Chapter 17 #2
“Will that work outside the pyramid?” Ezra mused, glancing up at the stone doorway. Sure enough, there was a curse inscribed upon the lintel. It didn’t look like a garden-variety warning…
Vincent followed his stare, picking through the hieroglyphs almost as quickly. “The key to death lies within. Beware what you unlock, for what is sealed was never meant to open.”
“Too late for that.” Biz gestured at the rubble.
“Your father opened this tomb first.” Celia tapped her chin.
“At least, that’s what he told us. I didn’t think him of very sound mind at the time.
He was ranting about digging Ezra’s mother out of her grave…
” She glanced back in Ezra’s direction, eyes sharp.
“You never answered my question before. The Sanct in the reliefs… That was your mother, yes?”
The carvings were stylized, like so much of the tomb art from that time period.
It should have been impossible to know for sure…
without Nour’s distinctive beauty mark just above her lip, or the crookedness of her bottom teeth.
But Ezra would’ve staked his life on the fact that the woman in the murals was his mother.
He was, in fact, staking all of their lives.
You are not safe.
“I think Lord Blackwood was telling the truth.” Another glance at the sarcophagus lid did show a black spot just above the engraved mouth. “My mother was buried here. Thomas Ellington broke in and brought her back to life somehow.”
Vincent jerked his chin at the curse carved overhead. “With the key to death, I’d wager.”
“But if Papa truly discovered such a relic, why hasn’t he used it again? For Mama. For…”
George.
Biz never said the name, but it deafened Ezra all the same. Blood began to thunder behind his ears—and under this? A whisper. I protected you, brother. I saved you.
It’s your turn now.
He’d supposed, at the time, his dead brother was referring to Biz.
Instructing Ezra to watch over their little sister.
But what if George’s charge had been more literal?
Save him. Skull splinters be damned. What if there was a way to bring his brother back from the afterlife?
And his mother? And all the German soldiers who haunted his dreams?
What if Ezra could use magic for more than flowers and bones?
The hope of it ached.
The bitterness too.
Biz didn’t bother hiding either. “God…” Grief dripped through this word. A prayer turned inside out. “This whole time there was another way? Why would Papa choose to let everything rot?”
“Maybe he didn’t have a choice,” Celia murmured.
“What do you mean?” asked Biz.
“I mean, magic isn’t all butterflies and cartwheels. It carries serious consequences…” The other young woman’s safari hat tilted back toward the hieroglyphs that hovered above their heads. “Beware what you unlock.” She shot Ezra another look. “He did warn against us coming here.”
“I wouldn’t put too much stock in that little ditty.” Vincent waved at the hieroglyphs as if they were a swarm of sand gnats. “It’s basically obligatory for a tomb to have a dramatic warning written somewhere. Curses are about as common as camels out here.”
Celia’s mouth pinched. “Perhaps. But relics that can raise the dead aren’t so easy to come by. If Lord Blackwood did find one and use it…” She trailed off. “The cost might have been too high. It might have been like the healing spell, but instead of an eye for an eye… a life for a life.”
Wind howled above them. The sound threaded through Ezra, so big, big beyond mending… He didn’t know what to make of any of this. Much less himself.
Again, Vincent made as if to wave a cloud of insects away.
“Ifs, buts, and maybes! We could stand here conjecturing for the rest of the day, or we could actually go to Luxor and find some answers. Which will it be?” He made eye contact with every member of the group, ending at Ezra. “I know what I want.”
This train ride was much more relaxed than the previous one: The compartments they’d booked even had fold-down beds.
Their journey to Luxor would go through the night, and well into the next morning, so Vincent was forced to shell out pounds for two private compartments—for propriety’s sake.
The group had spent the first few hours poring over the map fragment, searching for clues they might have missed, but the fact of the matter was that Hugo and Everett had the better portion.
If Ezra’s mother had marked out the relic’s location, the X was on their section of the scroll.
Odds were high that the rival magicians would reach the treasure first.
Ezra tried not to dwell on this. His anger was still too near the surface, knotting his chest, every breath a threat.
Better, he reasoned, to focus on hope. It was easy enough to see in Biz’s eyes as she studied the map.
