by Zoe Ashwood
“Never again,” Isak mutters as he takes a fresh bottle of water from his backpack. “I won’t even drive my car through a tunnel if I can avoid it.”
I laugh—because laughing feels good. We’re free and we escaped that monster of a god, and whatever happens here is no longer our problem.
Isak stares at me, his sun-pinkened cheeks turning a deeper shade of red. Then he shakes his head as though to clear it, opens the bottle, pours half the water over his head, and drinks the rest. Since he doesn’t offer it to us, I’m assuming it’s the same weird saltwater I tasted earlier, and I really want to know what’s going on there.
“We should call Aya,” Raphaël says. “Arrange for a pick up somewhere closer to Luxor.”
I turn to where the sun is already touching the top of the hills surrounding this valley. In an hour, dusk will fall, and soon, we’ll be caught in the middle of the desert without shelter. Not a huge issue, since the temperatures didn’t drop too low last night, but we’re out of water, and I could really use a shower right about now. Returning to our car is out of the question—we’re all too exhausted to stumble through the desert for two hours. I’m a sweaty, bruised, dirty mess, and my entire body aches.
Isak folds his massive arms over his chest. “I can take you to Luxor.”
Raphaël pauses with his phone in his hand. “You’re sure?”
The big Icelander shrugs. “Yes. I’m headed toward the big river anyway.”
A flicker of some strange emotion passes over his face, so fast I don’t quite catch it. Eagerness, maybe, or anticipation.
Levi opens his mouth as though to question him further, but I squeeze his fingers to stop him. Isak is offering us a ride, and I’m not too proud to take it, even if he is technically our competitor.
“That would be great, thank you,” I say. “But where’s your car?”
The smirk that plays on Isak’s lips is sexy as hell. He faces the rocky wall opposite the tomb door, and after a moment, I realize two ropes are hanging from the top. I blink, then study Isak. Over his cargo shorts, he’s wearing a simple climbing harness.
“I’ll climb up and meet you at the mouth of the valley. Wait for me there.” He pauses, then throws me a serious glare over his shoulder. “Don’t get blown up.”
And he’s off. He clips himself to the rope and climbs up the wall with ease, his shoulders bunching and his legs pushing him upward. For a moment, I just stare at him—it’s hard to look away.
Then I shake myself and turn back to Levi and Raphaël. “Well, we better get going.”
Levi grumbles but puts himself at the front of our little group. “Just stay behind me. I’m going to try and retrace our steps from earlier so I don’t have to keep scanning for curses.”
It takes us almost twenty minutes of slow shuffling to find our way back to the open desert plains. The sun has set, and the sky is turning indigo in the east. Venus appears in the west, brighter than any of the stars. But they’re coming out, too, a sprinkling of magic dust in the darkness, greeting us after our ordeal.
“Do you think Einarsson is going to leave us here?” Levi asks, his voice betraying his exhaustion.
“No,” I reply with certainty.
I don’t know why, but Isak seems like an honorable man to me. Yes, he’d tried to scare me away from the competition back in Scotland, and I’d taken him for a prick who wanted to eliminate his rivals before the event even started. But now that we’ve gone through the first of the challenges, I suspect he was right to warn me. Maybe he knows more about the Scottish coven and about the games than we do.
Minutes later, headlights appear in the distance. The roar of a powerful engine comes next, disturbing the peaceful quiet of the desert. When Isak’s truck comes to a stop in front of us, I let out a giggle—the car fits the man perfectly, with its large wheels and massive shape. Without waiting for Isak to cut the engine, Levi opens the back door and gives me a hand so I can climb inside. Raphaël takes the passenger seat, and we set off into the night.
“Check in the back,” Isak says. “The idiot might have left some water there.”
The idiot must be the mercenary who’d held him at gunpoint. I bet the story of how they came to work together is intriguing, but I’m much more interested in the bottle of water that Levi unearths from a pack. He passes it to me first, and I take several big gulps before returning it to him. I want to pour it over my head like Isak did earlier, but we all need to drink. Even Raphaël accepts some to rinse his mouth.
