The Lost Sisterhood Read Online Free Page B

stirring. Had I encountered these symbols before? If so, frustratingly, the context completely escaped me.
    As it happened, my childhood friend Rebecca had been working at an archaeological site in Crete for the past three years, and I was fairly certain she knew precisely which organizations were digging where, and for what. Surely, if someone had come across this kind of inscription anywhere in the Mediterranean region, and had somehow linked it to the Amazons, Dr. Rebecca M. Wharton would have been the first to know.
    “Sorry to interrupt your midnight orgy,” I said, when she finally answered her cellphone. We had not spoken for over a month, and it occurred to me how much I had missed her when I heard her snorting delightedly at the other end. It was a laugh I would have recognized anywhere; it sounded like a whisky hangover but, in Rebecca’s case, was really the rather prosaic consequence of having her inquisitive head buried in a dusty hole all day.
    “I was just thinking of you!” she exclaimed. “I have a chorus of gorgeous Greek boys feeding me grapes and rubbing me with olive oil.”
    I laughed at the image. The odds of lovely Rebecca getting intimate with anything other than ancient pottery shards were, sadly, ten to none. There she was, playing the rebel with her sun cap and cutoff denim shorts, crawling around on her hands and knees in an anthill of fascinating male archaeologists … but with eyes for nothing but the past. Although she always talked big, I knew there was still a vicar’s daughter right beneath the freckles. “Is that why you haven’t had time to call and tell me the big news?”
    There was a brief rustle, suggesting Rebecca was trying to hold the phone between her ear and shoulder. “What big news?”
    “You tell me. Who’s digging up Amazons in your backyard?”
    She let out one of her ear-piercing jungle-bird shrieks.
“What?”
    “Take a look.” I leaned forward to check the picture on my computer screen. “I just emailed you a photo.”
    While we waited for Rebecca’s laptop to catch up, I gave her a quick overview of the situation, complete with James Moselane’s suspicion that I had become the victim of a hoax and might even be in danger. “Obviously, I’m not going,” I said, “but I’m dying to know where this picture was taken. As you can see, it looks like the inscription is part of a larger wall, with the text presented in vertical columns. As for the writing itself”—I leaned closer still, trying to position the desk lamp better—”I have this odd feeling … but I can’t for the life of me—”
    A crunching sound suggested Rebecca was chewing on a handful of nuts—a sure sign she was getting intrigued. “What do you want
me
to do?” she asked. “I can guarantee you this photo wasn’t taken on my island. If someone had come across a wall like that on Crete, trust me, I’d know about it.”
    “Here is what I want you to do,” I said. “Take a good look at that inscription and tell me where I’ve seen those symbols before.”
    I knew it was a long shot, but I had to try. Rebecca had always had a knack for seeing right through the obvious. She was the one who had discovered my father’s secret stash of chocolate bars in an old tackle box in the garage when we were children. Even then, despite her sweet tooth, she had not proposed we share one; the mere triumph of the discovery—and of being able to teach me something about my father that I didn’t know—was excitement enough.
    “I am going to give you another minute—” I said.
    “How about,” countered Rebecca, “you give me a few days to ask around? I’ll forward the photo to Mr. Telemakhos—”
    “Wait!” I said. “Don’t show this photo to
anyone.
”
    “Why not?”
    I hesitated, aware I was being irrational. “Because there is something about this writing that is deeply familiar to me … in an uncanny sort of way. It’s as if I can see it in blue writing—”
    The truth