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  “You despair,” Khara said, “when you should rejoice. Isn’t your heart softened by the way he looks at you?”

  Why does everyone, even a relative stranger, feel obligated to comment on my love life? Victoria wondered.

  A few moments of blessed silence went by. “I didn’t drink as much as I pretended,” Khara continued. “He asked questions for which I have no answer.”

  “No wonder you made such an impression on Marta,” Victoria commented, smiling. “Both of you are such schemers that you’re practically kindred spirits.” She turned off the engine and reached for her house key. “But now, my friend, you owe me a story.”

  Khara heaved a sigh. “It’s the least you deserve.”

  Chapter Eight Khara

  Victoria pointed out that the rug, the pattern of which Khara was studying, had been woven in Navajo style. Khara plucked at a fiber. Twirling the strand of red wool nervously, she wound it around her index finger.

  One week ago, she had stood, undaunted, before the High Council in the hope of proving herself worthy to rule the Great House of Egypt. Most of her life had been spent preparing for that grueling assessment of her physical and intellectual capabilities. Upon the council’s request, she had accurately calculated stores of grains, defended battle strategies, and surprised them with her skill at hand-to-hand combat. Had she been male the examination would have been little more than a collective nod. Hoping to discredit her—at twenty-three, she was far past the age of innocence—she had been examined by the royal physician, who reported with disappointment that her virginity was intact. Even her devotion to the gods had been called into question. In the end, the High Council was caught between allegiance to their divine king and centuries of tradition. With faces as long and rigid as obelisks, they reluctantly acquiesced to the wishes of their pharaoh.

  Tonight, as she smoothed the borrowed skirt across her lap, she felt the stakes were even higher. Saying too little could be as mortal to her hopes of returning home as divulging too much. These last days had shown with devastating clarity that she needed Victoria more than she dared admit.

  “I have come to see that something as small as a handful of moments are to blame for my misfortune,” Khara began, her voice trembling slightly, “the ones between the time I was born into this world, and Menefra followed.”

  After pulling open the doors, Victoria padded barefoot to her customary place on the sofa and removed the clip holding her hair. She brushed it away from her face and smiled encouragingly while Khara searched for the right place to begin.

  “Nandor says our spirits are as different as the sun and the moon. We share a strong resemblance to our mother—father’s last and most favored wife.”

  “A sister?” Victoria clapped. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? That is good news, isn’t it? I mean, she must be worried sick about you.”

  “Not in the way that you might think. I believe,” she mused, measuring her words carefully, “that my guardian’s intent was to protect me from Menefra.”

  “But why?”

  Shaking her head sadly, she sighed. “My sister is like the Khamsin.”

  “What’s that?” “Imagine that it is a spring day and you are enjoying the sky—bright blue and full of billowing clouds. You feel a gentle gust of warm wind from the east that does no more than raise the hair on your forearms. At that very instant, you must run for cover. You run for your life.” She demonstrated, fingers pumping furiously at the edge of the glass table. “For on the back of that gentle wind rides the Khamsin, bringing monstrous walls of sand that obliterate everything in their path. My sister has become,” she admitted for the first time, “a servant of wickedness.”

  “I take it that you two don’t get along.”

  “It was not always so,” Khara lamented. “Before, it seemed there was no distance between us, even when we were apart. A few decisive moments at our birth meant she was free from the burden of rule, from endless hours of study, a future devoid of choice. I never considered that Menefra, too, might scorn the order of her birth,” she confessed.

  “Where is your sister now?” She bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “In Egypt, certain that she will never see me again.” Khara licked away the droplet of blood and wrestled her anger into submission, lest it reveal itself on her face.

  Dante came inside. After Khara acknowledged him formally, he curled up next to her and laid his head against her thigh.

  “I’m confused. Why would you need protection from your sister?” Victoria made graceful marks on a pad similar to the one Robert had used.