I lean forward to plug my phone into the car’s charger and catch a whiff of Isak’s scent. Even after a day in the desert, he doesn’t smell bad, which is just unfair. Resisting the urge to sniff at him like a creep, I lean back and twine my fingers with Levi’s. He gives me a tired smile, barely visible in the darkness, and leans his head back.
All the while, the big wheels rumble over the sand and rocks, taking us closer to the river Nile. I don’t ask Isak how he knows where he’s going. He doesn’t have a GPS on, and he drives calmly, like he’s been here before and has learned the route by heart. Raphaël doesn’t comment either, and his frown gradually relaxes.
The rocking of the vehicle and the exhaustion soon pull me under, and I give in to sleep, my fingers tangled with Levi’s.
Thirty-Four
Nora
I wake up as the car stops at a streetlight. Blinking in confusion, I stare at the green fields surrounding us. We’re in a village of some sort, but the streets are quiet, with barely any traffic around. Glancing over at Levi, I find him passed out cold, so I resist the urge to curl up to him and celebrate the fact that we’re all still alive.
In the front seats, Isak and Raphaël sit still as statues, their faces betraying no emotion. I wonder whether they’d talked during the long drive or just remained quiet and mysterious. The image has me smiling, so I lean over to tap Raphaël on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he says, his handsome features lighting up in a grin. “You’re awake.”
“Where are we?” I ask, peering through the windscreen.
“We’re nearing the river,” he replies.
Isak spares me a glance, then focuses back on the road. “I’m dropping you off near the ferry landing on the other side of Luxor,” he says. “From there, you’ll be able to find a ride or a hotel or…”
He trails off, gripping the wheel tighter. A pang of unexpected sadness goes through me at the thought of parting ways with him. He’d helped save me from the tomb, and now it feels strange to let him go.
But he’s in this competition for reasons different than mine, and we can’t both win.
I reach inside myself to check on the well of my magic. It’s definitely not fully recovered, but there might be enough for one very small enchantment. Biting my lip and feeling guilty as hell, I concentrate hard and put a tiny tracking spell on Isak. I don’t even need to touch him, just leave a trace of my magic on him so I’ll be able to track him later like I did with Raphaël.
Isak meets my gaze in the rearview mirror, and I glance away quickly before he can realize I’m being shifty. This is just a precaution. There’s no saying that he even picked the same locations as us, so I’m likely worrying over nothing. If that turns out to be true, I’ll remove the tracker as soon as we collect our third token.
Remembering the obsidian scarab I collected from the temple, I reach down for my backpack and take it out. In the orange glow of the streetlights, it glimmers, beautiful and expertly carved. Not a single chink mars its perfect symmetry. I send a pulse of magic into it, but it doesn’t reveal any trace of a spell. Before we fly out tomorrow, I’ll have Levi inspect it, too, just in case it’s hiding something nasty inside.
I settle against the backseat, fidgeting with the beetle. The question I’ll have to address with Levi—and Raphaël to some degree—is whether we want to win at all now that we know how dangerous this game really is. Levi only went along with this adventure because of me in the first place, and Raphaël… W
ell, I owe Raphaël a spell, and if I don’t win this thing, I’ll just have to look elsewhere to find it.
The closer we get to the riverfront, the more crowded the streets are. It’s a warm summer night, just past eleven p.m., and tourists still wander around, gawking at shops and stopping at cafés for cold drinks. There’s even an amusement park, lit up and playing loud, jangling music that filters into the car.
Then we’re at the ferry dock, where dozens of passenger boats are parked for the night, crowding against the piers. Only a couple of watercraft are still out on the wide river. On the other side, over the glittering water, stand yellow-lit pillars of one of the most famous temples in the world, the Luxor Temple complex. A tall obelisk juts into the sky, a spear pointed toward the heavens.
