I averted the horror of a burp, and made kind of a half-smile, half-grimace sort of thing. “Me neither. Where are you working in the tomb?”
“In Room Q. I’m sifting through the rubble looking for pottery shards.”
I tore off a little piece of bread that sat on the edge of my plate of stew. “Pottery shards? That sounds…uh…”
“Boring?”
Her eyes sparkled as she grinned. I waved my bread at her. “Well, yes, but I wasn’t going to say that. Besides, you get to work in the lower level. Sayed—he’s the guy I’m working with—says it’s much cooler down there.”
“You’re on the conservation team?”
I stuffed in a mouthful of stew (it was actually pretty good, but I was the first one to admit that after the day I’d had, a can of creamed corn would be just as heavenly as a triple-stuffed-crust pizza with everything but anchovies on it) and said carefully, so I wouldn’t spew stew on her, “Yup.”
“What sorts of things do you do?”
“Oh, tons of stuff,” I said, swallowing my mouthful of stew. “Right now I’m cleaning the lintel over the doorway into Room G. It’s a picture of Nekhbet. You know her? She’s the one with the vulture on her head. Well, not the whole vulture, just like a vulture-head thing. Kind of a vulture crown. Anyway, she’s who I’m working on. I can even write her name in hieroglyphs. Want to see?”
“Sure.”
I stuffed a bit more bread into my mouth, then reached for the paper that was tucked into my pants pocket. On one side it had instructions on how I was to brush the cleaning solvent over the walls. I flipped it over and started writing. “The wavy symbol, that’s an N. And the footy thing, that’s the K-H. The pot is a B, and half a circle is a T. Then there’s a vulture at the end that Sayed says kind of reinforces the name as being Nekhbet’s.”
“What about the other letters in her name?” she asked, frowning at the drawings I made. I looked at them, too, and suddenly realized how stupid I’d been. I’d just proven to her that I couldn’t draw worth spit. What if she said something to Kay?
I tucked the paper away quickly. “There are no vowels in hieroglyphs, just consonants.”
“Oh. Have you tried to write your name in hieroglyphs?”
“Nope. So, what do you with the pottery?”
“As little as possible. What was Dag going off on you about this morning?”
I rolled my eyes. “What wasn’t she going off about? Anything and everything. Do you know that she spent the entire trip here yammering on and on and on about curses and our responsibilities, and how if we stepped out of line at all she could send us home without us being able to do anything? What’s with that?”
She grinned. “She’s one of those power nazis.”
“You got that right.” I spent the next half hour talking to Sunita, eating, and drinking two bottles of pop. I still felt a bit guilty about caving and breaking my fast, but looking around the mess tent at the twenty or so other non-Muslim workers who were eating, I realized I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t take the heat without food and water. By the time lunch was over, I felt better about the whole thing.
Until I walked out of the tent and ran into Seth.
“Oh, uh…hi,” I said, desperately trying to stuff a bottle of water into the back pocket of my jeans, but I wasn’t wearing jeans, I was wearing the hideous white cotton pants that all of the conservationists wore, and which made me look like the Pillsbury Doughgirl. So instead I stuffed it behind me into the waistband. “Um. There you are. I missed you this morning. Um…well, I didn’t actually miss you, because you weren’t at work like Sayed said you were supposed to be, but I missed you as in…er…not miss, as in, like, I’m madly in love with you and missed you because I didn’t see you and I couldn’t stop thinking about you and wondered what you were doing and whether you were wearing another muscle tee—and you are, isn’t that like weird?—not miss that way, but miss as in you weren’t there and I was.”
The two glossy black eyebrows that curved above his eyes pulled together.
“I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“I thought so. My mom says I talk first, and think later, which is kind of stupid because you need your brain to talk.”
People walked out of the mess tent in small groups, chatting with each other until they came up to Seth and me. Then the chatter dropped down to a whisper as people hurried by.
Everyone except Chloe.
“Hey, Jan, do you know you have a water bottle in your pants?”
