“What do they want?” I cried, shooing at a child who refused to let go of my pants.
“Baksheesh,” Oliver said with an amused smirk. “It means ‘charitable gift.’ The Egyptians expect it from everyone.” He sauntered toward me, and his eyes flickered to the children’s. And thank the merciful heavens my demon knew so many languages, for after a few barked words of Arabic, the children finally released me—and shot straight for Allison.
I looked up at Oliver with a smile. “You survived,” I said.
He stepped to me and brushed a light, almost casual kiss over my forehead. “As did you.”
My heart stumbled—just a tiny catch. He was very happy to see me.
But then his gaze settled on my arm, and a frown creased his forehead. “Should I heal you?”
“No.” I glanced at Allison. She gestured wildly at the children, but they refused to stop yanking at her skirts.
I turned back to Oliver. “I’ll go with normal healing this time.”
“Ah,” he said with a knowing arch of his eyebrow. Luckily, he dropped the subject and simply turned a snarl on the Egyptian kids—and in a flurry of shouts and laughter, they finally scampered back toward town.
Allison threw her arms around me. “I thought you were dead! You just jumped right off the balloon, and then I didn’t see you again.” She lurched back, gripping my shoulders. “What the blazes were you thinking? Mr. McIntosh kept insisting you were fine, but I do not see how he could possibly know. And yet here you are!” She hugged me again. “You are fine! And you are alive! And, oh goodness, Eleanor, I do not ever want to experience that again.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, her expression animated as she pulled away, “Mr. Boyer managed to land us, but not before those awful creatures hurtled into us. What were they called again, Mr. McIntosh?”
“Hell Hounds,” Oliver offered with an almost indulgent smile. I could only suppose that near-death had made him and Allison tentative allies—and that Oliver had realized he now wore a last name. He responded to Mr. McIntosh as if born to it.
Allison shivered. “Hell Hounds. They hit us, Eleanor, and we were spinning and spinning for at least a hundred feet—”
“More like fifty,” Oliver amended.
“—until we hit the ground so hard, I thought my teeth would break. And then the balloon just . . . poof.” She flicked her wrists up. “I do not know how we’ll ever get off the ground now.”
I glanced at Oliver. “Is it that bad?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “That will be for your inventor to decide, but . . . it certainly won’t be easy to fix.”
Oliver was right. Once Daniel had assessed the damage, we learned the engine had been so knocked about that it would take at least the rest of the day to repair. But more concerning was that we needed fuel—the only way to inflate the balloon was with heated air. A lot of it.
After a great deal of asking around, Oliver managed to find a vendor in the nearby village who had sufficient oil . . . but not at an affordable price. “The man wants two hundred British pounds,” Oliver told Joseph, “and I cannot talk him down.”
Joseph, Allison, and I stood beside the open gondola hatch while Daniel and Jie yanked out floorboards in the cargo hold—Daniel needed better access to his engine. Meanwhile, our robed fuel salesman leaned on his donkey beneath a sycamore tree nearby. He stroked his mustache and looked very pleased by the inevitable fortune coming his way.
Joseph massaged his forehead. “We cannot possibly afford that. I do not even have a quarter of it.”
“Perhaps we could try a different village,” I suggested, but the grim slant to Oliver’s brow told me we weren’t likely to find a better price anywhere. Swatting at flies that kept attacking my bleeding arm, I turned to Allison. “How much money do you have?”
She winced and shrank back. “Not much more than Mr. Boyer.”
I blinked. “Your mother let you leave Philadelphia with less than fifty dollars?”
Her wince deepened, and she stoutly refused to meet my eyes. “My mother did not precisely approve of my trip. In fact, she swore she would not contribute a dime. What little money I have is what I managed to save myself.”
My breath wuffed out, and I fought to keep the disappointment off my face—it was hardly Allison’s fault we were poor. “Do we have any idea how long it would take to reach Giza from here?” I asked Oliver.
He hollered the question over to our new Egyptian friend—who quickly hollered back an answer.
“Half a day by horse,” Oliver translated.
I lowered my hands. “That is not so bad then. If we had horses, I mean.”