Self Esteem
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the motion picture The Mummy. That's all you, Universal Studios. And I'm not going to profit off this story, so calm down. There's no reason to sue, and you all make too much money anyway. Vultures.
AN: Thank you to Lady Softball, Nelle07, piratehero, Jac Danvers, Makayla, Typhoid-Candy, AnnabelleLee13194, and ZakiChiUmi for the reviews! Sorry this kind of took a while.
Chapter 9: The Return to Cairo
Madeline awoke with a start, her eyes flying open. She was alert in an instant, heart hammering wildly against her ribs. Momentarily, she was lost, unable to place the white room with the fancy European furniture. Seconds later, she realized she was in her hotel room, in her bed, and then she had the very disconcerting feeling of not being able to remember how she got there. Sadly, it wasn't an unfamiliar feeling; this time, however, she was certain it wasn't her fault.
The bed was soft and despite everything, she didn't quite want to get up, but the two bickering voices in the room were suddenly very loud and jarring and impossible to ignore.
"Oh, that's bloody perfect! And just how are we going to explain that to her? And really, how the bloody hell did any of this happen, anyway? Weren't you supposed to be watching her?"
That was Jonathan. Madeline blinked, turning slightly and trying to focus bleary eyes on her friend, standing by the door with none other than Ardeth Bay.
"Me?" Ardeth returned derisively. "You were there as well! Were you not watching? Or were you too busy with that blonde woman at the bar?"
"Oh, sure, blame it all on me! I believe you are supposed to be the Med-jai warrior here, bub! Isn't protecting people your job?"
"I cannot be everywhere at once!"
"And what about that bloody necklace, hmm? Whose job was it to watch that?"
Her head was killing her. The last thing she needed was to hear the two men have it out. She sat up, but the sudden movement went straight to her aching head, and she groaned loudly as she grabbed at her temples. "Damn it," she hissed. "Could you two, I don't know… shut the hell up already?"
Her outcry immediately silenced both Ardeth and Jonathan. Both of them whirled around in surprise. "Maddie!" Jonathan exclaimed.
"Madeline?" Ardeth asked at the same time.
Both of them moved quickly to the bed, one on either side of her, and Madeline rolled her eyes. "You all right, old girl?" Jonathan asked.
Madeline blinked and then frowned at both of them. Something heavy was hanging around her neck. Her hand rose automatically to her throat, and her fingers brushed cold metal. She looked down at herself and saw the gleam of gold at her collarbone. The ancient Necklace of Nitocris was still fastened around her neck.
What little she could recall of the night before came rushing back: arguing with Ardeth in the bar, taking a drink from Berkley, losing all ability to function like a human, getting dragged into the car in the alleyway… the necklace being fastened around her neck… the red, red moon… some strange fever dream…
Again, she frowned at her companions. "Why the hell am I still wearing this?" she asked them, albeit rather groggily.
Both Ardeth and Jonathan exchanged guilty looks. Immediately, Madeline knew something was wrong.
"What?" she demanded. No one answered her. "Somebody better tell me what's going on!"
"Not it," Jonathan said quickly.
Ardeth glared at him, and then sighed heavily. "We cannot get it off," he admitted.
Madeline stared at him incredulously for a moment. Then she said, quite eloquently, "What?"
"We cannot get it off," he repeated. "We tried, but… it is stuck. The clasp… it seems to have… vanished."
She stared at him some more. "Vanished?"
He nodded, but there was reluctance on his face. "Yes."
"It… it's not… it won't… come off?"
"We've rather established that already, old girl," Jonathan rebuked her, albeit gently.
The hotel room seemed to tilt at a strange angle, and her breath hitched. "Can't we just… I don't know… cut it off… somehow?"
"What, and cut your bloody throat while we're at it?" Jonathan asked incredulously.
He made a fair point, but truthfully, Madeline hadn't wanted to hear it. Suddenly, it seemed like she could not suck in full amounts of air, and her hand rubbed her chest just under the cursed necklace that would not come off. She wasn't sure what she expected, to be honest. She was breathless, and confused, and her mind was weirdly blank. Her breathing came in short, shallow gasps.
"Oh, no," Jonathan murmured. "Maddie, darling, this is not the time to hyperventilate!"
"I am not hyperventilating!" she snapped. Both Jonathan and Ardeth flinched. Madeline swallowed hard, trying to get her bearings. "I… I… I am fine." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The two men stared at her. "Ok," she said. "Damn, I need a drink."
She'd meant it as a joke, but Jonathan obligingly stood up and headed over to his bag, where he rooted around until he found his scotch bottle. He returned to the bed and handed it over. "It's not whiskey," he said apologetically. "But…"
Madeline snatched the bottle from his hand and took several long chugs. Joke or not, she wasn't turning down a good stiff drink right about now. Ardeth watched her wide-eyed. Jonathan had seen this happen far too many times to be impressed any longer. "All right, all right!" he scolded her finally, taking the bottle back. "That's enough of that, old girl!"
