“Is everything all right?” Sam asked cautiously.
No sense in beating around the bush. “Why is Sullivan suddenly letting us go, after we’ve only been here a day?”
The Egyptologist—Doc— didn’t say anything, only walked to the door and let himself out.
Sam watched him go, then turned back to the mortar and pestle. “I guess he already has all the people he needs after all.”
“Bullshit,” Alistair snapped. “Men like Sullivan never have enough of anything. Was it him you were meeting with today? What did he want?” He swallowed against a sudden constriction in his throat. “What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything!” Sam spun around, holding the pestle in his hand. Its end was covered in a deep blue powder.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Sam hesitated long enough Alistair knew he’d been right. “I’m fixing things,” he said at last. “Starting with you and our friends.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“Obviously not, since you ended up here,” Sam shot back.
Alistair swayed as if he’d been slapped. “What the hell, Sam?”
Sam started to put a hand to his mouth as if to catch the words, then remembered he was holding the pestle. “I didn’t mean that. It’s not true—it’s my fault you’re here, not yours.”
“You—”
“I helped figure out the look-away hex,” Sam said over him. “I didn’t notice that Luke, a man I sat beside almost every day for months, was killing people. I—” he caught himself. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, you’re in this situation because of me, and now I’ve fixed it.”
Every instinct screamed at him that this wasn’t leading anywhere good. “What did you promise Sullivan?”
Sam shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
The gulf of air between them suddenly felt impassable. Alistair wanted to demand the truth, insist Sam tell him everything, no matter what trouble it might cause with Sullivan. But from the stubborn look on his face, he knew Sam wasn’t going to give in.
“Fine,” he said.
“Please.” Sam took a step forward and stopped. “For once in your life, you just have to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Alistair protested.
“Then prove it.”
Fur and feathers. Alistair took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to loosen the tightness in his throat and chest. “All right. But if…I don’t know, if things get bad, or you need help, come to me.” He turned toward the door. “Before it’s too late.”
Sam didn’t have long to recover from his argument with Alistair. Almost as soon as he left, Paladino returned with some other men, all of them carrying the crates holding the assorted tomb-loot of Neferneferuaten. It took up most of the lab; tomorrow, he’d have to tell Glenda to join the rank and file of the hexmen in the scriptoriums for a bit.
She might even be relieved. Her nerves hadn’t faded from the encounter with Turner, and though she hadn’t said anything, he could tell she wasn’t happy with the job anymore.
He couldn’t blame her. She must be shaken from Luke’s betrayal—she’d known him far longer, been much closer to him, than Sam had. And she knew that put her under suspicion, that her life depended on whether a bunch of violent people believed her story or not…
Yeah. Sam wasn’t the only one seeing the dark side of their jobs right now.
She’d be all right. He’d make sure of it.
Doc reappeared as the last of the crates were being put in place. Once everyone else had filed out and Sam locked the door to the lab, he said, “So all of this is a joke, right? Sullivan doesn’t actually want us to make a resurrection hex for him.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Doc flung up his hands. “I know rich people aren’t like the rest of us, but he can’t seriously believe in any of this!”
