Outside the train station, the smell of old magic was stronger and mixed with the heat and the dust and something a little bit ... gamey. I turned to find a small herd of donkeys and donkey boys waiting nearby. That was it: the smell of donkey.
Finally all of our belongings were collected and we loaded ourselves and our luggage into the conveyance. The driver slapped the reins and the carriage moved forward.
The streets of Cairo still looked the same as on my first trip. Mostly. They were lined on either side by high narrow houses with second and third stories that jutted out over the street. Windows were covered with elaborate latticework that looked like exotic lace. And the colors! Violet, mulberry, olive, peach, and crimson, with the occasional flash of silver or brass. It was as though someone had spilled a paint box in the sand. Even so, it seemed to me that the shadows were darker, deeper, and more threatening than on my last visit.
I kept a careful eye on the men in the street—barefoot Egyptians in tattered cotton, Bedouin in long, billowing robes, effendis in their red fezzes—looking for any sign of the Serpents of Chaos, but everyone seemed as he should.
When at last the hotel came into view, my sigh of relief was cut short as a swarm of vendors and street sellers descended upon our carriage like one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. They pressed around on all sides, trying to sell whips, fly swatters, cork-lined hats, or locally crafted fans. One man carried an enormous stick covered with dangling shoes and nearly beaned us with it as he tried to show us his wares.
The hotel doorman—a giant, burly fellow—waded through the bodies, shooing them aside as if he were brushing crumbs from a table. He reached our carriage and cleared enough space for us to get out. Then he planted himself on one side of us and Mr. Bing took up the other as we made our way to the safety of the hotel lobby. The cool quiet was like a balm to our battered souls after the pandemonium of the morning.
Porters were sent to fetch our trunks and we were quickly shown to our rooms. Mr. Bing offered to wait downstairs while we freshened up, then escort us to the Antiquities Service.
"Don't dawdle, Theodosia," Mother said, when we reached our suite. "We've got to meet Mr. Bing in a quarter of an hour. I don't want to keep Monsieur Maspero waiting any longer than necessary."
"Yes, Mother," I said, then thump-bumped my way into the room where the porter had set my trunks. I nudged the door closed with the toe of my boot, then set my satchel and basket on the floor. I knelt down to open the wicker basket. "We're here," I told Isis. "You can come out now."
As soon as I lifted the lid, she shot out of the basket like a black lightning bolt. She stalked around the room, stopping to sniff here and there, trying to determine if the room met with her approval.
While she was deciding, I rifled through my trunk, looking for the least-wrinkled frock I could find. The butterscotch-colored taffeta seemed to have traveled the best, so I took it out and shook the wrinkles from it. By that time, Isis had returned to me and bumped her head against my ankle. "Is everything all right, then?" I asked her.
She meowed, and I bent to scratch her behind the ears. She ducked away from my hand and meowed again, this time prancing over to the window.
"Of course!" I said, horrified that I hadn't thought of it first. "You must be desperate to go out." I hurried over to the window, happy to see that it opened onto a garden of some sort. "But do hurry back," I told her. "I'll need you to stand guard while I'm out with Mother."
Isis gave a short warble of consent, then leaped outside and disappeared among the bushes.
I stepped out of my travel-stained gown and went to wash the dust from my face, neck, and arms. Scrubbed clean, I stared at myself in the mirror, looking for any sign that my eyes might be beginning to turn brown like Mother's. But no luck. They hadn't gotten more blue like Father's, either. They were still the color of swamp mud and unlike anyone else's in my family.
Answers, I promised myself. I would find answers on this trip. That was the other reason I had agreed to keep my promise to Awi Bubu.
I went back to the bed and slipped into my clean frock. I wished desperately that there was some way to carry a five-pound stone tablet on me, but there simply wasn't. I would have to leave the Emerald Tablet where it was. I was very careful to not let myself think of the tablet's hiding place in case someone skilled in Egyptian magic might be able to snatch it from my mind.
