Chapter 6 #2
“I was planning on wearing the suit Vincent bought—”
She waved off this notion. “No, no. This is a costume party! You have to dress the part! Don’t worry—we’re all going to be wearing ridiculous outfits. Vincent has decided to go as a mummy so that you can wear what he ordered weeks ago.”
“A mummy?” The top of Ezra’s mouth went dry. He tugged the zipper to discover a uraeus serpent staring him down—its golden hood flared over the rest of the pharaoh’s headdress. “What’s the theme of this party?”
“Take a guess.” Biz did a twirl in her gauzy linen gown. “I’m going as Cleopatra!” She halted at the sight of his face, her dress folding back in on itself. “Is something the matter? I thought this might be the perfect costume party introduction for you… Better than diapers and baby bottles.”
Ezra weighed the headdress in his hands, wondering if it was worth bringing up the commodification of his ancestors’ religion. This wasn’t just a hat. And it certainly wasn’t a diaper…
“Where did Vincent get this?” he asked instead.
Biz shrugged. “He’s always buying pretty things. I have about ten different pieces I need to go accessorize with! I’ll see you downstairs!”
She left Ezra then, with the gilded snake coiled in his hands.
He carried the garment bag over to the four-poster bed and pulled out the rest of the costume.
Ezra’s stomach did a funny little twist as he studied the suit.
There was nothing wrong with it. Not in the usual sense: After the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, Egyptomania had gripped the nation’s manufacturers.
Everything—from upholstery to pocket watches—was styled after the “ancient Egyptians.” Often with incredible inaccuracy.
Vincent had done his homework with the headdress, at least. It looked real.
A little too real.
Ezra set the piece on the down comforter, eyeing his palms warily. None of the gold had rubbed off. The serpent didn’t move; not the way Everett’s amulet had. Of course… he’d handled scores of ancient Egyptian artifacts at Oxford without glowing. What happened at the Seek and Find had been a fluke…
He still didn’t feel comfortable wearing the headdress.
The remainder of the costume wasn’t much: a shendyt loincloth. Ezra zipped it back into the garment bag and yanked a sheet from the bed. If anyone asked… he would be a visitor from Rome dressed in a full-coverage toga.
No one was looking at Ezra, though, when he entered the dining room.
They were too busy admiring how the place had transformed.
Apart from the Pratt family portrait looming over the sideboard, one would be hard-pressed to understand exactly where they were.
Potted palm trees sprouted from the corners, heavy with dates you could pluck and eat.
The rug had been removed, and piles of honest-to-goodness sand had been spread across the floor.
Where the table once sat was now a massive prop pyramid, tall enough to touch the chandelier, with built-in shelves for drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
The guests milling around it blended into the gold facade without much trouble.
Women wore sheath dresses covered in elaborate beaded patterns—blue lotuses and slender, swaying papyrus.
Many of their male companions were trying to pass as shirtless pharaohs.
Ezra tugged at the edges of his toga as he tried to find a subtle place to stand, along the far wall.
But this, too, had been decorated with what he suspected were actual wooden sarcophagi.
They were closed, thank goodness, but this didn’t make the figures any less unsettling.
“So what do you think?” It took a moment for Ezra to recognize the young man who’d appeared at his side, holding out a glass of champagne.
Mostly because Hugo was wearing a jackal headpiece meant to make him look like Anubis.
“Is it up to snuff? You know, I wanted to hire a snake charmer, but those are awfully hard to find on this side of the ocean.”
Ezra opened his mouth, then shut it again.
What did he think? He could probably write a separate doctoral dissertation on that—the absolute audacity of British lords to go down to Egypt and take whatever the hell they wanted.
Priceless treasures, mummies, six-year-old boys…
For what? Hugo had argued on behalf of museums the last time they’d met, yet here he was, using coffins to decorate his dining room.
Ezra knew better than to point this out.
He accepted the drink Hugo was offering and swallowed it back, back to where the anger was supposed to stay. There was a fuse-like fizz at the bottom of his stomach. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Ezra Bright.”
“Ah, yes.” Hugo held out a hand. There was a faint dusting of freckles on his knuckles, where flames usually danced.
“Hugo Pratt. Your host.” He tipped his jaw at the oil painting.
