The glass wall of Brennan's office revealed the woman herself, frowning at a pile of random objects scattered across the surface of her desk. These had apparently been unpacked from a battered cardboard box which currently teetered on the far edge of said desk. Booth steeled himself, rapped twice, then pushed the door open. The too-big smile he'd plastered to his face faltered only slightly when Brennan transferred her scowl from a bit of broken crockery to her partner.

"Booth! What are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too, Bones," he replied, nudging the door shut with his foot and crossing the room to face her over the original source of her displeasure. "What's all this stuff? The Jeffersonian planning a yard sale?"

She lifted a strand of greyish-blue clay beads, holding them up for him to see. "These are grave goods, alleged to be from the burial of the mummy we received from a defunct small museum in Kentucky. Cataloguing them will be a job for our Egyptology department, of course, but I wanted to take a look at them myself first. Some of this stuff is in really deplorable condition--just look at this shawabti, for example." She put down the beads and held up a small greenish statue; the surface showed multiple large chips, and the features of the face were badly worn away. "I don't know what kind of 'museum' this place was, but they obviously had no conception of proper storage or conservation techniques."

"So who was this guy?" The collection of objects seemed pitifully small, the items homely and unimpressive: strands of crude-looking beads, small statues like the shawabti she'd mentioned, pieces of broken pottery, a handful of tiny carved forms. Sweeping a fallen strand of hair behind one ear, Brennan looked up from her perusal of the little figure.

"She was a Late Period priestess, according to the records; a 26th Dynasty chantress named Nefret-sat-Amunet. And that's what makes these objects so puzzling; it is my understanding that most women who held that position by that era were daughters of noble families. These are not the burial goods of a wealthy woman or a priestess. The glyphs are almost completely eroded away, but I'm certain these shawabtis weren't hers; they're of a common, almost generic type, and depict a male figure."

Booth dropped into the chair across from her, surprised by her once again--though why he was surprised, he couldn't say. The woman loved mummies. Watching old Boris Karloff movies had started her down the road to super-squintdom. Of course she'd have enough Egyptological knowledge to bore him for hours. Of course. "So the museum just tossed whatever junk they had laying around into a box and shipped it all to you along with the mummy?"

"So it would appear. It's not uncommon for smaller museums to have artifacts of this type on display; they're plentiful, easy to find, and relatively cheap to purchase. Her tomb was probably robbed in antiquity; most of them were, particularly those of wealthier individuals, and a high-ranking noblewoman near the top of her profession would certainly have had goods worth plundering. It's a shame, though. I would have liked to have seen some of her belongings." She sifted through the items again, stirring the pile of bead strands with one finger. "I can only wonder to whom these objects belonged, and what they might have meant to them. A peasant woman might have cherished this simple necklace as her most prized possession, perhaps given to her by someone--look, see the pendant?"

Booth nodded, looking at the indistinguishable lump she indicated. He wondered what she'd been about to say during that rather sentimental speech, but knew better than to ask. She'd always had a clearer view of the dead than the living.

"It's crudely done and badly worn, but you can see that it's the form of a seated cat. This was a votive object, a theophany of the goddess Bast, who often took the form of a cat or a cat-headed woman. She was very popular with female devotees, and her festivals were reported by Herodotus as being filled with wild and licentious behavior. It was said that more alcohol was consumed during the annual festival of Bast than during all the other months of the year combined."

"Par-tay," Booth murmured, and they both stared at the tiny cat. It was easier than looking at each other. Brennan was about to launch into another lecture topic when the office door burst open, spilling Hodgins into the room.

"Just look what I have for you," he crowed, crossing the room and presenting an ovoid green item with all the pomp of a vassal offering tribute to his king. "When we opened up the crate there was another little package of artifacts packed in with her. There were several different amulets, but I knew you'd want this one right away." He stepped back, expectant, and Booth was astonished by the way her face lit up, because to him it looked like Hodgins had handed her a dirty rock. Brennan was nothing short of delighted.

"A heart scarab!"

"Just the kind of bug you like, Dr. B. I can't read the hieroglyphs, but I suspect there may be something on there that can ID our lady."

