. But at least he did so while driving the speedboat through choppy, now grimy harbor waters.
At least the gusting sand would help hide what we were doing. It wasn't even midafternoon, but the dust in the air made the sky as dark as twilight.
"Have I mentioned," my friend called over the wind gusts, dropping anchor, "that this is an insane idea?"
I shrugged into the harness that held my rental tanks and adjusted the straps, shifting my hips to keep balance in the pitching boat. "Yes."
Sand blew, gritty against my bare arms and legs. I was wearing just a bathing suit, protected only by mask, tanks and regulator—with fins and dive light, of course. Local dive shops did not carry the expensive dry suits that the archeologists used. None of the divers working in those shops had three heads or glowing eyeballs, so I had to believe short-enough exposure to the water wouldn't be enough to harm me or…
That it would be all right.
I'd just have to stay down as short a time as possible. Considering that we had hazardous diving conditions and worse-than-ever visibility, that wasn't a lousy plan anyway.
"You could drown," Rhys insisted, grasping the edge of the speedboat's windshield as a particularly large wave knocked us violently sideways. "Even if you don't drown, you've no guarantee of finding the chalice. And even if you find the chalice, you'll be no better than an antiquities thief if you take it.
With me as your accomplice
?"
I didn't like that part, either. But… "You didn't have to come," I reminded him, swishing my new mask in the water before pulling it on over my hair.
I sure hoped people like Catrina and d'Alencon, who never wore full dry gear, were right.
"Yes," said Rhys firmly. "I did. You truly may drown."
There was a reason the flag on the so-called beach, which signified the water safety, was flying black. Not that we could even see the concrete blocks at the water's edge.
"Are you absolutely certain this is necessary?" he asked. "There's still time to change your mind."
"Of course I'm not certain. Nothing in life is certain. But if I don't do this, and Lex really is in danger… "
It didn't bear thinking about.
"And if you die, and he isn't?"
But sometimes you have to go on instinct. I kissed his ear—I'd aimed for his cheek, but the boat rolled. Then I stuck the regulator in my mouth and rolled backward, into the harbor.
The last thing I saw was Rhys reaching for me.
Then—chaos.
Had I thought the water that cloaked Cleopatra's Palace was murky before? Between the sand being tossed in from above and stirred up from below, visibility was almost gone. Churning waters pushed me in different directions like a schoolyard bully. I turned on my dive light, but was too busy keeping it from being pulled from my hand to bother following its illumination through the swirling silt. A drag in the water rolled me, then I was caught in a different piece of current and forced downward…
I think it was downward. I was quickly losing track, and I had no dive buddy to keep track for me.
Crap
. Rhys was right. I
could
drown!
But not without a fight. And who knew? Maybe I
was
a champion, at that. Given the possible endings, I pretty much had to choose hope over fear.
Despite the tumbling, dragging confusion, I kicked in the direction I prayed was downward, thinking that the farther I got from the wind, the less disturbed the tide would be. Me against Nature.
I could only hope Nature felt like helping.
At least I was managing more of a straight line, the deeper I got. Then suddenly, looming out of nothingness, a huge face appeared before me. I cried out, almost lost the regulator, coughed—
Then stopped and went fetal, drawing my knees to my chest, circling them with my arms. It was the only way I would catch my breath without inhaling water.
Fear would kill me faster than a riptide.
The weight on my belt and ankles dragged me downward—my shoulder scraped lightly across the encrusted shoulder of the stone sphinx that had frightened me. Then I bounced lightly to the harbor floor, landing awkwardly beside a sunken cola bottle.
Only when I was breathing steadily again did I uncurl and shine the light, tethered to my wrist, at the statue beside me. This was a
good
thing. It helped me orient myself to where I was in the underwater palace. If the sphinx was
here
, then I needed to be…
I swam slowly, counting off landmarks in the form of fallen pillars and eroded figurines. More than once, the current swept me off course, but each time I found my way back until I'd reached the place where I'd sensed the call of
Isis
, only two days before.
It was time for the goddesses to come back.
By now going into the
Isis
position—one knee down and one up, and arms spread like wings—felt almost practiced.
Isis
, I thought as intensely as I could.
Oldest of the Old, Goddess of Ten Thousand Names
…
By the time I reached the end of my invocation, within the pull of the waters, I sensed it. Rather…
Her
.
A ripple of power.
Something in the harbor, beyond the veil of unseeing, beckoned me. And this time, no other diver swept by to distract me from it.
Leaning toward the call, I pushed off the floor and skimmed in that direction, staying mere feet from the bottom so as not to lose my way again. The halogen dive light could cut through at least that much of the murkiness as I paralleled the sweep of sand, the litter of artifacts.
The beckoning strengthened into something almost like a summons, a physical ache. I knew this feeling! I knew it from last night, when I was invoking the goddess for Lex—
—So that really
was
you!—
And I knew it from back when I'd found the Melusine Grail. A sense of belonging. Of strength. Of communion with generations of other women, far into the past, far into the future.
