Disclaimer: I don't own the Mummy, Rick, Evie, Alex... but I'm saving my pennies for Ardeth... hehe. I do own, however, every single one of their children... MWAHAHA!

Author's Quick Note!

I had this done about a week ago.
I didn't hear back from the person who offered to edit it for me.
Then decided it didn't feel like uploading.
So, I apologize for the long time it took to update.
As well as the fact that the beginning is kinda slow and (I feel) a bit lacking.
But please remember this is merely setting the stage, and that later chapters (that include action) are much better than this. I promise to update faster next time.
Okay, I'm done!
-Kat-

Cairo, Egypt

Rick picked up a box of books and immediately felt like he was going to fall over... again. Why did Evie have to pack so many books? Why did she have to have them? She worked at a library! Just borrow them and send them back.

He stepped into their new home. It had been empty... until they filled it to the brim with boxes. Now they just had to sort them. Thankfully, he had the last box.

"Alex! Evie!" he shouted up the winding stairs that led to the second story. After all the unpacking was done, there would be a study, four bedrooms, and two bathrooms up there. The main floor had a library and a den, kitchen, dining room, as well as a few extra rooms that they still had to decide what to do with.

This was Cairo and he was glad that they had gotten such a nice home. But why they were living there, he still didn't understand. His stream of thought was interrupted by Alex sliding down the railing.

"Hey, Dad!" he shouted, leaping off the banister. "Check it out, there's..."

Dropping the box, Rick put his fists on his hips and openned his mouth to say something to Alex, but before he could say anything, Evie screamed from upstairs for Rick the come immediately. "Now! Come here! Hurry, hurry!"

Rick gasped and ran up the stairs two at a time, followed by Alex. "I'm coming, Evie!"

He raced into the master bedroom and saw she wasn't anywhere. Suddenly he heard something in the closet bang. With impressive speed, he flung open the door. A ladder fell forward toward his face, nearly knocking him in the face, and he dodged it. In the closet he saw a pair of swinging legs, kicking in the air..

"Um... Eve?" he asked, stooping down to get the ladder. Setting it upright, he helped her down. Evie smiled gratefully at him.

"Sorry, dear. I guess I got a little excited..."

"You scared me half to death. What's wrong?"

"Absolutely nothing!" A big grin spread across her face and climbed back up the ladder and into the hole in the ceiling. Rick sighed and leaned against the doorframe. "Up here," she said. Reluctantly, he followed her.

He climbed up the ladder into the dark attic. Getting to his feet, he brushed off his knees and looked around the dim room. It was an old attic, dusty from not being used in... who knew how long? Evie was standing a few feet away from him. "Here, Rick," she said, waving him over to her.

He sighed, coughing a little, and walked over to her, looking over her shoulder at what she found. It was a box... of books. More books? Rick threw up his hands and turned away, muttering to himself. "Unbelievable!"

"I know!" Evie was too excited to notice. She was digging through the books, looking at every title. "These are all... the real thing! Their old enough to be... Rick? Look at this, will you?"

He was about to go back down the ladder. "Evie, it's a book. You have a lot of them."

She gave him a sideways glance and smirked. "Rick... have you ever heard of the Osiris?"

Rick sighed loudly and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Yeah, he's the god of the underworld. Why?"

"Where did we just come back from?" she asked, flipping the page of one book she had picked out of the rest. She was reading as she spoke.

"Yeah, I was wonder about that myself. Why did we move from London? I liked it there..." he complained. "No, we just had to move closer to the curses, didn't we?"

"Oh, hush. I thought we had discussed this. I wanted to be closer to my research. You know we just came back from the Temple of Isis."

"Mmhmm. What does that have to do with Osiris? Oh, right, because Isis was his wife?"

She turned and showed him the book, flattening out the pages for him to read. "Look! This chapter is about the Priestess of Isis. It tells all about her here, even about how she placed a curse on Pharaoh Seti's son."

Rick looked closer to the page, trying to see it in the dim light. "Hey, honey, why don't you take the books downstairs and we can look at them after we've finished unpacking, hm?"

She smiled up at him and slid her arm up his chest, encircling his neck. Pulling him closer, she drew their lips together in a light kiss. "Of course..." she whispered, and then smirked. "And after we're finished, we can look through all the books together."

