The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) (9 page)

“What is it, Miss Folley?” Pettigrew asked.

At the sound of his voice, showmanship was foremost on Eleanor’s mind; she told herself to remember his tone of voice, because it carried the way it had the night of the unwrappings. He was asking a larger audience what she, his volunteer, had discovered. But the reasonable part of her mind was pushed to the side at the sight of a ring submerged within the honey. It could not be, and yet it was.

“It’s a ring,” Eleanor whispered and she set her notebook to the side, rolling up her sleeves before she could reconsider. There was only that circle of metal and the memory of the rings that had carried her mother away. She wanted it, was enthralled by it, and was already reaching for it when Cleo’s mechanical fingers closed gently around her forearm.

“Eleanor.”

The cool touch of the metal fingers startled her back into the here and now. She looked at Cleo, who pulled her back from the sticky edge of the sarcophagus.

“Let me. If it is a ring, I can probably retrieve it without causing the body any stress.” Giving up her hold on Eleanor slowly, as though she were trusting her against her will, Cleo pulled a pair of leather gloves from one of her cases and slid them on, tightening them with the pull of a single lace bound into the upper hem.

“Here.”

Pettigrew pressed a leather-bound square box into Eleanor’s hands. With the flick of a switch upon its upper edge, clean bright light poured out of it. She aimed it into the sarcophagus, surprised when candle wax did not run from the case, but the light source was fully contained behind a glass lens.

“Wonderful!” Cleo exclaimed.

Eleanor angled the light toward the hand, not daring to hope she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Rings were not uncommon, she told herself as Cleo delved a precise hand into the thick golden river. It looked as if Cleo were shaking hands with the man, sliding her hand into his before her exact fingers latched onto the ring upon his smallest finger. It came slowly free and Eleanor found she was holding her breath as Cleo brought it from the honey.

“And here.”

Pettigrew offered a metal specimen tray and Cleo carefully deposited the ring into it. It was not corroded as the others were, a beautiful and perfect circle of metal within the puddle of honey. The metal was marked with patterns Eleanor had never seen, patches of bright and dark metals both. Pettigrew pressed the tray into Eleanor’s free hand. Eleanor snapped the light off, staring at the circle of metal.

It was smaller than she had guessed, though the honey might well have magnified its appearance. It was so small, Eleanor couldn’t help but wonder if it belonged to a woman. The metal appeared tarnished, unlike anything Eleanor had ever seen outside of the ring left atop her notebooks, the ring at the auction.

“Did you know this was here?” Eleanor whispered. She stared at Pettigrew, as if she could break him open with eyes alone and know every answer to every question. He only returned her stare, devoid of the anger and suspicion; his look was even, without even a trace of surprise at the accusation.

“Miss Folley, I am certain I had no idea, given that we have only just opened the sarcophagus.”

“Eleanor—”

Eleanor shushed Cleo, surprising even herself at the action. Pettigrew’s denial made perfect sense, and yet she could not shake the idea that they were part of an elaborate, ongoing spectacle, with Pettigrew as audience and conductor both. There was no stage, but for Alexandria herself, nor lights, nor music as there had been at his unwrapping party, but Eleanor still thought they were being watched and toyed with.

“The metal of that ring resembles two other rings I have come into recent possession of.” She looked at Cleo now. “You cannot possibly believe in
that
much coincidence.” Eleanor noted the way Cleo’s throat worked as she swallowed hard. Letting the honey drizzle from her glove, Cleo shook her head.

“There have been too many of those of late.”

“Similar to two
other
rings you have come into recent possession of,” Pettigrew said. He laughed at this and reclaimed the light box from Eleanor. “And here you criticize my own collection of artifacts. How dare you?”

“Rings are not people,” Eleanor insisted. She looked at the ring that stood within the pool of honey in the specimen tray. Clues, so many clues, but nothing that connected them, nothing but Pettigrew.

“These…” Pettigrew gestured to the sarcophagi around them, a gesture made without anger, filled with a deep passion for his subject as he warmed, “are no longer people, Miss Folley. There remain only shells that once housed such. These people have flown, much as Egypt’s own glory flown for she too is only presently a tarnished bauble dangled before countless white tourists. Fingerprints upon fingerprints, greedy hands shoveling what they may into their gaping maws.” He set the light box aside and walked a careful circle around the sarcophagus, until he reached Cleo’s side. He leaned in, his voice falling to a rough whisper.

