Dragon Soul

by Katie MacAlister

  “Oh, shut up,” he muttered, but evidently not softly enough, because Sophea tossed a startled look his way.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry, it was nothing. Just me talking to myself.”

  Her nose scrunched in that delightful manner she had. “I thought you were referring to my sausage double entendre. Do you often tell yourself to shut up?”

  “I do when my mind is being obnoxious. If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll go wash my hands before we eat.”

  He used the few minutes of privacy in the bathroom to get his errant mind (and related body parts) under control. The face that stared out of the mirror at him bore obvious signs of strain—there were silver threads starting to show up in his hair, his cheeks had a gaunt look that he hadn’t noticed before, and lines that he hadn’t remembered had suddenly sprouted at the edges of both eyes.

  “You look like hell,” he told his reflection. “No woman in her right mind would consider you as a viable sexual partner, let alone someone to spend any length of time with. Get the job done and go back to Sao Pedro where the only thing you have to worry about is interfering tourists.”

  His inner voice had some things to say about that, but he ignored them, instead focusing his intentions on talking Sophea out of taking the cruise. He had a horrible feeling she was misinterpreting his desire to keep her safe, but he would simply straighten that out later, once he knew she was removed from any danger.

  “—well and fine, but don’t know what I’m going to do about clothes. I mean, this cruise is for a week, and I only packed two days’ worth of clothes,” Sophea was saying when he exited the bathroom. “And I don’t have much money to buy more.”

  “Cruises always call for lots of clothing,” Rowan said, nodding sagely just as if he knew what he was talking about. Which he didn’t—he’d never been on a cruise in his life. “Far better to save your money for other things, don’t you think?”

  “I’m a pretty thrifty person, so I tend to agree,” Sophea said slowly. “But… the thought of a free cruise is awfully hard to turn down.”

  “There’s the souk,” Mrs. P said, stuffing some pens and hotel paper into her bag. “Clothing can be had there for a few coppers.”

  “The bazaar?” Sophea pursed her lips in thought. It just made him want to kiss her. “I doubt if things are that cheap, although I did read that people here expect you to bargain for things. I wonder…”

  “I wouldn’t risk it,” he said, nodding toward the clock. “You wouldn’t have time to get to the bazaar district, shop, and get back for the sailing.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” she said, biting her lower lip. “We’re all supposed to go see the pyramids anyway. Although I suppose we could souk it up after that, if there’s time.”

  He had to look away, lest a lascivious expression give away his memories about nibbling on that delicious pink lip.

  “My beau will reward you once I am returned to him,” Mrs. P said, tucking the cordless phone into her sizeable purse, along with an ashtray and the mints from Sophea’s pillow. “Stop blathering and get me some tea.”

  “Well…” Sophea looked him full in the eyes. “What do you think I should do?”

  Go home, he ordered his mouth to say. The words were on the tip of his tongue when he opened his mouth, but somehow what came out ended up being, “Take the cruise, of course. Mrs. P says she needs you.”

  “You’re right,” she said with an oddly unsure look at him. “It would be stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Sorry, Mrs. P, I didn’t mean to call you a horse. But you’re both right—I’d kick myself for the rest of my life if I didn’t take this opportunity. Stop waffling and take the bull by the balls, the matron at the orphanage used to say, and that’s just what I’m going to do. If we don’t have time to go to the bazaar after the pyramid tour, then I’ll just buy some clothes at the villages we’re sure to stop by. Well! This is exciting, isn’t it? Rather than being sad because I’m going to be leaving you, we’re all setting off on an exciting adventure. Together.”

  She put an emphasis on the word that baffled him—was she implying she was looking forward to more rendezvous as they had the night before, or was she hinting at something else? And if it was the former, why did she have a glum air about her?

  Sophea rose at the sound of a knock and waited silently while a waiter delivered their food.

  He stared dumbly at the plate set before him, his mind alternating between berating himself and fighting the desire to grab Sophea and kiss her like he’d had the night before. What had he been thinking, telling her to join them?