Now she was searching for more than just gold…
An entire future had unfolded. A way to escape her pain without couture dresses and cleverly named cocktails and kisses cheaper than the lipstick they ruined.
George.
They still hadn’t said his name. But the promise of their brother was palpable—a fifth person in the train car.
A second chance at… everything.
Vincent sat beside his fiancée, their previous squabble forgotten.
He leaned in to look over Biz’s shoulder, lost to the details of the map.
Celia was the only member of their party who seemed more reserved than before.
She’d sat in a corner, arms crossed. The violet was still in her utility belt, but it had wilted, squashed by the silver lighter she’d crammed into the same pocket.
She wouldn’t look Ezra in the eye.
An eye for an eye.
A life for a life.
When she and Biz finally retired for the evening, she left the compartment without saying good night.
He’d finally frightened her.
That had to be it.
She’d finally dug too deep, found the truth of what they were chasing.
The truth of him… Unlike Vincent and Biz, Celia understood Ezra’s war with the shadows, and how close he’d come to repeating that massacre in the trench.
His sister and her fiancé had shaken off the incident with the pistol.
Mostly. There was still an odd expression behind Biz’s good night as she gave her fiancé a quick peck on the cheek and then nodded at Ezra, as if they’d made some agreement he did not quite understand.
Did she know about him and Vincent?
Was she fleeing too?
Beds folded down from the wall. Their sheets weren’t as nice as the ones from Mena House, but the train rocked with a lullaby quality that would soon have Ezra on the edge of dreams. He was exhausted.
Their day in the desert had tired him, yes, but there were even heavier things on his mind.
Like the sarcophagus lid. And the murals.
He didn’t quite understand how all these things fit with the woman he’d called mut.
“Now, if all our Egyptology classes had been like today, I would have certainly stayed on and learned something,” Vincent declared as he climbed into his bunk. “That was the most excitement I’ve had in years!”
Ezra wasn’t sure he could say the same. The springs that dug into his back reminded him of the cots at the army training camp, where he and George had learned to shoot more than just pinecones. George. His ghost hadn’t fled with Biz. He was here and so very, very far away.
“You read that curse pretty quickly,” Ezra pointed out. His own interpretation of the hieroglyphs had been slower, but the end result was the same. The key to death lies within. Beware what you unlock, for what is sealed was never meant to open.
“Must have been all the adrenaline.” Vincent held out his hand, as if reaching for Ezra across the aisle. “See? I’m still shaking. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep a wink on this glorified sardine can.”
Ezra’s head sank back into his pillow. The cot’s springs kept clawing at him.
George.
“The power to raise the dead,” his old friend murmured at the ceiling. “Can you believe it?”
George. George. George.
And just like his dead brother’s name, Ezra’s faith felt far too precious to voice aloud. “I wonder what Blythe would say,” he replied instead.
“Blythe? Ha. He would’ve been studying those beetle things with a magnifying glass while they ate him alive.
Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem if he’d gotten his hands on this relic we’re chasing.
” Vincent shifted so that he lay on his side, watching Ezra with those ocean eyes.
“Think of the implications! Death undone. You could bring back kings! Pharaohs, even. No more digging around in the dirt for answers when you could just interview King Tut himself, eh?”
“That would certainly make Egyptology easier,” Ezra began. “But what if Celia’s right? What if the cost of using the relic is too high?”
The man across the aisle let out a little groan. “Ah, now, don’t ruin my fantasies, Bright.”
A shiver tickled the back of Ezra’s neck, so visceral that he turned over to check and see if there was a feather poking out of his pillow. “All right, then. Let’s imagine you could resurrect anyone you’d like—no consequences. Who would you choose?” he asked as he settled back into the mattress.
“The Caesars. And Cleopatra. She probably has some juicy stories to tell.”
“You do know they were all at war with each other at some point or another. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
“Or a very rousing dinner party,” Vincent replied lightly.
“That’s all you’d use the power for? A dinner party?”
There was a click-clacking silence as their train pressed forward.
It was jolting, realizing how much the other man struggled to answer.
Death had left Vincent Cain untouched, for the most part.
No trenches, no brothers lost to the mud, no fathers to the front.
The ivory wand was a novelty to him. An intellectual exercise.
Not the very real possibility of bringing back a soul he’d lost.