Pettigrew came to his feet, slowly, but the motion was enough to cause Virgil to take a step closer. His attention within the room narrowed to Pettigrew alone; he knew Cleo was safe at Eleanor’s side, and Auberon knew to how to allow Virgil space should anything untoward occur.
Pettigrew did smile now, slanting it in Virgil’s direction. He kept his empty hands spread before him. “Down, boy. I mean no harm here, least of all to Miss Barclay. I have welcomed you all into my home, believing you shared an interest in the sarcophagi given your bidding at the auction. You could not own them, but why not see what was to be seen? If I have given offense, you will forgive me. You are giving offense here and now, making these outlandish presumptions as to my motives. I have none, but for a fellowship of knowledge. You…even your ladies…possess knowledge I do not regarding such artifacts. Despite Miss Folley’s earlier accusations against my character, I have no wish to destroy these things, only to understand them, so that we all might benefit. You presume because of my connections—connections severed by the grave. Howard Irving is well and truly dead, is he not? My allegiance to the man was not so deep, Mallory.”
The problem, Virgil decided, was that it sounded entirely reasonable. Much as Irving’s own conversations had always contained an edge of reason, a cloak of respectability. This was the trick, ensuring that everything did appear reasonable, even logical on the surface. Given Pettigrew’s interactions with Irving, it wasn’t a surprise Pettigrew might know them. Given their failed bids at the auction, it was also not a surprise that the winner might invite them to the unwrapping, to at least partake in some of the excitement.
But on another level, the level that involved baiting Eleanor by using Cleo, Virgil was more disturbed than he would admit to Pettigrew. This was a level that didn’t speak of logic at all; it was primal, as if Pettigrew knew exactly how a beast would react. Would Irving have told others about Virgil’s affliction? Virgil rather hoped not, but also could not say. Despite the man having been his father by marriage, he did not know. Irving’s inner circle had likely known, but Pettigrew claimed no such close ties.
This too was a thing easily glossed over or denied.
Still, Virgil nodded and did not press. “You will forgive us our suspicions,” he said, and nodded toward Cleo. “When one witnesses a friend collapsing into a heap after daring to have tasted…was it honey?…from a sealed sarcophagus… It is outside the realm of normalcy, Mister Pettigrew. Given that you extended the challenge…”
Pettigrew inclined his own head, folding his hands together. “Showmanship for the crowd, yes? My parties have become something of a legend in Alexandria, if I so say so myself. The people expect a certain amount of flourish and fancy.”
“It isn’t enough that you have ancient mummies to unwrap?” Auberon asked.
Pettigrew laughed, the sound of a dandy rather than a polished gentleman. “Oh gracious no. Not now. If one knows where to look, one can find mummy unwrappings in any corner of the city. It’s become quite a business, Mister Auberon. Why, just last week there was a mummy bonfire, and the week before, they were launching burning mummies into the night sky upon balloons.”
Virgil did not miss the expression on Eleanor’s face; it was hard to ignore the fury that simmered there. Still, she did not launch herself at Pettigrew, possibly mindful that now would be a poor time to tackle him to the floor and chew on his neck until he grew silent. Eleanor turned her furious gaze to Cleo’s injured temple, but Virgil had no doubt she was paying just as much attention to the conversation at hand.
“So you need to ensure your spectacle is at least as impressive,” Virgil said.
“Spectacle—did you find it to be such?” Pettigrew exhaled and made quite a show of loosening his necktie. His fingers stroked over the jet tiepin and held it a moment, before he continued. “It is exhausting, I will have you know. I try to be responsible with the artifacts I obtain, keeping them so they aren’t launched into the air or set on fire. Can you imagine the losses Egypt has already incurred based on such vile actions? It sickens me, absolutely sickens me. No, I much prefer to open the sarcophagi with some semblance of control and order, so that we might learn. Isn’t that why we love Egypt—she has so much to teach us.” Pettigrew’s eyes moved back to Eleanor and Cleo. “The past holds court here, despite the march of years. I would know every secret buried in that past, yes I would. Surely none would find fault with that.”
