Page 138 of Blue Moon

And then I’d known precisely what to do—call Ryder and cry on his voicemail. But it had all worked out perfectly in the end, at least until this schmuck hired someone to feed me poisoned pastries.

“I understand how that feels. Even though the signs were there in my life too, I didn’t know how to interpret them at first.” He gave a sudden smile. “The woman who raised me used to call me her little Mark Antony, but I didn’t realise for years that she meant it literally. I’m not sure even she did.”

“Then why did she call you that?”

“Because Mark Antony was quite the charmer with the ladies, and so am I.”

He looked at me expectantly.

“Yes, absolutely.”

Absolutely not. Thanks to the knot of fear in my stomach, I hadn’t touched the bread, oil, and olives set out between us, but I was still chewing over his words. Earlier, he’d told me I looked like Cleopatra, and every ancient essayist—the gossip columnists of their time—said that she was ugly. Okay, not in those exact words, but they said she was smart and charismatic and glossed over the actual physical part. Mark Antony definitely wasn’t charming.

Although I had to admit he had good taste. I mean, not only had he chosen me as his victim, but this ski chalet of a prison was actually pretty nice. Had he picked out the decor himself? A stone fireplace was the focal point of the great room, with a cluster of brown leather couches set around a glass coffee table in front. Every surface seemed to have some kind of antiquity on it, and there were more on the walls. Masks, paintings… Someone had either travelled a lot or bought half of eBay.

“Why do you think I look like Cleopatra? I saw pictures of coins with her face on them, and…well, I don’t think we look alike.”

He popped an olive into his mouth and fished a phone out of his pocket. After a moment of scrolling, he slid it over to me. The urge to call 911 was almost irresistible, but would they understand what was happening? Ryder would cotton on in an instant—he’d hear me talking and trace the call—but I didn’t know his number by heart. He’d typed it into my phone months ago, and whenever I wanted to call him, I just went to my recents and tapped his name. Perhaps I should try— Oh. There was no signal, so it didn’t matter anyway. How did he live like this?

“That’s us as we once were,” he said.

It was a picture of two gleaming gold busts on stone pillars, one male, one female, in front of a wall covered in hieroglyphics. Antony and Cleopatra? I hadn’t seen this photo in any of my googling.

“Is this photoshopped?”

He chuckled softly. “No, it’s our tomb.”

“Huh? But nobody ever found that. I looked it up.”

“You won’t find the details in any history book. A few hours after it was discovered, it was sealed up again.”

“Why? Why would somebody do that?”

“Because our former earthly forms are guarded by the gods. Anubis, Isis, Nephthys. The four sons of Horus. The entrance was marked with a curse. Any man who enters into this tomb will be judged by the Great God. He will lose his earthly wealth, his flesh will be seized by fire, and his bones will become dust.”

“Isn’t that just hokum?”

“Two people entered the tomb. One of them died there.”

I shuddered. “And the other?”

“She died in a fire three years later. It was so intense that her bones crumbled when the emergency services tried to recover them.”

“Wow. I mean, how do you know that?”

“Because she was the closest thing I had to a mother.”

38

RYDER

“He just gave me a sandwich and told me to wait for my mom. He didn’t say he was coming back.”

They’d found Kobie Jiminez seated at a table in the corner of Wonder Burger, eating a sausage, egg, and cheese bagel and playing Hungry Birds on his phone. The kid had no idea what the problem was. Anton Hebert had shown up in the Jiminez apartment and told Kobie that his mom had to work late. Since Nola seemed to change sitters on a regular basis and Anton had a key—a key Nola had “lost” at work the month before and hadn’t mentioned because she didn’t think it was important—Kobie thought it was okay and went with him. The guy had balls. He’d taken Kobie to pick up takeout and groceries before they headed back to his apartment, and Kobie said he’d had a great time, although he was disappointed he didn’t get to see the snakes. Hebert had taken them to his “other place.” They’d shared “weird food,” which seemed to be Lebanese from the description, and then Kobie had felt tired. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, but when he woke, it had been time to get breakfast. They’d missed Hebert by minutes.

“Did he say anything about where he was going next?” Dusk asked.

With Dan still out hunting down silver SUVs, Dusk had been deemed the most personable member of the team and, therefore, the most suited to questioning a child. They’d put him on a couch in a small sunroom at the Cathouse with cookies and a soft drink. Nola was sitting with Kobie, sniffing and wiping her eyes with a tissue. She’d apologised a hundred times. Ryder wanted to hate her for what she’d done to Luna, but if his kid had been abducted and he didn’t have a support network like Blackwood, he knew he might make questionable decisions in the crusade to get the child back.

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