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  For my cat, Captain Flash.

  May you never run out of socks to terrorize.

  1

  Tomb Raiding Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

  Noon, about two stories underneath Alexandria

  I brushed another chunk of two-thousand-year-old dirt off the horse femur. It was lying in a shallow alcove in the Hall of Caracalla, part of the catacombs that ran underneath Alexandria. I readjusted my baseball cap and cleared the sweat off my forehead before glancing up at the man crouched on the other side of the mummified horse remains. Mike, the dig supervising postdoc I’d been saddled with, was a couple years older than me and suffered the poor posture and starters’ beer gut rampant amongst grad students everywhere. Especially the ones who spend more time than wise hunched over a computer and/or things buried in the ground.

  Annnddd Mike was still engrossed with the front end of the ­skeleton . . .

  I swore silently. Great. Just fantastic. Out of all the dig sites on my list, leave it to me to pick the one in the middle of a heat wave with stifling stale air and the overattentive postdoc. I’d been stuck in Egypt for three days now on a job that should have taken hours. If Mike would just leave me alone for fifteen minutes even, I could find my way into the lower levels, grab my Medusa head, and get the hell out before anyone double-checked my paperwork.

  “Shit.” I dropped my brush and braced against the wall as the entire burial chamber shook; the catacombs ran under a main artery of the city, and every time a heavier-than-average truck passed overhead, the whole thing trembled. On the bright side, the truck meant it had to almost be lunchtime. Maybe I could convince Mike to take a long break . . .

  Artifact or not, three days in this tomb with Mike—the one postdoc in the entire IAA who doesn’t shunt his work on to grad students—and I was well past my breaking point . . .

  Come on, Owl, keep in character: you’re Serena, a young, impressionable grad student trying to wrangle a decent dig for her PhD, not an antiquities thief with personal space issues . . .

  Mike shifted, leaning further over the horse’s skeleton.

  Curious, I glanced up and caught where he was looking—not at the horse skull.

  Oh screw staying in character. Captain would be getting restless, and this job was taking too long anyways.

  “I swear to God, you stare down my shirt one more time, I’m going to break your nose with my pickax,” I said.

  Mike sat up and feigned shock—or maybe it was shock at getting caught. “What? I swear, I wasn’t—”

  I glared. “Mike, I’m tired. My sinuses are filled with enough dust to last a week, and the only thing I want right now is a cold beer, which is now impossible because the beer fridge broke yesterday—meaning I’m stuck with warm beer, only half an excavated horse, and you staring down my shirt.” I derived some satisfaction as the shock on his face faded to a resigned white pallor when he realized I wasn’t buying his protest.

  “I refuse to take my frustration out on the skeleton,” I continued. “The horse can’t help that it’s caked in two thousand years’ worth of dirt—and the beer is technically still drinkable. Guess which of the three things pissing me off right now that leaves? I’ll give you a hint, Mike. It’s the one acting like a dick.”

  He shifted and wiped the fresh sweat off his face with a dirt-covered palm. He gulped, “I’ll—ah—how about I go grab us water and lunch?”

  I glanced back down at my horse femur. “You do that,” I said, and went back to brushing sediment off the bone until Mike’s last footstep was followed by the gate clanging shut behind him.

  Finally. I pulled my cell out of my pocket and dialed Nadya. From now on no more sneaking in as a grad student . . . For whatever reason, these days the IAA was upping security just about everywhere. Where normally I’d only worry about the dose of sedative needed to knock out an overly attentive postdoc like Mike, now I had to contend with security checking up on us at random intervals. Understandable, considering the boom in demand for antiquities, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still piss me the hell off . . .

  The IAA, or International Archaeology Association, is the organization that governs every single university archaeology department on the planet. They’re also the self-appointed authority responsible for keeping all supernatural elements under wraps, and they aren’t shy about enforcing it. Creative bastards too. They’d not only tanked my career but also driven me half off the grid.

  Which was another reason I needed to get a move on.

  Come to think of it, if I’d just let postdocs like Mike stare down my shirt while I’d been in grad school, I’d probably have had my PhD and a cushy museum job by now . . . I’m sure there’s a life lesson to be learned in there somewhere.

  Nadya picked up after the second ring. “Alix? What is taking you so long?”

  “Not now,” I said, keeping my voice low on the off chance the echo carried. “I’ve got ten, maybe fifteen minutes until Mike gets back. Do we know where the hell the Medusa head is yet? And I don’t mean ‘it’s in the crypt’; I mean exact location down to the room corner if you’ve got it. I really don’t want to have to break in here at night.”

  The IAA guards were only half the problem; I was more worried about the vampires. Just because Alexander and the Paris boys hadn’t crawled out of their hole in three months didn’t mean they weren’t skulking around looking for me. This was the third job back-to-back in North Africa. If Alexander had gotten word about the Morocco catacombs and my impromptu pit stop in Algeria, he’d have feelers out in every city along the Barbary Coast and right on through to Istanbul.

  There was a pause on the other end. “Alix, we can abort the job and come back in a month—after things cool down,” Nadya said.

