Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “How could you possibly come see Miss Folley and not me?” Mallory said with a pronounced pout. Resting in his arms, Margarite tapped his nose.

  “I know you, uncle, but not her,” she explained. She offered Mallory a candy stick from her collection. “You should share with Miss Folley.”

  “I promise to.” Mallory took the candy and gave Margarite a noisy, wet kiss on her cheek before setting her down. As soon as her booted feet touched the dock, she skipped off again, this time launching herself toward Auberon and Gin.

  “Destined to shatter hearts across the country, if not the world,” Mallory murmured, drawing Eleanor to his side. “Come on, they won’t bite you.”

  Recalling Gin’s words, she looked again to the black dog, caught once more by the thought of Anubis.

  No one in the crowd did bite, but that didn’t stop Eleanor’s stomach from turning over throughout the introductions. Virgil’s sister Imogene was nothing she had imagined, and Eleanor silently chided herself for the assumptions she had made. “Governess” put one idea in her head, that of glasses and rules and strictly pressed clothing, but after meeting Imogene, Eleanor had to laugh at herself, for she couldn’t picture the young woman in anything pressed or strict. Her nephews and niece listened well to her too; Jean and Daniel, the twins, clasped hands at her direction and always stayed within her line of sight, though clearly they longed to explore the newly tethered ship.

  Neither were Mallory’s parents what Eleanor expected. With Mallory not having told them about his true nature, she presumed they would also be rigid in their thinking: that they wouldn’t accept their son for who he was. But Eleanor saw only kindness and love in their eyes when Mallory brought her to them. They were happy to have him home, if even for only a short while.

  “Mother, Father, this is Miss Folley.”

  Virgil’s mother, a round Italian woman named Giada, had tears in her brown eyes: eyes she had given to her son, along with lips and cheekbones, and the fine line of her nose. Giada brushed her tears away and graciously welcomed Eleanor to their home. At her side, Jean Mallory also extended his welcome. His hands were Virgil’s hands, with a few more years of work, strength, and love in them.

  “Now you’ve made your mother cry,” Eleanor teased Mallory, which elicited a laugh from his parents.

  “I understand the two of you are here for work,” Giada said, “but I’ll be disappointed if you don’t take a tour of the vineyard, Miss Folley. Virgil tells me you’ve never been to this part of France.”

  “Alas, you come to us after the harvest, when you can’t eat straight from the vines,” Jean said and clicked his tongue. “Would you look at that child.”

  Eleanor looked to Margarite, who was attempting to ride the large black dog as though it were a horse. She might have managed, if not for her handful of candies.

  “That is Gat,” Mallory said. “By all rights, that dog should be dead. I can’t remember a time we didn’t have him. Im got to name him—so she named him Gateau.”

  “My favorite thing to eat,” Imogene said with a grin. “Margarite, come, you’ll ruin that dress.”

  “Will I?” Margarite asked in a tone that Eleanor could only hear as hopeful.

  Giada looped her arm through Eleanor’s as the group walked toward the house. Mallory skipped ahead with Gat, throwing a stick for the dog to fetch. Though he looked at ease, Eleanor had grown to know the look of worry on him. While he played with Gat, he constantly surveyed the land around them, and Eleanor wondered if it was his brother he sought or other Mistral agents. Auberon and Gin walked at a slower pace than the main group, also inspecting the landscape. The suspicious side of Eleanor’s mind was in silent agreement: if anyone from Irving’s group meant trouble, there was too much cover for them to find shelter in.

  “I don’t care if it is work that has brought my son home, but I feel I should thank you,” Giada said.

  “Thank me?” Eleanor turned her attention back to the woman at her side.

  “We haven’t communicated often—work has kept him so busy—but in these past weeks, we have received more telegraphemes from him than we ever have, and when he mentions you—” Giada allowed a moment of silence to fall between them. “I am being entirely too forward. Virgil has a way about him, you know.”

  “So I have heard.”

