19. Boy Kings
Boy Kings
Valley of the Kings, Egypt
Frankie was going to get them both killed, and the little bastard would probably be grinning like a fox when it happened.
Elias pressed his handkerchief to his nose, stifling a sneeze.
Around him lay the treasures of a long-dead boy king, scattered like trash after a burglary.
Grave robbers had made a mess: smashed pottery, overturned furniture, bits of gold leaf crushed into the floor.
But really, how different was that from what they were doing right now?
“The big boss man, Howard Carter, he calls this archaeology? I call it looting with a graduate degree.”
“Elias.” His brother’s voice floated up, muffled behind a funerary couch. “Quit lecturing and get hunting. We’re on the clock.”
Franklin Shaw, known as Frankie to anyone who loved him, which was pretty much everyone, was twenty-one years old and completely in his element.
Where Elias was perpetually out of place in this suffocating tomb, Frankie moved through it like he’d been born underground.
The air was musty, and Elias was hyper-aware of the grit of crushed gold leaf sticking to his palms, a reminder of what they were doing: grave-robbing in the Valley of the Kings.
Frankie had been doing this type of work for Upson Burke for two years now, ‘liberating’ magical artifacts from Alexandria to Tehran.
He had the easy confidence of someone who’d neither experienced nor even considered the word consequences.
Elias, on the other hand, knew all about consequences.
Consequences were why he’d needed to put six thousand miles between himself and a very angry Chicago gangster, whose girlfriend had made some regrettable decisions involving Elias and a hotel room.
“Looking for what, exactly? This place has already been cleaned out.”
“Not quite.” Frankie was on his hands and knees, peering under things and running his fingers along the wall bases. “Burke said it would be here. Something small the other thieves missed.”
“The old bastard say what we’re looking for?”
“Nope.” Frankie flashed that grin that had gotten both of them out of (and into!) more trouble than Elias cared to remember. “Just said I’d know it when I found it.”
Elias crouched beside an overturned chest, half-heartedly sifting through debris, mainly gold leaf and some stones. Nothing screamed “powerful magical artifact,” but the truly powerful ones never did.
“You know,” Elias said, “there’s a word for what we’re doing here.”
“Procurement?”
“Grave-robbing.”
“Procurement sounds better.” Frankie had moved to the far corner now, shifting aside a broken canopic jar. “Besides, Carter’s doing the same thing. He’s going to put it all in a museum instead of Burke’s private collection. What’s the difference?”
“Gift shop?”
Frankie had an easy, infectious laugh that made people want to offer him things. Money, secrets, the benefit of the doubt. Elias had spent most of his adult life trying to protect his kid brother from the consequences of being so goddamn likeable. And failing, mostly.
“Aha! Got it!” Frankie’s voice sharpened as he gently pulled something from behind a collapsed wall.
Elias moved closer. “What is it?”
“Linen. Mummy wrapping.” Frankie held it up to the dim doorway light. It was the length of his forearm, yellowed but intact. “Look at the back.”
Elias squinted. There were symbols inked onto the fabric—hieroglyphics, but not the decorative kind you saw on tomb walls. These were dense, precise, the kind of writing that meant something. The kind that did something. “Is that a spell?”
“The spell.” Frankie’s eyes were bright, almost feverish. “This is what Burke wanted—the spell rumored to grant power over death itself. This is what he’s been searching for in every tomb from here to Thebes.”
“What’s it do?”
Frankie’s grin widened. “He thinks it’s the key to immortality.”
Of course he did. Upson Burke III was seventy-two years old and rich enough to buy whole countries. The only thing he couldn’t buy was more time, and it was driving him insane.
“You believe him?” Elias asked.
Frankie shrugged, careful as a magician folding a trick. “Doesn’t matter what I believe. Only matters what Burke’ll shell out.”
Footsteps echoed from the outer chamber: the boss man, Howard Carter. His voice grew closer as he lectured someone on the significance of the architecture or some scholarly folderol.
Frankie shoved the linen into his jacket, stood, and brushed dust from his knees. “Come on, look busy. Archaeologically speaking.”
By the time Carter stalked in—tall, thin, wearing that death-mask scowl—both brothers looked busy, the picture of earnest archaeology.
“Ah, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Shaw.” Carter nodded to each of them. He’d never bothered to learn which was which. “Any significant findings?”
“Just cataloguing the debris, sir,” Frankie said earnestly. “Remarkable craftsmanship, even in pieces.”
