The Cult of Osiris

phone cameras. Nobody needed to check that his name was on the VIP list, though Eddie didn’t receive the same star treatment. ‘Whoa, guys, he’s with me,’ said Grant as two bouncers closed ranks in front of Eddie like meaty sliding doors. ‘It’s cool, he’s my bodyguard.’

‘This little guy?’ rumbled the larger of the two hulks, smirking. Eddie gave him a scathing look. A brief stand- off, then the bouncers moved apart and he followed Grant inside. Behind, a snarl announced the Lamborghini’s departure for the parking structure down the street.

The club’s interior was on three levels, the lowest an almost pit-like dance floor with a higher area containing the long, neon-lit bar surrounding it. Overlooking both was a glass-walled balcony: the VIP lounge. The pounding music was as trendy and contemporary as the overdone hairstyles of the clubbers, and Eddie didn’t have the slightest idea of the band’s name.

‘Christ, I feel old,’ he muttered as he followed Grant up to the balcony.

Nina almost didn’t call Macy after her pleasant afternoon and dinner with Lola; in fact, until she opened her bag to check her phone for messages and saw the note, she had completely forgotten her earlier conversation. She could have simply shrugged and gone home, but the twin proddings of politeness and minor guilt swayed her otherwise.

She had no messages, so entered Macy’s number again. The same man answered, with the same suspicious air, before she heard Macy say in the background, ‘Is that her? Joey, give me the phone!’ One brief scuffle for possession later, and she was on the line. ‘Hi? Dr Wilde? Is that you?’

‘It’s me,’ Nina assured her.

She sounded relieved. ‘Thanks for calling back. Can you still meet me?’

‘Do you remember where I said?’

‘The coffee place? Yeah, Joey knows where it is. Can you meet me right now?’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Nina, still not sure if she should go through with it. ‘I can be there in . . . fifteen minutes?’

‘That’s great! I’ll be waiting for you. Dr Wilde, thank you so much for doing this. I’ll see you soon.’ She hung up.

Nina made a faint noise of exasperation, then set off. She might as well get it over with.

The area hadn’t altered much in the two and a half years since she’d moved out of the East Village; some stores and restaurants had changed hands and a few buildings had been renovated, but 52 Perk-Up looked much the same as the last time she’d been there. The paintings on the back wall were by different local artists, and new faces were serving, but beyond that it was as self-consciously bohemian as ever.

It was also small; she would have deduced which customer was Macy within moments even if she hadn’t sprung up to greet her. ‘Dr Wilde! Hi!’

‘You’re Macy, I take it,’ said Nina, coming to her table. Macy Sharif was not what she had expected; she had assumed that anyone involved with a dig as major as the Sphinx would be at least a post-grad. But the extremely attractive young girl before her, black hair tied back in a ponytail, was too young even to be a graduate, maybe still in her teens. She was also dressed more for spring break than study - as well as an extremely short denim skirt, she wore a very tight designer top emphasising her breasts. The slightly malicious thought crossed Nina’s mind that Berkeley might have chosen her for his team for reasons other than her academic qualifications, before she decided that was unfair. She didn’t know anything about the girl; she should at least give her the benefit of the doubt.

‘Yeah, that’s me! Hi.’ Macy seemed genuinely pleased at the meeting; maybe she really was a fan. ‘I’m really glad Lola managed to get hold of you - I tried calling your number in the phone book, but it wasn’t working. So I went there in person, but the building super said you’d moved out.’

‘Yeah, a few months ago.’ Now Nina was faintly unsettled; perhaps Macy was a fan in the original sense of the word, derived from ‘fanatic’. But she appeared normal and polite enough.

‘Do you want a coffee?’

‘No thanks, I’m fine.’ The table had another occupant, a man of Macy’s age with a fake tan, a necklace of chunky wooden beads and a spiky hairstyle that resembled something from a Japanese cartoon. He briefly looked Nina up and down, then turned his gaze back to Macy’s chest. ‘Hi,’ Nina said. The young man grunted.