  Giada stepped away, catching the twins’ hands to lead them to the front steps. They skipped up them together, and Eleanor watched as though she had never seen such a thing in her life. A family this closely knit was a curious thing to her; she had missed her own so terribly. Eleanor also felt dumbstruck by the idea that Mallory had mentioned her in communications with his parents. She tried to shake it off, but couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Miss Folley?”

  Eleanor found Mallory at her side. He drew her out of the path, allowing Auberon and Gin to precede them into the house, Margarite skipping between and around them. Mallory fisted his hands into the lapel of Eleanor’s jacket, pulling it closer around her.

  “You will certainly catch a chill if you stay out much longer.”

  Eleanor’s smile widened at the sight of Mallory’s nephew- and niece-tousled hair against the bright sky. Was everything more brilliant because she was keenly aware that she might not return if they opened the Glass of Anubis? Eleanor didn’t know and right then didn’t care to analyze it.

  “I haven’t once felt the cold.”

  “He promised, and he knows you were due today.” Giada Mallory fussed with the green and white napkins before her, and Virgil stilled her hands.

  “You can fold those napkins into swans if you like, but they won’t bring Adrian any sooner,” he said.

  Virgil looked across the table to Robin. Adrian’s pregnant wife sat folding more napkins: no swans, just efficient triangles. Virgil had always been curious about this woman, this woman who could love his brother when Adrian bristled at everyone else. How had Adrian allowed her inside? Virgil supposed the how didn’t matter, so much as the fact that he’d done it at all. Allowing someone inside was loaded with risk, and yet . . .

  Robin looked up in time to catch him staring. “I can fetch him,” she said.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Virgil said and waved her back into her chair when she made to stand. “Unless you want your child born in the vineyard.”

  “This entire country is a vineyard,” Robin said and she laughed, a sound that put Virgil at ease. She added another folded napkin to the stack. “I walk out there every day—”

  “I will go,” Virgil said before the argument could go further. If Robin had been taking lessons from his mother, it might well continue until the following morning, with Adrian yet to be coaxed from the vines.

  “Virgil.”

  He looked up to his father, who stood in the doorway, a crystal glass of amber liquid in hand. Now that he was here, it was natural; the hesitation and concern he had felt during his conversation about family with Eleanor atop the pyramid drained away, until there was only this moment, sitting with those he loved, in his childhood home.

  “Father?” He could almost predict what his father meant to say, and when the words came, Virgil had trouble not grinning.

  “Your brother damn well knows his way back to this house—excuse my language, ladies. You didn’t travel all this way to drag your brother up here.”

  “Neither did I come all this way to make him feel unwelcome in his own home.” Virgil stood and smoothed his coat down. “If he would be more comfortable, I can take a room at the inn up the valley—”

  “You will do no such thing.”

  Virgil couldn’t remember ever hearing such venom in his mother’s voice. It sounded to Virgil as if his parents were as tired of this rift in the family as he was. He couldn’t blame them.

  “In any case, he and I should talk. If you will excuse me . . . ” He bowed to the ladies and took his leave before anyone could stop him again.

  It was strange to be in this house, but also
comforting. Much of the house was as he remembered it, from its fruit-patterned wallpapers to its paintings of landscapes, still lifes, and a few ancestors. It was a comfortable home, made more so by the memories Virgil found around every corner. When he peered into the sitting room to find Eleanor with Imogene and her young charges, it was not a memory that greeted him, but a wholly new thing he could hardly understand. The sight of Eleanor in his family home made him go very still indeed.

  “Fleeing the scene, are you?” Imogene asked when she spied him lingering in the doorway. The twins fluttered around her.

  “Establishing that Miss Folley hasn’t yet been eaten whole by you or your charges,” Virgil said with a nod. It drew a laugh from Eleanor, and she crossed the room to him. She neatly avoided Margarite and walked with Virgil to the foyer.

  “I’m going out after Adrian,” he said with a look out the windows. He reached for a blue smock hanging from a row near the door. Vineyards could be unkind to one’s clothing. “I wanted to be sure that you—” He drew the smock on, startled when Eleanor stepped forward to fasten the buttons. “—were comfortable here.” His mouth tipped up, unaccustomed to such attentions.

