Amulet Keepers

by Michael Northrop

  An hour later, he was seated in a reading room on the third floor, in between the maps collection and Asian and African Studies. He had a heavy stack of old books on his desk and a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He began with Highgate. He needed to figure out who was in that tomb: why the Walker had robbed it in the first place, and why he’d go back. His eyes glazed like doughnuts as he hit plenty of history in two newer books, but no mention of an unmarked vault. He skeptically picked up a very old, wafer-thin volume called A Stroll Down Egyptian Avenue.

  The detailed description of the place sent a shiver through Alex. He remembered walking that same shadowy path — and what had waited at the end. And then: “As I walked on, I came upon the unnamed vault and spared a thought for the notorious archaeologist within …” Alex held his breath, but the book’s author spared only a thought, not a name.

  An archaeologist, thought Alex. He glanced at the heavy stack of books in front of him, sighed, and went to get a whole new stack. He knew more or less what he was looking for: a “notorious” British archaeologist who’d died between 1839, when Highgate opened, and 1904, when the old book was written. He still wished his mom was there to ask all the right questions at the information desk. My mom, he thought, or Ren.

  Ren’s head swam as she took a seat in front of a large painting, the old canvas thick and dark with layers of oil paint. Though she’d never seen it before, the painting was immediately familiar to her. It was by Rembrandt van Rijn, the Dutch painter whose work filled her favorite room back home at the Met. She followed the patterns in the paint slowly, allowing the faces and shapes they formed to come to her as if emerging from a lake.

  She felt a knot loosen somewhere inside her. She could almost imagine she was back at the Met, waiting for her dad to finish work. Almost. But other images shouldered their way in. She reached a dark corner of the canvas, and instead of seeing the shadows of a long-ago room, she spied the open mouth of a monster. She shivered deep down but didn’t look away.

  She felt like she saw the impossible almost every day now. On a good day, it was a dead cat trying to get free. On a bad day, it was a dead man trying to suck out her soul … She felt like a visitor in her own world. Her facts, her lists: What good did they do when anything could be true? She pushed on, out of the corner of the canvas and back up. She found a face, the little brush of color on the cheek, and ever so slightly, she smiled.

  And that’s when she understood why she was there, in that room, instead of at the British Library. Yes, Alex was being selfish, but that wasn’t it. She really was drained, and it wasn’t her body that needed recharging. It wasn’t her brain, either. She pulled her gaze back and took in the whole painting at once. It was beautiful.

  No, it was her soul. She didn’t understand how that was possible, either, but she knew this: It had nearly been torn from her, and now it needed to heal.

  “Hey, Ren,” she heard as someone sat down next to her.

  She turned. “Oh, hey, Luke,” she said, not quite managing to keep the surprise out of her voice.

  “Hey,” he said. “S’up?”

  “Uh, not much?” said Ren. “Just checking out the paintings.”

  “Right, right,” said Luke. “ ’Cause it’s a gallery. Me too.”

  Ren didn’t want to be rude, but … “Really?” she said. Luke was dressed as if a basketball game might break out at any moment. “Doesn’t, uh, doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

  “Oh, it’s not, but the camp makes us,” he said. “We have to ‘tackle’ cultural tasks. It’s supposed to increase our mental sharpness or something. I’d like to tackle whoever came up with the idea before I die of boredom.”

  “Right,” said Ren, picturing a small army of young jocks in knee-length shorts snickering at naked sculptures.

  “Who painted this thing?” said Luke, nodding at the Rembrandt.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  The look on his face, as blank as the day is long, told her he wasn’t. She sighed. “It’s a Rembrandt.”

  Luke unfolded a piece of paper and took a small pen from his shorts. He scanned the paper but put the pen away without making a mark. “Oh, man,” he said. “Already have that one.”

  “Bummer,” said Ren, immediately regretting her sarcasm. Luke had saved her at the airport.