It wasn’t old, compared to most of the things that gathered dust in this house, but the likeness wasn’t exactly recent either.
Hugo was a young, freckled lad, sitting in the shadow of his well-built brother.
Nolan. The young man wore an officer’s uniform.
There was a gold signet ring winking on his finger…
Ezra wondered if it was the same one Hugo sported now.
The fizzy feeling in his stomach started to twist. Was it safe to shake a magician’s hand?
Hugo had to notice this hesitation, but he let the moment glide past. His hand dropped back. “People are saying you’re an Egyptologist! That you can even read hieroglyphics!”
Ezra’s gaze darted to a nearby group of flappers, wishing that Celia would magically appear in their midst—but the only one he recognized was Minnie, dressed in a blouse that had been stitched with hieroglyphics.
“That’s right.” He pointed to the shirt. “Minnie over there is wearing a recipe for goat stew.”
This got him a laugh. “Seriously?”
No. The design was actually more of a mishmash of symbols. Whatever the blouse’s manufacturer thought might look Egyptian enough—an ankh and a flying sun and a falcon set between more blooming papyrus. It looked beautiful, yes, but it was nonsense.
It meant nothing.
Ezra shrugged. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”
Hugo’s eyes narrowed underneath the jaw of his Anubis headdress. “Perhaps you would be interested in more serious translations. My family has been collecting Egyptian antiquities for generations, but I’m not sure we fully appreciate—”
A linen-covered hand landed on Ezra’s shoulder. The fingers weren’t withered, the way they might have been on a real mummy. Vincent had wrapped himself from head to toe in ripped fabric.
“Ah, Hugo, you’re not trying to put my friend Ezra to work, now, are you? I just managed to get his nose out of a book for the weekend and here you are trying to tempt him with papyrus scrolls! It’s uncouth!”
Their host tilted his jackal head toward Vincent. “What happened to your costume? I heard a rumor that you spent a small fortune on a headdress at Sotheby’s.”
Again, Ezra tugged at his bedsheet. He could feel his old friend’s gaze at the edges—questioning the fabric.
“Biz liked the idea of a mummy costume better,” Vincent explained. “She thought it was funnier.”
This is all a joke to them. This thought clawed at the back of Ezra’s skull as he took another, longer sip of champagne.
It only made the burn at the bottom of his stomach worse.
In the corner of his vision, he caught a flash of turquoise and kohl, but it wasn’t his lost mother’s face he saw when he turned.
Only a Bright Young Thing knocking on one of the sarcophagi while her friends shrieked with nervous laughter.
He shut his eyes, but the sounds only grew sharper. Same as they had at the side of the pool.
“Are you all right, Bright?” Vincent’s fingers tightened around his shoulder.
No. But he wasn’t about to admit that in front of Hugo. “I’m fine,” he said, a little too loudly, as his eyes cracked back open. “I just drank that champagne too fast.”
Vincent leaned over and murmured something in Hugo’s ear, then wheeled Ezra around and marched him across the sandy floor to some French doors that let out into the house’s picture-perfect gardens.
Lavender and rosemary bushes hemmed in a patio that several other partiers had clearly used as a spot to smoke.
Vincent halted beside a flowerpot that had several spent cigarette butts hiding beneath its geranium’s leaves.
There was also a stray bow tie draped over the red blossom.
“Care to explain to me why you’ve made off with the Pratts’ bedsheets when I offered you a perfectly good crown?” he asked as he pulled a silver case out from the many folds of his mummy costume and extended it toward Ezra.
He took a cigarette for show. “It’s nothing personal.”
“No?” Vincent arched his eyebrow and lit the tip of his cigarette.
“That headpiece isn’t a costume. You, of all people, should know better…
” Ezra watched the lighter’s wavering flame.
He felt more heat, deep in his bones, as more flappers’ shrieks drifted through the open doors.
Deeper still, when he met Vincent’s gaze.
Why didn’t the other young man see how much this hurt?
“Is this what you quit Oxford for? To run around the countryside terrorizing hounds with bow ties?” Ezra kicked at the pot that held the neckwear.
A few petals shuddered off the geranium.
“It’s not the exact reason I reversed my matriculation, no.” Vincent leaned closer to light Ezra’s cigarette.
A spark.