Alex slid across the seat and exited curbside, and the friends dragged their bags toward a large apartment complex. Ren and Todtman rolled prim wheelie bags, while Alex and Luke lugged heavy suitcases.

Todtman was in the lead, slowed down only slightly by a noticeable limp. Alex could follow the old scholar by sound alone — the hum of his wheelie bag and the steady click-clack of his black walking stick — so he let his eyes wander. The city was alien and dangerous, but he was looking for something much more familiar: his mom.

He knew it was crazy to think he’d spot her in a city of millions. But then, craziness was all around him now. Everyone thought she was in Egypt, and this was the capital, a few blocks away from the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on the planet. Before she’d used the Lost Spells to heal him, Alex had always been too sick or weak to travel with her when she came here for work. Instead, she’d described the streets of Cairo and the wonders they led to, telling him true stories that felt like fairy tales. What better place for a missing Egyptologist? he thought.

He saw a woman with brown hair like his mom’s and nearly gave himself whiplash turning to look. Nothing. Not her.

He checked to see if Ren had seen him acting crazy, but she was looking at the buildings, sizing up the angles and architecture. She got that from her dad, a senior engineer who’d worked alongside his mom back at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ponytail! Pantsuit! His head whipped around again. Not her.

He glanced up at the apartment complex. A tall brick wall surrounded it, and Todtman was leading them toward the lone opening in the center. This was where they were supposed to stay. The rooms had been arranged by Todtman’s contact at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the powerful agency in charge of Egypt’s ancient treasures.

Alex forced himself to stop scanning the sidewalk for his mom and tried to focus. We have other fish to fry, he told himself, but even that phrase came from her — and reminded him of what a bad cook she was. “What is it?” he’d ask her when presented with her latest on-the-fly concoction. “Burned,” she’d answer, an inside joke but often true.

Maybe she’ll be the one to find me, he thought, but that really was crazy. If she wanted to find him, all she had to do was call. So why doesn’t she? he thought for the one-millionth time. He looked down at his phone. Nothing. If she was really out there — if she really had the Lost Spells, like everyone seemed to think — why didn’t she call and tell him where she was? She must have a reason, he told himself. But what? He was so distracted he didn’t notice that the click-clacking of Todtman’s cane had stopped — until he walked right into the German’s back.

“Sorry,” said Alex, retreating — right into Ren.

“Hey!” she said.

“What’s up?” said Luke, smoothly sidestepping the jumbled bodies.

Todtman pushed his palm toward the ground — quiet, please — and then waved them all to the side. “Over here!” he whispered urgently, motioning them toward the brick wall on one side of the entrance.

Alex knew it was serious when Todtman lifted his bag’s wheels off the ground and didn’t use his cane, choosing to limp quietly — and painfully — over. The others huddled up against the wall next to him.

“I don’t think she saw us,” said Dr. Todtman, nodding toward some unseen enemy inside the complex. His face was always a little froggy, with eyes that protruded too much and a chin that protruded too little, but fear now amplified the effect.

“Who?” said Alex, resting his suitcase on the ground.

“So we’re not going in?” said Luke, a little too loud. He was fast on his feet but could be painfully slow on the uptake.

The other three shushed him.

“Peshwar,” said Todtman, as if it were the name of a particularly gruesome disease. “She is another Order operative. And it seems she is waiting for us.”

Alex flattened back against the wall. The bricks were still radiating heat left over from the blazing Egyptian day but Todtman’s words sent a chill through him. How did she know we were coming?

“We can’t stay here,” said Todtman.

Alex glanced up at the sky — as dark as gray wool now — and the taxi driver’s words came back to him: “The voices are worse at night.”

“We will have to make other arrangements,” said Todtman. “I have a friend here … It has been years, but maybe …”

Suddenly, Alex heard footsteps coming from the other side of the wall: the brisk slap of expensive shoes on the stone walkway. Alex pushed himself off the wall. Instinctively, his left hand reached up and wrapped around the ancient scarab amulet that hung from a chain beneath his shirt. He felt his pulse rev and his mind calm as the magic of the ancient amulet surged through him.

A man in a tan, summer-weight suit walked out through the entryway in the wall and turned toward them. His cold eyes lit up with recognition.

“Walak!” he shouted in Arabic, before turning and waving to whoever was behind him. He was an Order thug, calling for backup.

Alex gripped his amulet tighter with his left hand as his right shot up and unleashed a spear of concentrated wind that knocked the man back against the wall.

“Kuhh!” he said as his head hit the bricks and his eyes fluttered closed.

But as fast as Alex had acted, it wasn’t fast enough.

More footsteps sounded from inside the complex. A stampede of Order muscle was heading toward them!

“Let’s go!” said Ren.

Luke, an elite athlete with Olympic dreams, leaned forward into a sprinter’s stance. But Alex knew that they weren’t running anywhere. Todtman’s left leg had been crippled by a scorpion sting back in New York. He looked over to see Todtman’s own amulet, a jewel-eyed falcon known as the Watcher, disappear into the scholar’s hand.

“Ahlan!” he shouted.

It was one of the few Arabic words Alex knew, a simple greeting. Several pedestrians who’d stopped to gawk at the fallen thug now looked over at Todtman and snapped to attention. They immediately rushed into the opening in the wall, forming a tightly shut human gate. The Watcher could do more than watch …

“This way! Leave the bags!” said Todtman, his cane already clacking down the sidewalk.

Alex looked over at the people blocking the opening in the wall. They were a tangled mass of intertwined arms and legs, but he saw other arms now, other hands. The Order’s thugs were already pushing their way through.

And then a flash of crimson light lit the Egyptian dusk and people began to fall to the ground.

“Over here!” called Todtman, cutting through a double strand of police tape with a swipe of his cane and turning down a side alley.

They’d come to Egypt to battle the Death Walkers and to find the Lost Spells and, hopefully, Alex’s mom. But once again, they were the ones being hunted.

Alex hustled down the alley alongside Ren. Todtman was half a limp ahead, and Luke had fallen back to serve as rear guard.

Ren gave Alex a quick look: Here we go again.

Her own amulet, an ibis she’d been given deep under that London cemetery, bounced at her neck. Unlike him, she hadn’t reached for it once during the encounter. He knew she still didn’t trust it — or the magic that powered it — but he wished she would. Because it could provide the one thing they needed most: answers.

As the sky above them darkened, the alleyway behind them lit up a brilliant red. A scream split the air like a knife.