Instead of filling me with awe, the view has me shuddering. Now that I’ve seen the reality of the god, Set, I’m not too keen to go exploring the Ancient Egyptian sacred spaces. Maybe after this race is complete, I will have calmed down enough to return here as a tourist.
Levi groans, and I gently nudge his arm to wake him up. He blinks at me with sleepy green eyes, then a slow grin stretches his full lips as he realizes it’s me. Something flips inside my belly, warm and exciting. I will never get tired of him looking at me like that. Ever.
How we could have lived together for years without figuring this thing out is beyond me. But we’re smarter now. No more secrets, and no more pretending.
The car rolls to a stop in a parking lot. I throw open the door on my side, and the warm night air envelops me, carrying along the scent of the river, murky and swampy. Palm trees sway in a gentle breeze. The chatter of people surrounding us is so damn welcome after the complete isolation of the desert.
“You know what I really want?” Levi asks, slinging an arm around my shoulder.
I press a quick kiss to the underside of his strong jaw. “What?”
“A shower.”
Raphaël snorts. “You need it, too. You both do.”
Levi pushes him away with a grin. “If you don’t like stinking mortals, you shouldn’t stand so close to us.”
Isak rummages through his baggage, throwing amused glances our way. A phone rings, and it takes me a moment to figure out it’s mine. I dive back into the car and answer my sister’s video call just in time.
“Nora!” she exclaims. “I’ve been calling you since morning. And I texted. Where were you? Dad’s getting worried.”
Hearing her voice and seeing her pretty face is so good, my throat closes up. “Hey, you,” I choke out. “I was, um… My battery died.”
It’s not a lie, but I still feel pretty shitty about only telling her that.
But Lily narrows her eyes at the screen. “Where are you? Why is it dark? Oh my gods, are you not in Boston?” She turns her head to the side and yells, “Dad, Elliot, come quick! Nora’s on a mission again!”
I groan, cursing myself for not thinking of this. Why did I have to answer the video call? I could have called her back or texted and set her at ease without all this. She holds the phone farther from her face, and suddenly, my brother—Lily’s twin—and Dad are there, waving and grinning at me.
“Where are you, sweetie?” Dad asks, squinting at the screen.
I turn so the camera captures the palm trees behind me. “In Egypt.”
There’s no use in lying. After the competition, I meant to explain everything to them, but I’d hoped to do it when the danger was all over and I could recount the story as a big adventure. How naïve of me that was. Now I’ve realized that if I continue with this game, I might never get to tell them about it. I could die in Iceland. Or in Greece.
“Egypt?” Dad repeats. “Nora, you know what Mom and I told you—”
“Yeah, Dad,” I say to stop his lecture. “I know. But this is an important mission, and it’s done. We’re leaving the country soon.”
“Who’s we?” Lily latches on to my choice of words.
Levi, who has clearly been listening this whole time, steps up to me and presses close so he fits in the screen. “Hi, Lily. Elliot. Mr. Moss.”
“Hey, man.”
My younger brother hero-worships Levi, and a grin replaces his perpetual scowl at the sight of my partner in crime.
“You’re taking good care of Nora, then?” my dad asks in his most Dad-like voice.
Rolling my eyes, I say, “I’m taking care of myself, you know.”
His smile gentles, and he takes off his glasses to rub them on the hem of his button-down shirt. “I know you are. But I’m less worried knowing you have someone to watch your back.”
“Everything’s great here,” Levi says.
He knows better than to tell my family how close to dying we actually came.
“Wait,” Lily says, leaning in. “Why are you filthy? And who’s that behind you?”
I glance back and nearly groan at the sight of Raphaël and Isak who should clearly be hiding somewhere off to the side but are peering into my screen from just a step or two away. After this call, I’ll have to educate them on proper phone etiquette when younger sisters are calling—younger sisters who are way too clever at figuring things out.
“Is that Raphaël?” she hisses, her face transforming in fury. “The guy you dated in college?”
“Nora dated a guy called Raphaël?” Elliot asks in all his standoffish glory. “How old is he? A hundred?”
