Free Her Kind of Trouble by Evelyn Vaughn Page B

had to swallow before asking, "Any other…injuries?"
    "They did not Abelard me, if that's what you mean. Though God knows what would have happened if you'd not been here." Abelard was a medieval churchman, one of a famous pair of lovers, who'd been castrated by his beloved's uncle.
    I smiled, pleased by both the joke and the way Rhys's voice was gaining strength. In fact—
    To my surprise, he sat up.
    "Careful!" I insisted.
    "I shall be. But, Maggi, I do feel somewhat better than I'd feared." He ran his own hands over his ribs—gingerly, since
better by
no means meant
well
. "You've a healing touch."
    Or maybe he'd just been suckering me into feeling him up… but with Rhys, I sincerely doubted it. "Or maybe with that gag off, you've been able to catch your breath?"
    "Or that. Maggi—"
    He spoke with a sudden intensity that matched his expression. Maybe he would kiss me. Maybe I wouldn't protest, even though I should, since I was officially dating Lex, especially since Rhys knew it. And yet—
    A pain in my fingertips distracted me—and Rhys, eyes widening, knocked the remains of our makeshift torch out of my hand. It went out on the board, leaving us in darkness again.
    "We, er, still have my shirt," Rhys suggested, moment gone. "But ought we not have a plan first, before we use up that resource?"
    "Good point." My words were muffled around my slightly burnt fingers. "It would help if we knew how we got here in the first place."
    "They carried us," said Rhys, matter-of-fact. "But being blindfolded, that's no great help."
    "What?"
    "They burst into Tala's house and dragged us away, right in front of the little girl. But you know that."
    "I don't know that. I thought Tala had drugged both of us."
    "Drugged? Neither of us was drugged."
    "Of course we were drugged. The last thing I did before I lost consciousness was take a sip of the wine Tala offered us."
    Silence and darkness pushed in around us.
    Then Rhys said, "Maggi, you were conscious until after Mr. Rachid and his men attacked us."
    So why didn't I remember?
    ----
    Chapter 7

     
    According to Rhys, I'd gotten quiet after my first or second sip of Tala's wine. At the time, he'd chalked that up to my annoyance with the Coptic Grailkeeper.
    Then I'd touched my throat and said, "Someone's here."
    Just before Hani and his men burst in.
    "I don't remember that," I insisted—if this hadn't been Rhys, I might have suspected him of lying. "I don't remember any of it."
    "Perhaps you hit your head while they carried us here. That would explain a great deal." Rhys found my shoulder in the dark, and squeezed it gently. "Let's focus for now on finding our way out."
    "It would help if we knew where
here
was."
    "Actually, I suspect I know. These seem to be the cisterns of ancient Alexandria .
A
cistern, in any case."
    He told me more as we put together a makeshift torch, harvesting his socks to burn first. Apparently, Alexandria was honeycombed with a series of fresh-water cisterns, created at the time of the city's foundation by its namesake, Alexander the Great, in 300 B.C.
    "This cistern is clearly more recent," Rhys mused, holding up the sputtering torch we'd MacGyvered together from one of his socks wrapped around the top of one of my sandals. The uneven glimpses of columns and vaults that arched into the pressing darkness around us, at least two levels above and one level below to the reflective water, were hauntingly beautiful…and damned eerie. "Ninth century, I'd imagine."
    "A thousand years and change," I murmured—then deliberately forced my attention back to the precarious issue of our footing. Even barefooted, I wasn't wholly sure of my balance, much less his. Despite that we were heading where I'd thought the lights had vanished, most of the stone braces we had to traverse, barely two feet wide, didn't have wood over them—and they were crumbling remains of their former glory. "Is that all?"
    "They are positively modern, by Egyptian standards," agreed Rhys.