Just as I'd finished brushing my hair, Isis appeared on the windowsill. "Perfect timing—oh, what have you got?" Something small and wriggly dangled from her jaws. I hurried over to shut the window and lock it tightly behind her.
"Theo? Are you ready?" Mother called out.
"Coming!" I called back. I turned to Isis. "Don't let anyone near our treasure. I'm counting on you."
She gave a low-throated growl, then stalked back to her basket, climbed in, and began to make crunching sounds.
"Er, enjoy your dinner." I glanced at the reticule on the bed. I thought briefly of putting it in one of the drawers, but a reticule was the first thing even a common thief would look for. No, it seemed best to bring it with me. Sighing, I slipped the wretched thing onto my wrist and went to find my mother and Mr. Bing.
CHAPTER TWO
The Mother of All Museums
IF YOU'VE EVER HAD THE EXPERIENCE of being given a lovely apple, all rosy and full of promise, only to bite into it and find a wormy, rotten core, then you will understand the feeling I had when I first stepped into the Egyptian Museum.
It was a large, impressive building full of hundreds—if not thousands—of ancient artifacts I would never see anywhere else. However, when I stepped inside, the force of the black magic, heka, and lingering mut nearly brought me to my knees. In fact, I actually stumbled as the magic rising off centuries' worth of discoveries pressed down on me. It felt as if every artifact in the place had left a trace of itself behind in the vestibule of the museum, like Mother's perfume when she leaves a room. Only this wasn't the charming smell of lilacs or lily of the valley. This was a thick miasma of magic and curses. Far removed from the source of their power, they buzzed faintly through the air, an invisible swarm of tiny, malevolent insects. With so much of it contained in such a confined space, there was the distinct sense of pressure building—like the air just before a thunderstorm.
"Theo, are you all right?" Mother asked, the worry in her voice overlaid with a tinge of annoyance. The word peculiar lay unspoken in the air between us.
"Yes, Mother. Just missed a step, that's all." I held myself as still as possible and let the noxious brew wash over me, trying to get acclimated to it.
Mr. Bing peered down at me. "Are you certain? You look rather pale..."
I waved my hand dismissively. "I'm sure it's the heat. I'm not quite used to the weather here, and then the sudden cool of the museum. It will just take me a moment to adjust."
"Well, if you're sure, Monsieur Maspero's office is this way." Bing led us through the vestibule and past a large, tantalizing room lined with rows and rows of sarcophagi. At the far end of the room sat two large statues, as if holding court over all the tourists who dared to interrupt the rest of the ancient pharaohs. My feet itched to turn down those steps, but Bing was moving along at a brisk clip and I had already been scolded once for dawdling.
We proceeded down a hallway lined with offices until Mr. Bing finally stopped in front of a large door. "Mrs. Throckmorton," he said, "you may go in, as Monsieur Maspero is expecting you. While the two of you meet, perhaps you would allow me to give your daughter a tour of our museum? Find her some cool refreshment?"
"You are too kind, Mr. Bing," Mother said. "That would be lovely."
I was torn. If I went with Bing, I would not hear what Mother and M. Maspero discussed. However, Bing might have an important message from Wigmere. Not only that, this could be my only chance to see all the wonders in the museum. Besides, I already knew the bulk of Mother's plan—it had been my plan first, after all, to come to Luxor and look for clues to what w
e suspected was a grand temple built by Thutmose III. In the end, I decided I could afford to take Bing up on his offer. "Thank you, Mr. Bing. I would like that very much."
He opened the door for Mother, then closed it after her and turned to me. "This way."
As we made our way back down the hallway, I was dying to ask if he carried a message from Wigmere, but a public hallway didn't seem the right place for such a question. Especially since I had no idea how many at the Antiquities Service were part of the Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers. It was a brilliant cover, I thought, hiding a secret organization dedicated to minimizing the corrosive effects of ancient magic and keeping it out of the wrong hands inside the Antiquities Service.
However, the longer I thump-bumped along behind Bing, the clearer it became that he was leading me far away from the exhibits. Perhaps we were heading for the refreshment first. I certainly wouldn't refuse something cool to drink and a place to sit down and grow accustomed to the thick pool of heka I was wading through.
