“You don’t think someone broke in only to leave that ring, do you?” Eleanor asked as they rode upstairs in the elevator. She was surprised at what she found on his face, and so too the words that poured from him.
“You will not put that ring on. Promise me, Eleanor.”
The concern his words carried was a weight upon her heart. Eleanor reached for him, sliding her hands into his jacket to hold him close, to have the heat of him enfold her once more. The rings of Anubis had required her blood, after all, to open a portal to the past. A portal that might well have stranded her in a place from which she could not return. She had no wish to put him through that again, even if he were by her side.
“I promise you,” she said, but the tension in Mallory’s body didn’t ease. He was drawn as tight as a violin string the entire way to her room, and even when he claimed her key to unlock her door, he had not relaxed.
“Virgil.”
He stepped into the room with her and closed the door behind them. Eleanor did not care what any other agent on the floor might think were they to see such a thing. When Mallory reached for her, she reached right back, opening her mouth to his as it descended for a kiss. It was not tender but edged with teeth, and in his bite she knew a familiar claim, a claim she knew they both wanted to see through, to the end and beyond.
“I will not,” Eleanor whispered as his mouth broke from hers and his teeth gently bit into the line of her jaw, “go putting on any strange rings.”
This drew a low growl from him and three long strides; she stepped backward as he advanced, the motion placing her against the back of her small sofa. Mallory’s hands slid down her arms to encompass her waist, to haul her closer to his hard warmth so his mouth could consume hers once more. If there was a tremor within him now, it had nothing to do with leaving the opium behind.
Eleanor found a strange solace within this shared fury; the beast just beneath her skin did not claw for release, content to roll itself between Mallory’s hands until Eleanor thought she might go mad. She wanted, very much, to throw propriety straight out the window and let it shatter to pieces in the snowy courtyard. It was Mallory who stepped back at last. Still, he drew his fingers across her mouth for a final touch before he walked to the door.
“I will see you at breakfast,” he said as his hand closed around the doorknob. “And if you go looking for the ring overnight…I will know.”
His expression lightened as his mouth curled into a smile, but Eleanor knew he was quite serious. Knew it even before he closed the door and did not walk down to his own room; knew it before he sank against the door and spent the night sleeping against its wood. Eleanor slept as though she were dead, her body aching from running, transforming, longing. She drifted through dreams that were senseless, but ever round like a ring. Circling.
* * *
Virgil woke against Eleanor’s door, a sharp pain radiating from shoulder to skull as he shifted into a new position for the first time in hours. He did not check his pocket watch, not wanting to know how many hours had passed. Despite the gloom of the hallway, he knew it to be morning, the wolf inside him having a better handle on the days than the man did. The wolf wanted to roll over and sleep while the man needed to get moving, bathed and dressed for the day ahead.
He pushed himself to standing and leaned into Eleanor’s door, pressing his forehead against the mahogany to listen. Her breathing was soft, but he picked it easily from of the morning’s silence, discerning from it that she slept on. If past evenings spent as wolf and jackal spoke to future performance, she would continue to sleep like the dead, the transformation to and from exhausting her beyond her present means to deal with it.
Those days were far behind him, but he recalled them well even so. The terror of his first transformation was always close to hand, the helplessness that had swallowed him. It was still a curious thing, to have Eleanor Folley as partner in transformation lessons, work concerns, and romantic pursuits. He had never imagined such a partnership, yet here he was in the midst of one. He pressed his hands to her door, as if to embrace her through the wood, then moved down the hallway, and the elevator that carried him to his own rooms.
Though the rooms had not changed either their views of Paris or their furnishings, they were less dismal than only a month prior. Something about the space was different, better, and Virgil supposed it was he who had changed. Caroline and her parents had been put to good rest, and with them the ghosts of too many years.
His hands still shook as he filled a bath, as he pulled a straight razor across cheeks and jaw. Even as he dressed, his hands were weak, as if not fully his own. This, he had been warned, was a symptom of opium withdrawal. He would be anxious, the doctors told him; insomnia might well plague his nights—thus, dozing outside Eleanor’s door was little burden. His bed was both too narrow and too wide; he wanted to bundle Eleanor into it and keep her long past the sunrise that broke the day wide open.
Virgil closed his hands into fists and attempted to knot his tie once more, but as ever, he failed at this simple thing. The wolf in him disliked ties entirely, but in the work environment, he had vowed to attempt them, determined to look like a gentleman if he could not actually be one. He could not deny that he enjoyed the way Eleanor smiled when she noticed the improperly tied cloth around his neck, nor that he enjoyed the way she sometimes smoothed it flat or retied it entirely.
When he finished his morning routine, the desire to wake Eleanor was too powerful to resist, but there came a knock at his door, and he breathed a low murmur of thanks to whomever it was, knowing it would grant him a distraction he sorely needed. He did not want to be dependent on Eleanor for any stage of his recovery—he feared replacing one addiction with another was all too easily done, knowing he could also find escape in the wolf. Running from one to the other to avoid the very thought of opium would likely do him no good in the end.
