Her Kind of Trouble (30 page)
Goddess!
So clearly did I sense Her presence that, as I began to pass Her hiding place, I felt an immediate sense of loss. I reached out to stop myself with one hand on a broken column, then floated backward, shining the light closer. What?
Where
?
I swam across to the other side of the column, leaned closer—
And there She lay, trapped beneath it, half-covered with sand. The remains of Her larger-than-life statue, surely from the temple where Cleopatra herself had once worshipped, was really here. I'd found Her.
Isis
.
She had once been seated, though the natural disasters that had sunk this part of
Alexandria
had thrown her and the throne she sat on to their side. Fish nosed at the algae-spotted folds in her hewn gown, at her roundly carved bare toes. Her sculpted face, beautiful despite the mask of erosion, wasn't quite as flat as those of so many ancient Egyptian statues, probably because of the Greek influence that had taken over
Egypt
and founded this particular city long before Cleopatra's time. Instead,
Isis
seemed to wear an expression of eternal calm, of waiting strength.
Hello
, she seemed to say, with her unblinking stone eyes.
About damned time
.
I bowed awkwardly, what with being under pushing water. Though I'd come as fast as I could, I felt suddenly guilty that what had finally gotten me to her was the need of her help, not my need to help her.
Then again, if anybody understood having to rescue a…what? Lex wasn't my husband. And yet…
I had to hope
Isis
would understand, and I began to look for where, in this area that had surely been her temple, her sacred chalice may have been kept. There would have been no reason for anybody to hide it. The
Frustratingly, the sense that had drawn me to
Isis
seemed connected to the statue itself, not the grail. So I began to look more closely at that statue, my nose and dive mask almost rudely close to her figure, and noticed something intriguing. One of her silt-veiled hands, so graceful and delicate despite being larger than my own, was held awkwardly outward, cupped around…what?
The stone fingers curled to just the right size to have held the base of a chalice, but now they held nothing at all.
And the velvety algae that encrusted so many of these artifacts, especially the column and the rest of the statue, was freshly dislodged from those fingers.
Desperation clenched in my chest as I understood. I knew it, with a knowing that went beyond further proof.
Someone had taken the Isis Grail from the statue's hand.
Recently.
Chapter 18
After an increasingly desperate search of the area around the fallen
Isis
, sending billows of sand up from my scrabbling hands, I had to give up.
It wasn't here
!
I surfaced in defeat, just in time for a wave to slap me right into the side of the speedboat, knocking me silly. Then Rhys was there, dragging me into the boat, into his arms, helping pull the mask off me as blowing sand began to stick to my wet body.
"It's gone," I gasped, after my first breath of warm, gritty air. "I need it, and it's gone!"
"You mean… you didn't find it?" Rhys wrapped me in a beach towel.
"I mean it was there, but it isn't anymore. I found a statue of
Isis
—it's beautiful—and she used to be holding something in her hand, but it's gone. You can see where the algae was disturbed. Someone took it!"
"But that's ridiculous, Maggi. Who would steal…" Our gazes locked. Then Rhys's eyes widened. "Surely she would not," he protested. But she'd stolen a grail from me once before. Why not this time?
In situ my ass!
"Even if Catrina did take it," argued Rhys, following me as I stalked into the room I shared with my French bitch of a nemesis, "and that's quite a big
if
, surely she'd not hide it in here."
I'd gotten more than a few strange looks in the lobby. My hair hung in wet shanks after the dive and now the blowing wind had coated it with dust. I'd pulled my skirt and blouse back on over my bathing suit before we reached shore, so the dampening material was rubbing grit into my skin.
And I didn't give a damn about any of that.
I just stood in the center of the room and closed my eyes. Outside the window, with a sparking noise and what I assumed was a flash of light, a trolley rumbled through the intersection.
"Any number of explanations—" Rhys continued, but I held up a hand and said, "Shhh."
He shushed, and I took a deep breath…and
sensed
.
I was a Grailkeeper. That meant I had an ancestral connection to these chalices. I'd already found one of them, and it had felt like home. And I might even be a champion. Surely—
Yes
. Sensing its call, I went to Catrina's bed and tugged an old, floral-patterned suitcase out from under it. For once, I didn't care why she hadn't bought something better. I unzipped it.