“How do you stand it? You both carry Egyptian blood, do you not? Or is that why you stand it? Because
any
preservation is better than utter destruction and complete loss? You see this world fingerprinted to clouds and footprinted into dust because it would at least remain in some way beneath these awful trespasses. We are none of us more than this body here.” He stabbed a finger toward the honey mummy. “Forever dissolving into the world around us. There was no grand and glorious afterlife to carry this man into, was there? Anubis did not scoop his heart into his hand for judgment. This man was flesh and bone and rot, as are we all.”

The jackal within Eleanor pressed so hard that Eleanor feared she would lose her human form before Pettigrew and Cleo. She wanted to silence Pettigrew, her teeth in his throat, because his words touched on truths she didn’t like to examine. What had become of the glorious Egypt that had once been? With shaking hands Eleanor pressed the specimen tray with its ring into Cleo’s hands.

“B-bring that t-to me later?” Eleanor stepped back from the sarcophagus, struggling for each step she took.

“Eleanor, where are you—” Cleo moved to follow, but Eleanor held up a hand.

“I will s-see you at the hotel.”

“Miss Folley.”

The hard edge of Pettigrew’s voice was somehow as compelling as the ring itself, but she shook her head and fled the room. She was aware of his pursuit and feared he would overtake her, because he knew the halls of his home and she did not. She was surprised to find a series of lamps in the corridors, however, illuminated to show her the path out. She ran, not questioning these lamps until she burst outside and found evening had arrived. They had scheduled a driver to come for them mid-afternoon, but he had never… He had never…

The silver-haired Akila lingered outside the villa wall. Eleanor stared at her in disbelief and anger both. No coincidence, she told herself and she ran, heading for the woman even as she sensed Pettigrew at her heels. She did not look—if Pettigrew and Akila were working together, if they were leading her toward some fate she could not yet see, she did not care. She was tired of games and rings and of feeling that even after everything she had given up for her mother, that she was not yet in control of her own destiny.

Eleanor ran after Akila, pursing the woman until she thought her skin would burst, and when at last she let her human self fall away—when she could no longer hold any part of it—it was with a sigh of relief. The jackal stretched and threw itself into pursuit of the prey Akila had become. The city spread out in a simple grid of streets around them, but these straight lines were garbled with baskets, troughs, and the occasional alarmed camel side-stepping at their passage.

Around them in the night air, Eleanor became aware of the hum of locusts. Gentle at first, and only occasional. And then, more, and more as if they were raining from clouds, until even the evening sky was dark with them, surging everywhere overhead and underfoot. Eleanor squashed them as she ran in jackal form, and Akila must have too, for she slipped on locust-slick stones as they entered the alleys of the Arab Quarter. Eleanor pursued. Akila fled.

Eleanor pressed Akila deeper into the alleys, but the locusts grew so thick she could not stop snapping at them. Some burst against her tongue in sour explosions. They crawled over her back and her head, trying to burrow into her ears, biting everywhere they landed. Eleanor could not control her reaction to the beasts, jumping and jerking when she meant to run, when she meant to haul Akila to the stones and demand answers. She threw herself to the stones, to roll and thrash and try to shake the insects loose, but they remained intent upon her.

Then, Akila was there, pressing a hand against Eleanor’s head. Her touch was like fire even though Eleanor’s fur, uncomfortable but tolerable to the jackal if not the locusts. They crisped up as if they had been burned, falling dead to the stones around them.

“
Incendia
,” Akila whispered and the air around them turned to flame.

The locusts did not die quietly, but went up with strangely human-sounding shrieks that caused Eleanor to shudder and retch. She pushed herself up from the stones as the locusts began to fall, to escape the papery rain of them. Akila snapped her fingers as if bringing a dog to heel and Eleanor, knowing she might not get another opportunity, followed her deeper into the alleys.

“Ah, see here, gentlemen! The Thomson-Widmanstätten reveals itself! Beautiful, like a metal lattice within the metal.”