She swallowed, took another deep breath, and turned to Ardeth. "Ok," she breathed. "What the hell are we going to do?"
Jonathan looked at Ardeth too. Madeline supposed it was disconcerting to have both of them staring at him like he had all the answers, because Ardeth started studying the bedspread. "You cannot go to England, that much is obvious," he announced. "I sent one of my men to the station, to buy us passage to Cairo. Jonathan says he has books there, and perhaps if we consult those books, we can learn what all these hieroglyphs mean. After that, I hope we can remove the necklace and stop whatever was started last night."
"Yes, what the bloody hell was that all about?" Jonathan added, frowning. "All the wind, and the moon turning red… and that freak sandstorm!"
"It was definitely supernatural," Ardeth allowed. He looked at Madeline. "What exactly did the necklace do to you?"
Madeline stared wide-eyed at him, feeling quite put on the spot. "What do you mean?"
"You… you…" Ardeth seemed to be at a loss for words, his hand jerking up once, and then dropping back to his side. "You were…"
"A right bumbling mess," Jonathan interrupted helpfully. Madeline glared at him, but he carried on as though he couldn't see her. "Crawling about, barely speaking real words, limp as a wooden doll… well, I've seen you corked out of your mind plenty of times, and you've never been that bad…"
"It was a drug!" she cut him off, quickly, before he could start regaling Ardeth with stories of her drunken escapades. She didn't need any help looking like a complete fool in front of the man; she was perfectly capable of that all by herself. "I mean… I only had one drink in the bar, and… then suddenly it was like I'd had half a bottle of whiskey. Berkley slipped me something, some kind of drug; I don't know what."
"So it wasn't the necklace?" Ardeth prompted.
It was on the tip of her tongue to agree, but that wouldn't be helpful. In fact, it would be a lie. Madeline closed her eyes, thinking back to the night before, recalling the way the necklace seared against her skin, like a red-hot iron, and how her head felt like it would split open. "Um… well… when he put it on…"
She trailed off, but Ardeth wasn't letting her off the hook. "What happened when he put it on?"
"It… it burned."
Her hand was on the necklace, fingertips resting lightly on the metal as she remembered the white hot pain when Berkley clasped the necklace around her neck. She flinched slightly, closing her eyes.
"It burned?" Ardeth repeated her, and she nodded.
"Yeah. Then… um… my head, it just… it hurt. I don't know, like… like this sharp pain."
She nearly mentioned the strange dream she'd had after passing out, but in truth she couldn't fully recall it. It was all fuzzy, disjointed images, some clear as a bell and terrifying, others blurred about the edges and just beyond the edges of her memory. What would be the point in recounting some strange drug-fueled hallucination?
"So," she changed the subject. "The plan… um… what are we…?"
"As soon as my man returns from the station," Ardeth interrupted her, as though anticipating the question. "We will leave Alexandria. Two of my men will stay behind here, to make sure we are not followed, and then they will head to our brothers near Pharos. It is not far from here. The other two I am sending back to Farafra, to inform the rest of the tribe what has happened and gather the council. I need to spread the news throughout the confederation as quickly as possible."
"What are they going to do?" she asked. "Send us a scribe, or…?"
"Prepare for battle," he interrupted her again. "Should the pharaoh return from the dead and make good on her promise to rule the world."
Silence descended on the hotel room. Madeline's fingers still rested on the necklace as she studied the bedspread, letting the enormity of the situation sink in. Jonathan was standing awkwardly beside her, hand ruffling the back of his hair as he stared at the window with an affected air of nonchalance. Madeline looked at Ardeth again. He was as stern-faced and serious as ever, and she swallowed, hard.
There was a knock on the door then, and Ardeth drew his sword as he crossed the room, striding purposefully to the door and peering through the peephole. Seconds later, he swung the door open, revealing one of his warriors, and then stepped into the hallway.
"Well, Maddie," Jonathan murmured once they were alone. "Looks like we stepped in it good this time."
"You mean I stepped it in good," she corrected him. "I took the laced drink from the maniac, I got the necklace put around my neck, and I apparently started something terrible and world-ending… me, me, me."
"Now, now, old girl," Jonathan began soothingly, but Ardeth reappeared at that moment, boarding passes in hand, and Jonathan immediately fell silent.
"We must board the train in one hour," Ardeth announced. "Can we manage that?"
Madeline nodded. "Of course," she murmured. "That… that sounds fine. Jonathan?"
"I think we should wire Evie," he blurted out. Both Madeline and Ardeth turned to him, and he scrunched up his face worriedly, and rather self-consciously. As bad as she felt about that, Madeline was not getting on board with that plan.
"No," she returned. "I do not want to drag Rick and Evie into my problems."
"Well, it's not just your problem, per say," Jonathan argued. "It's everyone's problem."
