Busted Flush

About the only thing anyone looking for Ellen Allworth would expect was the cameo, the one whose profile she usually consciously styled her hair to mirror. But despite being anonymous in its beauty, black and white carved portrait jewels were no longer a popular fashion item, and the only woman known to wear one as a constant was her, Cameo.

She could always take it off, of course, but then again, Ellen could always cut off her left arm. Instead, she reached into her satchel and withdrew a long red Isadora Duncan–style scarf, looping it once around her neck, concealing the heirloom and source of her ace name. The scarf trailed like a pennant as she came on the dock, an anonymous fashion plate from a yacht magazine.

There was a peculiar smell in the air. Incense, Ellen realized as she got her land legs and looked for the source. Nearby, uncomfortably close to the gas pumps and their extremely hopeful OUT OF GAS—CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK sign, was a bowl filled with sand, a dozen sticks planted in it, embers glowing like jacinths in the morning light.

Beyond that, a dark-haired woman knelt on a prayer rug. In her right hand she held a musical instrument that looked like a tuning fork, gilt brass crossed with jangling metal bars—a sistrum, Ellen remembered dimly from the memory of one of her ancestresses; they’d been all the rage back in the twenties, part of the Egyptian Revival when they’d cracked King Tut’s tomb. The woman holding the sistrum looked like she’d have fit right in back then, garbed as she was in a long linen gown with an elaborate scapular beaded with faience and gold. Given the current tensions with the Caliphate, wearing that outfit took either guts or religion.

Ellen took a deep breath and reached into her satchel as casually as she could. She and her ace had been in hiding ever since Cardinal Contarini and his mad monks had called a hit on her, and given the cardinal’s fondness for ace assassins and their fondness for odd getups . . .

Her fingers closed around soft felt, and in a practiced motion, she donned Nick’s fedora.

“What . . . ?” Nick began, looking around.

Quiet, Ellen said in the back of his head, her head. That woman. I think she’s an ace.

Nick looked, noting the sistrum and prayer rug. “Elle,” Nick said in a soft undertone, “if that woman’s Catholic, then the Pope’s a Unitarian.” He sighed. “If the Alumbrados ever do send anyone, it’ll probably be a guy in an I AM THAT MAN FROM NANTUCKET T-shirt.”

Nickie, I’m not being paranoid. . . .

He grimaced, all the response she needed. “Elle, please, just live a little. For both of us. It’s not like being up the sleeve ever did me any good. No one but you even knows who Will-o’-Wisp was, or even remembers half of what I did. And in the end, I still got killed. . . .”

Before she was born, Ellen knew, but before she could respond, Nick took the hat off and she was alone inside her skull. Again.

Ellen clutched the worn fedora for a long moment, then slipped it back inside her satchel, shouldering it as bravely as she could, and soldiered on, wind stinging her eyes. Nick was right. Live a little. She smiled and nodded to the woman on the prayer rug and walked on past.

The woman stopped shaking her sistrum and stared at Ellen’s throat. “Kamea.”

Ellen paused, her free hand coming up to where the wind had whipped the scarf aside, almost touching the exposed brooch. “Excuse me?” she asked, stepping back a pace.

“Kamea,” the woman repeated, a word in what sounded like Arabic or Hebrew, then gestured to Ellen’s cameo with her free hand. “You bear the charm, the face of Nepthys, the white goddess in the black night. You are her avatar and my prayers have been answered.”

“Nepthys?” Ellen echoed, trying to place it as she fumbled for Nick’s hat.

“The wife of Set,” the woman supplied, “the mother of Anubis and the sister of Isis. And, oh, my dear sister, I am Isis. Isis of the Living Gods. My brother-husband, Osiris, he-who-rose-from-the-dead, had a vision that the avatar of Nepthys would arise at dawn on this morn from the waves at the whale road’s end.” She gestured with her sistrum, bars chiming softly, indicating Nantucket. “Nepthys would rise, surrounded by the dead that walk and the wind that wails.”

The morning wind was brisk but not yet wailing, and as for walking dead, at this hour, there weren’t even any hungover tourists. Ellen raised an eyebrow. “See any of those?” she asked, her hand inside her satchel, a death grip on the dead man’s fedora.