Chapter 17
Again.
It had almost happened again.
Ezra did not trust himself to move, except for slumping against the wall and burying his face in his hands.
Through a crack in his fingers, he could see the hollow sarcophagus.
And the lid. The face etched on its front had shaken him—the kohl-lined eyes and turquoise embellishments were all too familiar.
So was the grief that had mushroomed in his chest. No flowers here.
Not now. The sight of his mother’s coffin split open had also filled him with rage.
How dare they. How fucking dare they take this final piece of her, the last thing I have left!
They might as well have stolen her actual mummy and pulverized it, for how angry it made Ezra feel.
He might have been able to contain this fury.
To press it down, down, the way he so often had at careless comments cast his way by lords and professors.
But there was too much history here, too much fear in Celia’s eyes when Hugo pressed that blasted knife into her throat.
If Ezra’s magic couldn’t stop her from getting hurt, then what was he good for?
He tried not to think of George when the shadows came pouring toward him, but the muscle memory of this magic was too similar. Too easy.
The rage.
The shadows.
The shine.
The weapons turning on their wielders. Yes, yes, let them taste their own damn medicine. Let them understand what it feels like to be the one crushed under a boot, gutted, left for jackals. Let them rot—
If Biz hadn’t screamed his name, he wouldn’t have remembered that she, too, had a pistol. His pistol. The one he’d handed her back at the museum. When Ezra glanced back over his shoulder, he’d found her pointing the barrel at her own temple.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
Skull splinters. Bits of brain. Green eyes gone.
Ezra blinked and George’s death disappeared.
Biz was still here, pale as a sheet and shaking. Afraid. Ezra could feel her fear coursing through the darkness between them. His curse hadn’t just seized Hugo’s shadow. It had taken the shadows of all the burial chamber’s occupants… Celia and Vincent too.
He didn’t really know how to let go.
But he had to.
“It’s all right, Bright.” Vincent’s voice was low.
It matched the sun of the brisk Oxford evening he drew out of his belt: a memory.
It was slim—not much wider than a darning needle, but Ezra recognized the scene inside instantly.
The university’s trees had been leafed in that exact shade of gold when the two had shared their first kiss. “We’re with you. I’m here.”
The other young man made a swiping motion, cutting through Ezra’s spell, almost through Ezra himself.
This wasn’t some average recollection. He could smell fires burning in hearths all across campus.
He could hear his own laughter as he walked toward the Bodleian with Vincent—insides toasty despite the autumn temperatures. Their kiss had been even warmer…
Biz let out a ragged gasp as she pulled the Webley pistol away from her head.
Ezra’s breaths were just as rough.
He didn’t dare try to stop Hugo and Everett as they fled.
Instead, he wilted to the floor, trying to make himself as small as possible.
He’d nearly killed his sister… nearly shot her face away.
You’re not safe. Christ, he never should have let Biz come on this trip, no matter how human she’d once made him feel, because the fact of the matter was that he was more.
He was not safe. He could feel his companions’ shadows trembling at their toes, while dust shivered from the ceiling.
A hole appeared in the far wall and Celia scrambled through it, but Ezra just sat tight, squeezing his knees into his chest.
The tomb was quiet for a long while. Until Ezra felt a touch on his shoulder. Biz. The fear he’d felt in her only moments before was gone. Or, at least, very well buried. She knelt next to him with no hesitation, tucking her yellow hair behind her ears while she looked Ezra up and down.
“Are you hurt?”
He shifted so that her hand was no longer resting on his shoulder. “I should be the one asking you.”
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“Are you?” Ezra pressed. These were cracks that could not be patched up with a cocktail or a clever joke.
Not that this stopped Elizabeth Ellington from trying. “I might have been better if I’d been able to shoot Hugo in the foot.” She glared in Vincent’s direction. “But someone had to stop me.”
“I’m sorry, would you like me to apologize for being the hero of the hour?”
“I don’t need a hero.”
“Well, you at least need to stop treating me like I’m the villain,” Vincent retorted. “All I’ve done, all I’ve ever done, is step in and save you. Pawn my diamonds and fleece my pockets if you want, but you don’t have to be so goddamn cruel about it.”
Biz’s mouth dropped open, wide enough to catch a fly. Or a scarab. The small stone creatures hadn’t recovered from Ezra’s powerful display. Most of them were lying on their backs, looking more like pebbles than not.
