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It still felt unreal to Ellie that tomorrow, she would cross that river to search those ruins for a secret that might have remained concealed for three thousand years.
The peace and wonder of the moment was broken by the sound of a door being thrown open.
“Goodness, did I need that bath!” Constance declared as she strode into the room.
She kicked the door shut behind her with a bang.
Ellie’s petite friend tossed her towel over the back of the room’s only armchair with a practiced motion. She collapsed into the seat, lifting and then flopping the thick black waves of her hair over the cloth, where they dripped onto the carpet.
“Shouldn’t you wrap your hair?” Ellie asked.
“What do you think I am—a savage? Have you any idea what would happen to these curls if I tried that? In this heat? No.” Constance leaned back, wriggling her rear a bit to settle more comfortably into the chair as she closed her eyes. “I am going to air dry, slowly, as God intended me to do. I just wish I had a magazine.” She opened her eyes, looking to Ellie hopefully. “Are there any magazines?”
“Just a Bible,” Ellie informed her, plucking the book in question from the table beside her. “Shall I bring it over?”
Constance considered the question, torn between obvious distaste and boredom. “No,” she concluded with a sigh.
Ellie had enjoyed the luxury of a wash herself a little earlier. She was now dressed in a comfortable galabeya and loose trousers that one of the chambermaids had delivered to the room—items from the shopping list Constance had scribbled out for the hotel manager, Mr. Oliver. Ellie’s own things were being laundered. They had thoroughly required it after being worn for two straight days that included a tomb raid, a crawl through a collapsing tunnel, and a ten-hour train ride.
Her skin was still damp from her bath. The soft breeze that tossed the pale, light curtains by the window felt deliciously cool.
Ellie turned her eyes back to the distant ruins across the river. “We need to make our arrangements to get to Hatshepsut’s temple.”
“Already done,” Constance replied with a breezy wave of her hand, still leaning back against her towel.
“Already done?” Ellie echoed in surprise.
“We are leaving at ten o’clock. Mr. Oliver is seeing to it,” Constance explained. “It’s the sort of thing he does all the time.”
The Luxor Hotel was owned by the Thomas Cook company, which also ran tourist steamboats and luxury dahabeeyahs up and down the Nile. They had built the establishment as a spot where their passengers could overnight while exploring the many famous sites of Thebes. It made perfect sense that the manager would know how to book the boats, animals, and guides needed to make an expedition to the ruins.
The fact that their own excursion had less to do with sightseeing and more to do with preventing the theft of an extremely dangerous arcanum likely made little difference in purely practical terms. With the matter of tomorrow’s mission more or less settled, Ellie turned her attention once more to the wonders that lay just outside her window.
“It really is quite splendid, isn’t it?” Constance prompted comfortably from her chair. The dripping of her hair had slowed a bit.
“I don’t think I really believed I’d ever see it,” Ellie admitted quietly, her eyes still on the shadowy cliffs.
“Whyever not?” Constance frowned. “It isn’t as though it’s on the other side of the world. And your brother lives here.”
“Neil never extended an invitation,” Ellie returned.
“Stuffy is even more of a curmudgeon than I remember.” Constance swung her legs happily. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor. “I had to give him a solid poke in the kidney with one of my knives just to get him into that tunnel! What did he think was going to happen if he kept standing around—that the baddies would give him a handshake and apologize for the interruption? One would think he had never had an actual adventure before!”
“I am fairly certain he hasn’t,” Ellie admitted.
“Well, if we are really going to chase down a mysterious pharaoh and uncover the location of the long-lost Staff of Moses, he is going to need to lighten up,” Constance concluded firmly.
The lazy kicking of her legs stilled. Her expression became unsettlingly contemplative.
Ellie pulled her gaze from the window and gave her friend a wary look. “What are you thinking about?”
“Oh—only that it has just occurred to me that I might know a way to help with that.”
“And what might that be?”
“Taking him for a lover, of course,” Constance replied distractedly.
Ellie dropped the Bible. “You…what?!”
