Alex tried to make eye contact again in the mirror, but Aditi was too busy merging back into the city traffic. The Order had already known who was meeting them at the airport — he could still hear Liam mangling Aditi’s name — and they would definitely know where they were headed now. He hoped she knew what she was doing. He watched her eyes work as she drove, quick and alert. He knew she was a member of the same secret group of scholars as Todtman. Ren called them “the book club,” and there was no doubt they were a far-flung group of museum-working nerds — but they were also mysterious and powerful. Alex wondered if Aditi had an amulet, too, something to match Todtman’s formidable falcon.
He looked back through the window. No van, he thought. Not yet. And as the light changed and they scooted through a busy intersection, he thought he might be able to keep it that way. His head was clearer now, and his hands were free. He reached up and wrapped his left hand around his scarab amulet. The rush overtook him, and he looked back again, feeling his pulse quicken as he narrowed his eyes.
He stared at the traffic light and it instantly turned red. A chorus of honks rose up, and he turned back around, knowing it would stay that way for some time.
Despite everything they’d been through, and the dangers that could still be waiting up ahead, Alex couldn’t help but gawk from his cramped perch in the backseat. Though his mom traveled for work all the time, Alex’s shaky health had always made going along too big a risk. He’d always dreamed of being able to go to cool, far-off places.
Now London sprawled all around them: an unfamiliar city full of fresh names and new sights. As the car skirted around a crowded public square, Alex eyed a winged statue and read the sign: Piccadilly Circus. The buildings on one side were fronted with neon billboards, and on the other with ancient stone. It seemed half Times Square and half medieval metropolis.
A few more quick turns and suddenly they were pulling up to a grand stone building that towered above them, as large as a city block.
“The British Museum,” Ren said in a reverent whisper. “My dad always talks about this place.”
Alex nodded. His mom had, too. It was beautiful.
Aditi pulled up to a gate in the tall iron fence and slowed to a halt as she reached a little guard booth. She lowered her window and flashed an ID badge at the guard, who didn’t bother to look at it. “All good, then, Glenn?” she said to him.
“Near as I can tell!” he said, waving her through.
Alex was glad to see the security, but Aditi clearly wasn’t satisfied. She pulled the little car to a stop and parked it near the fence. The overheated engine sounded like a deflating balloon as she switched it off. “Right!” she said. “Out we go. Quickly!”
They all piled out of the car — and into the one next to it. It was a dark blue sedan, as generic as the museum car was distinctive and, mercifully, quite a bit larger. Even better, this one didn’t have their destination painted on the side. “In, in, in!” called Aditi. “Luggage in the boot.”
“The what?” said Luke.
Aditi answered by popping open the trunk. Barely a minute after they’d pulled into the employee lot, they pulled back out again. Glenn gave them a slightly baffled wave and then went back to his paper and tea.
As they drove away, Alex took a quick look back through the tall iron bars. He felt a wave of relief: This lady knew what she was doing after all. The little car was clearly visible from the street. Its cheery red-and-white paint scheme called out like a billboard to any thugs, cult operatives, or other interested parties. We’re in here, dummies, it seemed to say.
“Now, then, Luke,” said Aditi, “where is this camp of yours?”
And just like that, they were off to their first destination.
The blue sedan was barely out of sight when Glenn rose from his seat in the security booth once more.
“Delivery!” called a large, moon-faced man leaning out the driver’s-side window.
Glenn eyeballed the van. It was a little ragged by museum standards. Clearly not delivering any priceless artifacts. Maybe food, thought the guard, or toilet valves. “What’s in the back?” he said.
“Oh, just supplies ’n’ such,” said Liam. “Got all ’at paperwork right ’ere.”
Liam’s head disappeared back into the van, and when Glenn leaned in for a closer look, Liam was waiting. He grabbed the back of Glenn’s head with one powerful hand as the other one shot up toward the guard’s neck. The gleaming metal point of a large hypodermic needle sank deep into the soft, pale flesh of Glenn’s neck. For a moment, he twitched and jerked and tried to pull away, but as Liam pushed the plunger down with his thumb, the guard fell still.