‘You sure?’ Macy said. Nina nodded. ‘I could use something. Joey, go get me a cappuccino, will you? I want to talk to Dr Wilde in private.’

Joey grunted again and got up. ‘I’ll sit over there, keep an eye on the door.’

Nina gave Macy a curious look. ‘Something I should know about?’

‘I’ll tell you soon. Please, sit down.’ Nina sat opposite her. ‘Joey’s just watching out for me. He’s a friend from college - well, a friend with benefits.’ She grinned, making Nina a little uncomfortable about her openness. ‘He’s about the only person I know in New York. I’m from Miami.’

‘Right,’ said Nina, not particularly interested. ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’

Macy sat straighter. ‘First thing - can I just say it’s so great that you were willing to see me? I’ve wanted to meet you for ages. You’re like my hero!’

‘Really?’ Nina felt a little glow inside her; it was a long time since she’d had any kind of professional flattery.

‘Oh, totally! It’s because of you that I picked archaeology for my major. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but then I read this and thought: wow, that is so cool.’ She took out several slightly tattered magazine pages from her bag, laying them out flat on the table. Nina immediately recognised them as an article from around a year and a half earlier, about her discovery of Atlantis. One of the pictures was a photograph of herself, beaming proudly. Her younger self had her hair in the ponytail she had favoured at the time, prompting her to glance up at Macy’s very similar style.

‘Er, yeah,’ said Macy bashfully as she fingered her own tied-back hair. ‘I, ah, kinda borrowed your look. I thought if it worked for you . . . Hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, not at all,’ Nina said, the glow moving to her cheeks in slight embarrassment.

Joey returned and delivered a cappuccino, then sat at a table near the door. ‘See, when I read this,’ Macy continued, ‘it made me realise that wow, there really is all this amazing stuff still out there to discover.’ She tapped Nina’s picture. ‘And when I saw it was you who’d found it, it was like, oh my God! I mean, most archaeologists are guys, right, and they’re usually pretty old, but you? You were like a real-life Lara Croft. I thought, well, if you could do this, I could do it too!’

Nina knew the younger woman had meant it as a compliment, but wasn’t thrilled by her phrasing. ‘So . . . you weren’t sure what you wanted to do until then? You weren’t serious about archaeology?’

Macy shrugged. ‘The big, exciting stuff, sure. And I was already into Egyptology ’cause of my grandparents - they were from Egypt originally. My grandpa used to be a teacher, and he taught me to read hieroglyphics when I was a kid, which was pretty cool. But most of my first year, I kind of goofed off. I was in a sorority, I was a cheerleader, every night was party night - you know what it’s like!’

‘Hmm,’ said Nina, who at university had been anything but a party animal.

‘But then I almost flunked out, and that was when I realised I needed to pull myself together. Part of it was because I didn’t want to let down my mom and dad - I mean, they were paying for it! So I started working harder, and picked up my grades. But then when I heard about the IHA dig at the Sphinx, I realised it would be such a huge boost for me if I could be a part of it. So I managed to get on the team—’

‘There must have been a lot of competition.’

‘Oh, totally. But my mom does a lot of fundraising for international charities and she’s got friends at the UN, so that helped!’ She smiled brightly.

‘I’m sure it did,’ said Nina, unimpressed that nepotism, not hard work, had won her a place on the dig. While she didn’t consider herself the kind of person who made snap judgements, she was forced to admit that her initial appraisal of Macy - a party girl who relied on her looks and money to coast through life - seemed accurate. ‘Well, look, it’s been nice meeting you, and I’m glad I was such an inspiration, but I need to get moving.’

Macy’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, wait! Please, wait - I need to show you this.’ She hurriedly stuffed the pages back in her bag, her hand returning with a digital camera. ‘You know about the scrolls that told us how to find the Hall of Records, right?’

‘The ones that were found in Gaza? Yeah. I still keep up with the news.’

Macy didn’t register the sarcasm. ‘Okay, well, the Osirian Temple gave three pages to the IHA, right? Turns