Eleanor’s chin came up and Virgil could see by the way she held herself—her shoulders back, her spine straight—that she was making every effort to not unleash herself upon Pettigrew, who implied he knew more than he should with the words he spoke.
“Only with your methods, Mister Pettigrew,” she said.
At this, Pettigrew bowed slightly from the waist. “Forgive my offense, and also that I have other guests who require my attention. You are welcome to remain here as long as you will—my home should be considered your own. If you would excuse me.” With that, Pettigrew took his leave of the room, and Auberon closed the door behind him, taking up his post once more.
“I dislike that man.” His gaze settled heavily upon Cleo, who pressed her mechanical fingers against her temple.
“When you are able, we will go,” Eleanor said to her.
This idea, however, didn’t sit well with Cleo, who tensed. Virgil watched her, wanting to question her at length, but he remained mindful of her injury.
“How are you?” he asked her.
“Off balance,” Cleo snapped and drew away from Eleanor when she made to look again at her injured temple. “I will be fine, it’s only that…”
She did not say what it was, however, and no one in the room pressed. Eleanor removed herself from Cleo’s side, crossing toward Virgil. He couldn’t read all the unsaid things upon her face and within her eyes, but he could see that she very much wanted to run. Wanted to drop her human form and bolt into the night. He knew the inclination all too well; he likened it to the relationship he kept with opium. It was a splendid escape.
“Why would an Egyptian sarcophagus hold honey?” Virgil asked her in a low tone.
Eleanor shook her head, a tendril of loose dark hair catching against the collar of her jacket. Virgil congratulated himself on not reaching out to draw it free; this touch would lead to others and he was not so strong in the wake of the confrontation with Pettigrew.
“Only one reason comes to mind,” Eleanor said, “but it’s…a legend only. I’ve only ever seen reference to it in a handful of scattered, written works. Mummies have been used for a variety of things—kindling, ink, but many also regard them as medicine. There was a belief that a substance such as honey could be…transformed, but…”
The way she trailed off, her mouth curling in a sneer, made Virgil wonder. “Well this should be tremendous.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes, but managed a smile. “It was said that to make a honey mummy, one began when the body was still alive. You started with an older person who consented to the process—of eating only honey, until it oozed from their body and eventually killed them. They were then sealed into a sarcophagus, where they oozed and…steeped.”
“The way one might tea?” Auberon asked.
“Not too terribly different, I suppose,” Eleanor allowed, “but we’re talking for hundreds of years. A very strong and insistent …tea.”
“And what was this honey said to do?” Virgil asked. “You mentioned medicine.”
“Using the human body as presumed medicine isn’t entirely new,” Auberon said. “I’ve read accounts of the livers and hearts of gladiators being eaten, their very blood being consumed for the benefit believed contained therein.”
Eleanor nodded. “And honey is well suited to long term storage. This particular confection was said to cure a variety of ills, anything from broken limbs to sealing open wounds. Restoring a man’s…vitality. One account said a woman who could not bear children had a dozen after enjoying the honey upon her morning bread for a year.
These sarcophagi date from the Ptolemaic era—though it is possible they have been repurposed. We have no idea if there is a body within the honey, or from when that body dates.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Virgil said, “given the apparent generosity and curiously innocent exploratory nature of our host.” He was proud that he didn’t roll his eyes or sneer; so very proud, the way Eleanor must’ve been when she hadn’t taken Pettigrew by the throat earlier. “We ask to conduct a few tests.”
* * *
Eleanor, we need to talk.
They weren’t the words she wanted to hear, even if she knew they were true. And so instead of talking to Mallory like the adults they both were, she fled the hotel, taking a carriage west, beyond the edge of the city and apparent civilization, where the driver raised an eyebrow, but still left her, considering what she paid him. Here, she neatly stripped her clothes off, folded them into a pile behind a rock, and ran.