“Cruel?” his half sister croaked.
“Yes. Cruel. You’ve gotten prickly, ever since we left London, and I don’t like it. How do you expect the Bright Young Things to believe our fairy tale if you keep treating me like shit you found on the bottom of your shoe? There’s no point to us, otherwise.”
“No point to me, you mean.” Biz took a shuddering breath, glancing between Ezra and Vincent.
His fear from the night before felt both faraway and thick.
Did Biz know?
Could she possibly love all of him… after this?
Ezra didn’t see how, with the gun in her fist and the Oxford memory glistening at her feet. The shine of those turning trees dimmed as a shadow stretched across the chamber. Celia had reappeared in the gaping sunshine of the newly collapsed wall.
Her expression was grim. “They’ve escaped.”
Ezra raked his fingers through his hair, but there was no inspiration there. Nothing to fix the fact that his mother’s coffin had been discarded like a pistachio shell by those highborn lowlifes. Or that they’d made off with the second clue while he was too busy trying not to slaughter his sister—
“Oh, don’t look so defeated, Bright! Your mother’s treasure is still out there. Somewhere,” Vincent added as a wobbly afterthought. “All we have to do is track down two invisible magicians.”
“Simple enough.” Biz laughed—a too-loud sound, trying to balance everything back out. She turned a pleading glance back toward Celia. “I don’t suppose you have a magical compass tucked away in those trousers?”
The socialite twisted her mostly empty utility belt. “No luck there, I’m afraid.”
Ezra thought of the miniature gold pyramid he’d left in the wardrobe at the Cotswolds.
It was a world away. That, or Hugo had already gotten his grubby hands on the relic and was using it to get even further ahead…
Ezra stared at the golden carpet of sand stretching beyond the door.
It was a door, he realized. What had fallen away looked like newer stones than the rest of the chamber’s sandstone, and there was a distinct frame around Celia’s slight figure.
The tomb had had a second entrance… one that had been discovered before, judging by the juxtaposition in building materials.
Given the looted state of the burial chamber, this didn’t surprise Ezra.
He stood, bracing himself against a painting of the turquoise-masqued woman standing over a mummified body, the ivory tusk held high by her winged arms, and made his way to Celia. Her eyes gleamed almost the same color as the Tunguska knife, a reminder of how close they’d come…
“Hugo used the wind to cover their tracks,” she informed them.
“They have rooms at Shepheard’s, don’t they?” Biz offered. “We could go there.”
Celia frowned down at her balled fist. Ezra’s heart leapt when he realized there was a scrap of paper sticking out—she’d managed to grab at least some of the clue. Only… it wasn’t merely a clue.
It was a map.
That much became clear when they rolled the papyrus fragment out over the rubble.
The paper held wide swathes of desert, outcrops drawn on the map’s edge.
Mountains, really. Ezra remembered how high these stones rose into the sky, taking on shapes that mimicked cobras’ hoods or jackals’ haunches.
His mother used to point out hidden creatures in the red rocks as if they were clouds.
“You couldn’t have grabbed the map piece with the X on it?” Vincent said as all four of them leaned over the fragment.
Celia’s reply was drier than tomb dust. “I’ll try harder next time.”
“This looks like the corner of a building right here.” Biz jabbed the tattered edge with a very ungloved finger—oceans away Professor Blythe was surely shuddering. Her crimson nail dragged to the opposite corner. “And that looks like another pyramid.”
“It’s a mountain,” Ezra told her. “Ta Dehent. Or El Qurn, as they call it now.”
Celia looked up sharply. Her expression, however, had softened. “Are you positive?”
There were no labels on the map, but Ezra knew of no other mountain where a cobra’s likeness had been carved on the side. The cartographer had managed to capture its wild resemblance.
“We don’t need to go to Shepheard’s.” Relief flooded Ezra as he said this. “We need to go to Luxor.”
It made sense, that his mother’s treasure would be hidden somewhere in the hills she once roamed.
But where? The wadis surrounding the city were really scars left by ancient riverbeds, and as a result they could be winding.
Mazelike. The number of caves and tombs tucked within the red stones was unknowable.
“Then what?” Celia wondered.
“Maybe some vultures will help us out again.” Biz crouched to where one of the carnelian scarabs was struggling through the sand. “Or these little devils—they seemed to be cursed to swarm whoever was holding the scroll.”