Chapter 20
Celia Sinclair could hardly believe her eyes.
Gilded sarcophagi, cobra crowns, model boats, amulets, statues of long-forgotten gods, rows and rows of mysteriously sealed jars…
They’d stumbled into one of the largest treasures on this side of King Tut’s tomb.
The monetary value alone was incalculable, based on the sheer amount of gold, but this wasn’t what made Celia’s blood fizz as she took stock of the collection.
Every single one of these items, from the smallest scarab to the massive sarcophagus propped up in the corner, was dripping with magic.
Very old, very powerful magic. It crackled through her every breath.
It beckoned her closer.
There were no neatly labeled cards here, as there’d been in the British Museum.
No glass cases either. Celia was very aware of this as she settled onto the floor to examine the amulets scattered across a low wooden table.
Any one of these objects could carry a curse.
She stared at the ankhs and the many Eyes of Horus.
(Or Ra? She still wasn’t positive about which direction was which.) None of the scarabs here moved, the way they had in the tomb.
Celia studied them for a few more minutes, until Ezra disappeared into his old bedroom and she remembered that a six-year-old had once lived here.
No mother would leave cursed objects to sit within her child’s reach.
She picked up the figurines, one by one.
Many turned out to be protective talismans—capable of deflecting a blade or spearhead.
Celia discovered this when they sent her Tunguska knife skittering from her pocket.
The faience hippopotamus was a sheer delight: Clean, potable water poured from his open mouth when you tipped him on his side—far more handy for trekking through the desert than the tin canteens Mena House had provided.
On the shelf beside this piece was a polished brass mirror.
Celia couldn’t see much of a difference in her own face when she stared, but the room behind her became filled with dozens of little lights.
A way to find magical objects… Maybe it works through sand?
That’d certainly make it easier to uncover treasure stashes.
There was something blindingly bright in the corner where Vincent was bent over a gilded sarcophagus.
Celia set down the mirror and moved to join the bullet-heir. “Have you discovered anything?”
“Only how many hieroglyphics I’ve forgotten.” His reply was airy, but she noticed a tightness in his jaw as she drew closer. “Either this was the coffin of someone called the sun-catcher or it was a very oddly shaped boat. Maybe both? Though it’s hard to imagine paddling in such a thing…”
“Wouldn’t it sink?” Celia pointed out. “There’s too much gold.”
“I don’t suppose that would be a problem for you,” he replied snidely.
“You’re the one swimming in blood money,” she shot back.
Vincent did not flinch. “You’re the one spending it. I’ve noticed, Miss Sinclair, that you only become holier-than-thou when it suits you.”
Her insides crackled at this. It stung even more because—for all of Vincent’s meanness—he wasn’t exactly wrong.
“Ezra and Elizabeth might not see through your little act yet, but I do,” he went on.
Celia bristled, but she managed to cover it with a curtsy. “Look all you’d like, Mr. Cain. That’s why we’re here, is it not? To search for clues? Every minute we bicker counts toward Hugo’s head start, so forgive me if I choose not to waste any more time on you.”
She edged past the sarcophagus, toward the curio cabinet. A mummified cat sat on top of the shelves, but there was another, shinier object below that caught Celia’s eye.
The silver basin stood on three legs fashioned into flaring cobra heads.
These snakes’ eyes were tiny chips of amethyst. Their fangs were made of moonstone.
But to Celia, the most amazing thing about the piece was the water.
Its bowl was filled almost to the brim. The liquid barely rippled as she cupped the basin in her hands, pulling it toward her chest for a closer look.
She couldn’t see herself, the way she had in the polished brass mirror, but there were images skating across the water’s surface. Reflections, almost. As Celia stared deeper, she realized that none of the scenes were from this room.
Four camels threaded their way to flaming orange mountains.
Next was a long row of sphinxes, blood dripping from their teeth.
The ivory wand lay in a crimson puddle…
Then: darkness.
Darkness and death.
Celia’s fingers felt frozen against the bowl; frost wedged beneath her nails.
She could not let go. She could not look away.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only dark, spilling out of a gate and down a series of sandstone steps, swallowing golden globes of oil lamps, the garnet sheen of blood, so much blood.
Dim hands pulled out of the darkness as the dead fell to these puddles, lapping up the red like kittens nursing a bowl of milk.
