Her Kind of Trouble (28 page)

"Then hang on." And with a showy display of strength, he wrapped his arms around me, sat up, then stood and
carried me
into the bedroom.

"I can still walk," I teased, despite being impressed. "You're not
that
good."

"Pull back the covers, please," he said. "My hands are full."

So I reached out and did just that, and he lowered me onto six-hundred-thread-count cotton sheets that felt like silk.

I reached up and drew him down onto me. A few luxurious kisses later…

Was a very inappropriate time to remember to call Rhys.

Chapter 17

It's sad, how quickly things can decline from magic to frustration. The only familiar person the Hotel Athens's front desk could summon was Catrina. She coolly assured me that Rhys had been fine the last time she saw him—an hour previous—and that she would pass on the message that I'd be back in Alex the following day.

I didn't trust her as far as I could overhand a Volkswagen, but I didn't have a choice.

Then Lex, who'd been remarkably cool about me remembering another man while entwined naked with
him
, needed to talk seriously about the forgotten condom. "If you want to be absolutely sure nothing comes of it… "

He meant a morning-after pill. Despite us being in the middle of a hugely conservative country, I had no doubt he could pull it off, too, if I demanded one.

"No," I said firmly. "I don't want to be that sure. Do you?"

His eyes flared. "God, no! Maggi—"

But I kissed him, rather than risk him proposing marriage again.

It had already been a very full week.

We had a glorious night together, this time with the appropriate contraceptives, but that meant I was short on sleep when I woke, stiff and sticky, to an empty bed. Lex had left a note in his too-familiar handwriting on the pillow, gently weighed down by a handful of flowers from one of the suite's many arrangements. It read:

My Maggi:

Sorry couldn't stay for breakfast. Gone at least

one day on biz can't tell you damned thing about.

Will contact you in Alex. Be safe. Love you. L.

PS—Really.

PPS
—
Thank you for being my goddess
.

Okay, so it wasn't bad, as notes went. I carefully folded and saved it. My first thought at his declaration of love wasn't crap, which showed progress. In fact, I felt kind of melty and happy. But it wasn't cuddles and kisses and breakfast in bed, either. Business he couldn't talk about meant he was doing something involving the Comitatus, right here in
Egypt
. I didn't like not knowing whether it was minor business or the big takeover, some kind of yearly quorum or a huge who-gets-to-lead-us trial by combat. I didn't like not knowing whether I should be worried.

Which, damn it, would
always
be a problem with Lex, no matter how much good sex was involved.

"It's not as if you're the only woman to ever have this problem," noted Rhys later that afternoon, once I was back in
Alexandria
.

To my surprise and suspicion, Catrina had in fact passed on my message, so he hadn't worried overmuch. I was anxious to dive again, to see if I could access that sense of
knowing
which had been interrupted by the other day's boat accident. But diving was canceled for the day, because of high winds and choppy waters—yet another in my series of frustrations. Rhys and I had gone to the roof of the hotel with gyros and cold cans of soft drinks, purchased from a street vendor, to debrief.

I hadn't mentioned the sex, though Rhys may have guessed that part from the fact that I'd spent the night I sure as hell hadn't mentioned the Sacred Marriage ritual. But no way could I keep quiet about Lex's vanishing act. It weighed far too heavily on my mind.

"You're joking," I said now. "You don't really think that there are other women who are involved with leaders of secret societies which may or may not be working against their own ancestral legacy?"

Rhys crumpled a piece of crinkly paper that had wrapped his sandwich and threw it at me, but it blew away before we could stop it—and we did both try to stop it. "No, I mean to say that there are other women dating men with secrets. Agents who work for MI-6, for example, or your CIA or FBI. Members of military intelligence. Certain politicians."

"And men dating
women
with secrets," I corrected halfheartedly. "Women can be spies and politicians, too."

I hated sounding whiny, but I was tired, and a little achy, and
hot
. Even high winds and an adjacent sea couldn't make much headway against the Egyptian sun. I hated that diving had been canceled.

And I was getting a bit of a sore throat. Was it a side effect from my satisfied vocalizations the night before…or was someone in trouble? Me? Rhys?

Lex?

I hadn't seen anything of Hani Rachid since yesterday. Now that I didn't plan to deal with embassies, I'd gone back to wearing my sword under my skirt, just in case. That meant sitting with my legs stretched out in front of me.

