Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “Auberon and Gin know that I killed her, but they don’t know what I suspect of her. They don’t know because I couldn’t prove anything and still I have only bits and pieces, but I hope that you—” He turned back to look at her. “Among the many trips Caroline took, there is one to Morocco. This trip seemed nothing out of the ordinary until I became acquainted with your file. You were there at the same time. You were there with Christian Hubert.”

  “Morocco.” Eleanor lifted a hand to the ring she wore even now, curling her fingers into the fabric of her nightclothes.

  Mallory withdrew a photograph from his jacket and set it on the balcony ledge between them. The wedding photograph showed Mallory with a blond-haired woman, the woman Eleanor remembered from the night flight to the Roman ruin . . . and later. How young and in love Mallory looked in the photograph, his hair neatly and carefully slicked back, eyes gleaming as he held Caroline’s gloved hands within his own.

  “This woman met Christian in Morocco,” she said as she set her whiskey glass down and convinced her hands to stop shaking. “She gave him a ring in the tavern bar. This ring.” She touched a hand to the ring she wore. “Said she knew of a ruin that she would show us. I don’t know how she and Christian knew each other. Maybe you have that answer?” But at Mallory’s quick headshake, she exhaled. “We camped that night in Morocco . . . and I stole the ring from Christian.” Those words still wanted to stick in her throat. “They tried to find me. A month or so later, I was in Port Elizabeth and Caroline tracked me down. She was good. She nearly killed me.”

  How close Caroline had come, Eleanor didn’t want to remember. Caroline, Virgil’s wife. Virgil’s dead wife.

  “I have been trying to reassemble her life,” Mallory said. “It hasn’t been an easy thing, for her father is a director with Sirocco and may have had part in covering her trail.”

  “Cleo mentioned him, I think?”

  Mallory reached for Eleanor’s hand. She let him claim it, finding a comfort in his grip. “Forgive me for not telling you sooner. I thought I could keep this part to myself, and yet—” He laughed, a hollow sound, and then the words came in a rush. “You saw the wolf, you know my deepest shame, and every part of this mission is private and personal for you—believing the Lady might be your mother, risking your quiet, established life to return here, to this madness. You deserved the whole truth.”

  Eleanor held to Mallory’s hand, wanting to tell him that it was all right, that everything was all right, but the words wouldn’t come. The idea that Caroline had been Mallory’s wife colored everything in new hues.

  “There is one more piece to this puzzle,” he added, and Eleanor laughed, as if they would never find the puzzle’s end. “I don’t know if it fits, but you said there are four rings. You saw all four with the Lady?”

  “Yes. Always four, even in the stories my mother told me. ‘The Lady wore four rings to mark her stations.’ ”

  Mallory’s thumb began to worry a path along Eleanor’s thumb. She didn’t mind the motion, her skin warming beneath the touch.

  “At our wedding, Caroline’s father gifted her with a small box. Caroline never showed me what it was. Still, it was a small box, and might well have contained a ring. Being that we can connect Caroline to the ring you wear and can further connect her father to the Lady here, it makes sense they may have had another of the rings.”

  It was strange to Eleanor, the idea that Caroline might have had another of the Lady’s rings. It felt as though Caroline were trespassing in affairs that were none of her concern. Why was she so interested? Did she somehow have a tie to the Lady or did she, like so many others, only want the treasure? One must preserve fair Egypt before she vanished entirely . . .

  “Most of Caroline’s duties were in Cairo,” Mallory continued. “Her father has always been involved with Sirocco as far as I know.”

  “If Christian has the carnelian ring and Caroline another from her father, that leaves the scarab around my own neck, and only a fourth to find. I would wager that Director Irving has a good idea where it is.” Eleanor looked up at Mallory, who looked a measure calmer than he had earlier. “Did Caroline know what the rings might do, do you think?”

  “I tend toward yes. Caroline rarely saw value in anything old—that is to say, value beyond monetary. She and her father had countless arguments about the value of Sirocco’s work, being that so much of it was based around the recovery of artifacts. Director Irving values them for simply being, whereas Caroline always felt it was the money that mattered.”

