Chapter 15 #2
“Bright, are you all right?” Vincent’s voice was closer. The young man had crouched down by the armchair and was looking up at Ezra with those fathomless eyes. They looked almost indigo in the lamplight.
“I don’t know.” The words spilled out. “I don’t know what I am, Vincent.”
“You’re exhausted—” There was a gentle touch on his elbow. “Take the bed.”
“I—”
“Please. I insist. I’ll be cooler on the floor anyway.” Vincent flopped down on the rug and crossed his arms behind his head. “Plus, you tend to kick in your sleep.”
“I do?” He’d always recalled sleeping well, those nights.
“Why do you think I hoarded so many sheets? I was using them as a buffer!”
Ezra looked back at the four-poster bed.
It was massive. And most of the rumpled bedclothes were arranged down the middle, creating a natural divide.
As Ezra examined them, he suddenly felt tired, so damn tired, and all he wanted was that dreamless sleep, where his ghosts were put to rest and he woke up to Vincent’s snores.
Sleeping side by side wouldn’t hurt anyone, surely…
“The bed’s big enough for both of us,” he said.
Ezra’s sleep was, in fact, dreamless. He awoke not to Vincent’s snores but to the young man’s breath against his neck.
Sometime in the night their sheet barricade had twisted away so that the pair were only inches from each other.
Familiar warmth traced Ezra’s back as he watched purple dawnlight swell through the window.
And the pyramids… They were closer than he’d first suspected.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu loomed large.
Ezra couldn’t tell if the gooseflesh on his skin was due to awe or Vincent’s nearness.
He felt trapped between the two—overwhelmed by the day ahead.
What would happen when they reached the fourth pyramid?
When Hugo and Everett arrived from Cairo proper?
Dead. Dead. Dead—
A polite rap at the door cut through the memory of his father’s ranting.
Vincent groaned. Ezra rolled out of bed, red rushing to his cheeks as he covered up his friend’s shirtlessness with a discarded sheet.
Why was he blushing? There was nothing to blush about.
Only more gooseflesh as he padded across the room and opened the door.
Celia stood there, wearing a safari suit that reminded Ezra too much of a uniform—with drab khaki fabric and all its pockets.
But the utility belt cinched her waist rather nicely, and, he noted with pleasure, she’d stuck his violet in one of its pouches.
Biz, meanwhile, was wearing another linen dress, with a wide-brim hat and a parasol.
As if they were actually about to embark on a leisurely tour of the pyramids.
“You aren’t dressed yet?” Celia eyed his rumpled shirt.
“Er, no.”
“The guide is waiting for us downstairs with the camels. I’ve made sure everything’s in order,” Biz said excitedly, then called over Ezra’s shoulder. “Vincent! Stop lazing about! We’ve got a treasure to hunt!”
Celia scowled. “Could you yell that any louder? I don’t think the receptionist at the front desk heard you.” Again, her gaze raked over Ezra’s stale shirt. “She’s right, though. We can’t waste the head start we have on the other magicians.”
That sped things along. Within ten minutes all four of them were downstairs, eating croissants that had been packed in a small picnic basket and tentatively approaching the camels who knelt on the grass.
The animals did not seem impressed with Ezra’s and Vincent’s matching safari suits.
A particularly disgruntled one spit at Biz as she approached its tassel-adorned halter.
She spit right back, much to the horror of their guide.
Not long after, the group was off, sloping past rosebushes, where the desert began in earnest. The sands stretched out like an ocean.
If you looked in the right direction, it was easy to imagine that thousands of years had fallen away—the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure stood as proud as they always had.
From this distance, backlit by the rising sun, it was hard to see the true age of their stones.
The tomb of Queen Kentkwahes I lay to the east. Ezra had wondered if that was the site his mother’s hieroglyphs were referencing—given that Egyptologists in the nineteenth century believed the tomb’s stepped structure to be the base of a much larger pyramid and thus called it the fourth pyramid of Giza.
That theory had been all but debunked, though the nickname had stuck around on pamphlets and popular literature.
But riding out into the sunrise, it became clear what the fourth triangle on the scroll represented.
This pyramid sat to the west, veneered with snowy limestone.
A gold capstone sat at its peak, catching sunlight with a giant wink.
Ezra forgot to breathe: This was what the past truly looked like.
Not the grubby stones their guide was steering them toward.
