“Cleopatra VII?” Had there been that many?
“She’s the one you’re thinking of,” Rhys assured me.
“Seduced Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony, heavy-on-the-eye-shadow, death-by-asp Cleopatra.”
“The very same. It’s well-known that, amid her palace complex, she had a temple to Isis. But we now assume that the same earthquake which destroyed the Pharos Lighthouse submerged the palace complex as well. It was long after that nasty death-by-asp business, though.”
I looked from the approaching cabin cruiser back toward the coastal city of Alexandria, which, from the water, vaguely resembled an especially dusty, disorganized Venice off the Grand Canal…except for the chunks of cement blocks at the water’s edge, to fight erosion. Then I turned to the medieval fortress that guarded the harbor entrance from the sea, and tried to imagine how this ancient city would have looked a thousand years before even that had been built. “And where there is a temple to Isis…”
“It stands to reason there may be a reliquary,” agreed Rhys. “And where there is a reliquary…”
“There could be relics like a goddess grail.” I shivered happily at the thought. Another font of female power, just waiting for us under the salty water. If only I could collect enough—however many that might be—then they could finally be revealed to a world in need of their balance and power.
The man we’d hired to ferry us out to the cabin cruiser steered well around what I recognized as a diver-down buoy. He cut his engine and levered the motor up out of the water for safety. Momentum carried us the rest of the way to the ship. When I saw the name of this floating headquarters—Soeur d’Aphrodite, or Aphrodite’s Sister—I felt all the more certain of the rightness of this visit.
Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, isn’t just a goddess. She may well be another face of Isis.
“Several significant archeologists have been leading the effort to explore these sites since their discovery,” explained Rhys, grabbing hold of the ladder on the side of the ship as we coasted in beside it. “Whenever they can get permission. This is one of the few places in Alexandria where the scholars aren’t having to fight developers for rights to the land. There is even some talk about creating an underwater tunnel system specifically so that tourists can view the finds—once the government manages to lessen the toxicity in the local seawater. After you.”
He had my laptop case again, so all I had to do was gather up the excess of my torn cotton skirt, twist it, and tuck it into the waistband before I climbed up. If anyone had a problem with seeing my knees, they’d just have to get over it. I wasn’t about to risk falling into water Rhys had just announced was toxic. Once I swung onto the lower deck I freed my skirts, while Rhys followed me.
What came after was a pleasant jumble of introductions and welcomes from an international assortment of divers and archeologists. The director of this particular branch of the project, Pierre d’Alencon, shook my hand but seemed busy with other matters, so I backed to the edge of the deck, out of the way, to simply observe. Rhys got permission to show me the computer programs being used to map the underwater finds, so I turned in that direction—
And faced blazing green eyes.
“You,” snarled a sickeningly familiar female voice, in French.
Right before its owner pushed me over the railing.
Chapter 5
I made a desperate scramble at the metal railing as I fell over it. But I was too surprised, and it wasn’t enough. The impact against the back of my legs, against my grasping hands, gave way to weightlessness.
Then, with a splash, I vanished beneath the surface of the toxic harbor—and quickly closed my eyes. Sinking downward, before my frantic strokes and kicks stopped my descent, I wouldn’t have seen any goddess relics even if they waited right there in front of me.
Some champion!
Only after I managed to struggle upward, boots and soggy skirt and all, and my face broke the waves into the air, did I open my eyes to the sunshine—
And behold, far above, the bitch who’d pushed me.
Catrina Dauvergne of the Musée de Cluny, Paris.
The woman who’d once stolen the Melusine Grail from me.
The willowy, tawny-haired Frenchwoman was not smiling.
That made two of us.
Once I managed to drag myself up the chrome ladder and back onto the deck, I took two dripping steps in my attacker’s direction, my hand fisting. Maybe women don’t normally default to violence as quickly as men, but this was by no means quick. This had been simmering for weeks.
Rhys shouldered himself between us. “I forgot to mention her being here, Maggi. I’m so sorry.”
He would be. “Move.”
“I will not.” Protecting people brings out the tough-guy in Rhys, even when they didn’t deserve protection.
“Yes, Pritchard,” agreed Catrina in smooth French. “This is not for you to interfere.”
“But it is for me to interfere,” insisted a new voice, that of Monsier d’Alencon—also in French. The French seemed to be running this particular show, after all. “Explain yourselves.”
I wrung out my skirt into a splattering puddle; it clung like wet tissue. “You want me to explain?”
My French, unlike my Arabic, is fluent.
“I wish someone to explain so that I know which of you two—or three—” his gaze included Rhys “—to dismiss.”
Catrina and I glared at each other. But this was a choice expedition, remember? Newsweek. National Geographic. Cable. The threat of expulsion carried weight. I could read her hatred in her narrowed gaze. She’d once accused me of playing archeologist, raiding medieval sanctuaries and stealing the Melusine Chalice instead of leaving it in situ—not that I’d had any choice! She, on the other hand, had pretended that she would put the chalice on display in the Cluny, where it might empower countless visitors with its proof of goddess worship, only to then sell it onto the black market.
Either way, Catrina and I each had enough on the other to permanently ruin both our chances of involvement with either Cleopatra’s Palace or the Temple of Isis everyone hoped to find there—and, worse, to end Rhys’s internship, which he’d gotten through the Sorbonne. I was comfortably employed, waiting only for the fall semester to start. Catrina, I assumed, still had a job with the Cluny, unless she’d quit to live off her ill-gotten gains. But after he’d left the priesthood, archeology was the only profession Rhys had found that spoke to him.
No way would I ruin this opportunity.
No way would I allow Catrina to do so.
“I apologize,” I said slowly—to the project director. “Catrina and I are old friends. Sometimes our little jokes get out of hand, don’t they, Cat?”
Catrina Dauvergne might be disloyal, dishonest and vindictive—but she was not stupid. “But of course, Magdalene,” she said tightly. “Now we are even for the little joke you played in Paris.”
Bitch.
D’Alencon glared from one of us to the other while I stood there dripping—so much for making a professional first impression. “There will be no more jokes on my time, yes? It is how injuries happen.” And, blessedly, he turned back to other demands.
“This is not over,” Catrina whispered menacingly.
“Not even close,” I answered—and deliberately turned to Rhys, who had some explaining to do about forgetting to mention this woman’s presence.
But