Owl and the City of Angels (41 page)

The genie threw back his head and laughed. “You were right, incubus, she is very gullible.”

Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I glared at Rynn, who couldn’t quite cover a laugh. “You thought that was funny?”

Nomun leaned down and patted my shoulder. “Please take no offense. I offered to get you out of harm’s way, but he claimed you would be just as likely to throw something at me as the golem.” He added to Rynn, “The pirates are dismantled for now, though no sign of their leader. If we leave now and the wind is good, we will get there before nightfall.”

“We need to grab the elf first—and the Mau,” Rynn said. “I left them back at Passer’s temple. They should be fine provided the elf didn’t do anything stupid.”

Shit . . . “No, wait—I need back in there,” I said. “We can’t leave without Carpe’s stupid book, and I’m not leaving the pirates with the dig notes.” Thief or not, an archaeologist would have kept a map and inventory. We’d also know if more cursed artifacts had been sold.

Nomun nodded. “I’ll deal with the golem,” he said. He frowned and shook his head as he headed into the tent ahead of me. “So much trouble for one so small.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I called after him.

As soon as Nomun disappeared into the tent, I shook my head at Rynn. “I got to admit, I’m a little disappointed. An incubus held in captivity by a pack of pirates.”

“Who said anything about captivity?” Rynn said, arching a blond eyebrow.

I frowned. “What the hell else could you have been doing for the past couple hours?”

Rynn’s smile widened. “How bout you come meet my entourage.”

“
What
entourage?”

17

The Syrian City of the Dead

7:00 p.m., at the feet of Moses the Abyssinian

I had to hand it to Nomun, he got us into Syria and to the mountain undetected, though I don’t think I’ll ever step foot on a cargo plane again. Nomun could make very old planes do things they shouldn’t—like fly.

A fat lot of good getting here had done us, what with all the IAA crawling around . . . I was still trying to figure out how the hell they’d gotten all the vehicles in there, on account of there being no roads.

“I cannot believe we left the terra-cotta warriors behind,” I said to Nadya, who was sitting beside me. At the moment she had the binoculars. “A pair, Nadya.”

She jabbed me in the arm. “You do not need a terra-cotta warrior.”

I wiped sweat off my forehead and did my best to cover the wet cough I’d developed. It had started in the last couple hours, along with a killer sore throat—no pun intended. I was having a hard time keeping the hemorrhagic fever part out of my mind. “I beg to differ, especially if I get out alive.”

Nadya skewered me with one look.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve had my eye out for one of those? A pair!”

The skewering didn’t stop. “We’ll be in China again.”

“You know, that’s what people used to say about Nirvana concerts. No terra-cotta warriors—happy?” I said, and stifled another cough.

She shook her head and got up, heading over to where Carpe and Captain were hiding.

We were encamped on mountain steps dug out on the opposite side of the ravine that housed the Deir Mar Musa Monastery, maybe a thousand or so meters away, give or take. Both sides of the ravine were covered in paths that wound their way to nowhere, making that distance not mean a hell of a lot. In fact, the entire mountain range surrounding the Monastery of Saint Moses was filled with similar footpaths, which is what you get when you let the sheep and goats do the urban planning.

My head hurt. And despite the fact that I was running a permanent fever now, I was freezing from the altitude. We’d been on lookout for over an hour now—Rynn and his genie friend were not willing to do anything until nightfall. We had no idea what Odawaa might or might not have told the IAA—or if he was still alive.

By my guess, I was also about due for another hallucination. That was going to be a joy . . .

I checked my watch. 7:00 p.m. Time to see what the IAA had planned for dinner. “Gimme those,” I said, and grabbed the binoculars hanging from Rynn’s neck as he slid into Nadya’s place. After my hallucination with Caracalla, no one was willing to leave me on my own for any stretch of time . . .

“Damn it, will you ask before taking things?” Rynn said.

“Thief, remember?”

Using the binoculars, I focused in on the collection of tents and off-road jeeps surrounding the monastery and the footbridge spanning the ravine.

IAA agents and a handful of archaeologists milled around the jeeps and tarps before heading into the stone monastery buildings, light escaping from the stone windows.

Now, if I could just figure out who the hell was in charge. One of Sanders’s postdocs had to be milling around . . . even if I spotted a grad student I recognized, it’d be better than nothing.