  Well, he’d just have to work doubly hard to make sure that she was not put in harm’s way if the demons should return—and despite Gabriel’s optimistic outlook, he had little doubt that they’d not seen the last of them.

  In the end, he ate his food, letting Sophea run the conversation, answering only when she asked him a direct question.

  “You look tired,” she said as they finished the meal. “Why don’t you go take a nap for a couple of hours rather than go with Akbar to see the pyramids? Unless you really want to see them, that is.”

  He looked first at her, then at Mrs. P, who was busily rolling up a small rattan mat and sliding it into her suitcase. “I think that’s an excellent idea. I’ll rest while you’re out. Away from the hotel. Er… seeing the sights.”

  Sophea exclaimed at the time. “Criminy, how did it get to be this late? Akbar will be waiting for us in ten minutes. I’ll just take a fast shower before we go, Mrs. P, all right? Be sure to drink all that tea—we don’t need you getting dehydrated while we’re out seeing the pyramids!”

  The room seemed strangely empty when she hurried into the bathroom with her bag in hand.

  Silence reigned for a few minutes before Mrs. P, sipping noisily at her cup of tea, set it down and observed, “Her exuberance for life is endearing, is it not?”

  He got to his feet slowly, feeling as if he were at least two hundred years old, and moved casually toward the door. Sitting on a small table next to it were two key cards. “Did you tell her the truth when you said you knew who her father was?”

  Mrs. P cocked her head, and to his surprise, winked. “Perhaps I did, and perhaps I wanted to waken the gel to the truth. Go, now. You cannot be my champion if you are likely to drop from exhaustion. We have many trials ahead of us before I will reach my beau.”

  He paused at the door, opened it, and turned back to face Mrs. P, using his body to shield the fact that he was taking one of the key cards. As a distraction in case she noticed the movement of his arm, he asked, “I take it your boyfriend is in the Underworld?”

  The wrinkles in her face rearranged themselves into a smile. “Of course. Who else but a denizen of that realm could summon me to him?”

  Rowan slid the card into his back pocket and racked his mind through the dusty corridors of past history classes. “Set was the lord of the Egyptian underworld, wasn’t he? No, I lie—it was Osiris. Is that who you think you’re going to meet?”

  She wrapped her scrawny arms carefully around her hunched torso. “He has called me home at last. Somehow, he acquired the means, and we will be reunited again. And with my offering, he will be made whole, and will at last take his rightful place in the world.”

  Rowan tried to get his tired brain to process that, but it refused. It just outright refused. Instead, he nodded and quietly closed the door, returning to his room where he collapsed on the bed.

  But not before setting an alarm for an hour. By that time, Mrs. P’s room should be empty, and he would be able at last to search her things… and Sophea’s. Just in case Mrs. P got clever with hiding places.

  Exactly an hour and ten minutes later, he tapped on their door, heard nothing, and quietly opened it.

  The room had been torn apart, everything from the bedding to the clothes, even to the cushions on the chairs torn to literal shreds. Little particles of furniture stuffing floated gently in the air, s
tirred by the quiet rush of coolness from the air conditioner. He surveyed the damage. Even the luggage itself had been destroyed, leaving no doubt that if something had been hidden in a bag lining, or false bottom, it had been discovered.

  Rowan closed the door and returned to his room. If he had any hope of getting out of taking a cruise down the Nile, his chances had just dwindled to nothing. Assuming, of course, that whoever had destroyed the room had not found the ring… and suddenly, he was quite confident that it hadn’t been found.

  “The old biddy has it on her person,” he said aloud and called down to the front desk to lodge a complaint about the disturbance he heard in Mrs. P’s room. The room clerk promised to send someone up to investigate, after which Rowan, without even taking off his shoes, lay down on the bed and fell asleep in less than five minutes.

