Amulet Keepers

by Michael Northrop

  They reached the side gate together and slammed into it, pulling it shut behind them and sprinting straight down Swain’s Lane. They blew past the home of the two missing teens and didn’t stop until they’d reached the small cluster of houses and shops at the bottom. Sidewalk passersby stared at them, but Alex was too worried about Ren to notice. Finally, she turned to him. Her first words were forced, squeezed out through big greedy breaths. “He must’ve … been there … to … rob another … grave.”

  Alex nodded, relieved to hear her voice again. They took a few more looks behind them, then found a bench and plopped down, collecting themselves. Alex looked up and found the sun, its cottony white outline just visible behind a bank of late-day clouds. Ren did the same thing. The warmth felt good.

  Alex took out his cell phone to call Aditi, but the battery was completely drained, dead as a rock. He didn’t have to wonder why or ask Ren if hers was, too. The two sat side by side and pointed their faces at the sky, their eyes closed against the pale sun, their lips purple from the cold.

  Dr. Aditi nodded politely as the cemetery lady let her have it.

  “Yes, well, we have interns here, too, but ours know their place!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Aditi. “I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

  “Yes, well, I should hope it doesn’t.”

  Aditi played her best card: “They are Americans. Spirited, but …”

  “That’s one word for it, I suppose,” said the lady. She seemed to consider something, and then let it go. “Yes, yes, they certainly were spirited. And resourceful. I have no idea how they got that lock open.”

  “I think they teach that in the schools over there,” said Aditi.

  The lady shook her head lightly and let her frown slip away.

  “Yanks …” said Aditi, and the two shared a playful, conspiratorial smile.

  The lady handed her the letter Ren had dropped, the number she’d used to call her circled in blue pen at the top. “Yours, I believe.”

  “Thank you,” Aditi said, taking the list of emergency contact numbers. “Let me know if the museum can do anything for you here.”

  “Always looking for funds.”

  Another shared smile, then the gatekeeper headed back to her post and Aditi headed up the hillside. She sighed heavily as she topped the stone stairs at the edge of the courtyard and saw the slightly muddy main path. She was wearing entirely the wrong shoes for this.

  “Alex! Ren!” she called. “Come along, please! I’m not sure it’s quite … safe here!”

  She paused to look up the path and then cast a quick, nervous glance over her shoulder. She checked her phone: still no response to her calls and texts. She pocketed it and began to trudge upward. Todtman had warned her about the kids’ “initiative,” as he called it. He seemed to think it was a good thing. She wasn’t so sure.

  “Alex!” she called. “Ren!”

  No answer. She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and then continued on. She turned a gentle corner and saw a dead tree branch, split in two and lying in the middle of the walking path.

  Strange, she thought. The rest of the grounds seemed well maintained.

  She looked up to make sure another branch wasn’t about to fall but heard heavy footsteps behind her. “Alex?” she said, turning. “Re …” Her voice trailed away.

  The response came in a ragged rasp: “ ’Ello, luv.”

  Two strong hands clamped down on her shoulders. She tried to shake free. She struggled hard and did everything right: two hands on one wrist, find the weak point. It didn’t matter. His grip was like stone.

  Broken sounds spilled from the thing’s lips, and this time Aditi caught only one word: “Hungry.” The tussle with the Amulet Keeper had taken something out of him. He needed to feed.

  Aditi glared up at the man. He was disfigured by both death and afterlife, but she recognized him just the same. “I know you,” she said, and then spat in his face.

  If he reaches up to wipe it away, she thought, maybe I can slip free.

  He didn’t.

  His powerful hands dug into her shoulders as he opened his mouth wide and showed her oblivion. The world went cold, and the last thing she saw as her eyes turned white and her lips edged past purple was her very self, slipping away.

  Alex’s head was throbbing as they rode the train back to the Campbell. Using the amulet had always left him with headaches, and they seemed to be getting worse the better he got with the thing. He turned things over in his aching head as best he could. One grave robbed of gold, another containing Egyptian jars, and a Death Walker in … what, exactly? He wasn’t entirely sure what was under all that filth, but he thought it might be … khaki? He pictured the man’s face: damaged but pale. Replayed his words: ragged and torn but English. But how could a Death Walker — revived by the Lost Spells of ancient Egypt — be English?

  He turned his tender head toward Ren. If anyone could piece this together … But he could see right away that she wasn’t up for a debriefing. Shivering slightly in the seat next to him, she looked small and fragile.

  She saw him looking. “I feel so … hollow,” she said. She opened her mouth to clarify but couldn’t find the words. She gazed down at the train floor, as if she might have dropped them there.

  All Alex could do was nod. He knew exactly what she meant. He knew the ache in her heart and the dog-just-died feeling in her gut. He knew it well. His soul had slipped away before, after all. They rode on in heavy silence.

  By the time they reached the Campbell Collection, his headache was a full-blown migraine. Somers was behind the front desk, and he had a single message to relay: “Aditi’s looking for you. You are both in trouble.”

  They knew that already. There was a Death Walker in town. The two slunk upstairs, past a handful of late-day browsers. Alex rifled through his stuff for his bottle of headache pills, took two too many, and collapsed onto his bed.

