Page 155

But I wasn’t all right.

CAPÍTULO TREINTA Y SIETE

I stood in the balcony of my parents’ suite, the moonlight casting the city of a thousand minarets in a silver glow. I had cried myself to sleep. I had a nightmare and cried again. I woke up, and knew there were hours yet until the dawn.

Grief refused me sleep.

The night had turned cold. Winter had settled over the land, and a chill skimmed down my spine and I shivered. I turned away, closed the doors behind me with shaking hands. The bedroom seemed too far away for another step, and so I sank onto the couch. The trinket box rested on the wooden coffee table. Absently, I leaned forward and cradled it in the palm of my hands.

A memory crashed into me. The worst one yet.

Cleopatra’s quarters turned upside down by Roman soldiers. The ingredients for her spells destroyed and burned. Bottles of tonics emptied and dumped out the window. Her power stripped away as she faced the emperor, her maids crying in horror.

Her emotions flooded me. Rage. Despair. Sorrow to have lost everything.

The desire to be left alone in peace with her lover.

I blinked and the moment passed, the memory vanishing like mist. The quiet in the room thundered in my ears. I had finally left my uncle to rest, but energy curled tight under my skin.

I wanted to hunt my mother down.

Wherever she was, I would find her. She would pay for what she stole from me.

My uncle slept like the dead. I’d tried to make him comfortable, pulling the bedding up under his chin, but he’d restlessly shoved them off in his feverish sleep. I sat in a chair by his bed at Shepheard’s. His room was disorderly and crowded with books and rolled-up maps, several trunks and clothing heaped into piles around the floor.

My mind was full of blood.

No matter how long I sat in the bathtub that morning, I couldn’t rid myself of the sand crusted under my nails, embedded in my ears and hair. I couldn’t get clean enough. I couldn’t scrub the image of Elvira’s face from flashing across my mind. The despair on her face right before she died.

Her death wasmyfault.

She’d come after me, followed me, and I’d failed to protect her. How could I ever forgive myself? She ought never to have gotten involved in my mess. She trusted me to look after her. I should have barred the door so she couldn’t have left my hotel room. I ought to have woken up before her and anticipated her doomed decision to go down to the lobby.

I ought to have known what my mother was.

But I hadn’t, and she was gone.

I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to keep myself from crying out. I didn’t want to wake my uncle. I slumped against the seat and tried to keep my eyes open. I hadn’t slept or eaten anything in… oh, I had no idea.

One day turned into another and then on the second day, my uncle finally opened his eyes. He stared unblinking in the dimly lit room. Whit had come in earlier, and he’d sat with me while I hovered over my uncle, wiping his brow with cloths that I’d dipped in cool water.

“Hola, Tío.” I stood and went and sat by his side on the bed. “How do you feel?”

“What happened?”

“You were treated in Thebes and then brought back to the hotel in Cairo. The local authorities arrested the men who kidnapped us. Whit and I had to”—my voice broke—“leave Elvira in a cemetery in Thebes. I didn’tknow what else to do with… her body. They told me that I could always move her coffin wherever it needed to go. I suppose that means Argentina. My aunt will want to have her close.”

Whit stood and laid a hand on my shoulder, his thumb drawing circles.

My uncle regarded me with a tender and grief-stricken expression. “I’m so sorry, Inez. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

I met his gaze squarely. “I want to know all of it. I deserve the truth.”

He nodded, his throat working hard. “I’ve been excavating alongside Abdullah for a little over two decades. Your mother began acting strange early on. She claimed to be bored at the dig sites, so she stayed behind in Cairo, finding her own amusements. She started lying to me, became obsessed with searching for alchemical documents, of all things.”

My eyes flickered to Whit, but his expression revealed nothing of his thoughts. My uncle continued with his account. “As the years went on, she’d make excuses and not join us at all at various dig sites. Your father grew concerned, but he loved what he was doing and so turned a blind eye to her behavior. Cayo was always too passive when it came to my sister.”

“Go on,” I said. “What happened next?”