Virgil peered at the rings held in the careful hands of Miss Rachael Tyrell, Mistral’s lead geologist in Alexandria. Virgil did not believe it an exaggeration to say the geologist was more excited about the rings than he and Auberon were. Having no ties to strange rings and the potential powers therein, she was not worried about slipping them onto her fingers and had done so countless times during their cleaning. Virgil thought they paired well with her gray waistcoat and trousers. The rings gleamed in the light of the laboratory, revealing patterns unlike any Virgil had seen before. There appeared to be bands of light and dark metal both, within what Miss Tyrell had confirmed was iron.

“But you said they were iron,” Virgil said, still not entirely clear on the matter. “This looks like no iron I know.”

Miss Tyrell peered at Virgil with bright hazel eyes over the golden rim of her glasses. “Indeed I did, and indeed they are—just because you haven’t seen this kind of iron does not make it anything else.”

Auberon cleared his throat at the jab and Virgil shifted from foot to foot. “You have a point,” he said.

“Several, I promise,” Miss Tyrell said. She tipped the rings in the light, letting the patterns in the metal reveal themselves better. “Only meteorite shows this striking pattern, Mr. Mallory. It is said the ancient Egyptians crafted jewelry from such metals, but I have never seen such brilliant evidence before me until today.” With this, she handed the cleaned rings to Virgil with a resigned sigh. “I should rather like to keep them, but suppose you mean to take them elsewhere?”

Virgil pondered the rings within his hand. “I should rather like to leave them with you,” he murmured, then grunted when Auberon elbowed him in the ribs.

“Consider Miss Folley’s reaction to that,” Auberon said.

“Indeed.” Virgil didn’t like any of the answers because they confirmed what Eleanor said of Anubis, and the god’s own starry claims.

Emerging from the Mistral laboratory where he and Auberon had worked with Miss Tyrell, Virgil was astonished to discover that night had fallen. He stared at the sky, unable to believe it for many long moments. Eleanor and Cleo were supposed to have finished their work with Pettigrew after the lunch hour, but now, it was full dark.

“That is not possible,” Auberon said at his side, and withdrew his pocket watch.

Virgil peered at the silver watch face as it came open, but it only confirmed they had somehow lost a complete day within the laboratory. An entire day, given to the study of two rings? It was not remotely possible—the study of the rings had not consumed that much time—and yet, the moon stared down at them, a pale, accusatory eye that proved otherwise.

“Sirs?”

A driver from the carriages parked at the curb drew Virgil’s attention. It was the driver who had brought them from the hotel to the lab earlier that day. He looked no different, nor did he appear terribly concerned over the fact that it was now night.

“Just …back to the hotel, if you would?” Virgil asked. The driver nodded and skipped toward his carriage. Once inside, Virgil stared at Auberon, waiting for an explanation.

Auberon shook his head. “I have no logical way of explaining how the entire day has passed. I am, however, hungry, as if I have not eaten for the entirety of it. Do you think the rings have anything to do with it?”

Virgil noted his own hunger, the wolf within him discontent over that status once it was realized. He opened the display box of rings from the auction, which now also included the ring that had been left to them in Paris. They looked as they had all day, perfectly normal if curious in their compositions.

“Are you suggesting that we…” Virgil swallowed a curse as the carriage lurched into motion. He snapped the ring case shut once more, setting it on the seat beside him. “It was a few hours at the most? I am not certain a small bit of metal can speed up or alter time—or even our perception of such.”

“Given its possible origin…”

Virgil waved a hand. “Nonsense. We are not…” He pressed himself back into the seat, staring at Auberon. It was the look of a man on the edge of something he didn’t wish to be on. “We are not doing this again.”

“Certainly not,” Auberon said. “Miss Folley and Miss Barclay are safe at the hotel, no doubt annoyed and perplexed as to where we have spent these past hours. The rings simply occupied us as …nothing has before.”

Virgil startled. “Miss Folley and Miss Barclay. And if they aren’t at the hotel?” Had they returned from Pettigrew’s as normal? Had they noticed the strange slip of the day into night? “Good lord. You don’t suppose…” He had no idea what he meant to propose.

Auberon did and rose an eyebrow in question. “Are you suggesting that George Pettigrew has somehow turned day to night?”