  “Yeah,” said Luke ruefully. “Say, where’s A-Dawg at? Little twerp’s not answering my messages.”

  “His battery died,” she said, which was true enough.

  Luke nodded. “So where’s he at?”

  Ren considered the question — and how much she should tell Luke. “Reading,” she said. That also seemed true enough.

  Luke looked at her carefully. Does he know I’m ducking the question? Most of the time she thought Luke was as dumb as a rock, but sometimes she wasn’t so sure … “Like for his ‘internship’?” he said.

  The way he said it didn’t ease her suspicions, but a moment later he was standing up and heading out of the room. “There are more of these Rembrandts two floors down.”

  “Thanks,” she said, taking one last look and standing up herself.

  “Tell my cuz to call me, okay?” said Luke. “Laterz!”

  “Bye,” said Ren, but he was already gone. He had paintings to cross off his list.

  Ren checked her map. “Two floors down” … There was a level “–2” in the Sainsbury Wing — and it had “temporary exhibits.” That must be it, she thought.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and found a guard. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m looking for the Rembrandts?”

  “Ah, right, the special exhibit,” he said. “Far corner, last room.”

  He pointed the way. She thanked him and walked on, a spring in her step for the first time in dog years.

  She walked directly to the far corner, last room. Looking straight ahead, she didn’t notice that the guard from the stairs was following her.

  She entered the room like a summer breeze, light and warm. She looked around. She was the only one there, no people and no Rembrandts. These paintings were much earlier and entirely too English. She checked her map. The glass door swung shut behind her.

  “ ’Ello again,” she heard.

  The summer breeze turned to an arctic chill. She’d been so careful. Staying out of sight, blending in on the city’s crowded sidewalks. But in this museum, feeling better for just a moment, she’d let her guard down. And now, she would pay for it.

  She looked up and saw the thug from the airport: Liam, the van man. Behind him, through the closed glass door, she saw the guard from the stairs, taking up a post outside the room. So stupid, she thought.

  “What do you want?” she said, stalling for time as her hand found her pocket.

  “Nuffin’ really,” said Liam, a wicked grin lifting his thick lips. “No fuss. Jus’ come wiv us.”

  Us? thought Ren. How many of them are there?

  She ripped her phone free as she turned and ran. There was nowhere to go, no other exit, but she put the room’s one bench in between her and the towering thug. As she shifted her weight from left to right, trying to guess which side he’d attack from, her shaking fingers fumbled across the screen. She managed to open her text messages. Liam had taken something from his pocket, too: a syringe.

  Horse tranquilizer. It had nearly killed a guard twice her size. Liam took two quick steps and lunged. He stabbed out with the syringe as she punched her finger at the edge of the screen: Send! No bars down here. But maybe it would still —

  “Aaaah!” she screamed as the point of the needle raked across her left arm. A long, deep scratch — but had any of the tranquilizer gotten in? She ran around the right of the bench as Liam ran around the left. He was still behind it as she shot back across the room toward the door.

  “Stop ’er!” he roared.

  The guard turned around in time to see Ren throwing her whole body, messenger bag first, into the door. The thick safety glass smacked him in the face, an
d she squeezed out the small gap as Liam thundered up behind her.

  The next room was empty, too, but she could see the exit at the far end. Desperate for escape, pulse pounding in her ears, she ran. Two steps, three — and she was yanked back. The guard had recovered in time to grab the strap of her messenger bag. He reeled her in like a wriggling trout as the drop of tranquilizer began to take effect and her vision began to blur.

  Alex was in a small basement reading room at the tail end of a search for one thick out-of-print book. He opened Major British Archaeologists of the Nineteenth Century and flipped to the index at the back. First things first, he thought. What made an archaeologist notorious in the nineteenth century?

  He knew the answer immediately: It was a touchy subject in the museum world. He flipped to the T’s: “tomb raiding.” Early on, he knew, it had been a free-for-all, with European powers openly plundering Egyptian tombs. Even Napoleon had gotten into the act. But this book covered a time that included the first rules, too, the first laws and restrictions. He scanned down the long list of page numbers for tomb raiding … Clearly not everyone was following the rules.