“Yes,” I said, a little bit defensively, true, but hey, there I was trying to have a meaningful conversation with Seth—in between my babbling—and she had to butt in and point out I had a bottle stuffed down my pants. Like I wouldn’t know that? “I keep it there. It’s handy. Is that a problem?”
“Whatever,” she said, smiling a big old lip gloss smile at Seth. “Hi Seth! Struck anyone dead today?”
He made a face. “Not yet, but it’s only a little after noon.”
“Good one!” she grinned as she strolled past.
I ground my teeth for a minute, then dragged my mind off the fantasy of tripping Chloe so she’d fall lipgloss first into the sand, trying instead to think of something to say to Seth that wouldn’t make me sound like even more of an idiot than someone who stands around with a water bottle shoved down the back of her pants.
In the end, I decided honesty was going to have to do. “I guess you think I’m a loser, huh?” I asked as I pulled the bottle of water out from the waistband of the hideous white pants. “I don’t blame you, because I said I was going to do Ramadan and all, but it was so hot in the tomb, and…”
Seth held up a hand to stop me. “Jan, you don’t have to make an excuse to me about not fasting. You aren’t Muslim, so no one expects you to participate in Ramadan.”
“You’re fasting, aren’t you?” I asked, feeling worse than ever, as if I’d let him down somehow.
“Yes, but my dad is big on Muslim holy days. He thinks they’re an important part of our heritage.” Seth shrugged and turned, starting to walk toward the tent where everyone left their backpacks. I walked with him, feeling a bit squidgy. I mean, there I was, my first day on the site and one of the dig hunka-hunkas was walking with me! If I was keeping a hottie score, this would definitely get me at least twenty-five points. “My mother says the same thing about Christian holidays.”
I waved away a wasp that was buzzing around my head. “Bet that gets confusing sometimes, huh?”
He smiled and my stomach did a fluttery thing that had nothing to do with the stew I’d eaten. “I probably have the only family who celebrates both Ramadan and Christmas.”
I stopped in front of the tent that had my backpack. “So your mom is how you learned to speak such good English? That’s pretty cool. My mother doesn’t speak any other language except Pick on Jan-ese. Hang on a sec6; I have to put my water away in my backpack. Sayed says we’re not supposed to take anything in the tomb but our tools and the solvent and stuff.
“Here,” Seth said as I was about to enter the tent. He shoved the dirty black bracelet I’d bought at the bazaar two days before into my hand. “You left this behind last night.”
“Oh, thanks, I’d forgotten all about it.” I stuck both the bracelet and the bottle of water in my backpack, hurrying back 6out to Seth, wondering if he was planning on walking me all the way down into the ravine to the tomb. I racked my brain for something interesting to say so he wouldn’t get bored and leave me. “Um…what did Chloe mean about you striking anyone dead?”
His brows pulled together again. I had the worst urge to stroke my fingers over the frown and smooth it out, but I quickly squelched that idea by reminding myself that journalists don’t get involved in their subjects. “I told you last night—some of the people here think I’m the reincarnation of Set.”
“Set? That’s a god?”
“Yes. God of night. Lord of chaos. Murderer of his brother Osiris
.” Seth walked quickly, as if he didn’t notice it was at least a million degrees out in the sun. I shoved on the straw hat I’d pulled from my backpack, and trotted after him as he started down the long incline to the valley that held the tomb, praying that I wouldn’t melt into a big puddle of sweat before we got to the bottom.
“Oh. Sounds like bad news. Why do they think you’re his reincarnation?”
Seth shot me a scowly look, slowing down when he noticed me mopping at my face with the edge of my white t-shirt. “I’m sorry, I forgot that you’re new here and probably haven’t gotten used to the heat.”
“That’s OK, sweating is good for you. My sister Kara says you can lose all sorts of weight that way.”
He came to a sudden stop even though we were only midway down the path. I slid to a stop behind him, the rocks and dirt skittering around me. The people behind had to edge around us when Seth stood with his arms crossed as he glared at me. “Is that why you want to fast? You’re on a diet?”
Chloe, Sunita, and the French girl whose name I couldn’t remember were laughing as they passed us, Chloe shooting me a curious glance as she skirted a big boulder.