The Order was making its presence felt.
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jog!” called Dr. Aditi, bringing the car to a lurching halt.
Ren’s eyes snapped open in the backseat. She and Alex had both conked out after they’d dropped off Luke, unable to overcome the combined effects of jet lag, sleep debt, and head trauma. She sat up and peered between the seats. The first thing she saw was a large blue sign affixed to the brick wall in front of them:
THE CAMPBELL COLLECTION
OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES
“You’ll be staying here for a while,” said Aditi. Ren liked the way she talked, dispensing her crisply accented words like a banker peeling new bills off a money roll. “Safer than the museum at the moment,” she continued, “though there’s been plenty of activity here, as well.”
Ren set her wheelie bag down on the parking lot pavement and looked up. The London sky was gray and gloomy, just like in a movie. She bounced her bag briskly up onto the curb. “What is this place?” she said to Aditi’s back.
“The Campbell used to be a private collection, but now it’s a sort of satellite to the British Museum,” said Aditi.
Ren looked up at the tall, skinny building in front of her: It looked like a bit of an “antiquity” itself. The paint was beginning to peel on the old-fashioned wood-framed windows, and here and there she saw little gaps in the bricks. At the very top, she saw an old chimney leaning away from the building at an angle that looked unsafe. It reminded her of a tall, broken-down old man, tipping his cap to no one.
“I’ve arranged rooms for you two here,” Aditi added.
Here? thought Ren. In this creaky old place?
Inside, the Campbell Collection was cool and quiet. An old man named Somers led them to their rooms and gave them a heavy iron skeleton key for the front door. Ren wasn’t sure if Somers was his first name or his last name, or if he was the caretaker, curator, or something else entirely. But Aditi said they could trust him, and that was a relief. They came to a stop outside two low, narrow doors at the end of a top-floor hallway.
“Here you are,” he said in a deep, scratchy voice. “The old servants’ quarters.”
He turned the doorknob in front of him with long, bony fingers. It opened with a brisk click, revealing a tiny room with one narrow bed, a table, chair, dresser, lamp, and nothing else.
“Both rooms are the same,” said Somers. “Doesn’t much matter which one you choose.”
Ren looked at Alex. “I’ll take this one,” she said and wheeled her bag inside.
On the floor next to the bed she saw a small metal basin and a water jug: a chamber pot, like in a Charles Dickens novel. Please let this place have a real bathroom, she thought. She felt like she’d taken off from New York in the twenty-first century and landed in London in the nineteenth. Once again she got the sense of being ever so slightly separated from reality. Mummies and magic will do that, but sometimes even the normal things seemed off to her now.
She thumped her bag down as Somers opened the next door for Alex. “I’ll let you two get some rest,” Aditi called from the hall. “Be back in the afternoon!”
Ren could hear Alex protesting in the hallway. He wanted to get started now.
“I think you’ve had quite enough excitement for one morning,” countered Aditi, her footstep
s already heading toward the stairwell.
Ren took out her phone and looked at the time. Still too early to call her parents in New York. She pressed her hand into her bed, gauging its firmness. She thought maybe she’d take Aditi’s advice and get some rest. Then Alex ducked his head into her room.
“Hey, Ren,” he said. “Where’s that newspaper?”
And she knew she wouldn’t be getting that nap after all.
They spent that first, jet-lagged day doing what they could from the Campbell. Ren got a little burst of energy when they divided up the tasks, since that was the kind of thing she liked to do.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll go online and look for potential Death Walkers. Missing mummies, busted sarcophagi …” She glanced over at the picture of the wrapped hand in the paper, now lying open on her bed. “Anything tightly wrapped and very evil.”
“Cool,” said Alex. “I’ll check out the collection here. See if there’s anything useful. I think I saw a Book of the Dead display on the way in.”