  I read between the lines. The Morocco catacombs hadn’t been the problem. It’d been the Algerian private collection. Let’s just say helping myself to a couple Pharaonic pieces hadn’t gone well with the owner . . . or the Algerian police.

  I shut down that train of thought. Out of principle I couldn’t have bypassed Algeria—even if I’d wanted to, and provided Rynn, Mr. Kurosawa, and Lady Siyu never found out . . .

  “Nadya, if you get me the exact location, I can grab the Medusa head and still be out of here before anyone’s the wiser.”

  “I couldn’t find the exact location—notes on the Russian archaeology server were spotty—but it should be somewhere under you.”

  “Under me? There’s an entire flooded catacomb underneath me.” The underground rooms and chambers spanned three floors, all decorated with images of the Greek Medusa, the protector, mixed in with the Egyptian pantheon. A spiral staircase connected the first two floors, winding its way from the burial dining hall past the carved Medusa heads to the second-level burial chambers, and then on to the flooded third. Since no one had figured out how to reroute the rainwater away from the dig site and drain the last level, the third level had been cemented off decades ago. Considering the state of Egyptian sewers after the recent string of revolutions, opening up excavations down there was a moot point.

  “I am not a genie, Alix—I do not make maps appear out of thin air—and Alexandria was your stupid idea.”

  “Hey, not fair—”
>
  “Mr. Kurosawa told you to get either the Moroccan death mask or the Caracalla Medusa head, not both,” Nadya said.

  I shut up. It had been my bright idea to hit both jobs . . . and stop in Algiers. And no, it’s not greedy; it’s good game planning and time management. Speaking of time management, I checked my watch. Two minutes had passed since Mike had left. Half an hour was his usual lunch break . . . Now all I needed was the map. Considering the upped IAA security at the catacombs—and everywhere, for that matter—I hadn’t dared bring one on me. Hard to explain a treasure map stuffed in my backpack at a random spot search . . .

  “Nadya, you’ve got my laptop ready?”

  “Give me a minute.” I heard Nadya fiddling with my laptop, followed by a stream of Russian curses a moment later. “Alix, I can’t make head or tail of the login screen—call the elf and get him to do it for you.”

  By “elf,” Nadya meant Carpe Diem, my World Quest buddy . . . and actual elf. The real deal, supernatural version. Yeah, I hadn’t been too happy about finding that little fact out either. I had enough supernaturals to deal with in my life right now, including my boss, Mr. Kurosawa, and my on-again-off-again boyfriend, Rynn. Off again if he ever found out about Algiers . . .

  There were a couple good reasons why I didn’t want to call Carpe; near the top of my list was the fact that though he might be my World Quest teammate, deep down at the bottom of his sorcerer’s black heart he was just another goddamn thief. Giving him access to my inventory was more temptation versus trust than I cared to test—I know I’d have a hard time not pilfering his game inventory. There was one other reason though, that topped that one. “Because every time I talk to Carpe he starts whining about that stupid book.”

  “I thought that was in Egypt,” Nadya said.

  “My point exactly—look, it’s easy, log in to my World Quest game and pull up my maps inventory. The red one, top-right corner.”

  I heard more swearing on the other end as Nadya typed. “Found it. Egypt, no?”

  I shifted the phone so I could rummage through my backpack for my GPS. “Yeah. Under that there should be a list of cities. Pull up Alexandria and go to the Caracalla’s tomb. Left corner will have a legend shortcut search. Enter Medusa head.” In fact, there were many Medusa heads in the Caracalla catacomb, but only one that would register as worth stealing in World Quest. I’d had the map in my inventory for a while now but had never really considered going after the World Quest version—not worth the time or effort lootwise. But, if I knew World Quest and the developers’ penchant for historical accuracy bordering on obsession, the location would be dead-on.

  And no, there is no ethical debate about using my video game to make my day job easier. Consider it an out-of-game exploit.

  “I found it,” Nadya said, and gave me the coordinates to plug into my GPS. Hunh, it really was right underneath me, give or take twenty feet.

  “You’re by the horse burial, yes?” Nadya said. “There should be another burial chamber directly below you—a circular chamber, about twice the size of the one you’re in now. The map shows the Medusa head on the north side above a sarcophagus.”

  Sarcophagus? Out of reflex my heart sped up. I don’t have the best track record with sarcophagi. To be honest, I was more worried about the highway caving in above us than any lingering supernatural residents. The IAA wouldn’t have let Mike down here without a half-decent sweep, and up until a few decades ago the entire catacombs had been flooded. Any supernaturals should be long gone.

  Still . . . “Any red dots on the map?” I asked. Red dots on World Quest maps denoted in-game monsters.

  “No—nothing.”

  I let out my breath. No red dots, no monsters.

  “OK, Medusa head, north side, chamber below me.” I made certain my phone compass still worked underground and checked the time. Twenty-five minutes tops before Mike returned from lunch. I could explain away a five- or ten-minute absence, but I’d have to be fast. If things went as planned, we’d be back on a flight to Vegas by early evening.

  Get to work, Owl, and get the hell out. I scribbled on a sticky note—bathroom break—and stuck it by the horse femur, then ducked through a narrow passage to a side burial chamber—one where I’d scouted out loose tiles the day before during one of Mike’s washroom runs.

