FOUR

Knives in the Market

The zambezi rest stop was unlike any Schuyler had ever seen. Not only was it a sprawling complex of restaurants and parks, with groups of large families picnicking in the grass, enjoying the afternoon air, but it also housed a full African-style safari. The affable staff explained that zoos were now common in a number of rest stops catering to the commuter crowd that traveled between Egypt’s largest cities. The owner had designed this one to mimic the African veldt, complete with zebras and lions.

“Apparently on Friday afternoons there’s a lion hunt,”

Jack said, reading the brochure. “They put a pig in the lion pen, and the lioness—”

“Stop!” Schuyler said, trying not to laugh. “That’s horrible.”

They smiled and held hands across the table, careful not to display any more public affection than that. Schuyler’s ability to shift her features, along with her many-layered ward-robe, let her blend in easily, especially with the black silk scarf around her hair. During her time in Egypt she had noticed that not every girl chose to veil, although of course there were some women in full head-to-toe burkas. But most wore stylish brightly colored head scarves with regular jeans and long-sleeve T-shirts. The wealthy women dripping with jewels had sleek salon blow-dried hair, and did not wear scarves at all.

The only inconvenience Schuyler had found living in Egypt was that she could not travel alone without taking on the appearance of an older woman, which tired her. Not that it was dangerous, but young women simply did not walk the streets by themselves. They either traveled in groups or with a male relative. Schuyler and Jack wanted to call as little attention to themselves as possible, so they tried to follow the local customs.

They finished their late lunch at the rest stop and were back on the road, fighting the crazy traffic once again.

When they arrived in the city, Schuyler found Cairo as overwhelming as she had the first time they’d arrived in the country, the streets and sidewalks extremely crowded, loud, and polluted, teeming with people and cars and the incessant honking of horns. With some difficulty, Jack returned their car to the rental shop, and they found a cab to take them to a hotel. Since they were trying to be careful with money, they headed downtown, where Schuyler had heard there were more affordable options, rather than the high-end hotels along the east and west banks of the Nile. The budget hotels were located in old dilapidated apartment buildings on busy, noisy streets. There were several grubby backpacker dives that Jack rejected, although Schuyler told him she did not mind. Finally they settled upon a small hotel on a relatively quiet block, whose lobby looked cleaner than the others around it.

Jack rang the bell, and after a long wait, a sleepy manager appeared from a back room. “Yes? How can I help you?” he asked grumpily.

“We’d like a room,” Jack said. “Would you have any available, sir?”

“For how long?”

“A week for now, maybe more. Is that all right?”

“She is your wife?” the clerk asked, casting a suspicious eye on Schuyler.

“Yes,” Jack said tersely. He held up his bonding ring so the clerk could see it better. Schuyler tried to look modest and demure as the clerk eyed her warily. Jack rapped on the counter. “Will this be a problem, sir?” His voice was polite, but Schuyler could sense the annoyance behind it. She knew Jack did not like using the compulsion on humans, but it had been a long drive and he was getting irritable.

After taking a long time counting their cash, the clerk finally produced a key and led them to the second level. The room was plain but clean, and Jack and Schuyler went straight to bed so they could be up early the next morning.

The next day, Jack set off to speak to members from the local Coven. “I’m going to make a few calls. See if I can find anyone who can help us track down leads about Catherine,” he said. “You rest for a bit. You look tired, love.” He kissed her and was out the door. With his blond hair hidden in a cap and his green eyes shielded in wraparound sunglasses, dressed in light khakis and a white Oxford shirt, he looked capable and ready; yet Schuyler felt fearful for him. She knew he would be safe—as Abbadon, he was the one everyone should be afraid of—but she could not help it, she was afraid for his life. She knew she’d done the right thing in helping him change his mind about meeting the blood trial, but she worried it would not be enough—that somehow, some way, Jack would be snatched away without warning, and she would never see him again.

While he was out, Schuyler studied the rest of her grandfather’s journals. She could never read them without missing Lawrence. She could imagine him prodding her, challenging her to find the real, hidden meaning behind the cryptic words.

“Usually what we are looking for is right in front of us,” was one of his favorite maxims.

Jack returned in the afternoon. He removed his hat and rubbed his eyes. “The Conclave’s headquarters has been abandoned. But I was able to track down a human Conduit who used to serve an old friend of mine. He said the Coven has been under attack for the last month and the vampires are getting ready to leave the city. Bad news all around.” He looked despondent for a moment. The news that another Coven was going underground was hard to hear, Schuyler knew.

“Anyway, I asked him if he’d ever heard of someone called Catherine of Siena. It was a long shot, but sometimes legends last a long time in older parts of the world.”

“So you found her?” Schuyler said hopefully.

“Maybe. He gave me a name: zani, a holy woman with a huge following. We’re meeting a guide who can take us to her temple at the souk in an hour.” He looked at her directly.

“There’s something else.”

“What is it?” Schuyler asked, her inner alarm bells ringing, as Jack looked so somber.

“I think my sister is here. I can feel her…. She’s looking for something.”

Schuyler rushed to his side. “Then we’ll go.”

“No,” Jack said. “Somehow I sense she’s not here for me.”

“We can’t risk it….”

“Yes we can,” he said gently. “I am not afraid of Mimi or her wrath. We will meet with the holy woman. You will find your gatekeeper.”