Ren had seen it, too, but it was just one panel. The full copy at the Met had taken up an entire wall: two hundred spells spread across papyrus scrolls and linen mummy wrappings. “I guess we only need one spell,” she said. “If it’s the right one.”
That was her job. Find out who the Death Walker was in life, so they’d know which spell would work on it in death.
But as the day wore on, Ren’s eyes got heavy and fuzzy as she bumped into one dead end after another. She couldn’t find any reports of mummies missing from the British Museum — and it was the kind of thing that people usually noticed.
She looked up every ancient corpse listed in their collection online — and even the ones on the websites of a few of the smaller collections around town. None of them seemed especially evil: minor nobility, a high priest here and there, and even one royal accountant. The Stung Man sounded like a Death Walker, she thought sleepily, but the Accountant?
Alex returned after a thorough search, reporting that the Book of the Dead downstairs was just “a few scraps from the beginning,” the Campbell’s one human mummy was still very much in residence, and Aditi had called to say she wouldn’t be back that day because something had happened at the big museum.
What neither of them knew was that, later that night, something was going to happen at the little one, too.
Puhh-THUUMMP!
There it was again. Alex looked around the dark confines of his little room. It was the middle of the night, and strange noises were coming from somewhere in the closed museum.
Whup-WHUMMP!
Farther away and louder? Closer and quieter? Alex couldn’t tell. He sat up in the narrow wooden bed and flicked on the small lamp on the bedside table. He checked the corners of the room. Nothing. He exhaled.
Puhl-TIKKK!
The sharpest sound yet … Was it coming from the hallway?
“Hey, Ren,” he ventured, turning to face the wall. “That you?”
Silence for a second and then: “No … I thought it was you!”
The walls were thin enough that they could have a conversation at more or less normal volume.
“Hallway?” said Alex.
Praang!
They were both quiet for a moment, analyzing what they’d just heard.
“It’s coming from downstairs, I think,” said Ren. “I think the floors are as thin as the walls.”
“Okay,” said Alex. “Meet you out there?”
“Yeah, just a second.”
Alex threw back the thin covers and surveyed his outfit. Pajama pants and a King Tut T-shirt his mom had brought back from a trip to Egypt. Good enough, he figured. If it was a would-be Order assassin making that noise — or the mummy from the second floor — the only item that would matter was the amulet around his neck. He pulled the room’s one chair out from under the door handle. Through the wall, he heard Ren doing the same thing. The doors of the old servants’ quarters didn’t lock.
He wrapped his left hand around the scarab and felt his pulse quicken, his senses sharpen. He pushed his door open and ducked his head out into the hallway. The only light came from a red EXIT sign above the staircase at the far end of the hall.
He saw Ren duck her head out a few feet away, her dark, not-quite-shoulder-length hair edged in red. She turned to look at him —
WHOMP!
The sound was louder out here, and he saw her eyes go wide with fear.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he mouthed.
Quietly, carefully, they both stepped out into the hallway. Ren was fully dressed, her sneakers tied in fresh, impeccable bunny ears. Alex looked down at his own bare feet.
He squeezed his amulet a little tighter. He thought maybe he could sense something, small and subtle, like movement at the very edge of his vision. “Only one way to find out,” he said, lifting his chin toward the old stairwell.
Ren hesitated and then whispered, “Okay.”
BWWAACKK!
The sound echoed up the stairwell. Ren pointed a single finger down toward the floor, and he nodded. They were on the fourth floor of the narrow building, and the latest sound seemed to be coming from the third.
Alex edged forward and took the lead. Grim images of what might be down there filled his mind, but he pushed against his fear as if he were wading into icy cold waves at the shore. A small part of him even hoped it was someone from the death cult. The familiar refrain flashed through his thoughts: Find The Order, find my mom.
He walked straight toward the garish red glow of the EXIT sign and the dark mouth of the stairwell beyond.
