“Well, I survived the Channel.” She shrugged. I walked to the table and popped a bottle ofVeuve Clicquot.
“Only the finest for surviving death rituals and wardrobe thefts.”
Daphne took her glass and shook her head. “Emrys, or whatever you’re called… Are we ever going to stop getting chased by demons, specters, flesh-eating fairies or whatever those little bastards at the Folded Tower were? What’s next? Getting caviar served by ghosts in white gloves?”
I raised my glass in a toast. “We just might, Miss Daphne. But tell me, won’t you miss it a little?”
She chuckled, but her eyes remained serious. “I’m afraid that I might. Now, as we’re already sailing, and we’re still alive, let’s go and find some food.”
The ship’s dining room was all polished brass and red velvet. Large mirrors multiplied the flickering candlelight, and the hum of conversation echoed beneath the soft strains of a violin quartet. A ridiculous display of human decadence afloat—but I’d take it over bone-lined catacombs and Twisted Ones any day.
Daphne looked nearly civil across from me, wrapped in her stolen green dress, a single curl refusing to stay pinned behind her ear. Yet she still flinched when shadows moved too quickly.
I poured the champagne with a steady hand.
“You’re staring at people again,” she said, taking the glass. “You’re twitchier than usual. Is it the caviar?”
“I don’t trust anyone who smiles that much before noon,” I murmured, nodding toward a bejeweled woman fluttering her eyelashes at a man who looked like he’dtaxidermied his last wife. “Or anyone who orders pigeon for three courses.”
She snorted into her glass. “What is it with the French and birds?”
“Need to ask Nibble. His observations are always spot-on.”
She laughed—really laughed—and I memorized the sound before I could stop it.
A waiter brought out another course. Something drowned in cream and truffle oil. I barely tasted it.
Daphne pointed with her fork at an old man seated alone near the captain’s table. “See him? The one with the mustache that could lasso cattle?”
“Explorer,” I said. “Too many years in the sun, and that monkey on his shoulder is the only creature that’ll still talk to him.”
“What about the couple on the left?”
“Not a couple. He’s her employer. She’s hoping to marry into the title. He’s hoping she doesn’t notice he’s bankrupt.”
Daphne rolled her eyes. “You are terrifying.”
“Observant,” I corrected.
She tilted her head. “Were you doing that the entire time I was stitching you back together at the tower? Observing me?”
Yes.
“I was unconscious,” I said.
She leaned forward, chin propped on her hand. “Have you been to Egypt before?”
“Yes.”
She waited. I didn’t speak.
“And?”
I looked past her to the sea, to the ribbon of silver light beyond the window. “I remember music along the Nile. Flutes, mostly. Bright, reedy things. They’d play them at dusk, in the temples. Before the sun god went to sleep.”
Daphne blinked. “You were really there?”
“I was younger. Less jaded. They still built things to last back then. Temples painted in colors that would blind you. Kings who thought themselves gods.”
