“Really?” said Alex, but he knew she was serious when he saw the familiar line appear on her brow.
“I may not like all this magic and creepy dead stuff much,” she said, “but I do like cats.” Ren darted forward and knelt down next to the little creature. “Easy, easy,” she said. “Pretty kitty. Don’t smash me.”
Alex could see her fingers trembling as she worked to unfasten an upside-down clasp and untangle the remains of the electric cord.
“Careful!” he said, not only remembering the force with which the creature had swung its case but also eyeing its needle-like claws.
But the ex-cat had frozen at the first touch and seemed to be willing to wait. Did it know Ren was trying to help, or did it just think she was petting it?
“Almost done, little kitty,” said Ren. “Almost free.”
A few tugs and twists later, Ren stood up.
Slowly, tentatively, the little cat tugged its head back. Two large, pointed ears popped free from the wreckage. It turned and looked up at them with eyes that glowed green in the dim room. For just a second, they had a clear view of it — a skinny half-wrapped cat with iridescent eyes.
“It’s sort of …” Alex began.
“Cute,” confirmed Ren.
And it was, in a naked mole rat sort of way. Still, it was weird and spooky — especially in the half-dark room.
“I’ll get the lights,” said Alex, reaching not for the wall but his amulet.
They clicked on above them, flooding the room with light. Alex and Ren blinked a few times, and when they looked back down at the floor, the creepy-cute cat was gone.
Now that, thought Alex, really was spooky.
“Where did it go?” sputtered Ren. “How?”
“It’s a mummy cat, Ren,” said Alex. “Don’t try to make sense of it.”
The cat’s path was clearly marked with periodic dings and dents along the wall. They followed it back to its source: an overturned table and a puddle of glass.
“Somers is not going to be happy about this,” said Ren.
Alex pictured the old man’s flyaway white hair and the dark circles under his wrinkle-wrapped eyes. “I don’t think Somers has been happy since, like, 1963.”
He knelt down and carefully plucked a brass information plaque out of the broken glass. He stood up, turned it over, and read it:
PAI-EN-INMAR, SACRED CAT
FROM THE TEMPLE OF BASTET
BUBASTIS, C. 1730 BC
Alex knew all about Bastet: Part protector and part predator, the cat-headed goddess was both revered and feared in ancient Egypt. His mom had always wanted to get a cat and name it Bastet. And though she’d never said so, Alex knew why she hadn’t: He’d always been more than enough to care for.
Ren stepped over and plucked the plaque from his hands, snapping him back to reality.
“Mine,” she said.
He didn’t argue. She’d definitely earned it.
They cleaned up as best they could and headed back upstairs.
Back in his room, Alex fell into a fitful sleep as the adrenaline surge faded. But he did wake briefly just before dawn, and in those few blurry moments, he could’ve sworn he heard soft, small steps out in the hallway.
Alex woke up in a dark mood the next morning, and he stayed in one as Dr. Aditi drove them to the British Museum. His thoughts were grim and determined as the city slid by his window. They pulled into the same side lot as the day before, but Alex noticed that a different guard was on duty, and this one seemed much less relaxed.
That was fine. He was less relaxed, too. He couldn’t believe how much time he’d wasted already, spinning his wheels at the Campbell while his mom was held captive somewhere. The idea that she might be suffering — never far from his thoughts — jutted into his mind like an iceberg piercing the hull of a ship.
The three hurried into the staff entrance and up toward Aditi’s office. Alex quickly eyed the massive museum: huge rooms, sleek new display cases brimming with invaluable artifacts, and already full of visitors. It was the exact opposite of the sleepy old Campbell Collection, but a British brother to the Met. He looked over and saw Ren gawking at it all and felt like shouting at her: We’re not tourists!
They whisked through a large, impressive atrium and past the shuttered Egyptian exhibits. Alex read a sign at the entrance: THIS GALLERY IS IN THE COURSE OF REARRANGEMENT. WE APOLOGISE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. He thought of the “rearrangements” at the Met: everything from restless mummies to ancient diseases.
