Lost in Amon

Chapter One

The Moment of My Career

The diplomas in my hand felt surreal. It had taken seven long years, but I was finally finished. I sat on the worn leather couch, ignoring the way my sweaty skin stuck to it, and inspected each of them, three in total.

The Macquarie University hereby confers upon Etta Jane Mae the degree of Bachelor of Archaeology...Bachelor of Ancient History...Diploma of Ancient Languages.

I reread them over and over, checking each one, making sure my name was spelt correctly, that this wasn't a complete dream, that I'd actually done it. I knew I had—or I wouldn't have been sitting in my new home in Giza—but holding tangible evidence was completely different to simply "knowing".

Salma Hayes, my new boss, wasn't patient enough for me to graduate before beginning work. In fact, she'd demanded I fly out as soon as I'd accepted the position. I didn't even get to enjoy a graduation ceremony after my years of hard work. But I wasn't about to turn her down, either. Salma was one of the best Egyptologists in the world. Both hands wouldn't be enough to count the impact she's had on finding and understanding the history of Egypt (but I could write a ten-thousand-word paper on the subject if needed).

The only problem was that she's a diva. A demanding, rude, annoyingly brilliant diva who didn't let me attend my graduation ceremony. But she did pay for my first-class ticket, which is no small feat considering the flight from Sydney, Australia to Cairo, Egypt was over twenty-four hours of flying and included two stops. I was a sucker for first-class.

My phone buzzed and the peculiar ringtone told me automatically who it was. I answered quickly, partly because I was sick of hearing the rhythmic darbuka playing and partly because I knew Salma was going to chew my ear off.

'He–'
'Where are you right now?' Salma cut me off with an angry tone I knew was her default.
'Still at home. Why? I thought we weren't meeting up until eleven?'
'I need you here now.' I sighed and placed my precious diplomas down, wandering over to the window to peek outside. As I expected, her beat-up four-wheel-drive was sitting in the narrow street. She waved her arm at me in an impatient gesture. 'C'mon, we gotta go.'
'I'm coming, I'm coming,' I replied into the phone, hanging up and shaking my arms at her in a "what the hell?" gesture.

I was already dressed for the day, in the usual long khaki pants and loose-long-sleeved shirt. I used to wear white shirts a lot but learnt pretty quickly that black was a better option. It doesn't get dirty as quickly and it diffuses heat faster, so technically you're meant to feel cooler quicker. I say technically because I can't really tell a difference, but Salma had mentioned before that if I ever got stranded in the desert it was better to have a black shirt because it would help me stay warmer at night. Not sure how much science was behind that, but she always wears black, so there must be some life-saving advice in there.

I scooted out the door, backpack slung over my shoulder and double-checked that the door was locked. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference—the houses here certainly weren't as sturdy as the ones back home—but I checked, nonetheless. The streets were bustling with a life I never saw in Australia. A small motorbike buzzed past, with a large family squished on it. A bus beeped its horn irrationally at a car stopped in the middle of the road, the owners loading carts of fresh fruit from a store into the boot. I dodged a small car as it weaved between traffic and danced across the road, stopping by Salma's open window.

'What's the big deal?' I asked, pulling the door open as she scooted over, making room so that I could drive. She hated driving here. I did too, but she was the boss.
'They've found something at Saqqara.'
'Saqqara? That place has been dug to death; what could there possibly be left?'