  The pressure inside his skull was unbearable. He edged toward unconsciousness, and hoped for it. Ren called through the wall, something about messages. She’d plugged in her phone.

  Alex didn’t answer. He’d begun the day in a dark mood. He would end it in darkness.

  Alex slept straight through the evening and through most of the night, too. But after loading up at the drinking fountain before bed, he woke up with a pressing need around four a.m. All that remained of his headache was a fuzzy, unfocused feeling and a dull ache in one temple. His main problem now: The museum’s restrooms were all the way down on the second floor. He eyed the chamber pot on his way out of the room, but he still had his pride.

  He stumbled blearily down the dark stairwell.

  He couldn’t tell if his amulet felt a little hot as he passed the third floor or if he’d just been sleeping on it again. He reached his destination and pushed through the men’s room door. He looked like death in the mirror under the fluorescent lights.

  Flush with success, he headed back up the stairs. But he was more awake now — and the amulet did feel hot. Halfway up the last flight of stairs, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He wasn’t alone.

  Had they been followed?

  A noise behind him.

  He fumbled for his amulet and swung around, nearly falling.

  But it was too late … The cat had already brushed past him, tattered linen against flannel pajama. The little mummy looked back ever so slightly as she continued up the stairs, and Alex caught a glimpse of one glowing green eye.

  He clutched the railing and tried to catch his breath. “Ah … you scared … you little …”

  He saw her again a few minutes later, already curled up outside Ren’s door. Is she asleep? he wondered as he carefully stepped over her. Hasn’t she been doing that for, like, four thousand years?

  He closed his door, mildly creeped out but reassured by the thing’s utter lack of interest in him. A door to the afterlife had opened when his mom used the Lost Spells. He was just glad that not everyt
hing that slipped out was trying to kill him. He fell back to sleep and woke up again a little after six a.m. He unplugged his phone and saw all the missed calls and unanswered texts Aditi had left the day before, laced with ones from Luke. They both wanted to know where he was. It was too early to call Aditi back, but he bit the bullet and answered the last of her texts.

  He sat up and looked out the window. His head felt clear, the tenderness gone. He turned and looked at the mint-green wall. Ren was on the other side. His stone-cold amulet told him that the mummy cat had faded along with the darkness.

  He wanted to wake Ren up and get an early start on things. The way he saw it, they’d already wasted an entire night. But nothing would be open yet, and he had a vague sense that maybe he hadn’t been the greatest to her yesterday. He lowered his head to his pillow and let her sleep.

  He passed the time turning over the new information they’d gained at the cemetery. By the time he heard a faint stirring through the wall, it was almost nine. His patience had run out and he was once again anxious to get started. Plus, it was almost time for Dr. Aditi to pick them up. But the sound faded quickly.

  He raised his hand, hesitated for just a moment … and knocked.

  Come on, he was thinking. We’ve got to get going! Yeah, yesterday was rough — but that was yesterday.

  No response. He knocked again.

  “WHAT?” called Ren.

  Alex heard the edge in her voice, but he pushed past it. This was too important. “Time to get going!” he called.

  Ren didn’t answer, but he heard her thumping around loudly in her room. One shoe dropped, and then the other. He was already dressed, so he got up and walked toward his door. “Meet you in the hallway,” he said.

  He double-checked that the cat was gone and then took up the same post outside her door. He had to wait for a while, but eventually the door opened.

  “Uh, you look awful,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Ren. She ran a hand through her rumpled hair, but that wasn’t the problem. Her eyes were glassy, her lips still a little too dark …

  “I feel kinda drained,” she admitted. “So sleepy.”

  “We’re already late!”

  Ren’s glassy eyes went wide. “Dr. Aditi!” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Almost nine thirty!”

  The plan was for Aditi to pick them up a little before nine each day, on her way to the museum. They rushed down to the curb, waving at Somers, who was looking a little sleep-rumpled himself. They pushed through the front doors and into the first truly, cloudlessly sunny day since their arrival. The light hurt Alex’s eyes and he blinked against it as he scanned the pavement.

  But the little lot was empty except for Somers’s old green shoe box of a car.

  “Not here,” said Ren.

  “We really are in trouble,” said Alex.

  Ren could see Alex getting antsy again as they waited by the curb, scanning the street for familiar cars. He’d nearly gotten her killed, and all he’d had to say about it so far was “you look awful” and “you’re late.”

  “Hey,” he said. “What did the Walker’s outfit look like to you?”

  “His outfit?” said Ren sleepily.

  “Yeah, like, what material?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember an image she’d been trying to forget. “I don’t know what material it was,” she said finally, “but it had buttons.”

  “Yeah!” said Alex, loud enough to startle her. “They didn’t button their clothing in ancient Egypt.”

  “You don’t have to shout. We’re the only ones here.”

  He looked at her blankly and continued. “So this one’s not Egyptian, and not as old. Like, I don’t know how old, but definitely in the button age.”

  Alex was talking fast, rolling over Ren’s groggy mind.