  Nine

  “Hold on, don’t leave yet! We’re coming, we’re coming. We just got held up—oh, thank you. Would you mind helping Mrs. P, please? The dock is a bit uneven. I’ll grab our bags. We were robbed, our stuff totally destroyed. It was horrible! Ack. Sorry, yes, I have money. I’m not trying to run off without paying you.” I dug out a few bills from a pocket where I’d stuffed some money I’d exchanged for Mrs. P and paid off the taxi driver, who had followed yammering about me trying to rob him, when I shoved Mrs. P from the car and made a dash for the boat that was about to pull out from a rickety little dock extending twelve feet into the Nile.

  I grabbed the plastic bag with basic accessories that I’d had to fetch from the hotel’s shop—toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, and assorted other necessities—and with a note from the hotel giving me information about the police officer in charge of our case clutched in my sweaty hand, trotted after the crew member who was helping Mrs. P get onto the ship.

  “It was a nightmare, a total and complete nightmare. Everything was destroyed. They even squeezed out our toothpaste, and of course, we didn’t find out our things had been violated until we got back from seeing the pyramids, which was half an hour before we were supposed to come here. What? Oh, yes, tickets. Hold this, would you?” I shoved my bag of items at the man in a spotless white captain’s hat and rummaged around in my pockets. “One of them got torn in half, but the people at the reception desk taped it back together. Here we go.”

  The captain eyed my less than pristine self (dusty, sweaty, and wrinkled from our trip to the pyramids), pursed his lips, and considered the tickets. He was very Omar Sharif with dark eyes, an impressive mustache, sparkling white naval suit complete with glistening gold braid, and a general air of being the suavest man at the party. He also intimidated the crap out of me, an unreasonable feeling at best, but there was just something about him that seemed almost ruthless.

  He looked up from the tickets, taking me in again. If he was the top of the barrel, sartorially speaking, then I was wallowing in the dregs at the bottom. “I see. Welcome to the Wepwawet, Madame. I am Captain Kherty. There was no need for you to rush—Mr. Dakar told us you were delayed and would be along shortly.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” I walked up the brief gangway onto the ship, my mind simultaneously processing the traces of adrenaline resulting from the mad dash to the ship, the thrilled sensation of being on an actual river cruise about to set sail down the exotic Nile, and the on-again, off-again suspicion that Rowan had first used me to get to Mrs. P and then had torn apart our room and belongings.

  My initial response on seeing the destruction had been to blame it on Mr. Kim and cohort, but a memory of how interested Rowan had been about Mrs. P’s jewelry rose to usurp that. Just until I realized what I was doing, at which point I banished the thought, because I couldn’t truly suspect Rowan of doing something so heinous, could I?

  No. I could not.

  Except… damn. If only he hadn’t talked about Mrs. P’s jewelry. And just how did he know we’d be late to the ship? There hadn’t been time to call him for help—no, it had to be his guilty conscience at work.

  That thought depressed me like nothing else could.

  The captain handed us over to a stewardess, a tall African woman with the looks and demeanor of a supermodel. She hustled us into our stateroom suite with softly intoned comments that assured us of our welcome and that we would have a safe, enjoyable trip. Considering I hadn’t seen any of the armed guards on board the ship that I had at other locations around Cairo, I wondered about that, but eventually decided that I wasn’t going to let anything spoil the trip.

  Not even the destruction of my clothing and assorted sundries. The thought that Rowan had used me might do it, though… but no. “He just couldn’t have. He is not that sort of a man. I may not be the wisest woman in the world, but he couldn’t have deceived me that way. At least… oh, goddess, I hope he didn’t.”

  “Pardon?” The stewardess gave me an odd look.

  “I couldn’t call him,” I told her. “I mean, I could have, but some part of me was suspicious despite the fact that he seems so nice… I just couldn’t call him.”

  “I see,” she said, pursing her lips slightly.

  “Sorry. I’m mostly talking to myself, trying to untangle my feelings. Just ignore me.”

  She handed over two door keys and wished us a happy journey.

  “Well, this is pretty darned nice,” I said after she left us. The suite consisted of two bedrooms, each with its own minuscule bathroom, and a shared sitting room that ran the width of the bow of the ship. Windows on the shore side looked out at the hustle and bustle of vendors running to and fro trying to sell wares, while on the other side, the Nile itself glistened and glimmered in the setting sun.

