Twenty years later—he was now in his mid-forties—he still made a living via his art. Some of it was probably legitimate; he was commanding such high prices for his work that rich people thought there must be some value to it. But the ministry felt that the smuggling continued. They theorized that he had found a tomb somewhere in the region of Al Fayyum, near what the Greeks called Crocodilopolis, and he was selling off its treasures piece by piece. He was under electronic surveillance around the clock.
Most disturbing to me was the fact that Elkhashab had two residences, not one. There was one in Cairo and another in Al Fayyum, about eighty miles southwest. I could hardly lay in wait at both places, so I’d have to call that number at the bottom of Hal’s email and take an educated guess that the dirty deeds would most likely be done in Al Fayyum.
“Greetings from an old wolf in America,” I said in response to a gruff greeting.
“Who’s this?”
“A friend of Hal Hauk’s in Arizona.”
The tone of Cairo’s alpha changed abruptly. “Oh, sure, I know Hal,” Yusuf said.
“He told me you and your boys may be able to help me out.”
“Help with what?”
“Watch an address in Cairo for me for twenty-four hours and report all comings and goings.”
“You don’t need my boys for that kind of work.”
“The resident is a sorcerer and may try to slip by unseen.”
“I stand corrected. You need us.”
The incredible usefulness of werewolves—and also the reason why you don’t want to get on their bad side—is that they’re immune to almost all magic. Think you’re invisible? Nope, not to a werewolf’s eyes. Think you have an impenetrable magic ward protecting all your goodies? You don’t if a werewolf walks across it. Like the honey badger, the werewolf takes what it wants. Sure, you can pick a fight with a werewolf if you have some silver, but you’d better have enough for the whole pack. And if other packs get word that you go around killing werewolves … well. Let’s just say that nobody tries to mess with werewolves anymore.
I made arrangements with Yusuf and gave him my number in case Elkhashab showed up. He’d send the bill to Hal and everyone would be happy.
In America—before the widespread use of GPS devices—if you wished to go somewhere you’d never been before, you hired a taxi. If you were brave, you asked your father-in-law. In Egypt, you waved some money around in the bazaar, and plenty of people would happily volunteer to take you where you wished to go. We got picked up by a family of three, who were delighted to spend some time driving us around, especially since I paid for all their gas and then some.
I am not ashamed to say that, spread out in the back of an old pickup, Oberon and I napped on the way down.
Al Fayyum—spelled many different ways and sporting many different names through the centuries—is most likely the oldest city in Egypt. Herodotus described a labyrinth of surpassing magnificence there, better even than all the other wonders of Egypt, and evidence of his tale remains, but it’s a bloody wreck because some ancient Roman choad ordered the place quarried. Still, despite this defilement and many others, Al Fayyum has yielded its fair share of archaeological finds. The Ministry of Antiquities had good reason to suspect Elkhashab of finding something in the area: Chances were if you dug deep enough, you’d find something no matter what.
There’s an inland salt lake there called Lake Moeris, or Birket Qarun, and it was on the eastern edge of this lake that the old cult of Sobek flourished. In Crocodilopolis, they used to keep a real crocodile swathed in bling and fed on a diet of soft pink fleshy things. It was the lap of reptilian luxury back in the day. The new lap was on Elkhashab’s property, if Bast’s word could be believed. More of an estate than a house, ringed by a wall made of river mud and gated, it was east of the old site of Crocodilopolis and north of the ancient labyrinths.
Al Fayyum was not nearly so paved as Cairo, so I had little trouble accessing my magic there. Oberon and I took a leisurely stroll around Elkhashab’s estate, making no effort to conceal ourselves. I was looking at the walls in the magical spectrum to see what kind of wards Elkhashab had put around it. Bizarrely, he didn’t have any, except on his gate. That told me he had to have something frightful waiting on the other side of the walls that couldn’t be seen from the gate.
I did a pogo leap up to take a peek at the top of the wall. No wards there either. So I leapt up again, slapped my hands on the top, and pulled myself up for a good look, not caring who saw me do it.
