"Whatever," Peez croaked. He vanished into the mist only to return almost immediately with a gold goblet.

"Beer," he said as she raised the cup to her lips. "We have a highly authentic microbrewery on the premises that—"

He got a faceful of microbrew when Peez spritzed out her first taste of Horus Lite. "Dear gods, what was that stuff?" she gasped.

From somewhere deep in the heart of the pungent clouds there came a giggle and someone said: "That is what we like to call an acquired taste."

Peez blinked her stinging eyes and little by little was able to distinguish solid shapes amid the whorls of smoke. "I don't suppose there's a window in here?" she asked.

"Yes," said the voice. "But we prefer not to—"

"The Lady Peez has spoken!" Ray Rah thundered. "All power to the words of the Lady Peez! So let it be written, so let it be done! Gary, open the window." There came the sound of much scrabbling, a couple of bumps, a thud, several curses, Gary's mumbled "'Scuse me, sorry," and at long last the squeak of a sash being raised. A cool breeze blew into the room, banishing the worst of the haze and giving Peez a clear view of her surroundings.

Apart from the birdbath-sized incense burner in the center of the rug, the inner chamber of Ray Rah's temple looked like nothing more than a frat house rumpus room. There were several mismatched sofas and chairs, some wobbly-looking tables, a big screen TV complete with DVD player, a middle-of-the-line stereo system and a wet bar.

Peez decided to make the wet bar her number one priority. Striding across the room, ignoring the twenty-odd people lounging around, she went right up to the bar and set down her gold goblet with a mighty thump. "I don't call a practical joke an acquired taste," she informed the woman behind the counter. "And I sure as hell don't call this gunk beer."

The woman, like Ray Rah and the rest, was wearing the pleated white linen garb made famous by New Kingdom tomb paintings. She too wore a sparkling assortment of gold jewelry, heavy on the lotus/ankh/eye-of-Horus motifs. However, instead of a wig she had opted to cornrow her mousy brown hair and top the whole ensemble with a Cubs cap.

"Sorry to disillusion you, Princess, but that is beer," she said. "Authentic Ancient Egyptian beer. I brewed it myself, after copious research and the proper sacrifices to the gods. It may be a little sweeter than what you're used to—"

"Sweet, hell; it's chewy!" After Ray Rah and Gary's subservient behavior, Peez didn't care for this woman's in-your-face attitude at all. "There are pieces of—of— Well, I don't really want to know what they're pieces of, and I sure don't want to drink them!"

The woman reached under the bar and slammed a strange metal object down onto the counter between them. "That's because Gary was so hot to fetch you your drink that he forgot to give you the strainer straw. Want to give it a second try?" Her eyes added: Or do you want to wimp out now, Princess?

Peez thrust her goblet under the barkeep's nose. "Fill 'er up," she commanded. Using the straw as directed, she sucked up half the beer in one go. It still tasted too sweet, there wasn't any fizz to it worth mentioning, and it had about as much alcoholic kick as a dose of cough syrup, but she got it down.

The other temple members crowded up to the bar to watch. When she drained her goblet dry, they made small sounds of approval and gazed at her with reverence.

"Wow," one of them said. His slack belly lapped over the top of his long kilt. "You're the first person I ever saw who could stomach a whole serving of Meritaten's beer."

"Yeah," another man put in. "Even Ray Rah couldn't do that. You're cool!"

Peez scanned the ring of friendly faces surrounding her. Men and women alike all looked to be in their late forties to early fifties, with physiques that were not displayed to best advantage by a few paltry layers of translucent linen.

"I'm ... cool?" she repeated. "What is this, a hazing?"

"Oh no, Lady Peez, by no means, none at all!" Ray Rah hastened to say. He shoved his way through the crowd and glowered at Meritaten. "Some people seem to think it's all right to sacrifice the holy tenets of hospitality on the altar of historical authenticity, even if what they serve our honored guest tastes like a kitty litter cocktail! Some people seem to have forgotten that the gods see all and that a list of their errors will be forever inscribed on their hearts. Some people don't seem to care that when they die their hearts will be weighed in the Scales of Justice against the Feather of Ma'at and if they don't measure up, their hearts will be thrown into the jaws of a monster and devoured. Some people—"

"—don't care if they get to dwell in blessedness forever in the Field of Reeds, yadda, yadda, yadda." Meritaten leaned one elbow on the bar, chin in hand, and looked bored. "Some people are actually capable of reading the Book of the Dead for ourselves, thank you very much." She looked at Peez. "Hey, I'm sorry if you didn't like the beer. I didn't mean it as a practical joke, no matter what you think. I just assumed that since you're Edwina's daughter you'd be just as open to new experiences as she is. No hard feelings?"

"None." Peez summoned up one of her brother's patented ingratiating smiles. "Sorry if I snapped at you. I came here on serious business. I'm not exactly in the mood for initiation hijinks."

"We know," Meritaten said. "We heard." A chorus of sympathetic murmurs ran through the congregation. The news of Edwina's impending death had traveled fast.

"If it's any consolation, Nenufer's been studying the old ways of embalming," Gary said, nodding at another one of the women in the group.

Ray Rah chimed in with: "When the time comes, we promise to give your mother the most sumptuous burial the law allows. A pity we can't have slaves to help out with the arrangements, though. Without them you can't get a whole lot of good, solid tomb construction done at today's prices, and as for providing her with a suitable entourage to serve her in the Afterlife—" He shrugged. "I suppose she'll have to make do with ushabti figurines. I know that's what most pharaohs did, but if you ask me, you can't rely on a mere image of a servant to provide you with the same quality labor you got back in the good old days."

"Which was when—?" Peez asked, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Which was when the pharaohs had real servants sacrificed and put in their tombs with them." Ray Rah didn't seem at all disturbed by this aspect of his chosen spiritual path.

"Ah, come off it, Ray!" one of the men scoffed. "The only reason you're so keen on human sacrifice is 'cause the only way you'll ever get a woman is if she's too dead to run away."

"Shut up, Billy-hotep," Ray Rah said through gritted teeth.

The peculiarly named Billy-hotep giggled. The eyes behind his bifocal wire-rimmed glasses were two blobs of solid black, their pupils dilated to the point of no return.

That must've been some powerful incense he was inhaling, Peez thought.

Billy-hotep's inhibitions had gone the way of the pharaohs. "Well, excuuuse me, Your Revered Datelessness," he said, "but you forget: We've all known you since college. Whenever we did see you with a girl, we always found out later she'd been bought and paid for."

"Like your membership dues in the temple?" Ray Rah countered. "I've been floating you one loan after another, and this is the thanks I get? The first live contact we have with the head office in over twenty-five years and you try to embarrass me in front of her? Maybe I should let you sink or swim on your own. No dues, no membership; no membership—"

"—no parties." The realization yanked Billy-hotep down to earth with a thud. He began to blubber: "You can't do that to me, man! I love our parties! They're just like the ones we used to throw back in college!"