❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
THE MORNING SUN peeked through the grey London clouds, a sure sign of the city's signature rainy weather to come soon. But for now it was dry and lovely in the early hours before the temperature would rise to early summer heights, and that is what Mara had wished for when her father suggested breakfast at one of the city's outdoor cafes, where they sat across from each other now. She hadn't wanted for the skies to open and drench them, especially so early in the morning.
"You can stop glancing to the sky, Mara," Jamil remarked after the fourth time she had since they sat down for breakfast. He didn't look up from his plate as he spoke. "It's not going to start raining now."
"It could," said Mara, a lightness to her voice.
"The forecast said it's not meant to rain until this weekend."
"And the forecast has always been correct, has it?" Mara inquired with a raised eyebrow. Jamil tilted his head at her. Mara continued, "I would rather not be caught in any rain before I even set foot on museum property. Things are already more difficult there this week than usual. I think the last thing I need is being caught in the rain."
There was still an hour before she would have to be at the British Museum for work; her travels between Cairo, where she lived permanently, and London for the liaison job she'd held for six years now had gotten more and more frequent through the years as advances were made in the field of Egyptology and new artifacts were being discovered. Typically she and Evy would work together, which made the difficulties of their jobs much easier to work through when they could bounce ideas off each other, but Evy wasn't even in the country this week. Her sister-in-law was with her family chasing images from surreal dreams she'd been having on a different continent.
"Something other than Evelyn not being here?" Jamil inferred from her tone of voice. "I know you work with her more than anyone else, and you do work well together."
"Well, yes, it is far easier when Evy's here, but the curator has also taken an indefinite leave of absence," Mara said with a sigh, "in addition to the curator of the Cairo museum asking me to catalog every stele the British Museum has in their collection, whether it's on exhibit now or not."
"Where is Evelyn? It seems out of character for her to take a leave, but certainly when she knew you were due to come back, and when you've brought her brother with you."
"The O'Connells are in Egypt."
Jamil's brows rose. "Not in Cairo?"
"No. A bit further down the Nile," Mara answered with a shake of her head. She paused for a moment and sighed again, adding, "Evy's been having odd dreams for a few weeks, of ancient Egypt. She says they're so vivid they seem more like memories than dreams. She finally found a place familiar to her through them, a temple of some sort, and they've gone to see what's there, if anything."
