Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(34)

I snapped my gaze ahead—and my own breath caught in my throat. For never had I seen a river so powerful. Its brown, muddy waters moved so gently, with the age and patience of a river that had seen more civilizations rise and fall than any other. The rich, green landscape only grew denser the closer we came to it, and there was no missing how black the soil became.

The sun reached its zenith soon after Joseph shifted the airship directly south, to follow the Nile’s path to Cairo. The room had grown hot—a veritable greenhouse—and I was sweating. We were all sweating.

Wiping a sleeve over my forehead, I wandered into the hall to get water from the galley. Yet Daniel strode out just as I turned in.

I pulled up short, and he lurched to a stop. Once I’d freed my heart from my esophagus, I scanned his face for some sign of how he felt. . . .

But I did not need to search, for he made it abundantly clear right away that he harbored no harsh feelings.

“I made potatoes for everyone. I ain’t the best cook, but . . .” He motioned vaguely into the galley. “Hopefully they’ll fill you up. Oh!” He spun toward the table. “I also cut some bread. I think it might be a bit stale, but I slathered enough butter on there that you shouldn’t notice.”

“Th-thank you,” I stammered.

He gave a half smile and rubbed his hands together. “Well, I reckon I should get flyin’. Eat up before it goes cold.” He sidestepped me into the hall. “Jie! Your garlic mash is ready!”

I watched him go, a mixture of gratitude and affection and . . . and love rolling in my heart.

Not for the first time, regret twined through me for last night. Did a grieving heart stop what I felt for him? No. So why had summoning the words been so impossible?

In a daze of hunger and muddled emotions, I moved to a metal pot on the table. Inside were boiled potatoes—unpeeled, but appetizing. As long as there was silverware (there was) and butter (heaps of it), I was happy.

As I munched beside the porthole, I pondered how best to confess my feelings to Daniel. When to say it. What to say.

Soon Jie joined me to eat her raw garlic mashed with potatoes. She grimaced as she ate but didn’t complain, and we watched the view drift by.

Steamers and boats sailed below us, and the farther south we went—and the closer to Cairo we came—the more traffic there was on the Nile. And the more people on the riverbanks. Fishing, bathing, washing clothes—it seemed to be a part of each and every person’s life. It was so unlike the Delaware River back in Philadelphia—a fickle, wild force—or the river Seine in Paris, with its elegant, structured waterways. The Nile seemed to be the very lifeblood of Egypt.

“It’s kinda cloudy, yeah?” Jie smacked her lips and tipped back a glass of water. “I thought Egypt was always sunny.”

“Well, it must rain sometime,” I replied, leaning into the glass. “But you’re right. It is cloudy. And windy.” I motioned to gusting palm trees below. “There must be quite a storm coming.”

“And coming in fast.” She frowned. “It’s getting darker by the second. I’ve never seen clouds move so fast.”

I tugged at my earlobe, alarm prickling along my neck. Then, without a word, I scrambled into the hall. Daniel and Joseph stood side by side at the wheel, their shoulders tense.

“The storm,” I said, hurrying into the pilothouse—and catching full sight of the rolling gray clouds ahead. “It isn’t right.”

“We know,” Daniel replied, his gaze intent on the horizon. “But we’re only a few minutes outside of Cairo.”

Joseph offered me the spyglass. “That rise in the distance is where the city is.”

I pressed the glass to my eye . . . and a thousand tiny turrets appeared. At the foot of a white mountain, Cairo was a sprawling city of towers, domes, and layered, flat-roofed buildings.

I swung the glass farther left, to the east and toward the desert. Arid, lonely, and empty. Swinging right, to the west, I saw beyond the Nile, to fields of brilliant green and a rocky plateau with three sharp pyramids rising to the sky.

Suddenly, a cloud spun across my field of view. A cloud of darkness and death in the shape of a wild hound.

The Hell Hounds were here.

Everything inside me froze. Blood, pulse, thought. Just as when the Hounds had found me on the boat to France, they had somehow entered the earthly realm once more—and I had no doubt they were after us. . . .

My brain—and my body—roared back to full speed. Faster, even. “We need to land!” I snapped down the spyglass. “Now, Daniel!”

He winced. “We’re almost there, and I think I can navigate—”

“No.” I thrust the spyglass to him. “Now!”

Daniel glanced to Joseph—and Joseph nodded. “Do it.”

With a spin of the steering wheel and a wrenching of levers, the airship lurched left—to the east bank of the Nile—and began a descent.

We would not be fast enough—not to outrun the Hell Hounds. But what I could not figure out was why they were here. On the boat, Marcus’s spell had called them through. Had he done that again?

“El!” Oliver’s voice bellowed through the airship. Then he charged into the pilothouse, his eyes huge. “Is this your doing? Are they here because of you?”

“Is who here?” Joseph demanded. “And why is it Eleanor’s fa—”