  “In the order of our birth, Menefra follows me in the Line of Kings; it was never intended that she should rule. My sister has proven herself utterly unfit. I must return to prevent her succession to Egypt’s throne.”

  Gently, Victoria corrected her, “Khara, Egypt doesn’t have a throne any more. It’s a republic.”

  “Is that so?” she scoffed. “Do you claim to understand the Egyptian government better than I? I ask you this respectfully, as I am truly grateful for all you have done.”

  A venomous silence ensued. Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. The air was still; no sounds came from the nocturnal desert.

  Though it will be difficult, and you might find yourself in places unknown to Egyptians, do not lose hope. Nandor’s words strengthened Khara’s resolve. “I do not expect you to understand our ways. He told me as much so I would not be dissuaded.”

  “Who?”

  “Nandor. On the day I was sent here.” Victoria scratched her head. She pushed away the pad and pen and rested an elbow on the glass table. “We’ll get back to our political discussion later. Tell me about Nandor. Isn’t he the one who gave you the cuff?”

  “Yes,” she replied in a softer voice. “He was a great man and a complete mystery.”

  Victoria’s expression was one of curiosity and skepticism as she urged Khara to tell the story.

  “It began with my grandfather’s conquest of Nubia. In the ruin of a burning village, they witnessed a boy who had not seen his tenth summer fending off pharaoh’s soldiers with such ferocity that they spared his life. You see, Nandor was a wonder even then.” She straightened her shoulders. “Taller and stronger than anyone in pharaoh’s army, he was taken as a curiosity. “On the army’s return to Memphis, an asp slithered past the boy and the female captives and entered my grandfather’s tent. By the time the guards reached it, Nandor had bitten off the snake’s head! The shackles that had held him were gone, and grandfather was safe.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re telling me that your grandfather was also a pharaoh?” Victoria looked away and shook her head.

  “How else would my father have been crowned?”

  “Right, that whole bloodline thing.”

  “Precisely. Biting off a snake’s head was an omen even the High Priest could not overlook. Who better to protect the royal family than an eater of poisonous snakes? There were many such stories about Nandor. I remember asking my father if any of them were true.”

  Victoria’s eyebrow raised slightly. “And?”

  “One day, as we walked in the vineyard, he plucked a grape and handed it to me. ‘The best stories always ripen on the vine of truth,’ he said.”

  The telling eased Khara’s pain; it brought her father and Nandor back, if only for a precious moment. But at the same time, she felt a sharp pain near her heart and knew that the anger she felt as Menefra’s arrows sailed toward her on that terrible day was spreading, rotting her heart.

  As if she could read her thoughts, Victoria remarked, “Shouldn’t your guardian be here with you now?”

  “He would, if he could.” She could not bring herself to say more.

  The gazelle-like gentleness in Victoria’s eyes dissolved. Springing from the couch, the attorney circled her with quick strides. “There must be something,” she reasoned, “one teeny, tiny detail about your life that makes sense. If you persist with this ridiculous st
ory, I can’t help you anymore. I want to, but not under these conditions.”

  With as much civility as her offended heart could muster, Khara bowed slightly. “Allow me to prove a small part of my experience to you.”

  “Hell yes, can you do that?”

  She slipped Nandor’s cuff from around her thigh and handed it to Victoria. “Wear this.”

  “Why not? Among the peculiar things I’ve done for clients, this is nothing.”

  She took the cuff, her hand drooping slightly with its weight, and stared at it for a long time. “Do you want me to put it on?”

  “Not if you are afraid.”

  “Very funny.” Pushing the clasp open, Victoria studied the scarab’s body for the second time. “It’s magnificent and hideous at the same time. It gives me the creeps.”

  Laughing shortly, Khara declared, “Nandor would have it no other way. Do not worry—it will bring you no harm,” she assured Victoria, and then took a step back.

  “Okay, here goes nothing.” Victoria fitted the cuff just above her knee.

  Khara held her breath. Does the cuff’s power belong to anyone who wears it?