As they descended the dark stairwell, a symphony of small creaks and groans played on the old wooden stairs. The next loud noise made them jump.
WAHhwhuuMMPPP!
The sound echoed up the stairwell. Closer, thought Alex. Definitely closer. His imagination force-fed him images he did not want to see: the beefy Order operative looming above him, slamming the suitcase down; the empty eye sockets of the shriveled mummy on the second floor; the horrors he’d seen back home.
Ren’s smartphone glowed softly in the stairway, Dr. Aditi a touchscreen away. Alex remembered her voice from the brief phone call that day, distracted and upset. She didn’t say what had happened at the British Museum, but he could tell it was bad. Even if they called her right now, he realized as they reached the third-floor landing, there was a good chance she’d arrive too late.
PRRaaaKKK!
The noise rang out in the dark. It sounded like stone or bone. It also sounded like it was coming from the next room.
“You ready?” he whispered.
“Guess so,” answered Ren as they crept toward the low archway leading to a small side room.
In addition to the glow of the EXIT signs, there was a faint glow coming in through the windows, and here and there small bulbs illuminated display cases. A larger bulb washed the flat green surface of a six-thousand-year-old mudstone paint palette. The assortment of lights spawned a web of shadows. The Campbell was quiet during the day but downright spooky at night. They were almost at the archway now. His eyes brushed past a sign that read GALLERY XI: ANIMALS IN THE AFTERLIFE. They could hear another, softer sound coming from within: the raspy, irregular scratch of something being dragged across the wooden floor.
“Wait,” hissed Ren, stopping in front of a small fire extinguisher.
Gladly, thought Alex. He gripped his amulet in one sweaty palm. The old floor felt cool and rough against his bare feet. He watched as the concentration line appeared between Ren’s eyebrows. She carefully sized up the clasps in the dim light and then, with three quick movements, removed the fire extinguisher from its mount.
Wuh-PAAPPP!
The volume removed all doubt: The sound was coming from the next room — and coming toward them!
A scritch like fingernails scraping stone grew louder, just inside the archway. The sound was inhuman — that was no Order operative, Alex realized.
What if it was something far worse? What if the Death Walker they were looking for was looking for them? They weren’t prepared yet for a fight like that.
He glanced back at Ren. It was too late to hide, but could they run? As he saw Ren look down and freeze in fear, he understood: It was too late for that, too.
Holding his breath, he followed her gaze:
A pointy tail flicking back and forth.
Four stick-thin legs …
It was a creature with the body of a small animal, but its head was covered in a tangled mass of fractured wood and bent metal, which it was dragging backward through the archway. The strange creature was covered in …
“Oh no,” said Alex as the little beast dragged itself out of the shadows and into the weakly lit room.
“Is that …” Ren began.
“Yeah,” said Alex, backing slowly away. “It’s mummy wrapping.”
The creature paid no mind to the voices behind it, just continued dragging its burden across the floor. After a few more steps, it swung its neck hard against the base of the archway. The wood and metal slammed against the wall with astounding force. The noise rang through the room, and the friends jumped back another step.
“It must’ve tried to back out of its case and gotten stuck,” said Ren, lowering the fire extinguisher. “It’s trying to get its head out.”
Alex loosened his grip on the amulet. The thing wasn’t attacking; it was trapped. The busted remains of a display case wreathed its head. The electric cord of a display lamp wound through the wreckage and wrapped around the creature’s neck.
“What is it?” said Ren. “Did they have Chihuahuas back then?”
Alex shook his head and watched the creature’s long tail flick from side to side as it resumed its backward march. It was nearly hairless and half-wrapped in old linen; it was disoriented from its long sleep and trapped in the remains of its own case. But he knew exactly what it was.
“Cat,” he said. “Sometimes they mummified cats. To take with them to the afterlife.”
The cat mummy was closer now. Alex took another step back, but Ren took a step forward. “Poor thing,” she said.
Amulet Keepers Page 4