She ran and poured the anger and fear and tension into the conversion of forms. She was tired of being afraid of the jackal, afraid of the pain that came when her body shifted from one to the other. She ran until the sand under her feet was sand under her paws, until she could dig her claws into the loose earth, and forget everything other than the way her heart thrummed in her chest.
Even before she picked the scent of the wolf out of the desert air she knew that running away didn’t solve anything. She knew that eventually, she would shift back to her human form, would put her clothes back on, and have to speak with him. Running was a temporary reprieve from everything she wanted to ignore: the rings, Cleo’s strange behavior, and the way Pettigrew watched them all. But mostly, the rings.
They will carry you away.
Eleanor didn’t want to be carried—she wanted to stay grounded in the here and the now. She wanted to catalogue Mistral’s Paris archive and not have anything legendary or suspicious come to the fore. She wanted to wander Egypt until she knew its every corner. She wanted to do the work she had studied to do; she wanted to be only an archaeologist. Even this word tasted ironic, in this form where she had paws and not hands.
But she also wanted, very much, to feel the rings around her fingers, to know their weight and discover whatever power they held. To see if she could control it.
Mallory’s wolf form emerged from a stand of rocks at full run. He was so fast, he constantly amazed Eleanor. Not clumsy or timid, but sleek despite his size, able to maneuver that large body any way he liked. His fur shone in the rising moonlight, every shade of gold bound into a cloak of black. His eyes narrowed on her as if she were a squirrel, and he lunged. Eleanor leapt; long-legged and lean, she went right over his head, bounding away deeper into rocks and sand. He followed.
There was a snarl and it was not a warning sound, but one of outright anger. He was right to be angry, she knew; fear spurred the anger she would use the rings, the anger that the rings represented something she could not control, something that Anubis knew and would not yet reveal. Mallory’s mouth snapped warmly near her tail and she dug her paws deeper into the sand, forcing herself to run. Her mouth gaped open, breath strained, and three paces later, he caught her.
He leaped and landed on her from behind, forcing her down into the sand. Sand sprayed everywhere as they went down; Eleanor tried to dig her paws in, but with Mallory’s weight behind her, she could not. She did the only thing she could think of; she let her jackal form bleed away. No longer was she a small jackal pinned beneath an angry wolf, but a naked woman, with arms and legs she could better control. She turned in his rough hold, grasping his muzzle in one strong hand. Astonishment washed over even his wolf face. He had not expected that, nor did she when he also changed, her hand suddenly clasping his face and no longer his wolfish nose.
“Eleanor. Goddamn it.”
As soon as the curse was out—such a curse he was not often given to, given his Catholic upbringing and nature—his mouth covered hers. It was more than fear and more than desperation; this hunger was always ever there, just beneath the surface the way their animal forms were.
Eleanor dug her hands into Mallory’s hair the same way he did hers, as if to not hold on meant drowning. She was painfully aware of the length of his naked body against hers, but more aware of the way the sand slid around them; their animal forms had left a trench after their slide, and the sand began to slide into the worst places, between toes and legs.
Mallory pulled his mouth from Eleanor’s and hauled her out of the sand. It cascaded around them like warm rain and she shuddered, aroused and disgusted both. When she looked at Mallory’s face, she was surprised at how pale he was.
“Mallory—”
“I will not take you in the desert like some rutting beast,” he whispered.
It called to mind earlier encounters, where despite his apparent acceptance of his wolf, he still struggled to control this aspect of the animal, the wants of an animal mind, coupled with the wants of a human mind. Eleanor brushed her hands over his shoulders and down his chest, removing the sand that clung to him yet. She was mindful of the way the grit cascaded from him to the ground, to sprinkle over her own bare feet.
“You aren’t, unless I also am,” she said softly. She drew her hand back up, to let it rest atop his heartbeat. “I’m sorry we argued, Virgil, but I cannot lie—I wonder what those rings would feel like on my fingers. I wonder what they might do, where they might take me.” Her eyes met his. “And I would go.”