  Chapter Nine Victoria

  An aura of expectancy fell over the room. Victoria clasped the cuff closed her eyes and felt…nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Laughing nervously, she fumbled to remove the golden bangle when a voice like that of a Shakespearean actor pierced the night.

  “You’re braver than I gave you credit for.”

  Victoria looked around but saw only the cat and Khara, the suggestion of a smile forming on the latter’s lips.

  Confused, Victoria challenged the voice. “Who are you?”

  “Ahem.”

  “Dante?” she gasped. The large grey cat came forward until he stood in front of her feet. Her heart pounded, and she felt lightheaded “This is a better way to communicate, wouldn’t you say?” His eyes glowed a shade of green she had never seen before as he wove his way around her ankles. “Our intervention may not have been the best way to convince her, Princess Khara. She’s completely undone.”

  Staggering backward, Victoria collapsed on the couch. “You—you know who she is?” The stammer that had been gone since puberty mercilessly reappeared.

  Dante jumped up beside her. “It was exactly the same for me,” Khara told her, approaching Victoria with her hand out, as she would a stray dog. “I saw the cuff beside me in the dirt. It was Nandor’s, you see; he had given it to me, so I could not leave it behind. Not long afterwards, a man—the one who brought me to you—appeared. I understood him when he explained why it was not safe to stay in the desert though I had never heard his tongue before. That is what convinced me I had arrived in the Underworld.”

  “But how does that work?” Victoria’s words sounded melodic, primitive. “And what language am I speaking now?”

  Dante stood on her legs and put his paws on her chest. “I think you know the answer. Isn’t it beautiful?” His soft grey face, only inches away, was serene. “Accept this superb gift and do not waste time wondering, Victoria.”

  Her head swam and her breathing was reduced to small, erratic gulps of air as she tried to wrestle the clasp open, pushing Dante rudely aside in the process. “Get this damned thing off!”

  Khara rushed to Victoria and removed the cuff. She took her hands and lifted her from the couch, guiding her to the patio and fresh air. “Now do you believe me?”

  Victoria wiped perspiration from her brow; the freight train in her head had slowed, but only a bit. “How is this possible?” she croaked.

  Khara shrugged as they stepped outside. “There are no answers, only questions,” she said cryptically as she leaned against the railing and stared at the stars. The wind caught her long hair, swirling it around her small body like a spirit. “The answer must lie in Nandor’s last words, but for now, I— we—remain victims of his dark art.” She took Victoria’s arm. “I needed you to believe me, though it was selfish of me to force my burden on you.”

  A shooting star flashed across the night sky as Khara took the cuff and returned inside. The stars looked different now and left her wondering how she had missed their remarkable beauty before. She lingered, watching Dante through the glass door. Was there something different about the way he looked at her? No, he seemed aloof as always, but happy to be at Khara’s side, which was just fine.

  When she finally came inside, she felt like being alone; no easy task in an apartment as small as hers. “I don’t feel well. I’m going to bed,” she announced.

  Khara had slipped off her clothes, so natural in her nakedness that Victoria found it more than a little unnerving. Her dancer’s body and fluid movements seemed a stark contrast to her fierce eyes. “I understand completely. Good night.”

  Hours later, her lawyer’s mind still sought an ordinary explanation for what had happened. Wearing Nandor’s cuff had distorted her mind, twisting the entire world on itself. Had she glimpsed the inside of another dimension, an otherworldly place where animals spoke and her senses had intensified a thousand times over, or had the whole thing been a dream?

  She dragged her thoughts back from the realm of the ethereal and fought the feeling in her gut. The conflict could not be put off any longer. Earlier, she had decided there was no harm in letting the girl’s fantasy live for one more night; rather than continue a pointless argument about the Egypt of the pharaohs, she had backed down. But no more. Tomorrow she would do more than argue; she would present Khara with irrefutable evidence. Hopefully they could start over from scratch and, this time, Khara had better tell the truth. Regarding the cuff—well, it was just as Khara had said. There were no answers, only questions.