  “It’s wonderful here,” Eleanor said as the shriek of children and the thunder of small feet rose in the near distance, “but are you well?” She smoothed her hands down the front of his smock, then took a step back to look at him. “You appear quite fine, but . . . Adrian.”

  Virgil recalled their conversation on the pyramid and gave a slow nod. “Adrian. The man can’t very well avoid his own home and family for the entire length of our visit, now can he? Nor can he avoid me.” He thought to kiss her, for it felt as natural as breathing, but realized how terribly familiar it was—and that Margarite watched them from the end of the hall.

  “Sweethearts!” she not so much whispered as shouted before she scampered away.

  “You will forgive me once again, Miss Folley.”

  Eleanor pressed her cheek against his own. “Good luck, Agent,” she murmured.

  Virgil didn’t have to know if she meant good luck in gaining her forgiveness or seeking Adrian out; she constantly refused to forgive him because she seemed to welcome such intrusions into her proximity. The matter of his brother would require a good deal more luck, indeed.

  Virgil nodded to Auberon and Gin, who stood outside, having claimed they meant to smoke, but neither held cigar or cigarette. Virgil touched Auberon’s arm, silently asking him to stay behind, while he looked to Gin. Gin, surprisingly good at shadowing a fellow agent, slipped off into the trees, his path likely matching Virgil’s as he stalked his way to the vineyard, seeking a man who wanted nothing to do with him.

  He found Adrian in one of the farthest fields. At the sound of his approach, Adrian stopped his work to turn and see who was coming.

  “Robin? I didn’t realize it was so late. Have—”

  “It’s not Robin,” Virgil called back, trying to keep his tone light. “Do you honestly think we would allow her to come after you, about to birth that child of yours?”

  Adrian said nothing. He turned his clippers back to the vines.

  Virgil disliked pruning. Cutting the thousands of canes by hand was no way to spend an otherwise perfectly nice day. Pruning them, burning the end to seal against disease, tossing the pruned vine into the burn can . . . It was the kind of duty one should partake of in hell, not on earth. But Virgil said nothing; it was possible Adrian enjoyed the work after all these years.

  “Mother said you were coming,” Adrian said as he snipped another branch. He cut the pruned piece into two shorter lengths and tossed them into the burn can. Sparks erupted, and smoke curled into the air.

  “I didn’t exactly believe I would come, either,” Virgil said. He stepped closer to Adrian, still leaving his brother enough room to work. “Mother won’t want you at the table like that.”

  Adrian looked as though he had been pruning for hours, bits of vine and debris stuck to his smock and in his hair. He had grown a beard, and its brown curls were littered with debris. He looked something of a bird’s nest, though Virgil wasn’t about to say so. He smelled of hard work and sweat. It was a familiar scent to Virgil, one that reminded him of their father.

  “Neither will Robin.” Adrian looked up from the vine and exhaled. “I presume the family is gathering for dinner.”

  “Everyone is here.” Virgil wanted to mention Eleanor, but was unsure how. So many of his memories of Adrian were tangled with their behavior at Virgil’s wedding to Caroline, and he wasn’t certain mentioning another woman would be wise. Would Adrian rebuke him? There was no clear path, so he stepped down the nearest one. “I’ve brought colleagues with me. We’re—”

  “You’re working?” Adrian’s laugh sounded like a short bark. He closed both sides of the burn can and looked at Virgil, disapproval marking every line of his face. “Can’t leave it behind, can you?”

  “And you?” Virgil asked, damned if he was going to let Adrian have his tantrum. He hated this. He wished it could be as it once was—the way it had been that long-ago day in the zoo, before the beast had charged out of the woods. Virgil looked up now, eyes flicking to the trees enclosing the vineyard. Gin was out there somewhere.

  “Staying out to needlessly prune? That’s either dedication or avoidance, Adrian. Robin has made it clear that I am to stay, so I’ll be up at the house. Mother would like you to come for dinner.”

  I would too, Virgil thought, but didn’t know how to say that. Those three words were simple, yet horribly complicated, and they lingered unsaid between the brothers.