Except, as we went farther and deeper into the museum, we seemed to have passed all the offices altogether. A faint niggle of concern settled along my shoulders and I remembered the rather maniacal look he'd had in the train station when he'd first spotted us. "Mr. Bing, where are you taking me, exactly?"
He looked over his shoulder at me and I was struck again by his intense eagerness. To make matters worse, his hair had escaped the confines of whatever tonic he'd combed it with that morning and was starting to stick up in odd places, which made him look slightly demented. "We're almost there," he said.
I knew he meant it to be reassuring, but instead it was as if someone had just flipped a caution switch inside me. I wasn't sure I should be following him.
I mean, what did I know about him, really? He said Wigmere had sent him, but surely any of the Serpents of Chaos could pretend he had been sent by the head of the Chosen Keepers. I abruptly stopped walking.
It took Bing a half dozen steps before he realized I was no longer following him. He stopped, then looked around. "What are you doing back there?" he asked.
I folded my arms and tried to look implacable. "I'm not taking another step until you tell me exactly where we're going."
He quickly retraced his steps until he was standing right in front of me. "I told you. Wigmere sent me," he said in quiet tones.
"Yes, but anyone could say that, couldn't he? And I would have no way of knowing whether or not he was telling the truth."
He opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it again. He looked crushed. "You mean you don't trust me?"
I hated to hurt his feelings, but one thing I've learned in the past few months is that everyone is suspect until proven innocent. I thought briefly of asking to see his wedjat eye tattoo—the one that all Chosen Keepers had—but decided against it. For one, if he was an impostor, I didn't want to spill the beans about their secret tattoo. Second, it was beyond scandalous—even for me—to wander around demanding to see strange men's chests. "Let's just say I have a cautious nature."
His smile put me a bit off balance. "And so you should, but really, there is nothing to worry about. We're almost there and then you'll see. Here, come." As he spoke, he reached out to grab my arm.
I tried to leap back out of his reach, but he had rather longish arms and was able to snag me anyway. "Let go," I said, pulling on my arm with all my strength.
"I told you," he grunted, trying to tug me down the hall. "We're almost there." Suddenly, he seemed to remember something and stopped tugging. Without him pulling on me, I tumbled backwards, nearly landing end over teakettle.
"I forgot! I'm supposed to tell you, I'm a traveler, come from the West."
Hearing the code phrase that Wigmere had given me cleared my suspicions instantly. "Well, honestly! Why didn't you say so in the first place?" I asked, straightening my frock.
"Sorry," he said with a sheepish grin. "I'm rather new at this."
Clearly, I thought.
Bing resumed walking and I fell into step behind him. He led me down the hall to a door, which led to another hallway, which in turn led to a back staircase of some sort. "Where are we going?" I asked.
"Lord Wigmere wanted you to meet with one of our senior research and development team members before you left for Luxor." Mr. Bing stopped in front of a small door. At first it appeared to be a closet—a closet full of an amazing collection of ancient Egyptian bric-a-brac. There were medium-size obelisks leaning up against the wall, plinths, busts of ancient Egyptians carved from stone, unused stone tablets and stele stacked atop one another like dinner plates. A fine layer of dust lay over everything. Mr. Bing went over to a towering wooden mummy case propped against the wall. As he went to lift the lid off, I saw that it was hinged, and it swung open to reveal a door.
"Very clever," I said admiringly.
"Isn't it, though?" Mr. Bing beamed and motioned for me to go first.
The passageway led to a large, winding stairway that seemed to disappear deep into the bowels of the museum. As we clattered down the stairs, the orb in my reticule bruised my leg with each step. The stairs were steep, almost a ladder, really, and they were circular. We went round and round, so that by the time we reached the bottom, my brain was spinning inside my head. "Where are we?" I asked. The walls down here seemed to be of rock rather than wood or plaster.