  Golden-orange rays smudged across both the darkening sky and the river, the latter giving the impression of a living being the way the light undulated across it.

  “Okay,” I said, reveling in the beauty of the scene. “This doesn’t make up for having our stuff trashed, but it’s pretty damned gorgeous nonetheless.”

  “What is? Oh, the river.” Mrs. P emerged from the bathroom, a hand towel stuck in her purse.

  I removed it and returned it to her bathroom, reminding her that we’d need our towels. “And besides, this is a super nice cabin, and I’m a bit afraid of Captain Kherty. He looks like the sort of man who’d throw a towel thief overboard without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “Pfft,” she said, and took a seat in an Egyptian-motif settee done in shades of turquoise and gold. “He is a ferryman, nothing more. Where is your man? Why did he not meet us?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t know, but trust me—I have a lot to say to him,” I answered grimly. “Even if I don’t think he did break into our room—and I’m sure he couldn’t have, because he’s just not that sort of man—I don’t like the fact that he knew about it. And is he using me? Man, I hate feeling like this! I know he’s not, but at the same time, I worry.”

  Mrs. P frowned at me. “You are speaking too many words.”

  “I know,” I said miserably. “I’m babbling. I blame Rowan. He’s turned me all inside out and I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “He’s a man,” she said, considering a painting of an ibis. “That is what they do.”

  “Right, well, I’m done with all this angsting. I’ll talk to him later and find out whether my instinct is right or if he’s a rat bastard. But first, let’s see if this ship runs a shop, and if they have something we can wear.”

  “This is a very nice pillow,” Mrs. P said, giving it a long look.

  I opened the door to find two women in their sixties wearing identical one-piece bathing suits swathed with gauze wraps.

  “Oh, goodness!” said the shorter of the two. She had washed-out reddish-blond hair, and was, like myself, on the fluffy side. Her companion had short dark curls shot through with gray, and a long, lean figure that boded of a metabolism of the gods. “What a fright you gave me! Barbs, did you see me jump? I must have cleared at least a foot.”

  “Hullo,” the tall one said. She tried to peer past
me into the room, but I didn’t need anyone seeing Mrs. P trying to appropriate a throw pillow, so I blocked their view and quickly closed the door. “Going out to see the ship, are you? We’re on the way to the pool.”

  “Hello,” I said politely, and shook both women’s hands when they were offered.

  “We’re Ken and Barbie,” the shorter woman said with a little apologetic laugh. “I know, right? It’s actually Kendra and Barbara, but all our friends call us Ken and Barbie, and it’s become second nature by now. You’re Sophea, aren’t you? I heard the captain talking about you. You’re American? We’re from Ireland, although you wouldn’t know it the way Barbs speaks. She’s veddy, veddy BBC neutral.”

  Barbie was in the process of giving me a good visual once-over. She nodded as her companion spoke, but other than saying, “Pleased to meet you,” didn’t offer much to the conversation.

  “Yes, I’m Sophea. I was just on my way to find a steward or ship person to see if there is a shop on board. I wasn’t sure if there was because it’s so small, but I am praying there is because otherwise everyone is going to get tired of seeing my employer and me in the same clothes.”

  “Your employer?” Barbie asked at the same time Ken made a face and said, “Dear me, dear me. Lost your luggage, did you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You must have a generous employer to take you on this trip,” Barbie said.

  With the memory of the scene Mrs. P had made in the tea shop uppermost in mind, I gave them both a bland smile and declined to comment on the eccentric old lady who was probably even now stripping the cabin bare of all she could stuff into her luggage. “Very generous.”

  “There is a shop,” Ken said excitedly, waving her hand toward her midsection. “We got our suits and these darling wraps there! I didn’t know there was going to be a pool on board. Honestly, the thought of swimming in a pool sailing on a ship just seems like the height of decadence, doesn’t it? And at night! But it’s so warm out, it’s like swimming during the day.”