He had something frightful waiting behind the walls, all right. It was a damn moat. A deep and wide one. And it was filled with hungry crocodiles. I had to admit that was pretty badass.
A few of the creatures spotted me and shifted, hoping to get a nice bite if I cooperated and leapt down to provide them breakfast. I toyed with the idea of calming their tiny reptilian brains and swimming right by, but it was too great a risk. There could be a big monster hiding under the black water that I wouldn’t catch, and then he’d certainly catch me.
Elkhashab had laid out his estate like a lion or tiger exhibit at a zoo. Inside the walls, the earth rose sort of like the mound of a volcano, so that the inside of the wall was much taller than the outside and impossible to jump over. By filling that with water and reptiles, he’d also made it impossible to jump over to safety from the outside. His house therefore rested on an island accessible only by the narrow strip of land leading from his gate.
I knew that couldn’t be the only entrance, though. A sneaky bastard like Elkhashab had to have some other escape route, especially since he was smuggling artifacts out of the country. He probably had a Scooby-Doo bookcase inside that revealed spiral stairs, and if you followed them down, you’d be in some creepy catacombs and eventually find a ladder that led to a trapdoor hidden in a warehouse or someplace else innocuous.
The chances of finding his secret passage inside were much greater than finding his exit point, but I had to get in there without tripping his wards. He had to come home to happy, undisturbed wards on his gate if I was going to ambush him properly.
I took one last look around and then allowed myself to slip down off the wall, disappointing the residents of the moat.
“All right. I’ve seen enough. To the casbah!”
Oberon trotted beside me, tail wagging. "I hope we’re going to rock it. Whatever you saw over that wall reminded you that you should buy me some snacks, right?"
“Um. Right. And we need to find a place for you to hang out for the day. It’s going to be impossible for you to come inside.”
"Nothing’s impossible!"
“Can you swing paw over paw on a rope without falling into a moat full of crocodiles?”
"Dang it! Is there really a moat full of crocodiles?"
“Yes, there is. We’ll hide you well. I don’t want anyone to think you’re up for grabs.”
I bought some food and water for Oberon and a few bones for him to gnaw on, and then we found a nice roof—there were plenty of the flat kind in Al Fayyum—where he could lounge unseen and undisturbed. After wishing him an excellent nap, I returned to the bazaar to purchase a good length of rope, a small anchor, and a single length of steel rebar. These would allow me to negotiate the moat.
Back on top of Elkhashab’s wall—this time with camouflage cast on myself—I set the steel rebar about halfway into the hardened mud, with a little magical encouragement. After tying one end of the rope to the rebar and the other to the anchor, I created a binding between the steel of the anchor and the wall of Elkhashab’s back patio; his house was constructed of the same adobe material. Once I energized the binding, the anchor flew to the house and stuck there without me having to throw it.
I had rather a lot of slack to take up—I’d overestimated the distance—and had to retie the rope on my end to make it taut.
All this activity had drawn the attention of Elkhashab’s crocodiles. Even though I was in camouflage, once I began to swing over their heads they threw off their customary torpor and became quite excited, scrambling over one another and trying to position themselves underneath me. They smelled what they couldn’t see. Hissing, snapping fights broke out. I have never felt so potentially tasty.
Once I had passed over the moat and it became clear that I wouldn’t fall into their waiting mouths, most of them gave up, but a few pursued me onto land, cleverly deducing that I’d have to drop down at some point. I slowed and found the small, hungry threads of their conscious minds and told them I wasn’t breakfast. Really. Go away. Back to the moat, there’s a good croc. They obeyed sluggishly, but they obeyed, one at a time, and I was able to make a soft landing next to the crocodile priest’s patio and dissolve my camouflage.
A quick glance at said patio in the magical spectrum revealed that—besides being expensively furnished—it was warded. So were all the windows. I didn’t intend to use any of them, anyway. I snuck around counterclockwise, to the side of the house where there was a thin strip of glass block high up in place of a full window. My guess was that this was a bathroom. Chances of plumbing being right on the wall beneath the blocks were slim. The chances that Elkhashab had warded his bathroom were even slimmer.