  “After she—” Eleanor bit her bottom lip, considering her words. Asking about a man’s dead wife, especially when he killed that wife, was rather like walking on a tightrope. “Did you find any small boxes among her possessions?”

  Mallory’s mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile, as if he knew the caution she took. “No.”

  “With Gin finding the items from the Lady’s initial examination,” she continued, “it makes me wonder if that ring is here. The Lady has been here all this time, with none outside the inner circle any the wiser about her. Why not keep the ring, too?”

  The worst-case scenario was that her mother had the fourth ring, which boded well in that no one could open the Glass. Even so, that was not the outcome Eleanor wanted.

  “I’ll have Gin take another look around, see if we can rattle any more information from Cleo, too.” Mallory’s thumb slowed against her hand, drawing lazy circles. “We’re here and Irving isn’t and we may as well take advantage of that.”

  Eleanor thought of advantages and taking them where they could. The night air made itself known to her as the wind lifted off the Nile and passed over the balconies in a whisper. She took a step backward, meaning to remove herself from Mallory’s reach. She did not regret her time with Christian, but she did regret the impression the rest of the world had of that time. She didn’t want anyone to think poorly of Mallory, who was, even tonight, wearing the black of mourning for his wife.

  Mallory’s hand opened as if to let her go, but instead of withdrawing, his fingers slid over her wrist and up her forearm, rucking the fabric of her robe as they went. Eleanor felt the same tug she had felt in the hallway and reversed her course, stepping toward him as his hand slid up the back of her arm. This close, there was a different kind of awareness. Did she growl or did he?

  “Miss Folley.”

  Was it a warning or did he want her to stop?

  “Agent?” she asked and watched his mouth curve at the word. She touched his beard where it darkened his chin, and with that, he erased all distance between them. His beard was softer than she had imagined it would be, and so too was his mouth.

  He seemed intent on consuming her now, even if he hadn’t meant to in the temple, his mouth breaking briefly from hers to taste her cheeks, the tip of her nose, the scar that marred her chin. Mallory’s fingers threaded through her hair, cupping the weight of her head as he feasted. She devoured in return.

  She could not remember the last time she had been kissed, which was a poor thing indeed. If she were a lady, she would not have known this pleasure at all. It should have bothered her, that she did find pleasure in this, for weren’t ladies to stay properly laced at all times? But here, she poured whiskey for a wolf, and lifted her mouth to his, and reveled in the taste and feel of him.

  And the last time Mallory had kissed? Probably his wife more than five years ago, and Eleanor ached for him, too.

  “We ride it out,” he said against her mouth.

  Those same words that he’d said to her in the desert when they fell under attack. Eleanor murmured her agreement, her own fingers having moved down his chin, to his tie where they tangled in the fabric. She gave it a gentle tug, to send the fabric spilling loose. Her fingers eased his waistcoat buttons open, so that she might slide a hand inside, around the middle of him, and up his back. She thought he growled that time, and his teeth caught her lower lip in a pleasant bite.

  There came then a knock at the
door and they paused, as though cold water had been doused over them. Eleanor met Mallory’s hooded eyes and slowly, as a gentleman might, he released her lower lip. Eleanor withdrew her hand from his waistcoat and knew she didn’t want a gentleman. No matter how improper, she was rather fond of this wolf.

  “Miss Folley? It’s Cleo.” Knuckles rapped against the door again.

  Eleanor was reluctant to leave him, but slid each of his waistcoat buttons back into their proper places.

  “Miss Folley.” His voice hitched.

  “Agent.”

  Neither could she help but touch him one more time, her fingers brushing over his lips before she finally stepped away from him.

  The world felt changed, electric, and Eleanor exhaled as she unlocked the door. She pulled it open and found Cleo on the other side, a stack of photographs in her mechanical arms.