Raphaël snorts behind me, and I close my eyes, mortified.
“Yeah, she dumped him because of…” She trails off and frowns. “Did you ever tell me what he did?”
I hadn’t—and I’d only told her enough to explain why I was moving in with Levi. If Lily and Raphaël will ever meet, I’ll have to warn her not to hex him. She’s a very protective little sister, and I love her all the more for it.
“I didn’t know Nora dated anyone in college,” Dad says, blinking up at the screen in confusion. “I always thought she liked Levi.”
The guys are now cracking up in earnest. Laughing, Levi presses a quick kiss to my cheek. More heat shoots into my head until I feel like my entire face is glowing. Even Isak covers his snort with his hand, and not one of them is gentleman enough to move away and let me deal with this embarrassment alone.
“And who is that?” Lily asks. “The tall one.”
I’m desperate to shift the focus away from myself, so I sidestep to include Isak in the frame. “A friend we met along the way.”
“I’ll need more details when you return.” She cocks her head to the side. “He’s hot. You can keep him.”
“Can you not?” Elliot turns to her in disgust.
“What?” she says, all innocence.
Isak grumbles something unintelligible under his breath, and I hope he’s not offended by the chaos of my family.
Dad leans forward. “Are you coming home? We’re having dinner together tomorrow before Elliot goes off to summer camp.”
“Oh my gods,” Elliot says in a near-perfect imitation of his twin, “for the hundredth time, it’s not a summer camp, Dad. It’s an internship.”
I want to say yes so badly. But if I want to be the first to bring the three tokens back to Scotland, I can’t afford to fly to Boston and back to Europe again. I’d lose two whole days to travel. Swallowing thickly, I realize I’ve made my decision somewhere along the way. I’m going to stick it out and continue with the mission, regardless of what Levi and Raphaël might do.
“Sorry,” I say. “We’ve got work to do. But soon, I promise.”
He smiles a little sadly and nods. “Take care of yourselves, now.”
I send air kisses to my sister and brother, then disconnect the call. Turning back to the three men, I cross my arms over my chest. “I hope you enjoyed that.”
Levi claps me on the shoulder. “Eh, at least I know now that you’ve always had a thing for me.”
“Shut up,” I say, though without much heat.
“Your family is much more amusing than mine,” Isak says in his softly
accented English. “You’re lucky to have them.”
“I know,” I answer simply, because it’s true.
Suddenly, he takes two long strides forward and grabs my chin with warm fingers, lifting my face. He presses his lips down on mine in a quick, hot kiss. At the same time, he presses something in my hand. He steps back, grinning, then winks at Levi and Raphaël who are both glaring at him.
“Goodbye, Nora,” he says.
Then he jogs straight to the water’s edge and plunges headfirst into the river Nile, fully clothed.
Staring after him, I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
“What the hell was that?” Levi demands. “Are you okay?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” I reply, still tingling from his kiss. “I’m fine.”
Finally, I manage to focus again, and I look down at what he gave me. It’s his car keys. Opening my hand, I show them to Levi and Raphaël.
“Strange,” Raphaël says in a thoughtful voice. “But at least we now have a way of getting back to Cairo.”
I glance at the river once more. “You don’t think he drowned, do you?”
“If he’s dumb enough to jump in without knowing how to swim, that’s his problem,” Levi grumbles. “Come on, let’s find somewhere to clean up.”
There are several small hotels within walking distance, my phone says, so we pick one and check in. It’s not as nice as the one Raphaël booked for us in Cairo, looking more corporate than exotic, but the staff is friendly, and they have ice cream, which I’ll get delivered to our room immediately after my shower. We don’t bother with booking separate rooms, and if the receptionist thinks it’s weird for two men and a woman to share, I bet the hefty tip Raphaël left for her will go a long way toward calming her down.
The moment the door of our room closes behind us, Raphaël pulls me into his arms. He claims my mouth in a desperate kiss, and I wrap my arms around his neck, hungry for him.