He opened the door to find Auberon, no longer wearing the dust and cobwebs of the night before. Virgil stepped aside to allow him entry, discovering he had brought coffee—enough for three—with him, along with a sheaf of paper tucked beneath one arm. Auberon leaned in and Virgil plucked the papers free.
“Eleanor is not yet awake,” Virgil said, following him to the sitting area. It was stark and unadorned, the velveteen of his couch worn in patches, a fire not yet lit in the grate. The room carried a chill Virgil hardly noticed, the wolf in him keeping him warmer than most others could claim.
“How was the park last evening?” Auberon asked. He sat, rather than moving toward the fireplace; Virgil knew Auberon would never voice a complaint about the rooms being too cold, nor would he presume to start a fire. Auberon poured coffee for them both, however, the liquid steaming into the white china cups.
Virgil glanced at the papers he held, then found himself frowning as he looked back up at Auberon. Much as he would not complain about a cold room, neither would he cut to the heart of business if Miss Cleo Barclay were involved. He would rather discuss matters of the park and wolves and jackals and not the intelligent archaeologist who had claimed his heart some scant years prior. Virgil, not being quite so polite, could not resist the opportunity to provoke his friend.
“You would rather have the details of a snowy Paris park run than discuss the fact that Cleo is summoning us to Alexandria?” He looked at the papers again, the topmost being Cleo’s actual telegraphed message, mentioning an auction of Egyptian and other goods. “I’m quite certain that would amuse her to no end, as it does me.” Virgil reached for his coffee, enjoying the way Auberon shifted on the couch, as though he’d gotten a wild animal twisted up in his trousers.
“Indeed,” Auberon bit out. He cleared his throat and took up his coffee cup. He did not look up from the surface of the liquid, but Virgil could see how that cup shook in his grip. It was a grip Virgil recognized, one that spoke of restraint and countless things unsaid. “She…” He trailed off, at last looking up from the coffee.
Virgil let t
he silence spool out between them. He had found that it helped in matters such as these—matters one was distinctly avoiding—to have long stretches of silence during which to contemplate all that one hoped for and feared.
“It’s quite possible that the auction will require only you and Miss Folley—”
“Oh, no.” Virgil shook his head and after one long swallow, abandoned the rest of his coffee. “Whereas Miss Folley is indeed my partner in certain endeavors, you remain my partner within Mistral. It is your post, my friend, and if we have been summoned, we shall indeed go. I am certain Miss Barclay will be delighted to see you.”
But here, no matter how much Virgil enjoyed poking the clearly tender wound, Auberon’s face closed in on itself. Something shuttered itself away, a pain so deep that Virgil regretted what he had said. The man before him had seen Virgil through hell and back, through countless opium dreams and out; he didn’t deserve such cruelty.
“Auberon, forgive me.”
Auberon met Virgil’s gaze and nodded. “There is nothing to forgive, after all. I have been, and am, as foolish a creature as you ever were and are.” His mouth twitched in a grin. “There are unresolved matters between she and I, and yes. I would welcome your counsel on them. At some point.”
Virgil only hoped he would be as wise as Auberon had been in his own counsel. Matters of the heart were just as tricky as matters concerning one’s literal inner beast.
“At your leisure, of course,” Virgil said.
He looked back to the file Auberon had brought, reading through Cleo’s missive. It was transcribed in the neat hand that Virgil recognized to be Auberon’s own and he wondered at that, for Auberon did not normally operate the Mistral telegraph. He noted the curiosity, but said nothing of it lest he quickly discourage Auberon on the matter of Miss Barclay entirely.
“This doesn’t appear entirely out of bounds,” he said as he continued to read the pages before him.
As was often the case in Egypt of late, goods hauled from tombs by robbers were making their way to illegal markets. There were too many such auctions to keep up with every single one; while Mistral was aware of them by and large, they had made no concerted effort to stem the tide. Virgil suspected a good many of the artifacts residing within Mistral’s archive had been obtained at such auctions, by Howard Irving and his cohorts. While Virgil disliked the practice, he couldn’t say it was entirely unproductive. These items might otherwise be lost, carried across ocean and continent.
“Cle— Miss Barclay included a partial manifest,” Auberon said, then took a long drink of his coffee. He filled his cup once more and drank it empty, more like a wolf than gentleman in the moment. “There are a good many things that tie into items Miss Folley has already catalogued here. Miss Barclay also goes on to describe a set of sarcophagi that may well contain Egyptian royals.”
Virgil’s eyebrows lifted and he regarded Auberon over the list of said items. “She must have good cause to believe this is genuine, then.”
Auberon set his cup aside; it made a soft clatter upon the tray. “She has heard in local circles that George Pettigrew will be in attendance,” he said, leaning back into the worn velveteen of the couch.
Virgil set the file aside. “George Pettigrew has a known past with Howard Irving,” he said. Virgil found it was becoming predictable—that someone tied to Irving would still be involved in matters he should not. Irving had tried to resurrect his dead daughter via the hands of Anubis; there was no telling what one of his known associates might attempt, given the items in the auction list. Among those items, Virgil had noted a collection of Egyptian rings and his gut tied itself into a knot at the mere idea. They simply could not go down this path again, not when they had returned the rings to Anubis.