  Cleo rocked on her heels and grinned at Eleanor, plainly pleased with something. “I’m terribly sorry about the hour, but I couldn’t wait,” she said. Then, her amber eyes flew wide.

  Eleanor didn’t have to follow Cleo’s gaze to know Mallory had made himself known, but she still did, because looking at him had become a pleasure.

  Cleo stuttered. “I-I—”

  “We were sharing some theories about the Lady,” Mallory said and lifted the wedding photo. Eleanor noted he didn’t show Cleo the actual photograph, but its backside. Eleanor didn’t miss the reserve that had returned to his eyes.

  “The Lady is why I’m here,” Cleo said as Eleanor allowed her into the room. Cleo lifted the photographs she held and moved toward the low table before the couch. “I wanted you both to see this as soon as possible, because I think I have discovered the right path.”

  Mallory and Eleanor settled onto the couch as Cleo spread out the photographs on the table before them. The first photograph Cleo showed was the familiar image of the Lady’s head with the strange, pale mass lodged in the mouth. A second photograph showed a similar mass, though didn’t appear to be of the Lady. A third image showed another head, this mouth filled with what appeared to be a tangle of thread.

  When Cleo didn’t say anything, Eleanor looked from the photographs to the scientist. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Surely you do,” Cleo said encouragingly. One metal finger tapped against the tangle of thread. “Ancient Egyptians were somewhat skilled when it came to replacing teeth.”

  Eleanor looked at the image in a new light, because she knew this from her studies. “They used gold wire to bind false teeth into a mouth.” Eleanor still had trouble digesting that idea; how anyone could have withstood such pain was beyond her, yet Mallory had shown her exactly what a body could endure.

  Cleo beamed. “Precisely. This image is one such procedure.” She set the image aside and lifted another. “This is a picture of ivory, which appears more dense than bone as it has no system of blood vessels. This was one of the earliest tests we did here, wanting to be sure we weren’t going to damage a body by . . . ”

  Mallory cleared his throat.

  Cleo trailed off. “Entirely unimportant at this juncture, but look here.”

  She lifted the photograph of the Lady, offering it to Eleanor. Eleanor could see the pale mass was the same. There was no blood vessel structure, so it wasn’t bone or tooth. “Is this ivory in her mouth, then?”

  Cleo nodded and then said nothing.

  “Here,” Mallory murmured and traced a slightly darker line on the image with a finger. “These are—teeth?”

  “Artificial teeth,” Cleo said, looking as though she would burst with the revelation. “Modern false teeth, in the body of a woman who—from the linen and description of the rings—otherwise dates to the New Kingdom.”

  “My mother never had false teeth.”

  It hit Eleanor, the realization that she had wanted this to be her mother after all. That they had not found Dalila Folley was impossible, their journey only having led them to a solid dead end.

  She stared at the images spread before her, touching the image that should have been her mother but was likely not. It was awful and inconceivable.

  Mallory shifted, leaning into her the way he so often had. Heat from his body bled into her, and Eleanor tried to find comfort in his presence and support. But the young girl who had lost her mother wanted only to cry. This revelation felt like losing her all over again.

  “Eleanor, your mother may not have had false teeth,” Mallory said, “but what about your grandmother?”

  At Cleo’s widening grin, Eleanor could only stare. She felt again that hand wrapping around her, threatening to pull her away.

  Father?

  Daughter.

  The darkness moved. Within the dark, nothing had form—the dark was Anubis and Anubis was the dark. People had fashioned him into many forms through the centuries, from jackal to man and back again, but he was as he had ever been: older than the face of the deep, and darker than the blackest night.

  Soon, daughter, soon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The insistent fingers of an autumn wind pulled a shutter loose from its mooring, but it wasn’t the weather that concerned her. If the radiant energy photographs spread before her were where all paths led, Eleanor found herself standing at either the end of a passage or upon a cliff’s edge. Her fingers slid over the corner of an image showing the bright outline of something that should not be: modern false teeth in the mouth of an ancient Egyptian woman.