I turned fifty shades of red as I looked away from him. “Geez, if you said it a little bit louder, I think they could hear you all the way in Cairo.”
“Jan.” His fingers were warm on my already hot chin as he turned my face so I was looking at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just wanted to know if that’s why you were so set on fasting for Ramadan.”
“Yeah, well, what if I am? What’s wrong with that?”
His brown eyes were even warmer than the sun burning down on us. They started a little fire in my belly, a fire that seemed to zoom through my body, making all of me go tingly. “You shouldn’t use Ramadan as an excuse to diet, Jan. That’s not what it’s about.”
I made an exasperated noise, not caring if the people trying to get around us heard me. “Oh, great, so now I’m violating some Ramadan rule?”
“It’s just that Ramadan is a holy month, a time that is supposed to be dedicated to prayers.”
“So I can fast and pray, but not diet, is that it? Criminy dutch, Seth, look at me! I look like the something out of Attack of the Killer Marshmallow People! And these stupid white clothes don’t help—everyone knows white makes you look fatter.”
“I always heard that was stripes,” a voice said behind me. “Doesn’t Mom say she won’t wear stripes because they make her bottom look huge?”
I turned to find Seth standing behind me…only it wasn’t Seth, of course. It was his brother, Mr. Octopus Hands.
“Hello, Cy,” I said, trying to stop my blush from going off the blush meter and actually igniting my face.
He grinned. He was dressed almost the same as Seth, although he wore a blue muscle tee instead of black. His hair, however, was pulled back in a long ponytail, and I wondered if the two brothers checked with each other before they got dressed to make sure they looked identical as possible. “Figured it out, did you? Didn’t think it would take you long. Mom says you’re on the conservation team. That’s a shame—I bet you’d like the work on the burial chambers more. It’s great stuff, isn’t it Seth?”
The two exchanged glances. Cy’s eyes were more or less technically the same as Seth’s, but where Seth’s had a guarded, somewhat wary look to them, as if he’d learned to expect the worst, Cy’s eyes had a look that I always thought of as secretly laughing. It was as if he found something funny, but didn’t want anyone to know he was laughing at them. My fingers tightened into a fist as his eyes laughed at Seth, a slight mocking smile curling his lips.
“Do you want something, Cy?” Seth said, his jaw tight, as if he was fighting to keep from saying things he wanted to say. I knew just how he felt.
“As a matter of fact, I do. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Jan; yet, and since I’m not stupid enough to keep a girl standing out in the sun just to chat her up, why don’t we go down into the wadi.”
“Wadi?” I asked, ignoring the hand he waved toward the bottom of the steep path. I might be so hot that you could probably fry an egg on my skin, but I did not like Cy. He just rubbed me the wrong way. Besides, I wanted to finish talking to Seth…for professional purposes, of course. Interview, and all that.
“The valley is a wadi, a dried up stream bed. Come on, Jan, no one will miss you if you’re a few minutes late. Why don’t you stop by my tent and I can show you some pictures of the burial chambers?”
Seth turned away and started to walk down the path. My brain went totally psycho on me and before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed Seth’s hand and slid my way down the gravel and dirt after him to a more solid part of the path. Seth looked down at our hands in surprise as I smiled over my shoulder at Cy. “Sorry, Seth is going to help me clean Nekhbet. Maybe some other time?”
I made it to the bottom of the path without falling, dying of embarrassment, or melting away completely, all of which I had figured could happen. At the bottom Cy walked by us without saying anything, but I could tell by the tense line of his shoulders that he was pissed at me.
“Welcome to the club,” I sighed.
“What club?” Seth asked.
“The People Mad at Jan club.” I disentangled my fingers from his and headed toward the tomb opening, not wanting to look at his face. Either it would be full of disgust because I had grabbed his hand in front of his brother, thereby making it look like he wanted to hold my hand, or else he would be looking at me with pity, feeling sorry for the girl who was so desperate to have people think she was liked that she grabbed the hand of whoever was nearest.