Flipping the item over, she peered closely at it, before finally holding it up for both men to see. She indicated a row of incised glyphs with one gloved finger. "Yes, see right there? Her name is very distinctive--you can see the nefer symbol, which is thought to be a stylized representation of the heart and trachea. And here is the symbol of the god's name, with the feminine suffix -et. You can tell that a space was left on the scarab for the name to be filled in later, indicating that it wasn't carved specifically for her but was purchased and personalized at the time of her death. Good work, Hodgins. Be sure you sift through the packing materials carefully, just in case any other objects might have gotten dislodged in transit."

"I'll let you know. See ya, Booth." And he was off, muttering happily about his ongoing status as King of the Lab.

Booth had to break the silence that descended after Hodgins' departure, as his partner seemed to have entered an artifact-induced trance; she was holding the scarab in the palm of her left hand, her right index finger tracing delicately over its surface. Her gaze was faraway, fixed upon the small treasure, and Booth wondered what she was seeing there.

"So, a heart scarab," he said at last, voice loud in the ticking silence of the room. Brennan nodded, not looking up.

"Yes. The Egyptians believed--erroneously--that the heart was the seat of intellect and cognition, rather than the brain. As you know, during the embalming process, the brain was removed by means of a sharpened hook inserted through the nasal cavity--"

"Not only did I not know that, I absolutely did not need to know that."

She looked up at that, smirking. "While other organs were removed and either thrown away or prepared separately and stored in ritual vessels, the heart remained within the mummy. The heart scarab is a special amulet that is designed to keep one's heart from betraying them in the presence of the divine judges in the afterlife."

"How can your heart betray you?" Booth asked curiously, looking at the scarab with sharper interest. He knew Brennan heard the double meaning in the question by the way her breathing changed, and kept his eyes assiduously away from hers. Skittish as a new colt when emotional topics were breached, she was best approached obliquely, in a manner that would allow her to answer from the comfortable distance science could provide her.

"It was thought that one's heart might reveal things to the assessors that it would be imprudent for them to know--things that might jeopardize one's happiness in the afterlife. They believed that the heart held all of a person's secrets, and would reveal them if not persuaded to keep quiet by means of magical spells. The heart scarab is inscribed with the spell used for that purpose."

"So the heart couldn't lie."

"Presumably not, but there were assumed to be things that it shouldn't reveal, lest the person lose their chance of any peace and happiness in the life to come."

Unconsciously, Booth reached out for the scarab. Brennan swatted his hand away. "Not without gloves," she admonished, reaching into her desk drawer and coming up with a pair. After he snapped them into place, she very gently placed the scarab into his upturned palms, holding her hand over it for just a moment before drawing away.

"It's broken, anyway," she murmured, fiddling with a loose bead from the pile. "See the crack?"

"Sure, it's cracked, but it's not broken. Damaged, but not destroyed. Why, does a crack mean it won't work right?"

"Assuming that magical spells and amulets held any quantifiable power--which of course they don't--then maybe. The appearance of the crack suggests that it has been there for a very long time." She reached over and traced the line of the damage. Booth shifted his grip so that her hand was clasped between both of his, the amulet secure between them.

"I've heard that bones knit back stronger than they were before they were broken," he said at length. "Is that true?"

"No," she replied promptly. "That is a myth. But a broken bone that heals properly with no complications regains the full strength that it held before the injury."

"Maybe that's true of muscles, too."

"The Japanese have a belief that a thing that has been broken and repaired is even more beautiful than before, because of its flaws rather than in spite of them. It is the imperfection that gives the object its strength." Her voice was low, but rang out clearly in the quiet room. When she raised her head and looked directly, almost defiantly, at him, he could almost feel his own heart crack. He prayed it wouldn't betray him again.

"There are always complications, Bones, but I think maybe the Japanese have it right. Maybe a cracked heart is better than one that's never been touched at all."

Carefully, delicately, she extracted her hand from between his, leaving the artifact still cradled in his palms as she rose from her chair and disappeared into her bathroom. Booth sank back deflated, releasing the enormous tension he'd been unaware of for the past however many minutes. Pinching the bridge of his nose with his left hand, he replaced the scarab dead-center on her desk blotter with his right. When Brennan returned, she was composed and serene as always, and only the softness of her expression and the tender redness around her eyes betrayed her. That, and her cracked and mending heart.

Booth stood up and reached for her hand, then dropped it in favor of draping an arm around her shoulders instead. "Come on, Bones, it's past time for lunch. Anything you want; I'm buying."

And that was truer than even she knew.