"No," she said again. "They have Alex, and new lives in England, and we are not going to summon them back to Egypt every time something evil tries to resurrect itself around here. They'd be headed back here every other week, at this rate!"
"It might be a good idea," Ardeth began, and Madeline shook her head… which hurt terribly, and she instantly regretted it.
"No. No, no, no. Jonathan is just as capable of translating these hieroglyphs…"
"I'm sorry, have you met me?" Jonathan cut in, sounding snarky. "How long have we known each other, exactly?"
"Shut up," she snapped. "I know you can handle it, Jonathan. You're not giving yourself enough credit."
Jonathan flushed, which was a feat in itself to behold, and then mumbled, "Still think we should wire Evie up."
Madeline ignored him, and started dragging herself out of the bed. She underestimated just how much her head hurt, and how strong that drug Berkley had slipped her must have been, because the room spun as she stood and her knees suddenly went weak. Jonathan inhaled sharply from behind her and Ardeth grabbed her around the waist just as she nearly toppled over on the floor. She snatched a hold of his arm in an attempt to steady herself. There was a brief scramble, with Madeline clutching his arm and forcing herself to stand up straight, as Ardeth shifted around and hefted her up, trying to support her weight. It wasn't until she was steady that Madeline became extremely aware of the fact that her chest was pressed firmly against Ardeth's, and that their cheeks were nearly touching. His hand was firm against her back, and his breath tickled her ear. She swallowed hard. Ardeth seemed to tense. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, rather embarrassed. "I'm fine," she muttered. He immediately sat her back down on the bed, and Madeline determinedly did not look at him.
"Are you sure?" Jonathan asked from behind her.
"Yes," she groaned, hiding her face in her hands. "Head rush, that's all. Give me a second."
Ardeth stared at her a moment, and then seemed to accept her answer. "All right," he said, taking charge again. "Jonathan, are you ready?"
He nodded, crossing to his bag. Madeline watched him tuck the scotch bottle back into his kit and fasten the clasps. "All packed up."
"I will send a man to accompany you to the lobby," Ardeth went on, although Madeline couldn't understand why Jonathan needed an escort. The damage had already been done, and she was apparently the intended target anyway. "Will you close out our rooms?"
"Why not?" Jonathan returned cheekily, swinging his bag onto his shoulder. Madeline watched as Ardeth and Jonathan ducked into the hallway. Ardeth reappeared a moment later, but Jonathan did not. He marched over to her side.
"Can you stand?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she returned, rather irritably as she got to her feet. Ardeth tensed up again, like he was planning to catch her for a second time, but Madeline didn't stumble. She excused herself and disappeared into the adjoining washroom.
It wasn't until she was relatively put back together – teeth brushed, face washed, and braid fixed – that she took a moment to truly look at her reflection. The woman staring back at her didn't look any different than the typical morning-after Madeline, complete with hangover, usually looked. Her face was a little pale, there were shadows underneath her eyes, and she looked tired. If she hadn't been staring at the huge, gaudy gold necklace around her throat, Madeline might have thought it was simply Saturday morning, and she'd had too much to drink the night before.
But the huge, gaudy gold necklace was there, garish and ugly and obvious, and it felt like an anchor around her neck. Madeline swallowed, hard, and buttoned up her shirtwaist as high as it would go, hiding the unwanted ornament from view.
When she exited the washroom, Ardeth was waiting for her, with her knapsack slung over his shoulder. "Ready?" he asked.
She nodded, and he followed her to the hotel room door, too close to her back. He stayed that close all the way down the hall and through the lobby, where they met with Jonathan again. If she'd hoped that would make him back off, she was dead wrong; Ardeth hovered over her all the way to the train station. She supposed she appreciated his concern, but truthfully, it was more than a little irritating.
He didn't need to smother her like this to impress upon her the seriousness of the situation. The necklace wouldn't come off, Berkley was the bad guy, and some evil, undead pharaoh wanted to take over the world. She already knew damn well she was in very serious trouble.
It wasn't until they reached the station that Ardeth gave her any distance. Madeline and Jonathan hopped on the train before Ardeth, squeezing their way through the loud, sweaty crowds and narrow train cars before finding a mostly empty compartment and taking their seats. Ardeth lingered on the platform to give his men parting instructions. Madeline sank into the hard, wooden seat with a sigh and rested her forehead in her hand, elbow perched on the armrest. Jonathan took the seat across from her. Neither of them spoke for a long moment, not until the train whistle blew, and the conductor began shouting for the final passengers to board.
"Ardeth better hurry," Jonathan murmured, squinting through the smudgy window. "Or we'll be headed off to Cairo without him. Now, twenty-four hours ago, I'd say that wouldn't be the worst thing, but in light of recent events…"
"What are you talking about?"
It was Ardeth who had spoken, and Jonathan jumped about a foot in the air at the other man's sudden appearance. "Er… um… nothing really, old friend, just… ruminating about last night and the end of the world?"