I took three steps before he touched my arm, moving around so he was facing me, the sun mercifully behind his head. The gold bits in his brown eyes were all lit up. “Why did you do that?”
I heaved an inner sigh and hurried into my apology, hoping to cut him off before he said anything that would make me cry. “Why did I grab your hand? I don’t know. I’m sorry. It was stupid. I won’t do it again.”
“No, not that. I like holding your hand. Why did you pick me over Cy?”
I gave him a look that should have let him know just how nuts he sounded, a little curl of warmth deep in my stomach making me wonder if I had been out in the sun too long. “Are you kidding? This is a test, isn’t it? It’s some sort of a test to see if I have heat stroke and am still sane, right?”
His frown was back. I almost smiled at it. I don’t know why a frown made me feel comfortable, but Seth’s did. I think it was because it was so Sethy. “No, it’s not a test. I want to know why you didn’t go with Cy.”
I shrugged and tried not to look at his mouth. All of a sudden I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, which was not how a journalist thought about her subjects. “I don’t like him very much.”
“You said that last night.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like him very much today, either.”
He stared at me for a minute like he didn’t believe me, his brown-eyed gaze boring into mine. “You’re the only person who feels that way.”
I shrugged again. “That’s me. I always seem to do the wrong thing. I’m sorry I said what I did about your brother, but I didn’t want to lie to you. If you don’t want to work with me now, I’ll understand. I’m sure your mom will get someone else to help with the lintel.”
“My mother named us for Osiris and Set,” he said, and it took me a minute to realize he was back to talking about why people thought he was Set reincarnated. “They were brothers. Osiris was the king of Egypt. He had everything he wanted because he was the oldest. His people loved him. His family adored him. He never did anything wrong. One day Set killed him in a fit of jealousy. Osiris became the king of the underworld, but the people didn’t stop loving him. They hated and feared Set, and blamed him for everything that went wrong.”
“Wow. That’s kind of horrible. But why do the people think that you’re the reincarnation of Set? I mean, your mom named
you guys purposely, right? So it was just one of those things you can’t help. You can take it from me, I know all about parents sticking you with a weird name.”
Seth turned and we started walking toward the tomb. I tripped a couple of times over small rocks, but he slowed down so I wasn’t trotting after him, huffing and puffing and making myself even hotter than I already was. “They think I’m Set because ever since I came to the dig, things have happened.”
“Really?” I stumbled over a clod of dried mud (AMERICAN TEEN KILLED BY CURSED MUMMY DIRT!), but Seth grabbed me before I could fall. “Thanks. What kind of things?”
“Thefts, mostly. Various artifacts have gone missing from the dig. But there are also injuries.” He slid a dark glance at me. “Whoever I work with seems to get injured.”
“Injured? Injured how?”
We paused at the bottom of the short path that led up to the tomb, set about twelve feet up the valley wall. At the base of the path Kay was sitting in the shade chatting with a small, dark man in a blue suit. He looked really uncomfortable, but I knew from Sayed that he was one of the officials from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities—the government organization who watched over all the dig sites. Kay nodded to me, but didn’t stop talking to the official as Seth and I grabbed our cleaning kits consisting of three different brushes, a small bottle of solvent, and a handful of clean rags for dusting off loose soil and debris. Kay frowned at Seth, but didn’t say anything about him wearing unauthorized clothes into the tomb.
“Last week it was Sherif, one of the diggers. He broke his leg when he was riding my bike.” Seth ducked as we entered the darkness of the tomb. Although electric lights had been set up in all the rooms, they were special low-impact lights that wouldn’t fade the paintings of the walls. It was a few degrees cooler inside the tomb because we were out of the direct sun, but those ancient Egyptians knew what they were doing when they built the tombs into the limestone cliffs—the insulating power of all that rock around us kept the tomb a nice, constant temperature: hot. “Two weeks ago Omar, the dig doctor, was bitten by a scorpion and had a horrible reaction. He almost died from it. A month before that, Enrico, one of the interns I was working with, went off by himself and had heat stroke. They had to send him home after he got out of the hospital. ”