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The thin metal skin of a battered taxi was all that stood between Alex Sennefer and a city at war with itself. The car wove its way through madhouse Cairo traffic as news reports on the radio screamed of a crime wave for the ages. But as the cab sped past groups of heavily armed police, Alex thought they seemed to be huddled together less to protect the public than themselves.

He glanced around the cab at his own compatriots. His athletic older cousin, Luke, sat next to him, dressed as if for basketball, and Alex’s best friend, Renata Duran, was barely visible on Luke’s opposite side. In the front seat were the mysterious scholar Dr. Ernst Todtman and the taxi driver, who leaned heavily on his horn.

Alex flinched from the noise. His nerves were shot and his thoughts were dark. He tried to shut out the chaos of Egypt’s capital as he remembered his time in England. Once again, he saw a man in a fearsome mask shouting questions at him in the eerie tomb beneath Highgate Cemetery. “Where is your mother, little boy?” He remembered the words so clearly that the man could have been in the taxi with him.

But of course, if he had been, one of them would be dead by now. The man was Ta-mesah, a top lieutenant of The Order. The mask was a powerful artifact in the shape of a crocodile’s head and capable, Alex knew from firsthand experience, of inflicting tremendous pain. “She must be in the Black Land,” Ta-mesah had shouted. “Tell us where!”

And now Alex was in the Black Land — Egypt, named for the rich, dark soil on the banks of the Nile River.

Those words had changed everything. Before them, Alex had believed that The Order had kidnapped his mom. That they’d taken her and also stolen the Lost Spells of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But after Ta-mesah’s words, he knew the ancient cult didn’t have her — that they were hunting for her, too. Now Alex and The Order were in a race to find her, and with her, perhaps, the Spells.

His mom had used the massive power of the Spells to bring Alex back from the brink of death. But in doing so, she had accidentally opened a gateway to the afterlife and released the evil ancients known as the Death Walkers. Now those sinister beings were working with The Order toward some dark end Alex could only guess at.

All this evil unleashed just to save his life. He felt a familiar wave of guilt at the thought, both a weight on his shoulders and a punch in his gut.

The traffic began to slow down, and the taxi’s air conditioning gave out with one last, dying wheeze. The driver shouted something in Arabic and pressed the button to lower the windows. Warm air hit Alex in the face. It wasn’t so bad while they were moving, but a moment later they ground to a full halt. A toxic mix of smells settled into the still air: uncollected trash from the curb, sulfurous fumes from the traffic, and the heavy smog that hung over the city.

“Ugh,” said Luke, burying his face in his hands.

“Did you know,” Ren began, leaning over to raise her window back up. Alex smiled despite the stench: Did you know were three of his friend’s favorite words. Ren continued: “… that living in Cairo is the same as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day?”

Alex flicked his eyes out over the city. The day was ending now and the sky was doubly clouded by weak light and strong smog. The buildings faded into a gray haze in the distance.

“It is not just the air that is bad here now,” added the driver in heavily accented English. “The whole city has gone mad.”

Alex’s eyes were beginning to water from the combination of odors. As he reached down to pull his T-shirt up over his nose and mouth, he heard shouting from the sidewalk. He turned his head in time to see a woman run headlong into the front window of a small store. The woman tumbled inside under a razor-sharp shower of broken glass.

“Is she hurt?” blurted Ren at the exact same moment that Luke said, “That was crazy!”

The taxi began moving again as the traffic crept forward. Alex kept his eyes on the shattered window as it disappeared behind them, looking for movement inside the store’s shadowy interior.

“Why would she do that?” he said to no one in particular.

It was the taxi driver who answered. “They say the voices of the dead haunt the city now,” he said. “Carried on the wind. Telling truth, telling lies, it doesn’t matter. They sow anger and seek to harm.”

“Yeah, but that was seriously bazonkers,” said Luke.

The driver paused, possibly trying to figure out what bazonkers meant. “That,” he said finally, “was nothing.”

His tone suggested that he was done with the subject, but Todtman wasn’t going to let it go. “What have you seen?” he asked.

The driver paused, considering it, then took a deep breath and answered. “I was at the hospital last night. My wife had been stabbed.” Alex heard Ren draw in a sharp breath.

“I am sorry,” said Todtman, but the driver shook him off. Now that he had started, he seemed determined to tell the story.

“She will recover,” he said. “But the hospital was like a war zone, and we left before we could see the doctor. We didn’t trust him.”

“Why not?” said Todtman, continuing his gentle prodding.

“Because he had attacked the previous patient with a metal crutch. It was late, you see” — he paused once more to weigh his words — “and the voices are worse at night.”

Alex looked out his window at the darkening sky above them and felt a shudder of fear run through him.

The taxi pulled off to the side of the road and came to one final abrupt halt.

“We are here,” said the driver. “Good luck.”