Her Kind of Trouble (6 page)

He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.

"Do you really plan to take this into the street?" I asked. "With all these nice bystanders and policemen?"

The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.

He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. "You have no business here."

But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a per-sonal power that was uniquely feminine. "You just made sure I do."

When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.

Then I heard Rhys's distinctly Welsh voice. "
Uffach cols
!" he swore. "What's this? Aren't you that fellow—"

"From the airport," I said, not looking back. "Yeah. Now he thinks he's Sinbad."

The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, "
Shorta! Shorta
!"

I hoped that meant
police
.

My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.

I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.

"What the hell was
that
all about?"

"I only knew I was coming to
Egypt
last night… I guess that's night before last, now," I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. "How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me?
At the airport
!"

"I didn't tell many people." Rhys hadn't lost the crease of concern between his blue eyes. Not while I talked to the police, and not while I bargained the merchant down to a third of his asking price for the sword that had protected me.

Normally I'm a wimpy barterer, but after the merchant's earlier vanishing act, I was in a combative mood.

Now I wore the sword's wooden scabbard slung innocently over my shoulder, a recent tourist's purchase. I hadn't decided on a name for the blade, yet. I would worry about concealing it later.

"It's not your fault," I assured Rhys.

"I told the hotel, to get you a bed. I told my friend Niko, when I asked to borrow the car. A group of people working on the project own it together, so it is possible one of the others know."

"I never said to keep it a secret."

"I told Tala, the woman I wish you to meet—"

"
Rhys
." I stopped and fixed him with my best scowl, swordfight-proven. "Let's not empower fear. The man didn't even use my name. He may not have even known who I really am."

"Then how is it that, so soon after the airport, he found you here?"

I looked around us, at a rope of guitars hanging outside one
souk
and a rainbow of glittering material draped before another, at the press and flow of people all around us. "Well… we wouldn't have noticed anyone following us around here, that's for sure."

"But how is it the man
could
have followed us in this crowd, and in
Cairo
traffic? And Maggi,
why
would he?"

Yeah, that one had me stumped, as well.

"Rings for rings," called the veiled woman working at the jewelry counter nearby, which made me look down at my left hand.

My breath caught in my throat, stopping as surely as it had when Sinbad shoved his elbow into me. "Unless… "

I could barely form the words. But the sudden rush of possibility was too horrible to keep to myself. "Unless I'm wearing some kind of tracking device."

"But who could possibly—" Rhys apparently saw how I was staring at the wedding ring.

The one Lex had given me.

Lex, one of the lead members of the Comitatus.

That's the problem with old wounds. They reopen.

"The guy attacked me with a sword," I whispered.

Rhys grabbed my hand, PDA or not. "Now wait a moment, Maggi. You were in a shop chockablock with swords. Just because this stranger used one does not mean he's a member of that secret order."

Yes, Rhys knew,
I
hadn't taken any vows of silence.

"They used ceremonial daggers, didn't they?"

"There is a difference between the two. Even if there were not, even if the man were—" he lowered his voice "—Comitatus, that could mean
Phillip
Stuart sent him, not necessarily Lex."

"But Lex is the only one who could have told Phil, and
how else did that man follow us from the airport
?" I freed my hand from his and waded through the crowd to the jewelry counter, where I could see the female clerk's smile in her eyes, over her veil. "Do you speak English?"

"Yes," she said, nodding. "Yes. Rings for rings."

"I don't want to buy—well, not a ring," I decided, since if I wanted help, I couldn't expect her to give it for free. I glanced impatiently at the cluster of cheap pewter pendants and quickly chose the horned disk that symbolizes
Isis
. "But I was hoping you could check
this
ring and tell me if there's anything strange about it. Anything like a…a tracking device?"

The clerk stared at me blankly, as if disappointed. Apparently her English wasn't good enough to include
tracking device
.

Great. "Is this a normal ring?" I tried, tugging the wedding band from my finger and sliding it across the counter toward her.

Then I froze, because of what she'd just slid hopefully across the counter toward
me
.

A brass chalice-well pendant—two intersecting circles, also called a
vesica piscis
. Similar to the pendant I already wore, had worn in one version or another since I was fourteen, except for the Arabic flourishes.

Symbol of the Grailkeepers.

Chapter 4

When the hopeful clerk repeated, "Rings for rings," I finally understood her. I'd simply known the childhood rhyme as
Circle to Circle
.

But circles, rings… they were all eternal loops. It lost little in translation. And it was a recognition code.

"Never an end," I greeted softly, purposefully giving the next piece of the Grailkeeper's chant.

She clearly recognized it. She beamed. I even caught a pale hint of white teeth behind her veil as she reached across the counter and grasped my hand. Her grip was firm. Then her eyes closed and she drew in a long, deep breath, as if savoring…

What? Was she sensing the essence of goddessness that seemed to empower women whom I touched, of late?

It wasn't like I expected her to rip off her veil and head scarf and demand equal pay for equal work. But when she opened her eyes, all she said was, "It is you!"

Uh-huh… "What is me?"

"You have come to reclaim the sultana's magic," she continued. "As in the tales."

For a moment I had the sick feeling that there was an actual sultana out there somewhere. One more responsibility I hadn't meant to take on. Then I realized that my word for the position would be
queen
.

"You mean like the fairy tale, about the queen and her nine daughters?" I asked.

"Seven," corrected the clerk—but as surely as I'd heard different versions of the story, I'd heard different numbers. Sometimes the queen had as many as thirteen daughters, sometimes as few as three. "Seven beautiful daughters."

Rhys, behind me, asked, "Does she mean the story where the queen gives her daughters magical cups?"

The clerk's eyes widened. She backed away two steps, making what I assumed was a protective gesture.

"It's all right," I assured her. "His mother is a Grailkeeper."

She stared at me blankly.

"A…Chalice Keeper," I tried.

She nodded slowly and said, "A Cup Holder."

"Um… yeah. A Cup Holder." Now that one suffered in translation. "He knows the story."

Pour your powers into these cups
, the queen instructs.
Hide them so that your energy can live on even though you be forgotten
.

The veiled clerk continued to eye Rhys as if he meant to attack her. Or me. With his big, manly hands and all that…testosterone.

"Perhaps I should go look at… yes, there," said Rhys, choosing the first thing he noticed. "One can't have enough T-shirts, can one?"

Only after he'd backed away did the "Cup Holder's" shoulders sink in relief. Poor, gentle Rhys.

"Let me try again," I said. "Hello. My name is Magdalene Sanger."

"I is Munira," said the clerk, clearly pleased. "It is..
. honor
... to meet champion."

"To meet what?"

"Champion of the Holy One." She opened her arms toward me, like a tah-dah move. "It is you, is not?"

"I'm looking for goddess cups, but I wouldn't call myself a champion." Certainly not
the
champion.

Even factoring in the number of women who'd forgotten or dismissed the legends, I suspect the number of hereditary Grailkeepers had to count in the hundreds, if not the thousands. The whole world had once worshipped goddesses, after all. We'd just kept such a low profile for so long, we'd lost track of each other.

There still had to be a handful who understood what the stories meant. Not just me.

"Blessings upon you, Champion," said Munira.

I gave up arguing with her, in favor of better information. "Well… thank you. Would
you
happen to know where a goddess cup is hidden?"

Like the
Isis
Grail?

She stared, brow furrowed.

"Did your mother teach you a rhyme or song about where the Holy One's cup might be waiting?" That's how most of our knowledge had been kept. Power mongers rarely think to dissect fairy tales or nursery rhymes.