One of the ghosts looked up—now wearing the ragged remains of a German uniform.
Fear unraveled through Celia’s chest, longer than any mummy’s wrappings could possibly be.
He won’t stop. None of it would. The rowed sphinxes were disappearing.
The orange mountains would be next, and then Luxor.
Death would wash down the Nile and into the sea—
The basin slipped, landing on the floor with a clang. Water sprayed everywhere. The cobras’ fangs glinted and Celia felt the sharpness of a scream carving past her own teeth.
Ezra appeared a moment later. Biz wasn’t far behind. Their voices sounded distant, as if they were all underwater.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you all right, Celia? Did you see anything, Vincent?”
“She was just staring into that bowl, and then she screamed…”
The frozen feeling was still there, icing over everything.
Even after Biz laid a gentle hand on Celia’s arm, she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak.
She watched Ezra crouch down and pick up the basin, studying its serpents before gazing back in her direction.
His eyes held a question he didn’t have to ask.
“I saw—” The end of everything. Too dark. Silence frosted Celia’s throat instead. She tried again. “I saw death.”
“Oooooh.” Vincent let out a mocking shiver. “Did he happen to be carrying a scythe?”
But Celia was past the bullet-heir’s pettiness.
She was beyond all of this. She was stuck in those clouds of darkness, in the black-hole eye sockets of the dead, the hungry dead, the unstoppable dead.
A rot far, far worse than anything that had ever crept up her father’s arm.
“It was everywhere. It was…” Her head kept shaking. Her arms too. “We can’t do this.”
Biz frowned. “Do what?”
“Resurrection,” Celia choked out. “We can’t use that relic. It’s not just a life for a life. It’s… it’s everything.”
Vincent raised his golden eyebrow. “What exactly did you see?”
“Sphinxes and blood and—and—” She grabbed the faience hippopotamus and knelt on the floor beside Ezra, tipping more water into the bowl he was holding. “Come see for yourselves.”
The four of them crowded around the basin. Celia felt as though she would never breathe again. She stared at the water warily, her knuckles white around the hippo’s belly. She couldn’t blame Ezra’s mother for collecting so many protective talismans. Especially if she’d seen similar visions…
“Is something supposed to be happening?” Vincent frowned down at the water. It remained clear.
Biz leaned closer. “Be patient, dear.”
Ezra turned the bowl this way and that, but no strange reflections appeared to overlap their own. Seconds dragged into minutes and Celia realized that whatever she saw in the basin wasn’t coming back.
“It was there, I swear. It was hell. There were ghosts everywhere and there was this—this black cloud taking over everything. And blood… so much blood…” Celia gripped the tiny hippopotamus tighter.
How to make them understand, when she herself had no explanation for what she’d witnessed?
Only fear. It kept unraveling—impossibly long.
“Sounds ominous,” Vincent grunted.
Ezra rocked on his heels. “It sounds like the trenches.”
“It’s hell, right?” Biz butted in. “I mean, we weren’t expecting this resurrection business to be all harps and cherubs, were we? If George is stuck in such an awful place, that’s all the more reason to bring him back—”
“We can’t!” The other three flinched at Celia’s shout.
Even the cat at the top of the shelves seemed to shrink back.
“Don’t you understand? We cannot use that relic.
It’s supposed to stay buried. Beware what you unlock, for what is sealed was never meant to open.
The writing was right there on the wall of Nour’s tomb—”
“That’s for grave robbers,” Vincent broke in.
Celia choked back a terrified laugh. “We’re literally trying to rob the grave!”
“I told you before, those curses have no real power. They’re there to scare people away from reaching the treasure.” Vincent’s blue eyes narrowed on her, his mouth tugging to the side. “I say, it’s convenient you’re getting cold feet now that we’ve stumbled across a cache of magical artifacts.”
Celia didn’t think the faience hippopotamus could crack, but she was certainly testing that theory.
“All this talk about helping Ezra find himself…” Vincent went on, shaking his head. “Really, all you wanted to find were a few new heirlooms. What did I tell you, Bright? She’s nothing more than a glorified gold digger.”
“Vincent!” Biz gasped.
“You don’t know shit, Vincent Cain.” Celia couldn’t quite keep the snarl off her face—thoughts of the dead were too near.
Memories of her father, in that stinking deathbed, sheets streaked with his own waste.
