been alone with him at night in a deserted warehouse. Anyone capable of copping a feel from a woman at least a millennium old was capable of anything. But the dead cameraman could be a lesser problem than what had killed him.
The chant rose and fell as she worked and, perhaps because it no longer blended into one long sound, she was sure she understood some of the individual words and phrases now, though she had never heard them pronounced before. Although she read ancient runes, they weren’t exactly the kind of language one used to chat with friends.
Taking out her cell phone, she pressed the panic button that called Jaime, the producer.
“Jaime, we’re going to need another camera operator. Try to get a lassie if you can.”
“Where’s Cruikshank? Drunk again?”
She hesitated. That was a much more plausible explanation than the one she suspected, and had no doubt been true prior to his atomization. “I suppose so.”
“Never mind then. I’ll deal with it myself for the rest of this segment and find someone in the morning.”
“Or you could stay in bed and I could go to my own and take this up again in the morning.”
“No time. The river’s rising, and the council is suspicious and breathing down our necks. They’ll want to schedule the site once we report our findings, and she’ll be lost to us.”
She’d tried to stop him, hadn’t she?
She looked down at the armored corpse, dead and innocent-seeming, but with its chant still pounding through her head. “If you’ve something to say, I wish you’d just say it and be done with it,” she told the figure. “You are giving me quite the headache.”
While waiting, she continued photographing, drawing, trying to decipher the runes. Susie certainly wasn’t Roman, Thracian, Dacian, Greek, Norse, or any of the other races that had invaded or passed through Scotland or England, nor was her armor British and certainly not Pictish. “I’ve no idea who you are or where you’re from or what you were doing in a grave beneath a shoe factory. I don’t suppose you could give me a wee hint, could you?”
But by then Jaime was there, to take Rob’s place behind the camera. “Any clues yet as to the identity of our guest?”
“Offhand, I’d say she’s not Scottish.”
“Have you peeked beneath the armor?” he asked. “If we had some idea of her coloring or bone structure, it would be a start. The river is already up on the banks, lapping the bottom of the bridge. We’ll need to move her to the museum soon to protect the find, but I wish we had a big finish for the show. That armor is incredible, though.”
“It is that.”
“Let’s remove it and make a start on the exam now. Have you recorded it sufficiently that you can mend it if it breaks when we take it off?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. He searched for a tool and set to work on the armor.
“I think so, but . . . ”
The chant in her ears once more rose to a scream. Kirsty looked from Jaime to the armor-clad corpse. The bit of armor he touched blazed blue suddenly, and Jaime slumped and disintegrated into a pile of ash similar to what Kirsty’s Wellies had been tracking all over the room that night.
Without thinking, Kirsty yelled, over the rising chant. “Stop that now, you!”
The chant took on an interrogatory and rather hurt tone.
“See here, I understand that you don’t like men, but you’re doing me out of a job. That’s my boss you’ve cremated, and while he was a bit of a sociopathic git, this is the best job I’ve ever had or am ever likely to be offered, so I’d appreciate it if you’d lay off. This ‘Mummy’s Curse’ business is a tad old-fashioned, don’t you think?” She realized that the Amazon herself was old-fashioned—extremely so—and she was gibbering at it. Susie lay there, as she had all along, and her armor as intriguing as ever but no longer blue in any respect.
“Thank you very much for not smiting me as well,” Kirsty added hastily. “It must have been maddening to lie in the ground all these years, but if you’re bored and want something to do, you might explain who you are exactly and what you’re doing here.”
The chanting rose again, more agitated than before, or was it only Kirsty’s own agitation she was projecting onto the Amazon? This whole job had seemed like a dream, especially