Dr. Aditi’s office was a mess, papers and folders everywhere, the blinds hanging lopsided. Alex took it all in at a glance. “Someone broke in, didn’t they?” he guessed. Is that why we wasted an entire day? he wanted to add.
He and Ren took seats in the two chairs in front of the cluttered desk and their host took a seat behind it. Ren opened her notebook and awaited the reply. To Alex, this “junior internship” was just a cover story, but he was pretty sure it was more than that to Ren. It would be a sweet credential for the high-stakes demolition derby of high school admission in Manhattan. His friend’s open notebook and new, blue, first-day-of-school dress were all the confirmation he needed.
Dr. Aditi glanced over to confirm the door was closed, let out a long, tired breath, and began. “Yes,” she said. “We have a guard in the hospital, injected with horse tranquilizers, apparently. Lucky to be alive. All these folders on top of my desk were on the floor. All the files inside them, many confidential, were outside them.”
Ren scribbled furiously in her notebook. “The men from the airport?” she asked.
“Presumably,” said Aditi.
“What were they looking for?”
“That’s the question,” said Aditi. “The only folder I’m sure they took was the one on the Lost Spells. The official one, anyway. My private file is on the computer, hidden behind a few extra passwords. Don’t think they got through.”
Alex pictured the crew of bone-breakers from the airport: not exactly hacker types. But something still didn’t make sense. “But why would they want our info on the Lost Spells? They have the Spells. They stole them from the Met when they got my mom.”
“Perhaps they’re wondering what exactly it is they have,” said Aditi. She paused. “But we have to at least consider the possibility they don’t have the Spells.”
His head swam at the implications. “But …” he began, but then he shook it off. “Fine, whatever,” he said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. He didn’t agree, but he was sick of talking about this stuff. “We need to get moving, anyway.”
“Excuse me?” said Dr. Aditi, looking across her cluttered desk at him.
Alex returned the look. “We need to get moving. Like, now.”
“Do you think you’re in charge here?” she said.
“No,” he admitted, though he wished he was. “But it’s pretty obvious. We need to get out there and find out what’s going on. That’s why I’m —” He caught himself a little too late and looked over at Ren. “I mean, that’s why we’re here, right?”
Now they were both giving him looks.
“I’ll be blunt,” said Dr. Aditi. “You are here” — she leaned forward in her chair — “because you have both done this before, and you, Alex, are the only one who can use the scarab. We will need it if there is a Death Walker here — and it certainly seems that there is.”
“And we need the Book of the Dead, too,” said Ren.
Alex stared at her, annoyed that she was trying to score internship points while he was trying to get things moving. She had a point, though. The little display at the Campbell was no help. Dr. Aditi began to answer, but he cut her off. “Do you have one here?” he said. “Can we get it?”
She looked at him and made him wait a moment before responding. “This is the British Museum,” she said. “It can be arranged — at least a scroll or two. But first we must learn who or what we are dealing with.”
“So we’ll know which spell t
o use,” added Ren, and Alex wanted to tell her to knock it off already. He glanced down at her open notebook and saw that she was making a list: three numbered items, but he couldn’t quite read them.
“Precisely,” said Aditi.
“Yeah, congratulations for telling us what we already know,” he said.
“Don’t be a jerk,” said Ren.
“Then don’t be a teacher’s pet,” he said. She glared at him, but he was already turning back toward Aditi. “All any of that means is that we need to get out there and start looking.”
“First we need information,” said Aditi evenly.
The more overheated Alex got, the more her calmness bothered him. He began drumming his fingers on his thigh.
“And we should start by reviewing what we already have,” she continued, ignoring Alex’s eye roll. “We will ‘get out there’ when we absolutely need to. You are still twelve, after all, and in my charge.”