They set off, navigating their way on foot through the topsyturvy streets of Cairo, where there were no crosswalks, traffic lights, stop signs, nor turn lanes; and along with the cars, buses, and rickety microbuses, the roads were clogged with donkey and horse carts, bikes and scooters headed in opposite directions. Just as on the highway, everyone on the streets pushed and shoved their way through. Schuyler noticed a car in the middle of the road, its owner fixing a flat tire—he had not thought to move it to the side, and so everyone else had to go around him. Using their vampire speed, they quickly zigzagged through vehicles, and arrived at the marketplace in good time.

The Khan el-Kalili was a winding labyrinthine souk that was once the center of commerce in Cairo during the middle Ages, but now mostly existed to serve the tourist community, with dozens of shops selling Pharaonic memorabilia and Egyptian trinkets: scarabs, crystal pyramids, Queen Nefertiti tea sets, and gold and silver cartouches with your name in-scribed in hieroglyphics. Formerly organized into districts, the shops were now mostly jumbled together, with rug merchants next to computer shops. Only the goldsmiths, coppersmiths, and spice dealers still kept to their historic places.

Schuyler walked quickly, matching Jack’s pace, attempt-ing to ignore the peddlers who thrust their wares in her face and tried to persuade her to come inside their shops. She would not let him out of her sight. He was convinced Mimi was not after him, but Schuyler was not as certain, and she didn’t trust Mimi to leave them alone. They tried to stay together, but the crowd was dense and they were often separated by the aggressive shopkeepers who came between them, holding up an “authentic” trinket of some sort.

“Very pretty very pretty ring yes? From authentic jade stone. One hundred percent made in Egypt!”

“No, sorry,” Schuyler said, trying to hold on to Jack’s hand and feeling his fingers slipping from her grasp as a shopkeeper inserted himself between them.

“Miss miss miss… come see… alabaster vase from the tombs themselves. Very rare. Very rare,” another said, holding up what had to be a cheap ornament most likely made in Ch-ina. Where was Jack? Schuyler looked around, trying not to panic.

“Ankh? Ward off the evil eye, miss…. Come see. Come inside, many more for you. Very nice.”

“No, no, sorry…” she said, brushing through and trying to make her way past a crowd of Russian tourists who had stopped to gawk at a copy of Tutankhamen’s gold coffin. Jack?

She sent.

I’m here. Don’t worry. Jack appeared by her side, and Schuyler could breathe again.

“Miss! You want, here—perfect sapphire match your eyes!”

“No, sorry. Please…” Schuyler said, pushing the man away. “Goodness, they’re persistent,” she said.

“They’re always a little more desperate in the off-season.

Ah, here’s the shop,” Jack said, stopping in front of a small storefront that sold all sorts of religious ornaments, from cru-cifixes to menorahs.

“Who’s this guide?” Schuyler asked.

“Roberston said it’s one of zani’s followers, like a high priest in her temple or something.” He motioned to the Yankees baseball hat on his head. “He’s supposed to look for the Yankee,” Jack explained with a wry smile.

“You buy! One hundred percent authentic!” a particularly aggressive shop owner demanded, waving a Persian rug in Schuyler’s face.

“No thank you, sir…” she said, trying to bat him away.

Next to her, Jack was accosted by another shopkeeper trying to sell him a hookah. Jack was being polite, but Schuyler was just about to lose her temper with her persistent rug salesman. She tried to dodge him, when she noticed Jack had disappeared again.

“Jack?” she called, feeling her anxiety triple. She was sure he was fine, of course, but Mimi was in Cairo. He had said so himself—and Schuyler began to feel a cold dread in her stomach. “JACK!” Jack? she sent. Where are you? When she turned, her wristwatch caught on the rug, unraveling part of the wool.

“You buy! You break, you buy!” the shopkeeper screamed.

“You buy!”

“Jack!” Schuyler called, brushing the salesman away. Had he found the guide? Where did he go? Why wasn’t he answering her call in the glom?

“Miss! You buy this! You broke, you buy! One hundred dollar!” The rug merchant gripped her arm and yelled into her ear.

Schuyler pushed him away, sending the tubby fellow crashing into a display of lamps. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,”

she said, which enraged him even more, and now there were two shopkeepers demanding payment for broken objects.

Starting to feel as if she had been set up, she looked around wildly for Jack, and when she finally saw him, she was horrified to find a hooded assailant coming up from behind him, sunlight glinting off a silver blade. The market was so busy, no one noticed. Tourists and shoppers walked by, oblivi-ous to the danger around them.

She was paralyzed, too frightened to scream, but at the last moment, Jack turned around and swiftly disarmed his attacker and gained the upper hand. But then he looked up in her direction and suddenly released his hold.

What was he doing? Schuyler was about to call to him when a black hood was thrust over her head and she found herself being dragged, kicking and screaming. The noise of the market and the chaos created by the enraged rug and lamp sellers drowned out her cries, and she was pulled away from the crowd into a quiet back alley.

Her attacker kept a solid hold around her neck, but Schuyler ordered her mind to calm, and reached for the hilt of her blade. In a flash, she was gripping its golden handle.

“Your friend has already surrendered his weapon,” a cold female voice said. “I suggest you do the same.”

Schuyler dropped her mother’s sword.