Prologue
From the journal of Ezra Jameson . . .
July 28, 1978
Regina has been in labor for more than thirty-six hours. My only child suffers, and refuses any medication or other comforts to help her birth the baby. She has refused to say anything about the father, or about the circumstances of her pregnancy. Three months ago, she returned from her yearlong expedition in a remote area of China—obviously pregnant. The discovery of a temple said to be the place Confucius’s mother met the Ki-lin had been too much for my daughter to resist.
We could not dissuade her. Her whole life has revolved around the mythos of unicorns. She’s been obsessed since she was a little girl—from the time she claimed to see one standing at the edge of our backyard, its horn glinting in the moonlight.
We tried to convince her that she’d had a vivid dream, yet even at that young age she could not be convinced that what she had seen was anything but real. Despite my wife’s concerns, I indulged Regina’s requests to use money and resources for her research trips because I could not tell her the truth. And I could only hope she did not discover it.
Regina had just started teaching classes and learning the ropes of being the college’s benefactor. Our family had started the institution and it would always be our duty to take care of it. Then word was sent from a colleague about the China expedition. The temple of Ki-lin had been found.
We tried to talk her out of it, but, of course, she insisted on going. And my dear wife was beside herself. In the end, we could do nothing to dissuade our daughter from her mission.
When Regina returned from China, she was . . . grieving. Listless. Depressed. As though her heart had borne some terrible tragedy. My wife and I cannot fathom this change in our daughter. It’s almost as if her inner light has been extinguished. She refused to leave her room, though she at least took care of herself and ate the meals brought to her.
When the labor pains began, she requested the presence of Ruadan. Though I have been friends with him for many years—from that extraordinary moment when we met in the deserts of the Sudan during my first expedition to find Set’s temple—I have never called upon him for help.
Now my daughter suffers and refuses to see me or her mother.
Ruadan remains in Regina’s room, helping bring my grandchild into the world.
The screaming is bearable.
It is her weeping that breaks my heart.
Chapter 1
Moira
“Fuck, it’s hot,” I complained as I slipped through the tent flap. I took off my broad-brimmed straw hat and slapped it against my hip. Dust puffed into the thick air. Whew. It was probably two degrees cooler inside, and only then because of the single wobbly electric fan running at full power.
I looked at my assistant, Dove. She sat cross-legged on her cot, making notes and sketching some of our recent finds. She was a slight young thing with a severe haircut that highlighted the kind of face that belonged on either a heroin addict or a supermodel. She was cranky as hell, unrepentant about her bad attitude, and probably the most saturnine person alive. I found her two years ago. Well, I found her scholarship application in a mountainous discard pile. She’d been slated for a rejection letter, but after I read her app and her essay, I told the scholarship committee to reconsider her application. And by “reconsider,” I really meant “accept that magnificent bitch as a student or die at my hands.”
I tended to get what I wanted.
I stared at Dove, who was ignoring the hell out of me. “Did I not give an inspiring lecture last night about saving our solar-powered fuel cells?”
“Absolutely riveting, Moira,” she agreed in her patented monotone. Her sarcasm was so well honed you were bleeding before you knew you’d been cut. “When the sun burns out in a billion years, I’m sure we will all thank you for inspiring us to save every drop of sunshine possible.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ax said you needed something. Otherwise, I need to get back to sweltering while I dust sand off three-thousand-year-old pottery.”
She peeked at me through the hair angled across her face. “There’s something weird about one of the ushabtis you found.” She picked up the little clay statue lying next to her and handed it to me. “It has fangs.”
I stared at the figure. She was right. The ushabti’s face was delicately carved, an ornate, beautiful piece, and yep, those were definitely fangs jutting from the dude’s mouth. “Okay. It’s weird, but . . . well, you know, those crazy ancient Egyptians.” I did a frenetic version of “jazz hands” to indicate super-crazy.
Dove arched one brow. “Read the glyphs,” she said. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have said that Dove sounded freaked out. Um, what? She never got freaked out.