"It's an underground chamber, built under the museum, dug right into the ground itself," Mr. Bing explained. "Most people don't even know it's here." He crossed over to two large steel doors and pressed a buzzer on the wall. There was a loud clunk as something unlocked, and then Mr. Bing pushed open the door. "Here she is, Professor. I'll come back for her in a bit." Then he stepped back out and closed the door behind me with a resounding clang.
I found myself in a large, cavernous room. Dark shadows obscured the high ceiling, and it was easy to imagine hundreds of tons of rock and Cairo streets far above.
A scraping noise came from a distant corner of the room and my pulse quickened.
"Hello?" I called out.
Rows of tables and benches swept out in front of me, stacked high with all manner of strange things: blocks of paraffin wax, rolls of beeswax, crocodile eggs, a mortar and pestle, long skinny reeds, papyrus leaves. There was even a large fish tank in the middle of the room, filled with what I thought might be oxyrinchus fish.
Half a dozen mummies in various states of undress lined one wall. Next to them were wine kegs, huge jars of golden honey, slabs of clay and unworked stone—basalt, granite, and alabaster. Thin sheets of gold and lead were scattered on one of the tables like playing cards, while a thick pot of what smelled like bitumen boiled sluggishly nearby.
"I'll be with you in just a moment," a voice called out.
I turned toward the voice, relieved to see a thin man hovering over one of the tables. He was taller even than Father and had stooped shoulders, as if he'd spent his entire life in a room that was too short for him. He wore a white canvas coat that came down to the knees of his plaid trousers. His hair was white and put me in mind of a dandelion just before all the fuzz flies away in a stiff breeze.
"There we go," the man said. "Done." He set whatever he'd been working on down and looked up at me. I gasped and took a step back, ready to run for the door. His face was half metal and leather, and his eyes were enormous, the size of billiard balls, as they swiveled crazily in my direction.
CHAPTER THREE
Professor Quillings, I Presume?
"OH, SORRY ABOUT THAT." He reached up and pushed the leather and brass up onto the top of his head. As his eyes went back to normal size, my heart started to beat again. He'd been wearing magnifying goggles.
The man came out from behind his table, smoothed down his hair (to no avail, I might add), and straightened his orange bow tie, which was singed at one end. "Miss Throckmorton?" He held out a hand and peered down at me.
I bobbed a quick curtsy. "Yes, sir, and whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?"
"Dr. Seymour Quillings. Head of the Brotherhood of Chosen Keepers Research and Development branch."
"How do you do?" I turned my gaze from the strange man back to the room behind us. "This is a lovely laboratory you have. You must do nothing but remove curses from dawn to dusk!"
He chuckled. "Not exactly. Wigmere's been telling me the most extraordinary things about you."
"Really?" That may or may not have been a good thing, I realized.
"Yes, about your remarkable abilities. Not to mention some of the very clever ideas you've been using in your work with ancient magic."
"Oh. Well. Thank you."
"I was especially fascinated by your use of wax and the moonlight. Fascinating. I've been doing some further experiments on those principles myself."
"Well, that's lovely, and I'm sure you'll find some, er, wonderful results." For all her emphasis on etiquette, Grandmother Throckmorton and her governesses neglected to teach me the proper response when discussing a person's experiments.
He stared at me a moment longer, as if I were a strange mechanism he were trying to understand, then clapped his hands together suddenly, startling me. "Well, I guess you'll be wondering why you're here?"
"I was, rather."
"Knowing the dangers and challenges you'll face, Wigmere did not want you going out unprepared. He wanted to outfit you properly for your mission."
I warmed at his words. Even from thousands of miles away, Wigmere was still looking out for me. "Excellent! What sorts of tools would those be?"
"Well, the first priority is to be sure you don't disappear. Wigmere did say you have an uncanny knack for finding trouble."
"I would have said trouble has an uncanny knack for finding me," I corrected, as the distinction seemed important.
"Either way, we don't want to lose track of you. Here, let me show you." He led me to a cluttered worktable that was full of springs and cogs and small chisels and screwdrivers the size of sewing needles. He brushed aside some brass shavings and tiny silver screws. "Here we go," he said triumphantly.