Sighing, he just nodded, bending down to pick up the box, knowing it would have been him anyway. "Whatever you say, Evie."

They joined Alex downstairs and began to sort the boxes, Alex taking all of his to his room, Evie taking their personal boxes to theirs, and, of course, Rick putting the books in the library.

"Dear, don't unpack the books. I want to sort them on the shelves myself later."

"Then why don't you carry the boxes into the library and I'll put away those boxes?"

Evie only smiled and resumed walking up the stairs. Rick shook his head and walked into the library. The library was a medium-sized room with walls covered in shelves. The previous owner had been a rich, old man, a scholar of sorts. He had built the house from the ground up, filling it with all his prized possessions. As far as Rick knew, when the man died, all of his artifacts were donated to the Cairo Museum, and everything else was auctioned off, since he had no living relatives.

But those books Evie had found in the attic... Why weren't they in the library? If they had been, they would have been auctioned or, by the look of the one Evie had shown him, placed in the museum or the library. Maybe they held a secret the old man didn't want anyone to find out? Whatever it may be, it made Evie happy to have some new interesting literature to look at. And who knew, maybe he would learn something too? He still wanted to know what was so great about the Temple of Isis.

There was nothing of real value when they went a few months ago to look around. But Evie was having those persistent dreams again, like the ones a few years ago that led them to the Scorpion King. These lastest dreams were about her father and her brother going to see the Priestess. Finding that book about the Priestess would keep Evie occupied for days, he could already tell. Not to mention all the trouble that had followed the last time she had dreams...

The rumbling of a car that was pulling up to their front doors pulled Rick out of his thoughts and back into the present. Setting down the fifth of eleven boxes of books, he ran to the door to see who it possibly could be.

Two men in dark clothes got out of the black car, their faces wrapped with scarves. One man was better built than the other, and that one Rick knew immediately.

"Ardeth!" Rick exclaimed, going to greet his friend. "Long time, no see! What are you doing here?"

Ardeth smiled and hugged him, then pulled away to look at his face. "You haven't changed in the last year, I see. I just came to welcome you into your new house."

"Come in," Rick said, moving to bring the two of them into his home.

"Ah, a truly beautiful home," Ardeth said, looking around at the large entrance hall. Suddenly, he threw his hand up in the air with a sigh and gestured to the younger man beside him. "Forgive me. This is my son, Horus."

"You have a son? And you never bothered to mention that? Nice to meet you," Rick said, sticking out his hand to shake the young man's hand. Horus looked at Rick's hand and instead saluted in the Medjai manner. Rick hesitated and did the same, giving Ardeth a questioning look.

Ardeth cleared his throated and smirked, patting his son's shoulder. "He was studying with Medjai closer to where his mother is. Things have calmed down a little more, so I have taken him up on learning beside me. I am training him. So, how is unpacking coming?" he asked, glancing around.

Rick rolled his eyes and sat down on one of the boxes. "A real dream."

"Since we're here, why don't we give you a hand? Then we can stay for dinner without feeling indebted to you."

Rick gave his friend a smile and slowly nodded. "I guess that could work. Horus, how much do you think you can lift?"

Horus first looked at his father, and then answered. "I used to carry pigs for my mother. Since I've started training, I've grown even stronger."

"All right," Rick said, slapping the young man's shoulders and pulling him toward the rest of the book boxes. "Why don't you take care of those by putting them in... that room?"

Horus nodded and started to it immediately. Rick smiled to himself, arms crossed. The rest of the day went fairly quickly and soon each of the boxes were where they should be. Not much was unpacked, besides the essentials. The beds were set up in all four of the bedrooms, the kitchen was nearly unpacked, as well as the bathrooms completed.

Finally around seven at night, Alex fell back on the couch in the den with a tired sigh. "Mum, when are we eating?"

Evie walked into the room and leaned against the doorpost, hand on her hip. "Oh, dear. Rick, I didn't pick up anything from the market."

"Oh... I guess I could suggest something," said a young woman behind Evie, her hands full with bags.

Alex immediately shot up in his spot on the couch and became more attentive, looking her up and down. The young woman was perhaps nineteen, tanned skinned, like she was Egyptian, and her hair was black as night. It curled around her face, framing it perfectly. One thing stood out: her eyes. They were green, with a ring of gold around the pupil. On her body was a black dress made of Egyptian linen that complimented her figure. She smiled at Alex, catching his stare.

