Normally, Nipper was the not the first person that Samantha would want anywhere near her while she tried to sketch an artifact. Yet there they were. She kneeled on the ground as she copied the picture of the tower slowly and carefully. Nipper stood and waited…and fidgeted.

While his sister was still drawing in her journal, he picked up the umbrella and popped it open.

“Let’s see,” he said as he scanned the lining through his magnifying glass.

He lowered the umbrella and looked around. Then he snapped the umbrella shut and dropped it back on the floor next to Samantha.

“Sam,” he said excitedly. “There’s a secret door just across the way. I think it’s underneath a boat.”

“Let me finish,” said Samantha, drawing faster. “I’m almost done.”

Nipper walked away from the exhibit.

Dennis trotted after him.

Samantha copied the last few symbols. Then she looked up.

Nipper was gone.

Quickly, she got to her feet and slung the umbrella over her shoulder. Looking left and right, she marched through several pairs of stone columns until she reached a model of a ceremonial riverboat.

The boat stood balanced on a wide rectangular pedestal. Samantha saw a small panel on one side of the base. The panel had been pushed open.

“Nipper,” she muttered to herself.

It had to be the secret door her brother had been yammering about while she was trying to sketch. She walked up to it and crouched to look inside. She could make out a long, low passageway that sloped downward and was punctuated by a very bright light in the distance.

“…and Dennis,” she added.

Samantha put on her sunglasses, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled through the opening. She stopped and twisted around to push the panel shut; then she headed toward the light.

She crawled for about thirty feet until the tunnel let out into a wide, round room.

She stood up and dusted off her pants.

Dennis sat across from her on the far side of the room, happily munching from the bag of crackers. The Blinky Barker bathed everything in bright white light. It reflected off silver panels that hung on the walls of the chamber and out through exits to the left and right. With each chew, blue sparkles swirled around the room as the light reflected off the big blue gem on his collar. The illumination revealed colorful drawings and symbols covering the ceiling and every inch of the wall.

There were large, dark gaps to the left and right where open doorways led to spaces beyond.

Samantha started to step forward—and stopped. A black circle took up most of the floor of the room. It was a deep, dark pit, surrounded by a narrow ledge.

She heard several faint grunting sounds. Fearfully, she inched forward and gazed into the hole.

“Nipper? Are you down there?” she asked.

She peered into the pit and saw smooth walls that extended far beyond the light from Dennis’s collar. It had to be at least fifty feet deep. Or five hundred. It was impossible to tell.

“Nipper?” she asked again.

Samantha’s heart raced as she thought about her brother falling into the pit, lying helpless and in pain way down at the bottom. She listened for another groan, or a crash or a thump or some other terrible sound of an eight-year-old who had gone splat.

She held her breath and stared into the darkness.

“Sam, is that you?” her brother’s voice echoed from a doorway on the right side of the room. “Come help me lift this chair. I think it’s solid gold.”

Samantha let out a sigh of relief. Then she began to inch carefully around the edge of the room. As she moved, she noticed that, unlike the temple above, which had a stone floor, this chamber was paved with red clay tiles. They were dirty and worn, and cracked with age.

Every few feet, a shiny metal panel stuck out from the wall, and each panel was held in place by a metal bracket. Between the panels, the walls were covered with drawings. They were strange—stranger than the ones in the Temple of Horus above. And there was a lot of writing. It was mysterious. It looked nothing like what she’d copied from “The Traveler and the Monkey King.”

There were lots of pictures of skulls and of weird people waving swords. There were all kinds of fish and birds. One large drawing appeared to show a giant squid.

The images seemed out of place. Samantha shivered. Everything here looked creepy. There was something bad about this place.

Samantha reached the doorway, turned right, and stepped into a new room.

Light streamed in behind her from Dennis’s collar, illuminating another chamber. It was bigger than the chamber with the pit in the center, and it was filled with fantastic objects. Everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with silver masks—creepy faces and skulls and animal heads. Ornate caskets and shimmering statues leaned against the walls. Baskets overflowing with coins and gems covered the floor.

Nipper was busy dragging a shiny chair toward the center of the room. The heavy scraping sound echoed as he tugged it, gouging out a trail of broken tiles and earth behind him. He was pulling it over to a pile of glistening silver skulls. Samantha could see spaces on the walls where Nipper had pried loose the masks. Dark soot trickled out of holes where the masks had been attached.

Nipper pushed the chair up against the mountain of objects and stopped. He adjusted some of the creepy silver faces that balanced on the pile.

Samantha didn’t know what he was up to, but she was sure it wasn’t good. “What are you doing?” she asked her brother nervously.

“This is my chance,” he said. “So use your big brain to help me figure out how I can haul these things home.”

“Your chance?” Samantha looked around the room. She could see that he had removed the tops from several large urns. A wooden sarcophagus covered in mysterious writing and speckled with pearls rested in one corner. Her brother had pried off the lid and propped it against a nearby wall. A stream of crud was oozing around the casket from a large hole in the wall where he had pulled a mask free.

“Nipper!” Samantha shouted. “Have you lost your mind?”

“No, Sam. I lost my Yankees,” he answered. “I’m going to sell this stuff so I can get my baseball team back.”

As he spoke, something on his hand flashed in the light. Nipper was wearing a large black-and-green ring on his finger. It was shaped like a scorpion and had two glittering green eyes. Samantha didn’t need her fashion-expert big sister Buffy to know that they were emeralds. Enormous emeralds.

“Where did you get that thing?” she asked.

“I pulled it off the mummy in the box,” he said, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the coffin. “It wasn’t making him look fabulous, that’s for sure. And I really need it so I can— Ouch!”

Nipper poked his thumb into his own eye.

For a moment, Samantha thought she saw the eyes on the scorpion ring glow.

Nipper crossed the room again and started to drag a heavy onyx table over to his treasure pile. It was covered in turquoise beads.

“I’ll have enough money to buy a second baseball team,” he said. “Maybe the Boston Red Sox. And you’ll get rich, too. There can be two Scarlett Hydrangeas in our family.”

He lost his grip and fell backward onto the floor. As he stood up, he smacked his forehead on the edge of the table.

The emerald scorpion eyes flashed. Samantha was sure this time.

“I know, Sam. It’s an awesome magical ring and it’s cursed,” said Nipper. “I started stumbling all over this place and banging into things way before you got here.”

She watched him bend down to grab a small golden statue of a jackal.

“I’m just going to add a few more treasures to this pile and— SAMMY!”