Alex slumped slightly in his chair. His fingers stopped. He couldn’t argue himself any older.
Aditi reached into the top drawer of her desk and pulled out two manila envelopes. “For now, I’ve printed up a file for each of you,” she said. “Everything that’s happened here to date. Look it over. See if anything rings a bell from the last time. I’ll set you up in a spare office.”
Alex couldn’t believe it: A Death Walker on the loose, red rain, his mom missing, The Order running wild, and she wants us to spend the day doing homework? He looked over at Ren, hoping for support, but she was eagerly reaching for her folder.
They needed to know who this new Death Walker was, but that wasn’t going to be in the newspapers. It’s not like they’d interviewed the thing.
As Aditi leaned forward to hand him his folder, the thin gold chain around her neck slipped out from under her collar. Alex stared. Would it be an amulet on the chain? What shape would it have? What powers? But instead, he caught a quick glimpse of a green gem, the size of a pencil eraser. He couldn’t believe it: She doesn’t even have an amulet.
He took the folder and sank back into his seat. Just great, he thought.
They followed Aditi to the spare office, and Ren had just one question for her on the way. “Are all the mummies still, you know, here?”
“It’s in the folder,” said Aditi. “But yes. One of them is getting a little … fidgety, but they’re all present and accounted for.”
When they arrived, it was more of a small conference room than an office, but it didn’t matter. Alex had no intention of staying long. He read enough to get the idea and then flipped through the rest. Ren read diligently, without comment. Alex could tell she was annoyed at him. He didn’t know why. Everything he’d said had been total common sense. Well, except maybe the teacher’s pet thing, he thought.
Finally, she sat back, pulled two printouts out of the stack, and began copying information down into her notebook.
“What?” he said.
“This is really interesting,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said.
“It’s these two,” she said, tipping the printouts toward him.
“I, uh, I didn’t get to those.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “It’s about the grave robberies,” she said. “They were both at the same place.”
Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought. “Is it far?”
“It’s in the north of the city,” she said, reaching for a third printout. “But probably not too far by train.”
Alex’s right knee began pumping up and down under the table. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Let’s check it out.”
The hardest part of sneaking out of the museum was convincing Ren to do it. After that, it was a piece of cake. Big museums were pretty much the same on either side of the Atlantic, and they blew through the offices with their well-practiced “staff kids” walks. They knew from the Met that no one ever asked for ID on the way out.
They hit the sidewalk in no time flat.
“Okay, where were the robberies?” said Alex, in full-on Go Mode now.
“Highgate Cemetery,” said Ren, a note of caution in her voice.
Alex got the impression that was supposed to mean something to him. He shook his head and made a ya got me expression.
“It’s super famous,” said Ren, as if that might ring a bell. “Really old and creepy?”
Alex shrugged. “How do we get there?”
Ren flipped to the maps at the back of her guidebook as they headed down the sidewalk. Alex saw a forest of mint green Post-it notes sticking out from the pages.
“From here we go to …” she began. Then she looked up, her eyes wide. “Goodge Street!”
Alex pumped his fist. The name of that Underground stop had been one of the clues that led them to London in the first place, after they’d found it on a scrap of burnt paper in The Order’s underground lair in New York.
Ren held up her hand for a high five, but Alex’s phone chirped with an incoming text and he left her hanging. They both froze as he checked the screen.
“Is it Dr. Aditi?” said Ren.
“Just Luke again,” he said, flicking his phone to silent. Ren did the same with hers: standard procedure when there was spy work to be done.
“Remember,” said Ren. “Just a quick look around and then we go straight back to the Campbell and tell Dr. Aditi we went back to study the folders. Which you should.”
“Sure,” said Alex. She was better at cover stories than he was, anyway. His had always been the same — too sick — and they had always been true. Not now. He had energy, and he had direction.