“Oh man, this just keeps getting better and better,” I said as I picked out a man wearing an old, secondhand military cargo jacket—it was supposed to be ironic, whatever the hell that meant—and shoulder-length light brown hair. I was half convinced he highlighted it.

Out of all the postdocs, of course it had to be him.

Nadya crouched down on my other side. “Far left, entrance to the monastery,” I told her. A moment later she swore.

“If we’re looking for the link of who’s in charge, that’s him,” I said.

“Who is it?” Rynn asked, taking his binoculars back.

“He’s Dr. Cooper Hill,” Nadya said. “One of Dr. Sanders’s most celebrated researchers, also used to be Alix’s and my acting supervisor.”

Rynn smirked. I ignored it. “Also happens to be the most cutthroat postdoc on his payroll.” I should have known he was involved. “I ruled him out initially because of the curse involved. Cooper isn’t stupid, but more than that, he doesn’t usually get his hands dirty.”

“No, he’d prefer to throw hapless grad students under the bus,” Nadya said. Yeah, then hijack the paperwork, falsify a few signatures and dig reports—hell, I’m amazed he hadn’t tried to pin drugs on me as well.

“What about the professor in charge?” Rynn asked.

I shook my head. “Past making sure they’re turning in publishable research papers, Dr. Sanders can’t be bothered checking what the hell his postdocs are doing. Besides, the IAA treats Hill like some sort of archaeology god.” With Dr. Sanders’s signature on the paperwork and Cooper’s clean record and talent for finding hapless and willing scapegoats, no wonder the IAA hadn’t bothered looking too closely into the reopening of the dig . . .

When I caught Rynn frowning at me, I added, “He’s good,” lest he read any meaning into it. “We’ll have to be careful—he’s got a talent for keeping track of what goes on at his dig sites. If something’s out of place, he’ll know.”

“Hill was responsible for getting Alix thrown out of grad school,” Nadya offered. “He was the one who convinced her to retract her research after it uncovered the Aztec mummy.”

“Gee thanks, Nadya.” Not exactly something I’d wanted Rynn to know about. Mostly because it was embarrassing. “
Retract your thesis, Alix, there’ll be a nice compensation pack in Ephesus for you . . .
”
Needless to say there had been no travel plans to Turkey, only a one-way ticket to Siberia.

I’ve got one hell of a talent for trusting the wrong people.

“Alix was particularly stupid, she was practically in love with Hill, followed him around like a lost puppy.”

Goddamn it—“Enough, Nadya!” I felt my face turning red as Rynn narrowed in on me. I did my best to put the conversation away from my idiocy and back on track. “Regardless of his dubious ethics, I’m still surprised Cooper’s involved. He usually keeps a degree’s worth of separation from anything remotely dangerous.”

“Cooper? You’re on a first-name basis?” Rynn asked, phrasing it innocently, though I knew damn well it was anything but.

I frowned right back. “If
Dr
.
Hill
is down there, it means he’s in charge of whatever the hell they’ve got going on. No way the thieves could have gotten in and out without him knowing and sounding the alarm.” As a point of reference, I purposely stayed away from his digs.

Rynn was finding my discomfort way too entertaining. I switched my attention back to Nadya. “See if you can find where Carpe is. We need that map.
Now
.” Carpe was off with our friendly neighborhood genie, Nomun. Apparently the agreement to get us into the city meant through the front gate. Not that I was complaining; I think Carpe was more afraid of the genie than Rynn . . .

As soon as Nadya was out of earshot, Rynn set in on me. “So Dr. Hill is the postdoc who ruined your life?”

I nodded and did my best to stifle another coughing fit. “Yup, that’s about it.”

Rynn seemed to consider that. “No offense, but present company excluded, you have horrible taste in men.”

“Right back at you,” I said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I nodded in the direction Nadya had headed, where Nomun was also overseeing Rynn’s collection of pirates. “Funny, when you said you’d been working on the pirates, I didn’t think you meant it quite so literally.”

He frowned. “I was pressed for time. Besides, they’re enthralled, not mind controlled. I’m not doing any permanent damage, and it’s not like I had a lot of options. Deal with it.”