The weathered man didn’t seem to see the monument Ezra was gaping at.
Of course he didn’t… The pyramid was magical.
Hidden from plain sight. Otherwise, Ezra would have heard Professor Blythe talking about its remarkably preserved state at one Oxford lecture or another.
The others had seen it too. Biz’s eyes shone with the capstone’s light. Celia burst into a grin as white as the stones. Even Vincent let out an appreciative grunt as he tried to redirect his camel. The animal grunted back, refusing to budge.
“That way!” Ezra called out to their guide, first in English. Then in Arabic. “We would like to go that way!”
The man turned, the look of confusion on his face only deepening when he saw where Ezra was pointing. “But, effendi, there’s nothing there to see.”
“On the contrary!” Biz called out. “There’s a fantastic view of all three pyramids! It would be the perfect spot for our morning picnic, would it not?”
The guide’s camel stamped. Its rider seemed just as uneasy.
There was a strange expression on his face as he stared at the patch of desert, as if noticing a new freckle on his arm for the first time, wondering how long it had been there.
“It is not safe. Jackals live out that way. And cobras. It would be better for us to stick to the path.” He gestured at the well-trodden sand that had seen countless tours.
“I’m not afraid of snakes,” Biz said. “I’d like to sketch the scenery, if I could. Please. We’ll pay you extra for the trouble.”
To Ezra’s relief, their guide steered his mount into the wavy sands. The rest of the camels followed at a plodding pace.
There were no other tracks in this sand.
No signs of movement around the pyramid’s base. Though, Ezra supposed, it was entirely possible that Hugo and Everett could be on the opposite side. They might have already found a way in…
“How is this here?” Awe carved out Biz’s voice as she stretched her neck to take in the structure.
“Magic,” Celia murmured, loud enough for all but their guide to hear.
“That would explain the other pyramids too!” This barking laugh came from Vincent.
“Professor Blythe has been running himself in circles trying to figure out how they managed to build such structures with their rudimentary technology. What I wouldn’t give to see the look on his stodgy face if he found out the truth! ”
“Perhaps I’ll just slip it into my dissertation,” Ezra replied wryly. “A History of Wings and Giza’s True Fourth Pyramid.”
The other young man grinned. “You’d make a much more exciting professor.”
A slight wind had picked up, gusting sand around their camels’ legs and causing Biz’s dress to flutter. She pressed one hand to her hat and clutched her parasol with the same fist she used to hold on to the reins. She was studying the pyramid far more intently than her Oxford-educated fiancé.
“How do we get inside to find the treasure?” she wondered. “I don’t see a door.”
Vincent snorted. “Did you imagine we could just walk up and knock?”
Biz wrinkled her nose under the shadow of her hat. She managed to look both peeved and pristine.
“Pyramid entrances are traditionally on the northern face, because that’s where the Imperishable Stars appear at night. The ones that never set,” Ezra explained. “Ancient Egyptians believed this made it easier for the buried person’s soul to rise to the afterlife.”
But there was no door in sight when they guided their camels to the opposite side of the pyramid.
The slope to the top was smooth, and Ezra found that if he stared at it too long, his vision burned out.
The limestone was dazzling white. Blindingly so.
Their guide still couldn’t see the pyramid, but he seemed to instinctively avoid the ground where its stones sat.
After the group had made a full circle and decided to dismount their camels, he murmured a prayer to Allah and guided his own beast away from the four adventurers.
“I need more money,” Biz said, planting her parasol in the sand beside her camel. She then turned to Vincent with her palm as flat as a waiter’s tray. “Please.”
There was a bemused look on her fiancé’s face as he gestured at the bare desert. “Whatever for?”
“Privacy. We’ll need to bribe the guide to leave us alone if we’re to get anything done.”
The memory of Elizabeth Ellington holding up a ring of the British Museum’s skeleton keys came rattling back to Ezra.
How many times had she bought her way in or out of something?
Money was a weapon in her hands. Even out here in the Sahara, she found a way to wield it.
Ezra watched in wonder as his half sister strolled over to the guide and passed along some banknotes: a well-oiled motion.
The man didn’t even blink as he pocketed the cash and mounted his camel.
“What on earth did you say to him?” Vincent wondered when Biz sashayed back to their picnic blanket.
“This and that.” She shrugged. “We’re to have the camels back to Mena House by sundown. I assume we can find the door by then?”