This adobe made of river mud was precisely the sort of thing I appreciated in construction materials. Though it took longer than I may have wished, it was not difficult to unbind it and watch a me-shaped hole appear in the wall. I still had to cut through some insulation with a dagger and then kick through some thin drywall inside, but it was easier than trying to dismantle an accomplished magician’s wards.
The first of many shocks in Elkhashab’s house came in a whiff of cinnamon apples. He had one of those plug-in air fresheners glowing softly next to the sink. Neat patterned towels, fluffy and folded, waited to complete hand-washing rituals. Not what I expected from a crocodile priest. Apart from that, the room looked unused—far too clean for an evil warlock’s daily use. I concluded with satisfaction that this was a guest bathroom and Elkhashab wouldn’t check it when he came home.
I stepped back outside for a moment to top off my bear charm. Fully charged, I crept back in with my faerie specs on, looking for more wards, and worrying a bit about mundane security as well.
I closed the bathroom door behind me, hoping he wouldn’t notice in his hurry to play with the grimoire. Outside, there was a short hallway leading to what I presumed were bedroom doors. Elkhashab didn’t strike me as the sort to share the same side of the house with guests, so I ignored these and moved on. There was a spacious living area with a giant TV and shelves lined with priceless figurines of this god or that goddess. On the opposite side of that, I found a foyer leading to the front door; I searched for a security system but found none. I could see wards around the front door instead.
An arched passage led to a kitchen, but there was likely little of interest in there. Another arch seemed to do nothing but give a view of a magnificent statue of Sobek set in a lighted niche, but once I got closer I saw that another hallway beckoned. These might lead to Elkhashab’s private rooms. I checked the door and doorjamb of the first one before opening it. No juju. No hairs across the threshold. And unlocked.
It was a study. A writing desk sat facing the wall shared with the hallway and door; the other three walls were lined with bookshelves. Centered between them was a comfy chair with a table and reading lamp next to it.
I clapped my hands together and rubbed them. Scooby-Doo’s legacy had to be here. Pull the right book and one of those bookcases would move aside. Or … I pranced over to the reading light and pulled the dangling chain. It turned on!
But nothing else happened.
Damn.
I began to systematically pull on every book he had on his shelves. Some of them were interesting, some were genuine grimoires I might enjoy snagging later, but most were dreck. None revealed a secret passage. I moved aside the comfy chair. I lifted the rug to look for trapdoors. Nothing. The writing desk, a long shot due to its placement, was similarly uncooperative. I sighed heavily and admitted that I could have been wrong.
There were other rooms to check. The whole house, if necessary.
I exited the study and closed the door behind me. I turned right to the next door and examined it as I had the first one. This door had nothing in the way of magical traps, but it did have the old hair-across-the-doorjamb trick. I opened the door and then bound the hair back into place as I closed it. Feel secure, Mr. Elkhashab. Nobody opened this door.
The room was an art studio. Canvases of ugly splatter paintings rested against the walls, five or six deep. An easel near the window had plastic sheeting spread underneath it with liberal staining. Despite this precaution, the floor of the studio—cheap linoleum tiles—had been anointed with droplets of various colors. A low countertop with cabinets underneath held his art supplies—lots of paint tubes and a container of paintbrushes, along with turpentine. A sink waited nearby to wash away the excess. On impulse, I tried the faucet. It sadly provided naught but hot and cold running water.
The canvases hid no secret doors behind them, and I was starting to get seriously frustrated. I’d been searching for an hour and had nothing to show for it. I moved the easel. I picked up the ceramic pot full of paintbrushes. I pulled up the edges of the plastic sheeting. I got a whole lot of nada.
Desperate, I began picking up the mess of paint tubes scattered about the counter, one by one, feeling intensely stupid as I placed them back exactly as I’d found them. Something clicked after I picked up the tube of phthalo blue. My eyes darted around the room, looking for canvases falling away. Nope. Behind me, the easel rested serenely, except for the ungodly mix of colors scattered about the legs.