  As he eyeballed the entries and wondered where to start, something occurred to him. Not even a thought yet, just an itch in his brain, a feeling that he was missing something. His mind flashed back to Highgate: the broken lid of the grave, the broken door of the crypt. Robbed, he thought. Raided.

  The thought took shape: Was he on the trail of the crypt owner, or the Death Walker? He remembered his original goal: a bad British dude with a strong connection to Egypt … Sounded a lot like a notorious archaeologist to him.

  He flipped to the M’s. There were dozens of entries for “mummies” … But only one for “mummified.” It took him to Chapter 17, devoted entirely to one man:

  “Discharged from the military for his habit of torturing prisoners, Captain Winfred Willoughby began a second career. He called himself a ‘gentleman archaeologist’ but was, by all accounts, a professional tomb raider. This too ended when he fled Egypt while awaiting trial for multiple counts of theft and the murder of a rival archaeologist and two young diggers …”

  Yeah, thought Alex, that’s a bad British dude, all right.

  He skipped down the page:

  “Seeking to ensure his own ‘immortality,’ Willoughby set aside a large sum in his will to have his body mummified. With no experienced practitioners available, however, the procedure was botched. According to contemporary accounts, the ceremonial washing was skipped, and while the other five steps were attempted” — Alex ran through them in his head: removing the organs, drying the body with salts, packing it with more salts, sealing it with resin, and wrapping it all up — “the hired help barely knew which end to hold the de-braining hook by …”

  Alex paused to turn the page, his head abuzz: a botched mummy, a mummy made by amateurs … He remembered the Walker’s ravaged voice and mottled skin. He read the last few lines:

  “The mummification was such a scandal at the time that the cemetery where he was interred refused to list Willoughby’s name on his crypt.”

  A crude early photo filled the rest of the page, blurry black-and-white. The subject looked smaller and less impressive than the figure they’d encountered at Highgate. His shoulders were slighter, his chest less broad, but the face and even the outfit left no doubt.

  No one broke into that mausoleum.

  Willoughby broke out.

  Alex snapped the book shut, and two names floated through his thunderstruck mind: that of his new enemy and that of his best friend.

  I’ve got to tell Ren, he thought as he took the stairs two at a time. He was eager to see the sun after his dark discoveries, and ready to make amends. He pictured her face lighting up as he relayed the info.

  Midway up the stairs, reception returned and his phone began buzzing with missed messages. Aditi, he thought. Now I’m going to get it. He glanced down at the screen as he reached the top of the stairs. He was half-right: Someone was in trouble. He nearly ran face-first into the door as he read Ren’s message:

  bAsement nat gallery cornerd VAN MAN1 HELP

  His heart sank as his pulse soared. He raced toward the exit. He wasn’t even going to read the second text — the latest from Luke — but the first line was already visible on the screen:

  Just saw R at galory. Where u at playa …

  Alex swiped back to Ren’s message and nearly put his finger through the screen as he punched her name to call her. He went through the front door of the library as his call went to voice mail.

  He asked the first three people he saw how to get to the National Gallery. The third guy knew: He had to take the Northern Line again, heading south this time. Alex burned with impatience as he listened. Van Man — Liam — could already have her. He wished he was there already, and suddenly he realized he knew someone who was. “Saw R at galory.”

  As he sprinted across the street toward Euston station, he punched his phone again. The time had come to return his cousin’s messages. The Order had its muscle. The friends needed some of their own.

  It was a quick, urgent phone call. With someone else, Alex might have had to convince him that the danger was real. But Luke had already seen Liam in action. His last words before Alex lost signal in the station: “I’m on it!”