“Not like I do. You think I’m in this for a few pieces of jewelry?
Some fancy new scarab brooch? The Order took everything from me.
They murdered my father, destroyed my family, and stole my future…
I’m here to even the score. I’m here to make things right. ”
“You’re acting just like them.”
It was Ezra who spoke. Ezra, whose words landed with a sniper’s precision. Each one left a hole in Celia’s chest. A space where her heart stopped beating. What? What did he say?
“My mother collected these pieces to keep them safe from the aamus—foreigners who would drag them back to their museums. Their vaults. Yet here you are, stuffing your pockets without a second thought.” He gestured toward her utility belt.
At the several ankhs Celia had tucked there, along with the brass mirror.
“I—I thought—” she stammered, her chest still leaking air everywhere. “I figured these could help us.”
“Help you,” Vincent slid in. “There’s a difference, oh Saint Kleptomania.”
“I’m not stealing them!”
“Taking is taking.” Ezra’s eyes hardened—bottle green.
There was something jagged behind them as he locked stares with Celia.
“You talk a lot about how awful the Order is, how much they’ve destroyed…
but did you even stop to think about what you might ruin?
” He glanced at the wet spot on the carpet.
To Celia, the stain seemed to be growing darker.
“Shouldn’t we all just take a breath?” Biz suggested.
But Ezra’s nostrils were already flaring. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you scanning for collectibles the moment you walked in, Elizabeth. You’re as bad as our father was—”
“That’s not fair, Ezra.”
“Not fair?” he laughed, but the sound was awful.
And loud. So loud that the mummified cat on the top of the dresser began to shake.
“You want to bring fairness into this? Is it fair that our governess always swatted me on the hand for speaking Arabic? Or that I had to forget my name—my own name? And when our father made me choose another, he made it quite clear I could not, would never, be an Ellington. You people asked me to give up everything I was, but there was nothing waiting for me on the other side. And then, then, I was asked to go and fight. For a country and a house and a king that would never be mine… They expected me to bleed. To die. To sacrifice myself for the sons who mattered. Does that sound fair to you?”
His half sister paled. She had the good sense not to answer. Ezra’s skin was starting to shine again.
All around the room, shadows started going sharp.
Celia took a step back.
“But this?” Ezra held up the hollowed-out basin.
The serpents’ eyes glinted, but even that couldn’t dispel the darkness left by the vision’s clouds.
It kept bleeding out into the rest of the room.
Oh Celia, Celia, my dear, there’s no stopping this.
There never was. “This is mine. I buried George, I buried the Germans, I buried my mother, I buried her little boy, but I will not bury this.”
Celia Sinclair could not breathe. It felt as if tons of sand had just collapsed on her chest—sand and fear.
Her head spun. Her breastbone ached. This room was too full of pasts.
Maybe if she went outside and got some air, her thoughts would clear…
She’d be able to better explain what she saw in the basin…
She stumbled to the door, picking up her boots instead of taking the time to lace them.
None of the others followed. Biz didn’t chase her down the stairs.
Ezra didn’t keep her from crossing the street.
Something inside her chest kept splintering; Celia was still afraid to take a breath that was too deep, in case it might break altogether.
She wandered past booths selling replicas of the amulets that crowded her belt. The hippopotamus figurine stayed tight in her fist.
Oh shit.
Celia stared down at the pockets of her utility belt. Ankhs peeked out of leather flaps beside her father’s lighter—all with an accusatory shine.
She hadn’t thought twice.
She hadn’t thought at all… Hugo Pratt probably hadn’t either as he’d perused her father’s study…
You’re acting just like them.
Nothing more than a glorified gold digger.
Holier-than-thou when it suits you.
Oh shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
What had she just ruined?
Was there any way to fix it? There must be… It wasn’t too late to turn around, to climb back up those stairs, to return the relics to their shelves. To apologize. To face Ezra’s hurt—so much hurt—without flinching. To explain what the silver basin had shown her.
Her mind was so wrapped up in these thoughts that Celia didn’t see the figure step out of the alleyway until it was too late.
An arm snaked around her throat. Another hand pressed a damp cloth to her face.
Now she really couldn’t breathe. Above her, the sun started to swim.
She heard the faience hippopotamus clatter to the sidewalk.
Gray pressed in. No. No! Black followed. Celia fought as hard as she could.
But her world vanished anyway.