“Does Cleo have any idea where Pettigrew’s interest lies?”
“Possibly in the royal sarcophagi,” Auberon said. “He may not attend—it may well be an agent of his, however it would be a simple enough matter to follow the agent.”
Virgil allowed himself a smile. “Simple enough, they won’t involve locals, but…us.”
Auberon’s laugh was calm and rich, a familiar comfort to Virgil. “She knows our ties to Irving and his men. Your ties.”
“And your own.” Virgil crossed his arms over his chest as he too leaned into the couch cushions. “You never did say what you and she saw from Anubis—when we all had visions of our lives that were. As we were judged.”
Silence again, and Virgil let it be. He watched Auberon, that strange shuttered look that spoke of things he could not voice, possibly matters for which he didn’t possess words. Virgil understood this state of being far too well.
“I never did say,” Auberon agreed, and did not elaborate now.
Virgil didn’t push. He gathered the files, knowing Eleanor would have a keen interest in the assembled list Cleo had sent. What treasures might she find there? No rings, Virgil told himself. He remained vexed over the one that had been revealed the night before, the small box that Auberon pressed into his hand even now.
Safekeeping, Virgil thought, but didn’t wholly believe it. Surely these things were connected—the break in, the ring, and a collection of items up for auction in distant Alexandria that included more ancient Egyptian rings. He hated rings. The idea that one could carry Eleanor away from him was abhorrent.
Down to his very soul, he hated rings.
“When do we leave?”
Chapter Three
11 November, 1889 – Cairo, Egypt
Dear Eleanor,
I appreciated your letter of 1 November a good deal. Though I know it is completely imagined, I thought the cold of Paris clung to the paper still. I would welcome snow; it has been some time since I have enjoyed such. It’s a shame it didn’t get properly cold for the Exposition.
I thank you, too, for the kind words about your mother and grandmother. I have certainly never encountered such a predicament and am pleased to know you thought it well-handled. How formal of me—but it is a relief to know my efforts helped and did not hinder. I cannot imagine how I myself would have reacted had it been my own late mother we were in search of. I suppose we never know how we shall handle a matter until it is upon us.
I trust you know of the discovery of another tomistoma fossil outside Cairo? (Although perhaps you do not, given the often tortoise-like revelations of such news.) This specimen is said to measure over six meters in length! I have not yet had the opportunity to see it, but perhaps we can view those on display at the museum when next you visit. Until then, I remain your friend,
Cleo
* * *
December 1889 – The skies over Alexandria, Egypt
Eleanor surveyed Alexandria from the air with a scowl. It wasn’t that she didn’t find the city beautiful—how could it not be, poised on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea as it was? It gleamed under the brilliant afternoon sun like a tiny pearl she could scoop into her hand. It was rather the idea that Mallory was keeping the newly discovered ring from her.
They had left Paris behind, but surely not the ring that had been so brazenly left atop her notebooks. She had been given time for a brief sweep of the archive’s known inventory, and had turned up nothing missing. This didn’t completely surprise her. Given that the greater portion of artifacts that remained were unsorted, it was likely the thief had taken something she hadn’t catalogued yet, and this was maddening. After seeing the list of items for auction from Cleo, Eleanor agreed they needed to reach Alexandria—even if they were being led there by the nose. Eleanor took it as no coincidence that the auction catalogue contained potentially royal sarcophagi, or a collection of Egyptian rings.
Eleanor was certain Mallory had not left the corroded ring in Paris, because this left the mysterious ring unguarded and open to potential mischief. No, Mallory was the kind who thought it best controlled in his own custody. Better than any lock and key, his own pocket was surely where it resided. He had been clever enough to keep her carefully at arm�
�s distance during the entire journey to Egypt.
“Wolf,” she murmured, even as she was amused by it.
He knew her far too well—better than he should have, perhaps, for only having met her two months prior. Still, they had learned a good deal about each other in the ensuing time; she supposed their shared abilities when it came to changing their human shapes into something four-legged gave them a certain simplicity for growing closer. In some ways, it was as if she had always known him, had always understood what he could not share, because these were the same things she could not.
Now, she pondered Alexandria from the deck of the airship Jackal, and could not suppress the excitement that always came with a new mission and a journey to Egypt. Part of her would always be anchored here; Egypt was ever in her blood thanks to her mother. She would not have it any other way and closed her eyes to bask in the warmth of the air, so deeply different from snow-chilled Paris.
She did not startle when familiar, broad hands slid around her waist from behind. She let her head tip forward a little, so that Mallory could lean in and nuzzle the back of her neck. This he did with such frequency, she had come to expect it, but it had not lost its charm or effect, for her entire body was set on fire by his passing breath. She thought her linen duster would go up in a puff of smoke. She leaned into Mallory and drew his arms fully around her, fingers sliding up his woolen jacket sleeves.
“Do not even think it,” he murmured.
Eleanor’s eyes slanted open and she turned to look at him. Oh yes, he knew her entirely too well by this point. “I am certain I do not know what you mean,” she said, but did not move from him arms. She did not flounce away and could neither hide the smile that tipped her mouth up, telling him that she knew quite well what he meant.
The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Page 3