  “He wasn’t exactly young,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  As out of it as she was, she still didn’t want to sound stupid. She searched her sleepy brain for something smart. “But no one makes mummies anymore,” she managed. She could still picture the Stung Man rising from his ancient sarcophagus, and later, once he’d replaced his wrappings with robes.

  Alex just shrugged. “People aren’t supposed to be filling English crypts with provisions for the afterlife, either,” he said. “That must’ve been what he was there for: going back for seconds.”

  But then something did occur to Ren, something smart. She pictured the hand in the newspaper photo, covered in fresh linen. “If this Walker was newer, maybe they … I mean, maybe someone is still … like …” She paused to piece the thought together, but Alex had run out of patience.

  “Where is she?” he blurted, turning to scan the road again.

  Ren exhaled loudly. She was annoyed at being cut off, but it was more than that. She still felt so tired. It wasn’t that she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. She’d basically passed out as soon as she hit the bed. It was something else. She felt beaten up, hollowed out.

  “I think I —” she began, but once again, Alex cut her off.

  “We’re wasting time,” he said. There was no question who would keep talking, so Ren let him. “We’ll just do it on our own until we hear from her.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that worked so well yesterday,” she said.

  Alex rolled on. “She’s mad at us. She’s probably out searching right now.”

  Ren doubted that. “She’ll call soon,” she said. “She left, like, a million messages yesterday. We just have to wait.”

  “We’ve waited too much already!” Alex sputtered, a fleck of saliva making it all the way to Ren’s cheek. “What we need now is information. We need to find out who was in that tomb, for one. Really old info — the kind of stuff that won’t be online. We need, like, a big library. Is there one in —”

  “The British Library is one of the biggest in the world, Alex. How do you not know that?”

  Finally, he looked over. Really looked. “What’s your problem, Ren?” he said.

  “What’s my problem?” she said. “Where do I start? Did you even see what happened to us yesterday? What that thing did?”

  “I saved you!” he protested.

  “Saved me? You dragged me there — you served me up!”

  “I was looking for information,” he said. “I thought you could appreciate that.”

  Ren felt the dam burst within her. “Yeah, well, we got plenty of that. And we were free. Gone. We were on the path, headed down, and you had to STOP! Why? So stupid! ‘Where’s my mom?’ ” She imitated his voice, made it whiny. “Really? You couldn’t understand that thing if it told you!”

  For a moment, she saw the words hit home. Then his eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m sorry if I’m not afraid to take chances,” he spat. “I don’t need to be perfect all the time. I don’t need to know all the answers first.”

  “What do you —” she began, but she knew what he meant. Boy, did she.

  Alex smirked, as if he’d proven something, as if he’d won. “We need to get going,” he said firmly.

  “We need to wait for Dr. Aditi!” said Ren. Now she was the one shouting. “Because your ‘chances’ are going to get us killed. And you know what I need?” She looked up at the sunny sky, the first really nice day since they’d arrived. “I need a break! From you, from this, from everything. I am tired, Alex … No,” she corrected herself. “I am drained.”

  Alex stared at her, bug-eyed. “What do you want to —”

  “I am going to go see the Rembrandts in the National Gallery. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  Rembrandt was Ren’s favorite painter, an Old Master of dark, lush portraits.

  “But you can see those at the Met,” said Alex.

  “No! I can’t! Because I am not in New York anymore, Alex. I’m in London! To help you, not that you’ve noticed.”

  Alex looked away. “You’re homesick,” he said. “You’re scared.”

  The disappointment i
n his voice stung Ren, and for just a brief, dark moment, she dug down deep in her mind, looking for something sharp to wound him with. At least I have parents at home to miss flashed up like a monster from the deep, but she didn’t say it. She took a deep breath.

  “I am going to the National Gallery to look at the paintings and wait for Dr. Aditi to call,” she said. She started down the sidewalk, pulling her guidebook from her messenger bag. “Have fun at the library.”

  Fine, thought Alex. Fine.

  They could leave him alone, completely abandon him, if they wanted. Ren could go to a freaking gallery; Aditi could cut him out of her search. He’d done this before. He remembered the long spring days after he’d been pulled out of school. Sitting in his mom’s office while she worked and Ren was in school, picking at his homeschool work like eating cold oatmeal. And he remembered the days in the hospital before that, waiting for his mom. Or anyone. So many days alone, and always waiting for someone.

  Not anymore, he told himself. Now it was his mom who was alone. Now she was waiting for him — at least he hoped and prayed that she was. He felt sure that she was alive. But how do I know? What if … Alex shook his head hard, and his fast walk turned into almost a jog.

  Soon, the massive British Library loomed before him. He was stunned by its size, and a jolt of hope shot through him. Maybe the answers he needed were in there … He needed information on Egyptian Avenue. That seemed like a good place to start, but he knew what he was really looking for were potential Death Walkers: bad British dudes with some strong connection to Egypt …

  Inside, the building was cool and clean and absolutely massive. Alex took a quick breath and got to it. It reminded him of the days he used to tag along with his mom to the main branch of the New York Public Library. This one was much larger and infinitely more British, but it contained the same mix of serious scholars, stressed students, gawking tourists, and the occasional crazy. Some books he could pluck from the shelves himself, and some he had to ask for.