"Excuse me," Evie said, crossing her arms. "Do we know you?"

"I'm sorry." The girl gasped and set down the bags at the door. With a hand extended toward Evie, she smiled. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Setine and I was looking for Mr. O'Connell. He... does live here, right?"

Evie relaxed only a little to shake Setine's hand and then took her hand back quickly. "Setine, you know this is private property, right?"

Glancing at the floor, she hesitated for a moment, but her eyes met Evie's fully. "Your door was open, and I only wanted to find Mr. O'Connell to speak with him."

"That's not an excuse to..."

Rick's footsteps down the stairs stopped the conversation and alerted both the women to look. "Evie, honey, where'd you put the box of... oh," he stopped in the middle of the staircase, seeing Setine. "Hi, I'm Rick."

Setine's face flushed as their eyes met. Her eyes spoke of a secret and everyone in the room could tell her arrival was more than a social visit.

"Mr. O'Connell," she began, meeting him at the bottom of the stairs with her hand extended. "My name is Setine..."

"Nice to meet you, Setine," Rick said warmly, shaking her hand. "What can we do for you? And please, call me Rick."

Her eyes darted from Evie to Alex and then to Rick. Ardeth was walking down the stairs to see what was going on.

"Well, I can think of no other way to go about this, so I might as well just say it. You may want me to call you 'Rick,' but I think my mother would prefer I call you... Dad."

There was dead silence. Alex swallowed, quickly trying to think of what that would make him to her, and trying to see if any previous thoughts his sixteen-year-old mind had before would be considered "wrong." Ardeth had walked in on the middle of the conversation, so he still had no idea what was going on. Evie was on the verge of tears, wondering what exactly had occurred between Rick and another woman before her, and certainly (hopefully) not during their marriage. Rick was trying to remember what he had done before he met Evie, because Setine had to come from something before her. Setine was wondering why she had even bothered to come.

With a quick glance at everyone's faces, Ardeth cleared his throat and grabbed Rick, pushing him up the stairs, and then grabbing Evie to follow. "I think we need some privacy. Alex..."

"Yeah, yeah, I got 'er," he mumbled as they disappeared upstairs. Casually he leaned back on the couch and patted a spot next to him. "So, Setine, take a seat."

Setine was still looking up at the empty staircase. With a heavy sigh, she walked over to the couch and plopped down, head in her hands.

Evie and Rick's Bedroom

"Rick, I can't believe you have a daughter!" Evie screamed, pacing on the floor. He was sitting on the bed, while Ardeth waited outside, respecting their privacy. The fact that he could hear it wasn't his fault; Evie wouldn't stop shouting.

"It's not like I knew about it, honey," Rick told her, trying to reach out for her arm. She recoiled it, glaring. "I told you, it was before us."

Evie rubbed her face with her hands, maybe trying to hide tears that wanted to fall. "Rick, I know you had a life before us. I had a life before us. But my past isn't coming back in the form of a young woman!"

"Well, you would know if you had a daughter, wouldn't you?" Rick snapped, getting sick of her accusations. He didn't understand what the problem was. When they were married, he told her during the war he had... met a few bellydancer girls.

She stopped and looked at him, arms crossed now. "But how many? How do we know there aren't four more of you running around?" She sighed heavily and finally sat down on the bed, her back to him. After a minute of sitting in silence, Evie turned her head slightly toward him. "I'm sorry. I guess... there's nothing we can really do. I don't like it, but you're not like that anymore."

Rick placed his hands on her hips and turned her around to face him on the bed. She softly giggled and put an arm around his shoulders, looking into his eyes. "I would never leave you or Alex, nor would I ever think to cheat on you, Evie. I love you," he said seriously, then a small smirk formed on his lips. "It's not like I have time to look at anyone else. You've got me chasing you all over Egypt all the time. Any other time I'm either eating, saving the world, or sleeping."

Letting out a laugh, Evie wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down on the bed on top of her. She rubbed his chest and looked into his eyes. "I guess having a daughter could be fun."

"Well, she's a piece of me. All the more reason why you two should get along."

"I guess. She's probably just visiting anyway."

"We'll have her a week and then I'll send her back to her mother," Rick told her, and then his head dipped, kissing her softly on the lips.