Crescent Moon

by Delilah Devlin

  Faith would be an important part of this investigation, and Juste had none. Not in her. Certainly, not in himself.

  Disappointment was bitter, but then she reminded herself she couldn’t entirely give up on the man. Amun had given her a sign. One she should heed. Juste was someone important, someone she had to keep close. While her hurt feelings made her wish she didn’t have to spend quite so much time in his company, because she would have liked to lick her wounds, this was where she had to be.

  In the museum, anyway. “Must I stay through the other interviews?”

  Juste glanced up. “I need to know if anyone has seen you before.”

  We all have needs, she thought snidely. “I’ve told you, no one here could have seen me.”

  “These folks dug the missing artifacts out of a cave near Thebes.”

  “And you don’t believe I was what they uncovered.” She gave a dismissive wave.

  “There’s no way you could have survived that long in those rags. They found you months ago.”

  Weary again, she smiled. “If they’d unwrapped me when they found me, I’d have been the wizened husk one would expect.”

  Juste shook his head. “Yeah, let’s just wait and see if any of them know you.” He pointed toward her ring. “Haddara asked you about that. Did he recognize it?”

  “He did.” He’d also read the inscription on the “rags” and understood enough of their meaning to know what the vizier had believed he’d set in motion. Haddara had asked her point blank how she’d come by the ring.

  “It was in my wrappings. Along with the headrest near my neck, the heart scarab atop my chest, the golden ankh, the double ba bird, the blade in my hand, and the scarab on my tongue.” She’d seen no reason to hide the truth.

  Haddara had gazed into her eyes and she’d let him in, sending him a wash of warmth he’d been open to receive. His eyes had closed for a moment, and when he’s opened them again, there had been awe shining in the black depths. “Khepri, I presume?” he’d whispered.

  At the sound of her name on his lips, she froze. “Are you in league with the nameless one?”

  “I am your protector.” He’d touched his forehead and dipped his head.

  Without question, she’d accepted his proclamation. Trust had felt right and fully intact from that first moment.

  Something she knew Juste would never understand or give so easily.

  “Khepri, what else did Haddara say?”

  “That he was my protector.” There’d been more, but she didn’t see a need to share everything with someone who didn’t believe.

  “You have one of those already.”

  “Do I?” Her gaze slid away. “I wish to see the naos.”

  “I’ll take you when we’re finished.”

  The tenseness in his tone raised the hairs on her neck. “I’d like to go now.”

  A muscle along the edge of his jaw spasmed like a tic. He set down the writing instrument and glanced at his wrist. “Can you hold off the interviews for a while?” he asked, his question clearly for Michael.

  “I’ll tell them we need a break,” Michael said, his eyebrows rising. “Have them back in forty-five?”

  Juste nodded and stood. He walked toward the door without glancing back.

  His action was somehow insulting, she knew, but she rose without complaint, following him out the door.

  Down the hallway, a woman sat behind a table, glancing up when Juste neared. “Can I help you, detective?”

  Facing the woman, he dug into the pocket in the back of his pants and pulled out the colorful paper he’d shown Khepri the night before. He pointed at the shrine. “Where can I find this?”

  “Give me just a moment. I know they’ve been unpacking, but I’m not sure which hall this one’s in.”

  She used her cell phone to call someone, then gave Juste a quick, polite smile. “It’s in Turney Hall.” She reached for another paper, circled an item, and pointed to her left. “You’re here, you can follow—”

  “I’ll find it, thanks.”

  Khepri nearly let out a grin as the woman’s smile froze on her face. She was pretty in a pale washed-out sort of way, like the slaves from the north—large and brutish and pale as sandstone with faded blue eyes.

  Khepri skipped to keep pace with Juste’s long strides. If he was punishing her for something, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her pant. Besides, she missed her lessons with the old man from the East, which had left her sore and breathless. He’d insisted on her walking briskly, even running in the silt beside the river to strengthen her lungs and legs. As tiny as he was, he’d made her gasp trying to keep up with his quick strides. Juste’s long gait wasn’t nearly as grueling.