Virgil lifted an eyebrow in return. “Are you suggesting that is somehow outside
our
realm of possibility, given that we were, not at all that long ago, speaking with Hatshepsut herself, witnessing Anubis’s judgment of the Irvings? We did see them turn to dust, did we not? We did,” he said, gripping the display box on the seat, “travel from present day, to ancient Egypt via a collection of rings not wholly unlike these.”

“Breathe, old man,” Auberon said. “Let us reach the hotel and have the ladies mock us for our worry, before we begin jumping to conclusions, yes?”

While his voice was even as ever—Auberon was never one given to outright anger, in Virgil’s experience—there was a rasp of unease within it; something was not quite right, and matter did not improve when they arrived at the Twelve Palms Hotel and discovered the ladies were not in residence. Their rooms remained locked, no sliver of light beneath either door. Virgil could not smell any recent trace of them, either; there was a faint hint of Eleanor’s morning soap, and the oil Cleo used on her mechanical arms, but nothing more. The desk clerk who had been on duty all day, shook his head and said that no, the women had not returned, nor had their driver.

“All right,” Virgil said. He had taken the time to tuck the rings beneath his bed’s mattress, given there was no room safe, and now paced a slow path through the lobby, his hands clasped together. “There is but one place they can be, surely? Just one, and in this time frame, thank you very much, not any other, be it distant past or far-flung future.”

“Unless they met with peril after having left Pettigrew’s,” Auberon said and took a step back from Virgil’s path, to keep himself out of arm’s reach.

Virgil unclasped his hands and drew them into fists. “This is positively not happening.”

“We have no idea yet as to what
has
happened,” Auberon said, “only that the ladies have not returned to the hotel. A ride to Pettigrew’s and then we shall reassess.”

It was Auberon’s calm voice and demeanor that helped Virgil though, he was certain. They called a fresh carriage and driver, and made the ride to Pettigrew’s. The entire house was illuminated against the night’s darkness, glowing like a rusty gem against the blackness. There was no lingering driver or carriage outside and the gates were closed, but as Virgil stepped down onto the drive, he could smell it.

Eleanor’s anger was sharp in the air and upon the dirt at the edge of the drive, there lay a button once attached to Eleanor’s blouse. He bent and scooped it into his hand, staring at it until Auberon’s hand upon his shoulder drew him back up.

“A button bodes neither good nor ill,” Auberon reminded him, but the sudden appearance of George Pettigrew within the brightly illuminated frame of his front door surely meant something.

“Gentlemen!” he called out, and walked down the drive toward them, his pace casual and not at all worried.

Of course he would not be, Virgil figured, not if his hand had set all of this into motion. Not if he were pulling strings and orchestrating even now.

Virgil’s hands shook the closer Pettigrew came. He wanted to blame it on the lack of opium, but knew it was the fault of the wolf within, the beast wanting to run. It would be easy to let himself seek an accomplice in the wolf and throw Pettigrew to the ground. But if Eleanor and Cleo were already in jeopardy at Pettigrew’s hands, such actions would do little to ease their plight.

“This is unexpected,” Pettigrew said, “but I am relieved to see you, yes indeed.” With these words, he opened the gates, swinging one side open to allow them entry. “Have you received word from Miss Folley?”

The worry that spiked through Virgil was like the coldest steel coated in ice and jammed into his neck. The wolf inside was so close to the surface, Virgil had to close his hand into a fist to keep the claws from bursting out.

“What do you mean, have we received word from Miss Folley?” he asked. He took a step forward, but no more when Auberon’s hand came to rest on his shoulder.

“The last we knew, Miss Folley and Miss Barclay were working here, with you, Mister Pettigrew,” Auberon clarified.

“Indeed, indeed. Miss Barclay yet remains, but Miss Folley…” Pettigrew drew in a breath and his shaking fingers fussed with his jet tie tack, covering it before smoothing his tie flat once more. “Come inside, I shall pour some tea and we will discuss what has happened. I believe something Miss Folley found within the sarcophagus disturbed her. She left in a poor temper.”

It took everything in Virgil to walk the distance to the front doors with a calm demeanor. If Eleanor was not here, where had she gone, and why?

“Something she found?” he managed to ask as they crossed the threshold of the gaudy house.