Goodge Street was on the Northern Line, a short walk away. They reached the station, bought their fare cards, and took the elevator down far below street level. “This is a lot deeper than the New York subway,” said Ren. “I don’t really like it.”
“Why not?” said Alex as the lift doors opened and they exited into tunnels lined in clean white tile.
“It’s like a tomb,” she said.
Alex nodded. He’d also been thinking about tombs a lot lately. He felt his scarab amulet bounce against his chest as they headed toward the train. The scarab was the symbol of the Returner, a traveler between the world of the living and the world of the dead. He’d been in both worlds now, and it was just starting to occur to him:
Maybe he still was.
They exited the Archway station and started up the long slope of Highgate Hill. The neighborhood got cleaner and quieter as they began to climb, smudged storefronts giving way to rows of pleasant town houses on either side of the street.
Alex wanted to head straight for the cemetery, but Ren insisted on taking a detour to look at some of the spots where people had disappeared. Alex moped a few steps behind as they took a road heading across the hill.
Before long, they stood on the sidewalk gazing across a tiny lawn at the house of the first two missing persons. It looked to be a two-family home, but a scrap of blue-and-white police tape still stuck to one of the door frames left no doubt which unit the boys had disappeared from.
“Two brothers, seventeen and eighteen,” said Ren, glancing down at a copy of a newspaper story. “Police thought maybe they’d just run away.”
“Until the next one,” said Alex.
It didn’t take them long to find that one. The houses weren’t exactly neighbors, but they were both near the bottom of the hill. They knew all about this missing person already.
“An eleven-year-old boy … Robbie,” said Ren.
Alex nodded. “The couple from the airport … their nephew,” he said. He could still see their eyes: wide and worried and rimmed with the dark circles of too many sleepless nights. They reminded him of how his mom had looked when his own health had begun to fail.
He shook his head hard, trying to dislodge the image. It was an old habit, and it had only gotten worse lately. Ren pretended not to notice, as usual. Instead, she flipped through her folder for the details. “He was on the ground floor,” she said
. “They found the window open the next morning.”
“Broken?” said Alex.
“Nope,” said Ren. “Opened from the inside.”
Alex’s eyes found the bedroom window and his blood ran cold. He’d seen a hyena-masked Order operative named Al-Dab’u controlling an entire construction crew. He’d seen a police detective Todtman had brainwashed. And now a boy had opened his own window and climbed out into the arms of the night. Whoever took these people — The Order or the Walker — he was pretty sure they ended up in the same place. He needed to know where that was.
“Let’s get to the cemetery,” he said.
“Well, there was another guy who disappeared,” said Ren. She pointed. “Sort of over and down, just past the bottom of the hill.”
Alex didn’t want to go backward. “It’s just going to be another stupid house,” he said.
“Houses aren’t stupid,” said Ren.
“Well, they aren’t smart,” he snapped. “And they’re not going to start flapping their doors and talking.”
“Why are you being so mean today?” said Ren.
“Why do you think?” he said.
Ren mumbled something under her breath, but he didn’t catch it.
“Which way to Highgate Cemetery?” he said.
She pointed to the very top of the hill.
Morbid thoughts slipped into Alex’s head as he began an uphill slog that would have been impossible for him a few weeks earlier. Soon he picked up his pace and took the lead. He knew they were getting closer to the old graveyard now.
He could feel his amulet getting warmer with each step.
Ren, on the other hand, felt a chill spreading up her spine. They were heading toward Highgate Cemetery. Older than some states back in the US, the place had been packed since World War I. Nearly a century of mossy overgrowth and benign neglect had left it famously spooky and reportedly haunted.
“There it is,” said Alex.
“I see it,” she said. “Slow down.”
A high iron fence surrounded the sprawling west cemetery, the older section — and the one where the robberies had taken place. It was closed now, except for a daily tour. Even if they managed to get in, they’d be the only ones inside. The only ones alive, anyway.
Amulet Keepers Page 5