  They passed one corridor, then another, each filled with color and lit with natural light through tall glass windows. The glass was without ripple or discoloration, stunningly perfect, as interesting to her as the pretty objects scattered on the walls and atop tall dark blocks with lamps shining more light downward.

  Her gaze wanted to linger, to appreciate what she hurried past. Then she heard it, a soft humming, like the temple singer’s pretty chorus as she danced between the tall columns. Khepri felt emotion well, tightening her chest, and she picked up her pace, rushing past Juste to follow the sound.

  In an unframed doorway, she halted. The music had stopped. Silence descended, muffled as though passing through thick balls of wadded cotton. She couldn’t hear her steps. Nor Juste’s behind her. How odd. Her gaze locked on an object, sitting in the midst of bits of trash, its white stone having lost its luster and all its sharply defined edges—but it was still recognizable, as was the figure seated beneath its short roof with his plumed hat and golden ankh in his hand. Never mind the gold had long since rubbed off the statue. It’s mate was in her pocket.

  In a slow descent, she went down on her knees in front of the shrine, wishing she had water to bathe with, incense to burn. In truth, she was too eager to seek counsel to care all that much.

  She bent, curling downward, until her upper torso flattened against the floor.

  O Husband, I call to you.

  The rest of her usual incantation made no sense given where she was and her unprepared state.

  Husband, so far have I journeyed. So long have I slept.

  Praise to you, praise to the gods of the Duat,

  Pray forgiveness for the false tears I wept.

  The hour approaches. I feel the urgency build,

  Show me the way. Show me your will.

  So shall it be done.

  Khepri kept her eyes closed, her mind open. For a moment, she felt nothing, and then the ground beneath her tilted. Next, a blow like a large, blunt fist hit her between her shoulder blades. Breath was forced out, her eyes bulged open, and from the edge of her vision, she saw Juste rush forward, sliding on his knees on the marble floor beside her.

  He shouted—she knew this because his lips moved and his face was red—but she couldn’t hear him. With a rending sound, her soul peeled away from her body, and her ba rose, flying above the quickly bluing body cuddled against a large solid chest.

  Right wing dipping, she glanced down once as she turned, shocked to find a piercing blue gaze following her as she swept away, flying just beneath the ceiling, then ducking beneath the doorway lintel and out into the corridor. Without a river’s edge to guide her, she followed the hint of a natural breeze, then a sudden glint of light through another hallway, then out a window.

  Sunshine drew her upward, sparkling on the dark water of a canal below. She flew downward, dipping her beak into the water, then rising again. Free, light as her hollow bones, carefree. Careless. Until she saw the dark shadow beneath the surface of the water. Long and sinuous, moving like a thick snake, but she knew what it was.

  Who it was. “Sobek!” she wheezed, opening her eyes, shocked to find Juste’s hands pressing down hard on her chest.

  “Jesus, fuck!” he said, sweeping his hands beneath her to hug
her close again.

  Sounds were everywhere—his ragged breaths, shouts from the hallway, feet rushing closer—telling her what had happened and what he’d thought. But there wasn’t time. “Sobek!” she gasped again.

  His strong hold eased and he brushed her hair from her face. His expression was ashen, his eyes welling with moisture. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  He’d been afraid. She smiled, knowing that was a promise she’d never make. “My soul left. My body expired. For just a moment, Justin. It’s a risk I willingly take for the gifts I receive.”

  “No gift’s worth that. You scared the ever-lovin’ crap outta me.”

  “She said something when she woke,” came a quiet voice from the doorway.

  Khepri tried to push away from Juste’s chest, but he didn’t relinquish his hold. She turned her head and met Haddara’s gaze.

  His eyebrows were raised and his dark eyes widened.

  “I said Sobek. He is in the canal.”

  “Sobek himself?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. But he’s enormous. Larger than the crocodiles that bask on the great river’s banks.”