He looked at Madeline for assistance, but she merely hid her amused smirk and glared at him. Ardeth simply looked at him for a moment, and then stepped closer to the window of the passenger car, peering suspiciously out at the platform before taking his seat beside Jonathan.
"What are you looking for out there?" Jonathan asked, rather sardonically. "Bad guys?"
Ardeth didn't reply. He just stared icily at Jonathan, and lifted an eyebrow. Madeline snorted, leaning back in her seat and rolling her eyes. "Trust me, Jonathan, if any bad guys are following us, they're probably already on the train."
"Cheery," Jonathan retorted. "I find your endless supply of optimism quite comforting in times of turmoil, old girl. Thank you very much."
She shut her eyes against the bright sun and shifted in her seat, sliding down a bit as she tried to get comfortable. Her head still ached, and she wanted a nap… not that she expected to sleep at all, given the circumstances. "Happy to help," she grunted at her friend.
"Are you feeling ill?" Ardeth asked her suddenly, and her eyes flew open. She was surprised to find him watching her intensely from his seat. Unsure what to do or what to say to him, she found herself frozen in place, staring back at him for what was surely an inappropriate amount of time.
"Uh…" she finally managed to spit out. "No, I'm all right. Just… tired."
"Fair enough, I suppose," Jonathan interjected. "You have been busy, what with the drugging at the bar and the incident behind the hotel, and all the sandstorms and the fainting…"
"Please continue to bring that up," Madeline returned sarcastically. "You know, it doesn't count as fainting if you've been slipped the Mickey, all right?"
"Sure, sure."
The whistle blew again as the train lurched forward, and the sound of the wheels on the track echoed loudly through the passenger car as the train gained speed; clack-clack-clackity-clack, over and over again, cutting through the silence in their compartment as the train pulled out of the station and headed south. Madeline leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes again. She let the clack-clack-clackety-clack wash over her, tuning out Jonathan's nearby rambling, and dozed off for the rest of the trip.
The platform was bustling when they reached Cairo that afternoon, overcrowded with passengers from every corner of Egyptian society, both embarking and disembarking. People were shouting, running, pushing… in truth, it was like any other day in any other part of Cairo and normally Madeline wouldn't even blink at such chaos, but today the noise and the crowd were overwhelming.
She shaded her eyes from the sun, harsh and too bright, as she stepped off the train. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and she rather wished there was. She knew the way out of the station and back towards the Drunken Scarab by heart, and there was no reason at all – barring inept henchmen interference – that there should be any problems getting to Jonathan's apartment. Yet when she turned her head towards the stretch of sand known as Giza, on the other side of the tracks and the other side of the river, where the three famous pyramids towered over the Nile, all thought of her original mission dropped right out of her head and her feet developed a life of their own. Flashes of that odd fever dream danced across her mind's eye: beautiful golden queens and tired old pharaohs, pyramids being erected high above the muddy waters of the Nile, snakes and mummies and screams…
"Madeline?"
Ardeth appeared in front of her very suddenly, his hands seizing her shoulders. He frowned down at her in concern, and she blinked rapidly, giving her head a good, cleansing shake. All the strange images vanished from her mind, replaced by the overwhelming shouting and rumbling of the train station, and all she saw was Ardeth.
"Madeline?" he asked again, slowly, like he was speaking to a small, dimwitted child. "Are you…?" He trailed off then, as though he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to ask, and then finished uncertainly, "… all right?"
She nodded again. "Uh-huh," she said too quickly, and rather breathlessly. "Yeah. Fantastic."
He was still frowning, and he tilted his head questioningly at her. Madeline took a quick look around. She had walked much farther than she'd realized, leaving their original train exit far behind. She frowned too, looked at Ardeth, and wondered if she should say something about it all… strange fever dream, inexplicable urge to move towards the pyramids, the whole nine yards. She felt as perplexed as Ardeth looked.
And, not that it mattered or meant anything at all to anyone – certainly not Madeline – but Ardeth was still holding onto her shoulders.
Jonathan arrived then, and splintered their quiet moment into a thousand noisy pieces. "Bloody hell! Whatever happened to 'never leave a man behind?'" he exclaimed, both indignant and out of breath. "First you wander off," he continued to rant, and gestured at Madeline. "And then you wander off after her." Here he gestured to Ardeth. "And you both leave me behind in your bloody dust! It's a nightmare in here; you could really lose a person in this crowd, you know! And for the record, Maddie, where the devil did you think you were going anyway?"
Madeline blinked at him for a moment, unable to fully get her head in the present. "Uh," she said eloquently. "Um… well…"
"That's what I thought," Jonathan interrupted, rolling his eyes and putting his hands on his hips. "Can we please get out of here and back to my apartment already?"
"Yes," Ardeth agreed abruptly, dropping his hands from her shoulders and gesturing to Jonathan. "Lead the way."