  The train took minutes but felt like hours. When it finally pulled into Charing Cross, Alex burst through the door and broke free ahead of the pack like a racehorse. He dodged fast cars and slow walkers and flew into the grand old building that housed the National Gallery. The first guards protested his pace — “Slow down there!” — but it wasn’t until the fourth guard that he ran into real trouble. The man was standing at the top of the stairwell, and Alex recognized his face from the airport.

  Alex grasped his amulet as they raced toward each other. Half a dozen museumgoers turned to watch. From their vantage point behind the action, it looked like the boy had pushed the guard with incredible force, sending him tumbling down the stairs. Only the “guard” had a clear view of what had really happened. The force had come from the boy’s hand, all right, but he had never touched him.

  Alex charged down the stairs, hopping over the tumbling thug and leaving him lying on the landing. But when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found himself in a battleground. Ren was lying on the floor, eyes closed and hands tied. Liam was kneeling next to her, wearing her messenger bag over his shoulder and wrapping her bound wrists with a scarf. Luke was backed into a corner facing two more thugs, one wearing a guard’s uniform.

  “ ’Bout time, cuz!” Luke called. He was standing in a wide stance with his arms out and his palms up, like an NFL lineman. He was cornered, but neither of the thugs seemed too eager to rush in on him. Alex could only imagine the tackles and turns his cousin had used to stall them so far.

  Liam followed Luke’s eyes and spun around. He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see Alex. “Look ’ooz ’ere!” bellowed the big man.

  Alex gritted his teeth and squeezed down hard on his amulet. The wind that comes before the rain, he thought as he raised his free hand. He squeezed his fingers into a sharp point and corrected himself. The wind that comes before the pain.

  A lance of concentrated air caught Liam directly under his chin, sending him reeling backward. As the other thugs turned and shifted to get out of the way, Luke Quicksilvered out between them. Without slowing down, he lowered his shoulder and crashed into the back of Liam’s legs, sending the big man toppling over him and onto the floor.

  “How’d you do that?” said Luke, a look of sheer bafflement on his flushed face. “It looked like you just, like, pointed at him.”

  Alex glanced down at the scarab. I’ll have to tell him, he thought. But it would have to wait. “Behind you!” called Alex.

  The other thugs were scrambling over their lardy leader as Liam rubbed his head and tried to right himself. Luke darted to the right and then quickly cut back to the left, leaving the closest bru
iser grasping at air.

  The thugs switched targets and rushed toward Alex. He couldn’t knock them both down at once with his wind power. His eyes sought out the biggest, heaviest object in the room. Unfortunately for Liam, that was him. Alex didn’t know if he could hoist that much weight, but as the thugs raced toward him, they also raced toward Ren. She was defenseless on the floor, and the thought that they would kick into her filled him with rage — and power.

  As Liam rose onto one knee, his body jerked violently off the floor and spun toward the other two men. His big frame caught them at shoulder level and all three landed in a heap on the cold tile floor, grunting from pain and surprise.

  “All right, seriously, what was that?” said Luke, rushing up to join Alex. “There’s no way that big dude could jump like that.”

  They both instinctively took up a defensive position over Ren’s limp body.

  “Get the one wiv da trinket!” shouted Liam, climbing back to his feet. “ ’E’s the one we really want. Cut ’is bleedin’ ’ands off if ya need to!”

  Alex heard a pair of mechanical shnikks as the two thugs rose from the floor with switchblades in their hands. The sharp steel caught the white museum light.

  Seven or eight museumgoers had come down the stairs to see what all the shouting was about. “They’ve got knives!” one of them shouted, and a real museum guard came running up.

  Liam surveyed the growing crowd with a snarl of disdain. He glanced down at Ren. Alex caught his gaze and gave him a look of his own: Don’t even think about it.

  “You ain’t seen the last of us, boys!” called Liam.

  The thugs bolted toward the stairs. The tourists shrieked and parted to let the knife-wielding goons pass. The lone guard made a valiant attempt at doing his duty, but Liam dismissed him with one powerful punch to the gut.