It was a good sword. It really did need a name. All the best mythic swords have one.

"Or women," Rhys agreed cheerfully, dragging me back on topic. "Quite."

"Except that spies and politicians can quit their jobs," I pointed out. "They may not ever be able to tell their secrets, but they can at least stop collecting more. I get the feeling Lex is in the Comitatus for life."

Overhead, a bird cried out, hawklike, as it circled by.

"I'm sorry, Maggi," said Rhys, after a long moment's consideration. "I know I'm a trained counselor, but would I be too selfish—would you be all right—if I asked to
not
counsel you about Lex Stuart? I'm afraid I'll be biased."

That caught my attention. "Oh. I'm…sorry."

"Please don't be. So tell me again about the clue that Jane and Tala gave you."

Rather than dwell on where my new intimacy with Lex left Rhys, I recited from memory: '"High in the heavens and under the sea,
Isis
is everywhere, she can-not be contained. Look for her where she is honored There, you shall find her cup.'"

Rhys chewed a bite of his gyro thoughtfully, then swallowed and wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. "Hmm."

The difference between this meal and last night's dinner struck me. Paper-wrapped, street-vendor sandwiches versus smoked duck and quail salad on china Aluminum cans of soda versus crystal goblets of sparkling water. A shaggy-haired friend in blue jeans and T-shirt, sitting on the roof and leaning against a brick wall, versus a well-groomed, well-dressed lover on an expensive chair of brocade and teak.

The funny thing is, I would have thought that in each case I would have chosen the former…

"What worries me," I continued, forcing myself to focus, "is that it's a different saying than the one Munira told me—you know, the Grailkeeper at the bazaar? When she tried to translate her ancestral rhyme, it had to do with
Isis
sleeping with no light. And then she said something like, 'She
is
, and always will be such.'"

"Perhaps the part about no light is a vague reference to the heavens and the sea," suggested Rhys. "There's little light under the sea. And
Isis
being 'always' could translate to her being 'everywhere, uncontained.'"

"It's still not much of a road map for finding her chalice," I grumbled. "You'd think those ancient Grail-keepers could have come up with something a little more specific. 'Thirty paces from the sphinx, toward the sunset' would be nice."

Rhys laughed. "Ah, but which sphinx?"

I nodded and took another long drink of fizzy, canned juice. I'd chosen against cola because of last night's goof. If there
was
a baby…

Gee, that possibility might also explain some of my moodiness, mightn't it? A baby would be life-changing, for better or worse, and my life was already changing fester than I could keep up.

With a chill, I realized that a baby would also continue my family's Grailkeeper lineage—and Lex's Comitatus bloodline.

Both.

Oh… goddess. Would such a child bring two diverse worlds together, at last? Or would her—or his—diverse roles destroy him—or her—from the in-side out?

Assuming Lex got control of the Comitatus at all.

It came down to a battle between hope and fear, didn't it?

"Do you really think you'll be able to sense the chalice again, once we go back down?" asked Rhys, ignorant of my epiphany.

And really, what could I do about the matter right now, except to eat healthy—just in case—and hope the Sacred Marriage had given Lex the edge he needed? Comitatus business was his.

Grail business…

"I hope so," I said, forcing my mind back to business. "Fat lot of good it does right now. Let's focus on Isis herself. Maybe there's a clue there. She's one of the oldest goddesses, if not
the
oldest. She's also one of the wisest, the only goddess ever to have learned the secret name of Ra and gain his powers over life and death."

"By tricking him," Rhys reminded me. "She created the snake that poisoned him in the first place, knowing Ra would need her, as Goddess of Medicine, to cure him."

"And she wouldn't do it until he told her his secret name," I agreed. "So we know she can be ruthless, too."

"But faithful," Rhys continued to brainstorm. "When Set first kills her husband, she breathes life back into… him… "

"And when Set cuts Osiris up into pieces,
Isis
uses her magic to find them," I continued—but stopped when I saw Rhys's concerned expression. "What?"

"It's… nothing."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, it's just…you did that."

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged, not comprehending.

"When I was hit by the boat the other day, and you gave me mouth-to-mouth. You breathed life back into me. Not unlike
Isis
."