  The scents of Cairo rolled into the sitting room on another inrush of air: anise, myrrh, camels, smoke. These scents were as drugs to Eleanor, nearly capable of drawing her back in time. She wanted to go, away from this room and into the guise of childhood’s safety. To the known, and not the unknown spread before her.

  Virgil Mallory moved from her side, crossing toward the window and its loose shutter while she remained on the couch. She had objected to the Mistral agent’s very presence only a short time before—feeling he had no place in a search so private—but now did not wish even his momentary absence. Cliff’s edge, she told herself. An abyss, unfathomable.

  “One thing I have never been able to understand,” Mallory said as he pulled the shutter to, “is why your mother was so intent on the Lady. She fashioned an entire mythology for this woman rather than simple bedtime stories. The Lady wasn’t a pharaoh, wasn’t a royal, so who was she? More specifically, who was she to your mother?”

  Eleanor looked at Cleo Barclay as she sorted through more images. Her mechanical arms gleamed in the low lamplight, fingers carefully closing against the edge of a photo as she lifted it.

  Eleanor pressed her hand against the couch, feeling not the fabric but a rough, male hand. It closed around hers with the heat of a white-hot sun burning through a cloudless Egyptian sky. She closed her eyes.

  Soon, Eleanor.

  It was not her mother’s voice, the voice she had sought all these years, but one heavy with power and age. Was it, as she had begun to suspect, the ancient god Anubis?

  As if the mere thought of his name conjured him, a sharp canine face assembled itself from the liquid black behind her eyes. Imagination, Eleanor told herself, as she had so many times before. Still, she remained unconvinced as his mouth parted to reveal gleaming fangs. Did his smile mock her doubt?

  Eleanor felt the reflection of a similar expression on her lips, and she tongued the sharp fang she felt in her own mouth.

  The shutter latch closed with a click that sounded like a revolver’s trigger. It served to snap Eleanor’s eyes open and her attention back to the room, where she fancied she could see the inky shadows being absorbed by the walls as the face of Anubis retreated. Eleanor ran her tongue across her teeth to reassure herself she had not just grown fangs.

  “The Lady,” Mallory continued, “was found buried in the middle of nowhere, but Dalila Folley knew the map of nowhere very well indeed.”

  Mallory sank onto the couch beside her again, and Eleanor curled into the reassuring arm he wrapped aroun
d her. She didn’t care that Cleo was there to bear witness. Cleo was more intent on the questions posed by the photographs.

  “There was a strange sense of relief when my mother found the Lady,” Eleanor finally said, her eyes on the photographs. The day she had lost her mother was never far from mind, but pressed even closer now. They were coming closer to the truth; they had to be. “I remembered thinking that everything would be all right, because she had looked for so long, and so many people told her she was wrong. Very few respected her work or my father’s—that only worsened when she vanished and he ceased his travels”

  “What do you know of your grandmother?” Mallory asked. “Your mother’s mother.”

  “I never knew her—Sagira.” The name felt strange on her tongue now. “She died before I was born. My mother was raised by an aunt; her own father died when she was ten, but he was an archaeologist, too. My mother’s father taught her, much as my father taught me . . . ”

  Eleanor felt as though a puzzle piece had fallen into place, a piece that allowed more of the overall image to become clear. But the image she saw was discomfiting. If the portal she believed in had allowed her mother to move backward through time, had it done the same for her grandmother before? Was the body in the ground indeed Dalila Folley’s own mother?

  Eleanor balked. The idea she had followed the same path as her mother before her was not only frightening, it was unsettling. Things she had no explanation for began to make painful sense: her father’s insistence through the years, the way her mother had known where the body was, the look on Dalila’s face when they had at last unearthed the Lady.

  “We have no evidence—” But didn’t they?

  “Nothing beyond the circumstantial, but, Eleanor . . . ” Mallory drew his arm from around her shoulders and made an effort to claim her hands. She pulled away, terror-stricken.

  Eleanor curled her hands into fists. “Agent—”