  Virgil walked away, not caring that he left Adrian alone. He damn well knew his own way back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was late, but Eleanor was not sleeping. She couldn’t. She rarely had trouble sleeping in strange places, for such had been her childhood, traveling to here and there and back again. She knew that wasn’t the problem. Every time she climbed into the beautiful bed, its carved headboard sporting a riot of carved grapes and vines, she grew uneasy. While the sheets were soft as clouds, she would have sworn she felt sand on them. She felt twelve all over again, camping in the desert with her parents and trying to shake the grit from her bedroll before sleep. This left her pacing over the pale green carpets with their cabbage roses, staring at her grandfather’s journal, which lay open across the foot of the bed.

  At the tapping on the balcony door, Eleanor paused in mid-step. The room was on the second floor of the house, and she thought it unlikely anyone—including Christian—had scaled the building to visit her. And Mallory would surely use the door. He had told her this room had been his own as a boy. Eleanor stayed exactly where she was, listening again over the hammer of her heartbeat. The tap came again.

  Beyond the square panes of glass, the night sky was broken only by gleaming stars. There was no shadow on the balcony, which emboldened her to move again, toward the doors she unlocked and opened.

  She expected autumn’s cooling air, but a hot wind greeted her, pushing the doors from her hands and lifting her hair from her shoulders. Her lips became dry and cracked, and she felt as if she hadn’t had a sip of water in days. It was not a French vineyard she looked out on, but, instead, a temple room. Before her stretched a rectangular pool, its inky surface reflecting the light of a half-dozen torches. In the distance, birds called to one another in the night air, and Eleanor could feel the powerful stroke of their wings as they took flight. The air they stirred poured through the temple and carried with it the stench of the underworld, black earth and sweet, rotting flesh. She knew everything here, and nothing; everything had a weight, everything had a pulse.

  Her hands shook, but still she stepped forward, her foot coming down on warm stone rather than the cool balcony. Egypt’s heat radiated through her, forcing the chill into retreat. Her robe whispered over the floor behind her.

  At the end of the pool, she found herself making an offering to the dark god she knew lingered there. Four rings, h
eavier than anything she had ever held, rested in her bloodied hand, and though she didn’t think it possible, she lifted them for his acceptance. Blood curled around her wrist and forearm in a crimson bracelet.

  She could not look the god in the eye. Was she dreaming? She thought back to the room and her restless pacing, and decided she was perfectly awake. Awake and in France and Egypt in the same instant, offering the rings to Anubis. But I don’t have the fourth ring, so this is a dream . . . isn’t it?

  “Daughter,” Anubis said.

  Eleanor looked at him, compelled by that word. Anubis was taller than the entire world, gold gilding every ebony edge of his body, and repugnance rolled over her. She felt helpless in his glassy eyes, a blue so dark it looked black at first glance. She blinked and saw an endless horizon. It stretched from one end of the world to the next.

  She rushed toward it, knowing it was hers to claim, even if she didn’t understand how. A honeyed light spilled out of Anubis’s eyes, brilliant and burning as it flooded over the land. In this light, she knew everything she should not: she could feel the dead within the world, both those waiting to be weighed and those who already had been. She could taste the impure hearts Ammit had consumed after Anubis deemed them unworthy of the afterlife.

  “Anubis.” Eleanor spoke his name and gave him power. How many times had her father told her that naming a thing made it real, made it solid and capable? Anubis’s black hand closed over her wrist. His touch was fire and ice both, and Eleanor felt he held her by her bones alone, that whatever flesh had made her into a whole body was burned away. But no—no, she saw that wasn’t right. Her hand showed brindled fur and claws curling where once there had been fingers. She forced down the revulsion she felt and, in its place flooded a strange relief. She did not understand.

  “Surrender them to me.”

  Eleanor tried to release the rings, but with his hand around her wrist, she could not move. She tried to make her other hand move, tried to pry his hand from her wrist, but Anubis would not be budged. Her hand shifted between paw and human hand, and she couldn’t move either properly. Eleanor fell to her knees, and the rings spilled onto the black stone floor.