  “She got that right,” Michael said as he strode inside, holding a cell phone to his ear. “A gator just snatched a woman. She and her boyfriend were havin’ a picnic on the grass ‘side Bayou St. John. Picked her up like she weighed nothin’. They think he’s now in City Park.”

  “The woman?” Juste asked.

  Brows wrinkling, Mikey shook his head. “What’s this got to do with our girl?”

  “Don’t know, but she saw it. She stopped breathin’ and the next minute she’s screamin’ about a so-bick.”

  Haddara sniffed. “An Egyptian God, his animal guise is that of a crocodile.”

  Mikey cleared his throat and waved his mike. “’Bout that. Everyone’s sayin’ they think it’s someone’s escaped pet, ‘cause there ain’t no crocodiles down here.”

  Juste’s gaze dropped to hers.

  And she saw it in his eyes, that first glimmer of belief. Warmth suffused her chest.

  “I’m goin’ to lunch,” Juste said, not raising his gaze. “Gonna have to be a table for three.” His words were rough and raspy.

  With the loud statement, she knew he addressed his partner. But the low-pitched ones made her shiver as she remembered hoarse whispers of the night before. “Haddara won’t mind.”

  A throat cleared near them, and she angled her head to look beyond Juste’s shoulder.

  Haddara smiled. “Looks as though you have two protectors, Mistress.”

  At the renewed tightening of Juste’s arms, she gave him what she knew he needed, reassurance that what they were beginning to feel for one another was real. She leaned upward and kissed him.

  Episode Five

  Part V – Message in the Dark

  Chapter Seventeen

  All throughout lunch, Juste kept his gaze on Khepri. Though aware he was acting like a Nervous Nelly, he couldn’t shake off the insistent urge to hover. She’d scared him. When she’d slumped to the museum floor and began turning blue, his heart had nearly burst out of his chest. His heart hadn’t beat right since.

  Now that she no longer looked like a corpse, the thing that burned through his mind most was the fact she’d kissed him—in front of God and everyone else. When he’d passed Mikey at the doorway, he’d aimed a glare at Mikey because his partner’s lips were pursed around a silent whistle. Haddara, once his dark eyebrows had lowered again, kept his disapproval carefully hidden, although Juste got the distinct feeling the other man didn’t think he was anywhere near her league. During the ride to the restaurant and as they’d waited for a table, the air of deference the other man exuded, the breathless anticipation of her every need, made Juste feel just a little unsettled, like he was missing something important.

  Khepri was just a woman—a beautiful one, but one he had every right to pursue—if he wasn’t in the middle of an investigation, and if he hadn’t found her at the scene of the robbery.

  Which had happened just yesterday.

  That thought gave him pause. So much had changed since then. He’d spent twenty-four hours barely thinking about Bobby’s death and his own role in that botched operation. He’d met a mysterious woman who might be Egyptian, might be in cahoots with thieves who had burgled a museum, and he’d slept with her. No, he’d barely slept. He’d been all over her, a suspect, a line he’d never crossed, never thought he’d be tempted to cross—but damned if he’d have done anything differently.

  And after what he thought he’d seen in the museum—a light-filled, bird-shaped “essence” pulling away from her supple back—he thought she might be more than just the god’s wife, as she’d called herself. He thought she might be a goddess herself. Something he dismissed automatically, because he didn’t believe in God, much less a host of them.

  Now, there was a monster in a canal running through New Orleans. Something connected with her and this crazy-ass crime that he’d never cared about but which seemed more and more sinister at every turn. Juste wasn’t superstitious, didn’t put a lot of credence into intuition, but the weird, magical vibe he’d been getting all along was growing too insistent to ignore.

  For the ten minutes since their meals had arrived at their sidewalk table at a popular Creole restaurant, he’d been doing his best to get his frayed nerves and knotted belly back under control.

  Juste took a deep breath and swung his gaze to Haddara. “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about. I don’t believe for a minute you wanted Dr. Dorman to interpret the inscriptions on your mummies. Seems like you could read ’em just fine.”