"She'd keep it close," I said.
"Maggi, are you sure you should—"
Then I lifted out a very large jar full of murky sea-water—and inside, like a dingy fish-bowl decoration, an ancient stone goblet.
I'm less than proud of my first reaction.
"Of all the people to have found it.
Catrina
?"
"
Uffach cols
," swore Rhys.
Me, I just knelt there by the bed and blinked eyes that suddenly burned at the grail's beauty.
Like so much Egyptian pottery, like the stuff I'd seen the other week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this cup was blue faience—I could see bits of the color and glints of gold and silver through the algae, especially where it had been separated from
Isis
's stone hand. Something was carved around it, although until I got the brown gunk off…
Standing, I opened the jar, reached in, and pulled the goblet out barehanded.
Rhys winced. "I'm sure she has it in there to maintain the integrity of the chemical composition that has preserved the piece for this—"
His words seemed to stick in his throat as I left the jar on Catrina's bed—where I kind of hoped it might fall over—and wiped the cup with a towel. Swatches of algae came off it, better revealing patches where the faience had worn smooth and, where bands of gold and silver framed them, a faint pattern of two-dimensional figures, worn to ghostlike indistinction, parading across the outside of the goblet's bowl.
Isis
, yes. And Osiris. The falcon-headed Horus, their child. The evil Set—I wasn't quite sure what kind of animal that head belonged to, but I recognized him from other illustrations.
Ankhs and stars, both symbols of
Isis
, filled in negative space.
As if I hadn't already recognized the power thrumming through me from the Isis Grail.
I turned to Rhys and said, with low intensity, "I know that you're an archeologist. I know this is going to seem like blasphemy to you. But I have to go wash this grail now."
His blue eyes widened.
"To find Lex, I have to be able to drink out of it, and I'm not doing that without cleaning it first. I'll be careful, but it's pretty old. If this hurts it, I'll feel guilty forever. But human life is more important than a cup. Even this one."
Rhys just stared.
"Aren't you going to argue with me?" I asked.
"I will not," he said, though clearly pained.
So I hurried down the hall to the bathroom, grail hidden in the towel, while I had the chance.
When I got back, it was with an Isis Cup as clean as I could possibly make it without actually scrubbing the rest of the design off. Patches of it almost glowed its cheerful blue despite the pitting of salt, sand and time. I poured bottled water into it, my hand shaking—and hesitated.
Not from fear, but inadequacy.
The first time I'd ever done this, it had been at a goddess's shrine. The second time had been with the support of other Grailkeepers. For last night's ritual, Lex and I had used candles and scents and music.
Now I had to try this in an aging hotel room? And me, damp and filthy?
No time
, my instincts warned.
"Perhaps I should go keep watch," Rhys suggested, either because he was sensing my thoughts or because he wasn't wholly comfortable watching me commune with a goddess. He was still very Catholic, after all.
"Thanks," I murmured, and he slipped out.
And then the grail and I were all alone together.
What if I couldn't do this
?
But I would. I had to.
Closing the room's curtains against the hazy afternoon, I set the grail on the floor, then knelt before it. This time, both my knees stayed on the linoleum in pure, desperate supplication. I'd already taken off my shoes. My feet were still sandy.
"
Isis
," I whispered into the shadows. I tried to sense the wholeness of
Egypt
stretching out around me. The sea—a longtime realm of the goddess—above me. The
Nile
connecting it to the lands of pyramids and tombs below me. Her kingdom. Her world. "Oldest of the Old," I continued, letting the words form in my mouth as they would. "Goddess of Ten Thousand Names. Lady of Compassion and Magic.
"
Isis
, I invite and welcome Thee into this, my world, which has great need of thy strength. I am a daughter of goddesses, proof that Your glory may have been veiled, but never forgotten. I am a… a champion of women, striving to return Your divine strength to others, I am… "
My bare hand, the one with the ring, clenched, and I blinked back tears.
"I am a bride, the vessel through which you granted your sacred blessings to someone who could be a great leader. If only for him… "