“Indeed.” Carter swept past them, already focused on something else, already composing the lectures he’d someday give.
Elias caught his brother’s eye. Frankie touched his jacket pocket once and winked. They’d done it. They’d stolen immortality from a boy king’s tomb, and nobody would ever know.
He remembered thinking, in that moment, that Frankie was going to be fine.
That this was just another job, just another artifact for some rick jerk’s collection.
Soon they’d be drinking whiskey in some dive, laughing about the whole thing.
Elias remembered the exact quality of light in that antechamber, the way dust motes danced in the air. He remembered everything.
Because a week later, his brother was dead.
* * *
The words landed like a body hitting pavement.
Luna’s hand tightened around his under the table—when had she grabbed his hand? Elias couldn’t remember. Everything felt distant suddenly, like he was watching the scene from underwater.
“How’d he die?” Scarlett asked, her voice careful.
“The linen was cursed.” Elias heard himself, calm and matter-of-fact, as if he were describing someone else’s tragedy.
“Ancient Egyptian death curse, very specific. Anyone who removed that spell would die on the new moon. We got it back to Cairo, Frankie delivered it to Burke personally, and six days later . . .” He made a vague gesture.
“He was twenty-one years old and healthy as a horse, and his heart just . . . gave out.”
Kelly had gone very still. “And Burke?”
“Oh, he knew about the curse.” The words tasted like desert sand.
“Not the specifics, maybe, but he knew the risk. He’d been chasing that particular spell for years, hiring magicians to raid tombs, promising them fortunes.
Most of them refused. But Frankie . . .” Elias shook his head.
“Frankie thought he was invincible. And Burke let him believe it. He got his spell. Franklin was just . . . overhead.”
Nate was staring at the photo on Scarlett’s phone, still visible on the table. “So this guy Burke, he was in his seventies in 1922? That means now he’d be . . .”
“A hundred and seventy-five, give or take,” Jerusha noted. “It seems I’m not the oldest antique in the shop, after all.”
“The spell worked, then,” Jasper said.
“Well, something did. Like I said, he was chasing immortality spells all over the world.” Elias looked at the photo of his old nemesis: still distinguished, still upright, still wearing clothes that were already out of fashion when the Titanic went down.
The man looked maybe sixty, tops. Whatever the spell had done, it had done it thoroughly.
Luna looked at Elias with new understanding. “You and Burke have history.”
“Ah well.” Elias shrugged dismissively. “Technically speaking I’m about the same age as Jerusha over there. We got history with all kinds of folks, right, Jerusha?”
The old witch raised her glass by way of answer.
But when he made eye contact with Luna, he could feel instantly that she was seeing right through every deflection, every carefully constructed wall.
“Your infamous con,” Kelly said slowly, working it through. “You convinced Burke he was buying prime beachfront property—”
“Thousands of acres of it, yes ma’am. I convinced him to pay top dollar for useless swampland. He lost a fortune. Should have lost everything.” His tone was light, but Luna could see how carefully he held himself, as if one wrong move might crack open something he needed to contain.
“But he didn’t,” Luna said softly.
His eyes flicked away from hers, and she knew she’d hit on something real. “No. He had enough money left to rebuild. Enough connections to weather the scandal. And apparently—” Elias gestured at the photo “—enough time to do it in.”
“So you tried to destroy him and failed,” Delilah said. Not cruelly, just stating a fact. “And that’s what got you sent to the Void.”
“The council convicted me of ‘undermining the integrity of magical commerce.’ Really, they were just defending one of their boys. Burke had friends in high places.”
The table went quiet. Meanwhile, all around them, the pub continued its gentle evening rhythm. Conversations, laughter, the clink of glasses. Normal people having normal nights.
Kelly took a long breath and straightened her shoulders. “All right. This is complicated. But it doesn’t change what we need to do.”
“Doesn’t it?” Scarlett glanced at Elias and then back at her mother. “I mean, this guy killed his brother. Might affect his judgment.”
“My judgment is fine,” Elias said, more sharply than he’d intended.
“Is it though?” Delilah asked gently. “Because if this is personal for you—”
“It’s not.”
“Elias—”
“It’s not.” He could hear his voice rising and forced it back down. “Look, I was surprised to see his face, all right? Thought the bastard would be dead by now. But we have a plan, and it’s a solid plan, and I’m not going to let ancient history derail it.”
Luna was still watching him with those knowing eyes. But much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t.