  “You are perceptive,” Haddara said, nodding. “I can read the ancient text. I needed the bodies removed from the region. I thought that taking the nameless one from his surroundings would lessen the chances of something terrible happening. Just as Khepri draws power from the naos, he could draw power from the sand, the Nile, and the blood of the descendents of those who followed him in the past.”

  Juste shook his head. “You know you’re talkin’ about a fuckin’ mummy.” He glanced at Khepri and grimaced. His foster mom had taught him better than to curse in front of a lady.

  Haddara’s mouth curved. “I am not a mystic. I believe in Allah and thought the beings that existed in my country’s traditions were fantasies, perhaps morality tales.”

  “Somethin’ happen that changed your mind?”

  Haddara’s gaze veered away, his expression tightening. “I was responsible for the security surrounding the summer digs. The year they uncovered Amun’s shrine, rain fell for a month.” The corners of his eyes crinkled up in laughter. “If you knew the region, you would understand that rain falling for a month has implications—biblical in scale. There were worried murmurs from the villagers, and then an old Coptic priest appeared on the sheik’s doorstep one day, warning of a terrible storm.

  “We laughed at his timing. The storm had already arrived. But he warned that the nameless one would soon rise. And when he did, he would annihilate all who had turned from him. The sheik owns a formidable library and is a student of mythology. He found reference to one of the scorpion kings, one who had been denied a proper tomb, who was so feared that a warrior accompanied him into the Duat—”

  “The Land of the Dead,” Khepri whispered beside him, then bent her head to clumsily use her fork to tear away another sliver of chicken.

  “I know what it is,” Juste muttered. “Your hell.”

  “Not mine,” Haddara said, “but certainly the nameless Pharaoh’s. And then the archeologist’s team found the cave.”

  Khepri drew his attention, by stabbing her chicken again. He realized she didn’t know how to use her fork. Juste leaned toward her. “Told you, you should have eaten the gumbo,” he said, waving his spoon.

  She glared. “You said the okra was slimy and the dish spicy.”

  He held out his spoon, which she grabbed. They scooted dinnerware to exchange dishes.r />
  At the clearing of a throat, Juste glanced up to find Haddara watching their interplay—and likely guessing correctly at how intimate they’d become. What was sharing a spoon? She’d used his toothbrush.

  “The other mummy was a pharaoh.” Juste barely contained a grimace. All this talk about mummies and myths didn’t sit well with him. It all sounded like a bunch of crap, but he still had questions he needed answered. “How’s she fit in all of this?” he said, pointing his fork at Khepri.

  Haddara leaned over the table. “First, tell me how you found her.”

  Since, in his gut, he knew Haddara wasn’t involved in the robbery, he said, “I found her swaddled like you’d expect any mummy, with the same characters painted on her as in the picture you gave me.”

  Haddara took a deep breath and leaned back. Again, he wore that same expression he had when he’d first met Khepri—a peaceful wonder that relaxed his otherwise closed features. “Where?”

  “In another crate, hidden away in the back.”

  “And you freed her?”

  “She was suffocatin’.”

  Khepri’s free hand slid into the one he rested on his knee, and he glanced sideways, finding her golden gaze resting steady on him. Even simple touches, shared glances, affected him. In the past, he’d have felt as though a noose was tightening around his neck, and the urge to escape would have him putting distance between them before such intimacies grew, but not this time. With this woman, every gesture, every look, drew him closer.

  “Justin Henry Boucher was meant to find me, Mr. Haddara. Our meeting was destined.”

  Juste swallowed and squeezed her hand. “What the hell happened back there at the shrine? I thought … I saw something.”

  The corners of her mouth curled upward. “What did you see?”

  Juste’s cheeks grew hot. Saying it out loud made it sound even more ludicrous. “I saw something shoot out of your back.”

  She smiled. “You saw it? No one ever has before. You must have some talent for magic or you would never have detected it.”