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Their conveyance stopped at a fine two-story structure fronted by a shady veranda. Painted letters on the wall just below the roof line readLuxor Hotel. The building looked well-kept and freshly painted. A pale-skinned gentleman in a cream suit hurried through the entrance to greet them.

With a tired sigh, Neil crossed over to accept the man’s enthusiastic handshake.

“Dr. Fairfax is already acquainted with Mr. Oliver, the manager,” Sayyid explained beside her. “He’ll make the arrangements.”

“Can Neil do that?” Ellie prompted with a flash of worry at the thought of her brother’s non-existent negotiation skills.

Sayyid did a reasonable job of turning his chuckle into a polite cough. “This is a Cooks’ hotel, and they have a special rate for Egyptologists,” he replied. “So he cannot muck it up too badly.”

While her brother chatted awkwardly with the hotel manager, Ellie took a moment to soak up the fact that she was actually standing in the city that lay at the heart of the Ancient Egyptian world. Luxor sat on the ruins of Thebes, the capital city of many of Egypt’s greatest dynasties and home to some of its most important temples. To the west sprawled the steep canyons riddled with the tombs of the noble dead.

She couldn’t see a great deal of that from where she stood, as the hotel’s garden was framed by a plastered wall roughly her own height, but her surroundings were far from unpleasant. Bushy, flowering shrubs and a lovely fountain filled the space between the enormous palm trees—but Ellie’s appreciation of the landscaping came to an abrupt halt at a pair of basalt sculptures that framed the walkway to the hotel door.

The statues were a matched pair that took the form of a noble woman seated on a square throne—only instead of a human face, she had the head of a lioness topped by the round disk of the full moon.

Or at least, one iteration of her did. The other moon-disk crown had broken off.

Ellie stiffened with recognition. She knew who that lion-headed woman was—Sekhmet, the Ancient Egyptian goddess of war and healing.

She gripped Sayyid’s arm. “Please tell me those are reproductions!”

Sayyid’s gaze shifted nervously to the statues. “Er… I am afraid they may have been removed from the ruins at Karnak.”

“Removed?!” Ellie echoed, her voice squeaking with outrage. “You mean they were taken from their original context so that they could serve asgarden furniturefor a tourists’ hotel?”

Adam strolled over to join them. “Wanna steal them back?”

“They must weigh over a thousand pounds,” Constance noted. It was not so much an objection as a statement of fact. Her thoughtful gaze at the sculptures indicated that she was seriously considering Adam’s suggestion.

“It’s notthathard to move a thousand pounds,” Adam pushed back. “It’s all about leverage.”

“They would only find them at the temple and bring them back here.” Sayyid sounded resigned.

“Then perhaps we should position them outside the manager’s bedroom window,” Ellie suggested darkly, “so that he thinks they are cursed and determined to haunt him.”

Sayyid stared at her with surprise.

“I say—that’s a properly Gothic idea!” Constance remarked admiringly.

Adam’s blue gaze dropped to her, his mouth quirking with approval.

Neil finally freed himself from the manager and came to join them. “Mr. Oliver is arranging rooms for us.”

“Does he have someone he could send to the shops?” Constance brushed off her dress, which was looking decidedly less pristine than it had the previous morning.

“I… didn’t think to ask,” Neil admitted, flushing.

“Of course you didn’t.” Constance gave him a sympathetic pat on the arm. “I’ll make a little list and pass it to the concierge. Shall we, then?”

She marched into the hotel like a general in a dingy lawn dress, head high. Ellie trailed along in her wake with a reluctant look at the sculptures.

There would be time to settle the matter of the misappropriated Sekhmets later. First, she had a mystery to solve—and a staff to save.

?

From the open window of her upper-floor room, Ellie could see past the hotel gardens to the Nile. The broad river gleamed with hints of gold as sunset painted the sky in vibrant streaks of pink and purple. On its banks stood another famous temple of Luxor, this one devoted to the worship of the divine kings of Upper and Lower Egypt. The mosque that rose from the center of the ruins was hundreds of years old but still in use. Ellie could hear the call of the muezzin from its minaret as the time for another of the daily prayers approached.

Past the line of fertile green on the far side of the river, she picked out the hazy shapes of half-crumbled walls and scattered columns that marked out more of the ruins of ancient Thebes. Beyond them were the steep cliffs of the range that held the famous tombs of the Valley of the Kings, the ragged stones quickly falling into rich purple shadow.