Jonathan did exactly that, although still indignant about the whole 'Madeline wanders off for no apparent reason' incident, and with his nose in the air as a result. It took longer than expected to make it through all the hustle and bustle of the train station, but eventually they fought their way through the crowd, flagged down transportation, and arrived more or less safe and sound at Jonathan's apartments over the Drunken Scarab.
The apartment was oddly silent after the chaos of the station and the city streets, and the quiet, cool, somewhat shaded rooms were a welcome relief to Madeline's still throbbing head. Once they'd unloaded the few things they'd brought with them on their trip, Jonathan began searching his apartments for his old books. Madeline took a seat in a white suede armchair and swung her boots up on the glass coffee table, where she rubbed her temples, waiting for her friend to lug out his texts. She was still tired, and she could feel another headache coming on.
Ardeth paced in front of the sitting room window, obviously impatient. He looked ridiculously out of place in Jonathan's fancy-pants, westernized art-Deco pied-à-terre. Marble countertops, gauzy curtains and dainty suede furniture, with ostentatious art on burgundy walls and fluffy white rugs atop pale, gold-flecked marble floors were perfectly suitable for suit-wearing, slicked back hair Jonathan. But Ardeth stuck out obnoxiously against the fancy backdrop, with his long, dusty black robes and huge weapons and general rough-looking-ness… well, he looked as out of place amongst Jonathan's finery as Madeline often felt.
Her eyes traveled longingly over to the wet bar. She could use a shot of whiskey about now. The only thing stopping her from sneaking a little bit was the churning sensation in her stomach. It had started on the way to Jonathan's apartments, and was now slowly intensifying. For once in her life, she didn't think she could handle a drink.
Jonathan burst back into the sitting room, his arms full of old, heavy books. "You know," he said, dumping them onto the marble-topped bar. "This would probably go a lot faster if we just threw in the towel now and sent my baby sister a cable. Eh? I'll head around to the telegraph office…"
Madeline rolled her eyes. "Absolutely not, Jonathan," she interrupted. "I told you, I am not involving Rick and Evie in my problems."
"Oh, but it's just bloody fine involving me then, is that right?"
"Yes," she retorted. Jonathan pouted. "Well, I'm sorry, Jonathan, but the last time I checked, you don't have a toddler running around!" He rolled his eyes. Madeline thought about what she'd said for a moment, and then remedied, "At least, not that we know about."
"Oh, please," he grumbled, pulling out one of the high black stools at the counter and taking a seat. He tossed at book at her, which she nearly caught with her face instead of her hands, and then opened a book of his own. Ardeth joined him at the counter, taking a book from the stack, and began flipping through the text with a furrowed brow.
Suddenly, Jonathan turned to her with a hopeful look on his face. "If I tell you that I do have a toddler, does that get me off the hook here?"
"No," Madeline returned shortly. She flipped through the first few pages of the text in her lap, frowning at the book in front of her. The words looked like English, and they sounded like English, but Madeline understood most of them about as well as she understood French – and the only thing she understood in French was 'Bon voyage.'
Jonathan appeared crestfallen. "I was afraid that would be the answer."
"Quiet, both of you," Ardeth ordered, thumbing through a book as well. "The faster we start, the faster we will be finished."
"Thanks, Mum," Jonathan returned sarcastically. "All right Maddie, let me have a look at that thing around your neck."
He hopped off the stool, and approached her with pad of paper and pen in hand. Madeline rolled her eyes, trying her best to hold still as Jonathan peered at the markings on the necklace. He copied them down on a sheet of paper in a surprisingly meticulous manner.
The copying process took several long minutes. Then, finally, Jonathan announced, "All right, that's it then. Everyone start looking for these symbols in our books."
The afternoon dragged on as the three of them sat around Jonathan's lavish, burgundy sitting room, trying to find anything in Jonathan's old textbooks that might help them understand the markings on the necklace, or the notes in Dr. Kadar's notebook. Madeline wasn't sure about the other two, but she felt extremely lost. Very little of anything she'd read made any sense to her at all, and as the hours progressed, the dull throbbing in her head began to intensify, as well as the upset feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She could only hope that Jonathan was making some progress. He had the little pad of paper sitting next to him, and as he continued to read through the books in front of him, he was constantly muttering unintelligibly to himself and taking down little notes.
Finally, after Jonathan had found something to serve for an evening meal – which Madeline didn't have the stomach to finish – and night began to fall over the city, Jonathan, apparently having enough, closed his book and stood up, yawning. "I think we all better get to bed," he announced.
"Did you find anything?" Madeline asked him.
She didn't care for the way Jonathan avoided her eyes when he replied, "Not yet, old girl."
Madeline would have pressed him on the subject, but he doused the lights and made his way to bed. "Let's go to sleep. Maddie, you can have the guest room, and Ardeth can sleep on the settee. All right?"