Mallory’s hand covered hers, warm and large and still gritty with sand. “If you intend to discover what Anubis means about those rings… They aren’t carrying you anywhere without me.”
Though she no longer possessed fur, she seemed to feel its bristle even so. “You don’t trust me—”
“I don’t trust him.”
But even as Mallory clarified, Eleanor pulled away. If she was of Anubis, of those he considered children, wasn’t it the same thing? It was made worse by the idea that part of her wanted to try the rings. That she would go.
In silence they walked back to the pile of her clothes and then to the pile of his, and dressed in companionable silence, Mallory helping when it came to the laces that bound Eleanor properly into her clothes, Eleanor helping him smooth his necktie into something that didn’t look assembled by wolfish hands. Unlike Eleanor, Mallory had not sent his driver back to the city, but had him wait, and Eleanor thanked him for this foresight as they climbed into the carriage. The ride was too long and not long enough, she decided, resting her head against his broad shoulder, exhaustion pulling her down and down.
Chapter Seven
June 1887 – Alexandria, Egypt
A small parcel, postmarked Paris, France; wrapped in brown paper and string. Contents: one pair of leather elbow-length gloves, brown in color. Each glove sports twelve buttons up the side, but they are constructed with hidden self-lacing, allowing one to simply pull a single lace to tighten.
A small note enclosed:
Miss Barclay, I hope these are to your satisfaction. –A.
* * *
“Have you seen him again?”
Eleanor drew her gaze from the exuberant house of George Pettigrew, to Cleo who waited with her at the front doors. Cleo looked well rested. The bruise on her temple was covered by her hair, which was determined to stay puffed into soft black clouds thanks to the Alexandrian humidity. Eleanor could have asked who she meant, but didn’t. She knew.
“Only on this door,” Eleanor said and nodded to the relief work of Anubis carved in the wood. He was well-rendered, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was meant to be wearing a modern-day necktie, or if the lazy line around his neck represented something else. “Anubis hasn’t returned to my knowledge.” She shifted the parcels she held and hoped Pettigrew would answer their knock soon. At least they were shaded, albeit beneath the vibrant blue wings of Nut above them. “Cleo, about the unwrapping. When you tasted the honey…”
At the look that crossed Cleo’s face, Eleanor bro
ke off. Normally, Cleo’s face was open, to all those around her and the possibilities. Cleo was not a person who shunned knowledge even if it contained revelations that would change her own outlook and beliefs; she was an archaeologist and a scientist who enjoyed learning all there was to learn, but something had brought about a change in her. Eleanor no longer found that openness, but a wall where there had once been a door opening toward all things.
“It wasn’t…” Cleo shook her head and eyed Eleanor over the stack of parcels she carried. “It didn’t taste like mummy, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Cleo’s nose wrinkled. “Ordinary honey. I blame the fainting on not sleeping well the night before.”
If this was the story Cleo was selling to the world, Eleanor remained suspicious. She supposed that came with her job; she was well used to breaking a thing open to peer inside at the actual truth. Cleo’s story was too simple. Why had she been so drawn in by Pettigrew? Why had Pettigrew played them the way he had? Eleanor could take nothing at face value.
It was none other than Pettigrew himself who eventually answered the door, looking sharp as ever in his black suit and pristine white shirt and necktie. The bit of jet that secured his tie winked at Eleanor as it caught the sunlight.
“Ladies, a pleasure,” he said and held the door open so that they could enter. “I would offer to take your parcels, but would be horrified if I mishandled any of them.”
The interior of the house was as cool as a tomb and Eleanor was thankful for it. Pettigrew had agreed to allow them complete access to the sarcophagus containing the honey, but refused to let it off the premises. Eleanor supposed she would be proprietary were the sarcophagus in her possession, too. She had already given up her new collection of rings that morning, albeit with reluctance; Mallory and Auberon were to see what they could learn of them with the help of Mistral’s local geologists, while she and Cleo surveyed the honey mummy, as she had taken to calling it. She wasn’t even certain there was a body within the sarcophagus, though she would wager money there was.
The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Page 9