“So the best solution you could come up with was to make the five of them fall madly in love with you?” Turns out Rynn hadn’t had to fight any of the pirates. Once he’d had enough of them enthralled, they’d just let him out. “You realize it’s not helping the case that you aren’t a whore,” I said.

“Will you please, for the love of God, stop with the whore jokes? At least until we get out of this mess? And only one of them thinks he’s in love with me. The other four don’t play for that particular team, and to be honest, I don’t think number five thought he did either. They’re more like extreme super fans. And who are you to complain? I put up with the stealing.”

“The point is you enthralled a pack of pirates.” When I said it like that, it sounded like collecting baseball cards. “It’s creepy, all right.”

“For the love of— Trust me, this isn’t a walk in the park. It’s disturbing being inside their heads, even on an emotional level. Granted, you’d be worse—”

“Wait a minute, how the hell am I worse than pirates?”

I watched as Rynn weighed his answer. “They’re mean and enjoy violence—it’s uncomfortable, but I can manage. You’re a roller coaster of conflicting emotions on a good day. It’d take more effort than I’m willing to expend to manage what goes on inside your head.”

Not sure how I felt about that assessment . . . “Just so we’re all clear on this though, you
could
do that to me, the whole enthralling thing?”

“I already promised I wouldn’t. Can we please drop the pirates?” he said, then gave me a critical look. “To be honest, I’m amazed you’re taking it this well.”

“Blame it on the fever. I’ll freak out once I’ve got the curse lifted.” Not to mention the over-a-few-thousand-years-old detail Artemis had hinted at back at Daphne’s. That is, if I got the curse lifted . . . which reminded me, I might never have the chance to ask Rynn again . . .

“What the hell does
seereet
mean?” I said.

“I prefer the game where you try to guess where I’m from.”

I shook my head. “Odds are not in my favor. I have it on questionable authority you were around for Caligula. Borders change too much over a couple thousand years—”

Rynn swore.

“You can thank your cousin for that tidbit. Come on.
Seereet
means ‘thrall’ or ‘incubus dinner,’ doesn’t it?”

“Alix—not now.”

“You might as well tell me. Come on—‘nonsupernatural’?”

“My God, if I didn’t—” Rynn made an exasperated noise and drew in a breath. “There is no direct translation for
seereet.
It’s an old word, and it’s a description used for someone’s energy—aura, you might call it, but that’s a human word as well and not completely accurate.”

I knew it. They’d been calling me some derogatory word for humans to my face . . . “Spit it out. What have all the supernaturals been calling me?”

He swayed his head from side to side, weighing his answer. “The closest translation would be—”

“Thief, it’s thief, isn’t it?”

“Train wreck,” he said.

Oh . . . Somehow I hadn’t seen that one coming. “I have the aura of a train wreck?” Somehow that was a bit of a letdown.

“Not exactly, but close enough.”

Hunh. I picked up the binoculars and started surveying the monastery again. The supernaturals had been calling me “train wreck” to my face . . .

Rynn gave me a wary look. “I didn’t tell people to call you that, I swear—”

It was my turn to shake my head. “No. I heard you the first time. It’s an aura thing.” Though I decided it was time to switch subjects. I jerked my head in the thralls’ direction. “Are you sure we can trust them?”

Rynn shrugged. “As far as you can trust anyone enthralled against their will—”

Someone cleared their throat.

I put down the binoculars. Carpe stood behind us with Nadya . . . and Nadya looked pissed.

“Carpe, where’s my World Quest map of the Syrian temple?” I said, letting the threat come through in my voice.

He cleared his throat again and glanced warily at Rynn. “There’s been a complication—” he started.

I’d had it with his bullshit. First the detour to Egypt, now this. I didn’t let him finish. Instead, I jumped up and pinned him to the cliff wall behind us. The nice thing about elves is they’re light. “Let’s just be real clear on something before another word leaves your mouth—if you even come
close
to insinuating I just wasted two days and my life chasing after
your
book and you can’t get my map—”

“No. I can get the map! Just stop strangling me and I’ll explain.”

Against my better judgment, I let Carpe go.

He rubbed his neck for a moment and glared at me. “The programmers have agreed to give us the map. It’s just that they want to have a meeting with us on World Quest—to negotiate . . .”