Both Madeline and Ardeth mumbled their acquiescence. Jonathan bid them both goodnight around a long, loud yawn, and then stumbled off into his room, shutting the door too hard behind him.
There was a brief silence. Madeline stared at the bedroom door, shook her head, and then glanced at Ardeth. Only the lamplight from the street, shining through the sitting room window, lit the room at all, and his dark eyes shone strangely at her out of the darkness. She swallowed. He stood stock still in the center of the room, staring at her.
"Goodnight," he said, breaking the stillness.
"Goodnight," she breathed back, turning towards the short hall that led to the guest room. Then Madeline stopped short and whirled around to address Ardeth again. "I'm sorry," she said, too quickly.
He frowned at her. "What for?"
The fact that he sounded genuinely curious should have set her mind at ease, but Madeline only felt twice as on edge. "You were right," she returned. "Back in Alexandria, at the hotel bar? About Berkley. I'm sorry I got upset and ran off all stubborn like that. I should have listened to you."
He shifted uncomfortably. Madeline couldn't make out too much of his face, but the hunched set of his shoulders made the discomfort clear. "You do not have to apologize to me," he began, but she cut him off right away.
"No, I do. This is all my stupid fault. If the world ends… or gets taken over by an evil undead mummy… or whatever happens… it's my fault."
"Madeline…"
"You tried to tell me – warn me about him. You sensed something off about him that I didn't. Something I should have seen, I just… I got sensitive and stubborn and I… ruined everything."
"It was not your fault."
"Of course it was!" she hissed loudly, torn between yelling and keeping her voice down so Jonathan wouldn't hear her through the bedroom door. "If I had just slowed down and thought about it for half a second instead of pulling a Madeline for the ten hundredth time…"
"It was my fault," he interrupted her, voice slightly louder, slightly deeper in aggravation. "Mine. I left you alone with him in the hotel…"
"Well, of course you did," she interrupted him this time. "After I yelled at you and flounced off for drinks with the bad guy…"
"But I also failed to protect the necklace," he pointed out. "I was responsible for keeping it safe, and I allowed it to be stolen right from my pocket, in that same bar, because I was distracted."
"Well…" she protested automatically, wanting to absolve Ardeth even if he'd made a decent point, and determined to put the blame squarely on her own head. Just why was anyone's guess. "At least you tried," she finished lamely.
Ardeth scoffed.
"I didn't try to do anything smart or helpful," she pressed. "I just went off drinking with the villain. You warned me it was a bad idea, and you were right. You picked up on something, Ardeth; something I was just oblivious about and… or you just used your common sense, maybe, and figured out that Berkley showing up randomly in Alexandria was too big a coincidence. I should have been suspicious too. I should have listened."
Ardeth didn't say anything at all. He stood still and squinted against the streetlamps, head turned towards the window. Madeline watched him from the shadow of the hallway. He looked uncomfortable again, like he had more to say, but couldn't quite spit it out. She frowned at him, but he kept squinting at the window, and she decided to let him off the hook.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "Goodnight, Ardeth."
She turned away from him, headed to the guest room for real this time, but he stopped her.
"Madeline."
At the sound of her name, she paused and turned back to him, surprised. In a rare twist of fate, Ardeth appeared equally if not more embarrassed than her. His head was still turned towards the window, but he studied the floor now. "I am sorry I involved you in this," he announced, without lifting his eyes. "I should never have left the necklace with Ajwad. And I should not have left you alone in the bar, especially after what Nasira told me."
Madeline stared at him in shock for a moment. The Med-jai chieftain looked extremely guilty, which struck Madeline as odd, since she still thought this whole damn mess was her fault. After all, Ardeth had tried to warn her about Berkley, and she'd failed to listen.
"Hey," she said softly. "It's not your fault. That guy… he's had this planned out for a long time, and he wanted me involved… for some stupid, incomprehensible reason. He would have found a way no matter what. So don't worry about it."
"I have to worry about it," he replied.
She sighed. "All right, then. But don't blame yourself."
"You might take your own advice."
His reply shook her. Madeline blinked, frowning at him. He didn't say anything else, only studied the floor in silence, and she took his lead, turning halfway back towards the bedrooms. "It really is going to be all right, you know," she said, attempting to be reassuring. "We've got Jonathan's books and we'll figure all this out and everything will turn out fine."
Ardeth nodded. "Yes," he agreed, although it sounded rather superficial. "I know."
She stared at him a moment, on her toes, half ready to head for her room but unable to leave just yet. Ardeth finally looked at her, unsmiling, and nodded once in her direction. "Goodnight, Madeline."
"Goodnight."
This time, when she turned away and headed down the hall to bed, Ardeth did not stop her, and she found no reason to turn around.
The next morning did not get off to a good start.
