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“No, he’s not an idiot.” Dr. Rebik smiled and stroked the back of her hand with one finger. “He’s just under the impression that archaeology should be an adventure, like it is in the movies and on television. Mystic relics. Cursed idols. Dark magics. The return of ancient gods, wrathful and virtually omnipotent. He has a problem differentiating between fact and fiction.”

“And yet…” Dean set a mug of coffee in front of the doctor and dropped into a chair across from him, cradling his own mug with both hands. “…youare traveling with a resurrected mummy there.”

“Yes, well, there’s always an exception that proves the rule.”

“He said you broke the seal keeping Meryat in her sarcophagus.”

“I did. Good coffee. Blue Mountain?”

“Organic Mexican.”

“Ah.” Another swallow and a happy sigh. His face puffy and deep purple bags under both eyes, the archaeologist looked as thrilled to be up at six thirty as Dean felt. “My Meryat was once the wife of Rekhmire, Grand Vizier to Ramses the Great.One of Ramses’ Grand Viziers at any rate. He had four that we know of during the many years of his rule. She used to give the most magnificent parties—we’ve found records of them in a number of writings of that era—and at one of them she inadvertently insulted a High Priest by…”

Another word from within the hood.

Dr. Rebik cleared his throat, his ears red.“Yes. Well, there’s no need to go into the specifics. The point is, the priest was insulted and, in a fit of pique, had her poisoned. Then he cursed her ka so that Anubis could not find it, confining it and her to the sarcophagus until a string of peculiar conditions were met that allowed the lock to be opened and Meryat to rise again.”

“Peculiar conditions?”

“Learned man. Eyes the color of rotting reeds. That sort of thing.”

“A learned man with greenish-brown eyes doesn’t seem that peculiar.”

“Three nipples…”

“Ah.” Cheeks burning, Dean paid a great deal of attention to his next swallow of coffee. “Lance says Meryat took over your mind.”

The doctor smiled into the shadows as desiccated fingers with blackened tips closed around his hand.“Meryat took over my heart. How could I not love a woman who’d suffered so bravely for so long? I know what you’re thinking, she’s not at her best physically, but every day she’s in the world she gains back a little more of her beauty.”

“She’s not sucking the energy out of people, is she?”

“People give off energy merely by existing. She absorbs that.”

“Lance said that when you left the lab, you left him for dead.”

That drew his attention back to Dean.“I pushed him into a supply closet,” he explained dryly, “and locked the door. Lance tends to exaggerate.”

“Yeah.” Dean decided he’d best keep both the foul fiend and pustulant monster comments to himself. “Does he exclaim everything he says, then?”

“Almost everything, yes. I’m amazed you managed to send him away. He’s remarkably tenacious.”

“I didn’t so much send him away as send him on a wild goose chase. He still thinks he’s after you.”

“I’m glad he isn’t. Well done and thank you.” As Dr. Rebik drained his mug, Meryat asked a question, her words running together like liquid and music combined. “Meryat wonders ifyou wonder how we found this place. This sanctuary.”

Dean shrugged, trying to look as though having the guest house called a sanctuary didn’t please him as much as it did. “You’d be amazed at the people who find this place.”

“In our case, it came about when Meryat’s ka managed to gain a small amount of freedom even before I opened the sarcophagus. Still trapped, it couldn’t touch the real world, but it could touch what she calls the possibilities. They told her of the Keepers and specifically of the Keeper who works from this inn. We were hoping you’d help us. Until she fully regains her physical form, Meryat is helpless and prey to every media influenced, addle-pated adventurer we meet.”

“Meet a lot?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Dean considered the hole to Hell that had once heated the guest house.“Not really, no.”

“So will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Help us.”

“Me? I’m not the Keeper.”

Meryat’s hand which had been reaching toward him, exposing more of a wrapped arm than he really wanted to see, withdrew.

“You’re not?”

“No. The Keeper’s my, uh, girlfriend and she’s away on business right now. But I’m expecting her back any time,” he added as Dr. Rebik’s face fell and Meryat’s hooded head sagged forward. “The room’s available as long as you need it.”

“So we’ll wait.”

Meryat asked another question.

“No, my love, I can’t think of a place we’d be safer. And now, if you don’t mind, Meryat needs to lie down. As yet she can manage only an hour or two on her feet a day.”

Dean stood as they did and managed to keep from flinching when Meryat’s fingertips touched the bare skin of his forearm for an instant as they passed. He took a long, comforting swallow of coffee and when he heard the door close on the second floor, said, “You were some quiet.”