“Indeed,” Pettigrew said again. He closed the doors behind them and gestured for them to follow. “She and Miss Barclay were positively rapt by the sarcophagus all day—they feared they overstayed their welcome, but worry not. They are welcome to stay as they will, having so much more knowledge of these matters than I.”

“And what did she find?” This question was asked through clenched teeth, Virgil having to swallow down wolf and worry as Pettigrew passed him another slick smile.

“A ring! Much like the one she acquired at the auction, the corroded one. Though this one was preserved—for the sarcophagus was
entirely
filled with honey. Can you imagine?”

Virgil supposed there were all kinds of ways to stop time; the mention of a third ring did it for him, as they ticked ever closer to an edge he still did not want Eleanor to go over.

Pettigrew clasped his hands together. “Come. Miss Barclay and I can tell you more over tea and surely by now, Miss Folley has returned to the hotel.”

Virgil doubted this, but if this were the last location Eleanor had been, he would study all there was to be had before he moved elsewhere. Eleanor was no stranger to Egypt, even if Alexandria was new, so he found some comfort in that idea, but not the idea that she had left in a poor temper.

Pettigrew led them down mummy-lined halls, where Virgil picked up only the slightest scent of Eleanor’s anger; if he had to guess, he would have said that hours had passed since she had been here. Hours. Did this play into the day-into-night occurrence? He kept the possibility close to hand.

Cleo was in the parlor where she had recovered after her fainting spell at the unwrapping. She looked considerably better, but it was surprise and worry both that flickered through her brown eyes at the sight of Virgil and Auberon. Her mouth parted, then closed, and she stared, faint lines creasing her brow.

“Has something happened to Eleanor?” she asked.

“We wondered the same,” Auberon said, “not finding either of you at the hotel, and night having arrived.”

Cleo looked to the windows, as if she was only just discovering this for herself. She moved toward the nearest window as if in a trance, feet silent on the tiled floor. Her fingers rested lightly on the window’s sill, her confusion reflected back at Virgil within the window’s glass.

“That’s not…”

“She did leave in quite a temper,” Pettigrew interrupted. He moved toward the tea cart, settling four cups into place and pouring. The fragrant scent of Earl Grey reached Virgil’s nose, but the familiar floral black tea didn’t calm the pacing wolf inside.

“I rather think I should go back to the hotel,” Virgil said, “and wait for her, if she has not yet returned on her own.”

Pettigrew waved him toward the couch. “Sit, and have tea, and we will tell you all we know before you go.”

“There was another ring,” Cleo said as she turned from the window. She crossed back to the sofas and sat, exhaling. “There was a body within the honey.”

Virgil did not miss the way her eyes flicked to Auberon, as if they shared a secret. About bodies? About honey?

“And the body wore a ring?” Auberon asked. “This body was encased in honey?”

Cleo’s head bobbed in a nod and she did not meet Auberon’s intent look. “Yes. It…” She squirmed in her seat, relaxing when Pettigrew pressed a delicate china cup in to her metal hands. “The body of a man. A man wearing a ring much like the one Eleanor got at the auction.”

“And as was left to her in Paris,” Auberon said.

He sank onto the couch, albeit a good distance from Cleo. Virgil watched them, each sneaking glances at the other as if they could not quite believe they were in the same room together. It was not young love, but something else entirely. Unfulfilled love? Unrequited? But no, he found reciprocation in both pairs of eyes.

Cleo set her tea aside and leaned forward, to nudge a small wood box closer to Virgil. “It’s not corroded like the others,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

Virgil could not bear to look at it—he knew it would surely show the same pattern as on the rings Miss Tyrell had cleaned. Instead, he took the cup of tea that Pettigrew offered him and drank it down in one hard swallow. He asked for another and Pettigrew poured again, before also offering a cup to Auberon.

“Miss Barclay tells me you have a history with rings,” Pettigrew said, “so it is no wonder that Miss Folley was disturbed to see one. Especially given the one in Paris? It’s a curious story, isn’t it? How a ring in Paris comes to match those she encounters in Egypt.” Pettigrew set the teapot upon the tray and lifted another, to pour for himself. “Couple that with the discovery of the honey, which ties into Miss Barclay’s own Alexandrian history and I would say you are on the cusp of something remarkable.
Indeed
.”