Madeline awoke suddenly, jarred from sleep but unsure by what. The sunlight cutting into the bedroom through the partially drawn, gauzy white curtains was too bright and too direct, and it hurt her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut, groaning quietly, and took a deep breath, burrowing deeper into the silky white linens and yanking the gray duvet up about her head.
Her headache from the day before was back and throbbing full force. She rubbed her temples and sighed into the fluffy pillow. Images from sleep were still lingering on the edges of her mind, images of desert and river and sun, pyramids and palms and queens. What a weird dream.
In fact, it had been exactly the same dream that she'd had the night before, the vivid drug-induced fever dream… at least, that was what she'd convinced herself the dream was. Madeline groaned into the pillow again. This was getting to be too much. There was a cursed necklace fastened permanently around her neck, there was a crazy anthropologist stalking her, and now she was having weird, reoccurring nightmares. I hate my life.
Slowly, she sat up in bed, flinging down the duvet but keeping her eyes shut. Her stomach churned unpleasantly as she did so, and her hand flew up to her mouth. She rested a moment against the headboard, and then slowly opened her eyes. Her head pounded harder and she shaded her eyes from the sunlight.
Sighing again, Madeline crawled out of bed and got ready to be seen in public as quickly and quietly as she could, though her process was repeatedly impeded by needing to stop and rest every time her stomach lurched, or her head throbbed, or she got dizzy. She tried to ignore it. However, once she was finally ready and walking out into the sitting room, where Ardeth and Jonathan were already awake and reading, the nausea and the headache got worse, and her limbs felt weak and funny, with her legs wobbling beneath her.
"Good morning, Maddie," Jonathan murmured, apparently only half awake.
"Hey," she muttered, focused on her path across the room. Jonathan had made breakfast; she could tell by the smell, which was turning her stomach. She took a seat on the settee, bypassing the spread, and picked up the book she'd abandoned on the glass coffee table the night before.
"Are you all right?" Ardeth asked suddenly.
She blinked at him. How he'd guessed she was feeling sick was beyond her, but she didn't want to worry anyone by copping to it. They had more important things to worry about anyway, like the imminent end of the world. "I'm fine," she replied.
He nodded, but he didn't look convinced. Madeline held his gaze for a long moment, and then he lowered his eyes to the book in front of him.
As the hours crept by, there was only more and more of the same. Madeline's headache worsened, her stomach refused to settle, and the world spun every time she stood. It was like the worse hangover she'd ever had, times ten. The sun crept higher in the sky, shining brighter through the sitting room, and Madeline's eyes tried to close of their own accord, turned to slits by the painful brightness. She shifted on the settee, trying to take a deep breath. She felt out of breath, as though she'd been running, and every inhale was shallower than it should be.
"Is something wrong?"
Madeline started at the unexpected question. She turned to Ardeth, who was still seated at the marble bar and staring at her in concern. "No, not at all," she replied.
It was a lie. The morning had faded into mid-afternoon by this point, and she felt even worse than she had when she'd woken up.
"You look ill," he persisted.
"I'm not," Madeline returned.
He did not look convinced, but returned to the books in front of him. Madeline tried to focus on her own volumes, but simply couldn't. Shafts of sunlight from the window tilted and blurred before her eyes, disorienting her as they painted stripes of light across the burgundy walls. The sensation was dizzying. Madeline squinted, with her eyes nearly shut now, and put the book aside. It was useless to try and read anymore; the words were fuzzy on the page. Taking it in mind to draw the gauzy white drapes, she rose from the settee, but the movement made her head spin and her stomach lurch. She froze, swayed, and covered her mouth, suddenly sick. With new urgency, she tripped through the sitting room as fast as she could, and stumbled into the washroom.
The door shut behind her with a loud, heavy slam. Madeline paused as the black and white floor tiles of Jonathan's fancy-smancy powder room moved right before her eyes, bobbing up and down, swaying side to side, swimming and blurring and wobbling. She shut her eyes and collapsed to her knees in front of the porcelain, Western commode, and forcefully expelled the contents of her stomach into the bowl.
She didn't know how long she knelt on the bathroom floor, with her diaphragm heaving relentlessly as she gagged and coughed up anything and everything she'd eaten over the past twelve hours. Breathless and sweating, she clutched the sides of the commode to keep her balance on her knees until she finally had nothing left in her stomach, and then she slumped to the side, landing on her hip and catching herself with her palms on the cold tile floor, where she struggled to catch her breath. Her head was still spinning and she was still very dizzy; she had to shut her eyes again to keep from going cross-eyed. She struggled to think critically, struggled to understand what was wrong with her. Why was she so sick, so suddenly?
Loud knocking on the bathroom door startled her, sending her sprawling sideways on the cold tile. "Maddie?" Jonathan called, sounding concerned. "Are you all right in there, old girl?"
It took more energy to answer him than it should have. "I'm fine!" she called back hoarsely, trying to sound like it.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! I'll be out in a minute!"