  The next time she opened her eyes, the sun was flooding her bedroom. She reached for her alarm clock and stared vacantly at the display, unable to construe any meaning from it. How much of last night had been real? Her first thought was of Robert’s intoxicating scent and the way he had wrapped her hand in his. And then there was Dante, who apparently knew more about Khara than she did. Dante, the cat, who had spoken to her. He and Khara had made her feel like an idiot, which, according to Marta, she was anyway. What a night!

  Rising slowly, she peeked around the corner and into the living room. Pillows remained where they had fallen, a testament that at least some parts of the previous night had happened. The sight of Khara sitting patiently at the tiny breakfast table, fully dressed, was a virtual smack across the face and just what she needed.

  “I’ve got the perfect resolution to last night’s debate,” Victoria began, standing with her hands on her hips. “As a matter of fact, we might find the answers to a number of things. Are you game?”

  “Of course.” Though Khara smiled, Victoria caught the challenge in her voice and saw the unflinching, golden stare of a hawk.

  “Good. It’s not far. We’ll pick up breakfast on the way.”

  Pulling on a pair of faded jeans, Victoria grabbed a white long-sleeved oxford shirt, rolled up the cuffs, and piled her hair into a hasty bun. She slipped on a pair of black loafers and grabbed her bag as they headed for the car.

  The two drove downtown and stopped at a drive-through where Victoria collected three steaming cups of coffee, egg burritos, and a cinnamon roll wrapped snugly in wax paper while Khara watched with unreserved astonishment. Examining the burrito closely as Victoria drove, she asked, “Is this also wrapped in paper?”

  Victoria nodded and gulped her coffee. “This is the ultimate disposable society.”

  “And you are proud of this?”

  “Not exactly, but I like to think that we have enough good qualities to balance us out.” Khara unwrapped the burrito, grinning at the sound the paper made as she tore it. She bit into it delicately. “Hmm. What is it I taste?”

  “Eggs. In the Southwest, we wrap everything in a tortilla.”

  “No, not the egg. Something else—a green, bright flavor.”

  “That would be the chili.”

  “Is
it supposed to burn? We don’t have this at home. I like it very much. Victoria?”

  “Yes?”

  “How are you able to drive this conveyance—no, that’s the wrong term, isn’t it? The word is car, correct? You are driving, drinking hot liquid from a paper cup, carrying on a conversation, all at the same time.”

  Victoria giggled.

  “Have I said something to make you laugh? I mean no disrespect. In fact, I find myself astonished by your abilities. Will you show me how to do it?”

  Though she strongly suspected Khara had not intended to compliment her, she laughed just the same—at herself.

  A short time later, they stepped out of the car and into a blast of cool fall wind, and Victoria guided Khara across the four-lane street. “The exhibit I want to show you is inside. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why I can’t do any more until you decide to let go of this harebrained story of yours.”

  “It grieves me that you think I would repay your immense kindness with lies,” Khara replied sadly. “If, as you say, the answers can be found here, no one welcomes them more than I.”

  Yellow rose bushes, freshly watered, lined the walkway to the El Paso International Museum of Art, a white colonial mansion larger and more exquisite than most that lined Montana Street. Cattle and railroad barons had built these magnificent homes, the longing in their hearts for the Old South evidenced by the antebellum architecture. These days, the renovated mansions stood delightfully out of place in a city of adobe and red-tiled roofs.

  “It’s not very large as museums go,” Victoria explained, “but over the years, Elias has managed to acquire a few notable pieces. He’s curated some wonderful exhibits. In fact there’s one in particular I’d like to show you.”

  Cutting across the wet lawn and along the side of the building, they passed what had once been the coach house, which now served as storage. She rang the buzzer at the dock entrance and waited. The cheery voice that came through the speaker made Khara jump.