  I kneeled down, pulled some heavier tools from my backpack, and set to work lifting the corner tile. Within a moment I pulled it free and shone my flashlight down. The light reflected off stagnant water and an exposed stone surface. I cracked the first light stick and dropped it down.

  As it struck the water and sunk to the bottom, the tiles decorating the floor flared into existence. Greens and blues that hadn’t seen sunlight in almost two thousand years depicted a mosaic of Medusa heads arranged in circles that wound their way in and out of the light stick’s glare.

  I gave a low whistle. Not every day you get to see something that untouched.

  On a positive note, I gauged the water at only a few feet deep. The exposed stone surface I’d picked up with my flashlight, however, was a more disconcerting matter; a second sarcophagus . . .

  Emperor Caracalla, the guy who built the catacomb, was the head of the Roman Pharaonic cult of Alexandria in the second century AD. His lifelong obsession was getting his hands on the Egyptian burial spells that would grant him a Pharaoh’s ticket to the immortal afterlife. As part of his spirit quest, he massacred twenty thousand Alexandrians, slaughtered a perfectly good set of chariot horses—one of which I’d spent the last three days excavating—and assassinated his own brother. A real all-around, outstanding citizen . . . Shame he never did find the right Egyptian burial spells.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what—or who—Caracalla stuck in the second sarcophagus.

  I took another breath. The IAA cleared the place, and World Quest had no monsters listed in here . . . and Caracalla at least had the good taste to bury himself with a gold-and-emerald-encrusted Medusa head . . .

  I set a climbing hook into the stone pillar above the hole and secured my rope, doing my best to think about the Medusa head and not the second sarcophagus.

  I started lowering myself down the hole, when my phone started to buzz and chime in my pocket. I frowned. I was sure I’d turned the damn ringer off—in fact, I know I had . . . I glanced at the number. Son of a bitch . . .

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “You missed game time,” came Carpe’s voice, closer to feminine than masculine on the sliding gray scale of male vocal texture.

  Goddamn it—he must have been monitoring my or Nadya’s phone. “I’m working—” I started.

  “You’re in Egypt,” he said, his voice thick with accusation.

  I closed my eyes; I didn’t have time for this. “Carpe, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I’m not getting your goddamn book!”

  “You’re doing this out of spite because I didn’t tell you I was an elf.”

  Ha. Far from it. In fact, I wished to hell he’d never told me. “No, I’m not refusing out of spite, I’m refusing on grounds of self-preservation.”

  “It’s a quick trip past the pyramids, you could be back in a day—”

  “I don’t care! I’m more interested in my neck—specifically that at the end of the day it’s still attached to both my head and body.”

  “Alix, it’s a matter of life and death—”

  Knowing Carpe, I doubted that very much. I started to lower myself through the hole. If I lost reception, all the better. “No, if you keep this up, I’m going to take out hits on you in World Quest—then it will be a matter of life and death.”

  I heard the rumble overhead before I felt the chamber shake around me. I swore.

  “Owl? What’s that noise?” Carpe said, his voice wary.

  “Got to go,” I said, and shoved the phone back in my pocket. I grabb
ed the edge of the floor with my free hand and held on to the rope with the other. I wasn’t risking my neck going against a real mummy just for Carpe’s stupid spell book . . .

  As the growl of the truck above faded into the distance, the chamber didn’t stop shaking. I felt the hook holding my rope give.

  Shit. I threw my weight against the edge of the hole as the rope slipped through my fingers and disappeared into the shadows of the pool below. With a last look down at the pool I started to pull myself up. That had been way too close—

  A snap echoed through the chamber as the stone tile I was holding onto cracked.

  My legs were still suspended over the crypt. I held my breath and carefully pulled myself up. I could still climb out and get the hell out of this mess . . . I kept thinking that even as the tile snapped cleaned through.

  “Son of a—” The rest of that sentence was distorted by my hitting the stone sarcophagus.

  Pain shot up my side as the ornate lid of the stone sarcophagus broke my fall, knocking the wind out of me. I lay there for a moment, my ears ringing as I mentally checked that everything was working and still where it was supposed to be.

  Well, look at the bright side: at least the sarcophagus stopped me from plunging into the stagnant water. It smelled so much worse down here . . .

  Back still smarting, I pushed myself up to seated. By the weight, I knew my flashlight was still tucked inside my jacket, so I fished that out first and turned on the high beam to quickly survey the burial chamber and get my bearings. The entire room was roughly sixteen by sixteen feet, maybe bigger, and consisted of rounded, arched walls and a vaulted ceiling. All four walls were decorated with carved and painted Medusa heads, a common protection symbol Pharaonic Romans buried themselves and their goods with. For some strange reason, out of all the Greek and Roman gods out there, the Pharaonic Romans had focused on Medusa as a protector. Thank God Gorgons were isolated to the northern side of the Mediterranean—something about a deep-seated fear of water. They don’t actually turn you into stone, in case you were wondering. That’s a myth. They cover their victims with ash and a gluelike substance that cauterizes flesh on impact before solidifying—think Pompeii.