Madeline heard Jonathan's footsteps carry him away from the door. She forced herself to sit up, and then grabbed hold of the sink in front of her, hauling herself to her feet. With the support of first the sink, and then the towel rack, she managed to make it to the door, and then walked cautiously out of the room.
She was shaking uncontrollably and she still couldn't see straight. Her legs felt impossibly weak. She nearly fell in the hall, and was saved only by a graceless slump into the wall. She clung to the wall from there on out, leaning against it as she crept carefully back to the sitting room, stopping and shutting her eyes with every dizzy spell that swept over her.
Both Jonathan and Ardeth looked up at her when she stepped into the sitting room, pausing in their examination of Dr. Kadar's research in order to stare at her. "Are you sure you are not ill?" Ardeth asked.
Madeline could detect subtle sarcasm, though he sounded concerned beneath his apparent annoyance with her. "I'm sure," she replied, refusing the bait.
She stayed in the hallway entrance a moment longer, catching her breath and preparing herself for the long walk across the open expanse of sitting room, with no supports to cling to as she made her way to the nearest chair. Steeling herself with a deep breath, Madeline shoved herself off the wall and wobbled across the room. She barely made it a few steps before the room began to blur before her eyes, and her knees went weak.
"Well, this is interesting!" Jonathan announced suddenly, reading from one of the numerous texts spread out on the bar. "It says here that scholars believe the…."
Whatever it was that scholars believed, Madeline never discovered. Her weak knees were unable to support her weight, and her long limbs folded underneath her. She pitched forward, collapsing face first on the floor and narrowly missing the coffee table.
Jonathan shut up immediately, and Ardeth turned in his chair. "Madeline!" she heard him shout in concern, jumping from his chair and kneeling beside her. He grabbed her shoulder and gently rolled her over onto her back.
"Maddie!" That voice belonged to Jonathan, who she could dimly see running towards her from the bar.
Madeline stared up at them, blinking hard. She couldn't concentrate on either one of their faces. Her head was pounding and the ceiling was spinning and everything was dimming around her. "Are you all right?" she heard Ardeth ask. "Madeline?"
Then his voice faded from her, and Madeline slipped into blackness.
There was a soft, sweet breeze blowing in from the river, and three tall pyramids shaded a beautiful woman from the hot sun as she sat on an ornate, gold-lacquered lounge, being fanned by servants with enormous green palm fronds. Her black, square wig, weaved with gold, covered a shaved head; her skin was deeply bronzed and her almond eyes were deep and black and lined with heavy, dark makeup. She wasn't exactly young, with lines forming at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but she was still a beauty.
She sat on a platform high above the pulsing mass of thousands of slaves and seasonal workers crowded below, covered in dust and sweating profusely as they busted up rocks and carted them towards the foundation of a fourth, new pyramid. At the edge of the platform, standing at attention and surrounded by lackeys, was a man that looked like her, wearing the blue and gold pharaoh's headdress. He was older than her, noticeably so, his eyes and mouth twice as lined, and shadows beneath his dark, tired eyes."Is it almost complete?"
It was a stupid question, she had to admit. Clearly, the pyramid was only in its beginning stages. But Pharaoh was always impatient.
"Much more time is needed, Pharaoh," one of his advisors returned, and he sighed.
The scene before the pyramids faded away, and then suddenly there was a long procession of people carrying a coffin towards the smallest of the three pyramids, as the sun set over the complex. The foundation of the fourth remained, unfinished and ignored, as the torch-carrying procession weaved through the sandy field, under the purple sky, and into the dark gaping opening of the smallest pyramid.
The woman from before was near the head of the procession, following behind the coffin. The long line of mourners marched slowly down a dark hall, lit only by their torches. They went lower and deeper, taking many twists and turns, the ceilings growing closer and closer to their heads, and torches flickering as the oxygen grew thinner and thinner. Finally, they paraded into a large chamber, and then through to another, smaller one, where the large stone sarcophagus was already waiting in the center of the room. They laid the coffin inside the sarcophagus and began saying incantations over it.
People slowly filed out of the chamber, though the time was passing faster than it should, in a strange overlapping of images, until only the woman remained. She reached up to her necklace – a wide gold choker, long gold stems hanging down over her collarbone – and removed a small green gem from the first gold stem. She dropped it deliberately into the sarcophagus, and then she got to her feet and walked away.
The images began to run together, flashing by too fast and making little sense. First, a bridge collapsed into the Nile. Then there was a bed, and the covers were yanked back to reveal a snake that lifted its head and hissed threateningly.
A large group of people carrying torches stormed down an elaborate hallway, swinging countless weapons.
Water rushed very suddenly into a banquet hall. No one escaped.
Flames blazed all around a young woman. A door shut heavily.
A mummy was carried through endless miles of rocky caverns and lowered into a stone sarcophagus. Suddenly, the mummy awoke with a loud, angry scream.