The door swung shut behind them with a thick THUNK. The man who’d slammed it exhaled, clearly relieved to have the chaos of Cairo shut out once more.

“Hello, I’m Jinn,” he said, a thick Egyptian accent decorating his seamless English. “Of course, that’s not my real name. And this is my little urban Shangri-la.” He gestured at the large, dimly lit room. “I steal the electricity.”

Alex looked around. The place seemed to be from another world — or at least another time. He wasn’t surprised to see all the ancient Egyptian touches — this was a colleague of Todtman’s after all, and they were in Egypt. He’d just never seen these kinds of ancient treasures look so … lived in. The leaves of a houseplant spilled out of an alabaster bowl that had to be at least two thousand years old. A square of tattered, hieroglyph-covered cloth hung on the wall like a poster for a rock band.

“Nice stuff,” said Luke. “Any way we could get our things back?”

Todtman chuckled softly. “Our bags have been taken and sold by now. We can buy new supplies tomorrow.”

“Let me show you to your rooms upstairs,” said Jinn.

“Great,” said Luke. “I can put all of my nonexistent stuff away.”

There was a scuttling sound above them. Alex, Ren, and Luke all froze and looked up at the ceiling.

“Are there other people here?” said Ren, her shoulders tensing.

“Yes,” said Jinn.

Ren relaxed a little.

“But I’m pretty sure those were rats.”

Ren lay awake, wondering how a building could be abandoned and inhabited at the same time. Sure, she understood why it might be helpful for a building to look abandoned. You could avoid drawing attention to your huge heap of ancient artifacts, for example. You could study things that Jinn had gently described as “outside of university interests.”

But wouldn’t you want to fix things up a bit? This place had rats scurrying around under the floorboards. Actual R-A-T-S rats.

Weak light filtered in the window to her little room, along with ominous sounds: screams and bangs. A siren wailed by on the street below, its flashing light painting Ren’s wall red-blue-red-blue. It receded into the distance, leaving her nerves vibrating like a strummed guitar. “This building is protected,” Jinn had said without much conviction. “But let me know if it isn’t.”

Ren shivered in the warm night and pulled her thin sheet in tight. It wasn’t the sirens that had her so spooked, or even the spirits. It was their cause. Two words formed in her head, clear and horrible: Death Walker. She was sure there was one here. She’d seen the way they plagued cities: scorpions in New York, blood rain in London, and now voices in Cairo.

The Death Walkers were beings evil enough that they knew they would fail the weighing of the heart ceremony — a test to get into the afterlife — and powerful enough to do something about it. They had clung to the edge of the afterlife, in between life and death, waiting for an opportunity to escape. An opportunity Alex’s mom had given them.

Now they were free and they were getting more powerful. How could this little group of friends hiding in a run-down house stop something so strong? Ren glanced over at the ibis amulet on her night table. Todtman and Alex were confident with their amulets. She was not.

The pale stone ibis shone softly, the image of an elegant, long-necked bird. She took it off to sleep, because she didn’t want it in her head when she dreamed. She wondered what would happen if she took hold of it now. The first time she’d used it, it had given her clear images, clear answers. But since then, it seemed to get harder to use the more she tried.

She’d just have to try harder.

Back in school, they’d called her Plus Ten Ren for the sheer volume of extra credit she plowed through. She wasn’t going to give up here. Ren threw her sheet to the side, took a deep breath, and reached over and plucked the ibis from the nightstand. She formed a question in her mind: What are we dealing with? Then rephrased on the fly: What are we up against? As soon as her hand closed around the ancient amulet and the electric energy began coursing through her veins, images flooded her mind.

An old warehouse, dark and empty; the sort of generic disposable cell phone Todtman had given each of them; a swirl of wind-whipped sand on a rocky desert landscape … The rapid-fire barrage knocked all words, and all sense, straight out of her head. She let go with a gasp, the amulet thunking down on the nightstand. What had she seen? What did it mean?

She looked at the little ibis, glowing softly in the dim light. She wanted to leave it there but forced herself to reach for it once more. “Try harder,” she whispered. She formed a new plan. She’d try moving some small object, or maybe opening the door — things the others could do easily with their amulets. But as soon as she grasped the ibis, another barrage of images stopped her cold: the swirl of wind-whipped sand again; a steep, rocky slope; the blazing sun. She felt like the amulet was shouting at her in a language she didn’t understand.

What did any of those things have to do with Cairo?

She felt like a failure, and she hated that. She got the same sick feeling she did when she couldn’t understand some key concept in class, when she was too confused to move on but too embarrassed to ask the teacher to repeat it.

She’d felt that way with negative numbers. They just hadn’t seemed fair to her: How can a number be negative? And she had nearly failed that test. Her father — her brilliant father — had tried to hide his disappointment when he found out, but she’d cried anyway. Now she felt a fresh tear forming in the corner of her eye and wiped it away quickly.

She dropped the ibis back on the table and flopped over in bed, turning her back on the thing. Forget magic amulets, she told herself. The test it was giving her wasn’t one she wanted to take — not now and honestly not ever. What she needed was a sleeping pill. They had a big day tomorrow. They were going to the Egyptian Museum to meet with Todtman’s Supreme Council contact. It had been the first museum to shut down once the Walkers had risen and the mummies had started moving. Todtman had said the man had information about the Lost Spells, and his hushed and hopeful tone had hinted at even more. Those were the kinds of things you needed energy for. She forced her eyes shut.

And that’s when she heard a scratching at the door.

Her eyes snapped back open. She waited, listened. There it was again: two more scratches — small, sharp claws on old wood — and then the telltale head bump.

Ren threw back the threadbare sheet and got up. The wood felt oily and half-rotten under her bare feet.

She reached the door, paused for just a second, and then slowly cracked it open. The creature slipped inside, a strand of its ragged linen wrappings catching momentarily on the door frame. Ren’s breath caught just slightly — it was a sight she might never fully get used to.

And then … The last place she’d seen this mummified cat was 3,500 miles away. Ren had covered the distance by plane — but how had the cat done it? It definitely wasn’t on those bony little paws.

“Mmrack,” it said softly.

“Hi, Pai,” said Ren.

She wasn’t ready to let most of the magic and mystery she encountered into her carefully ordered world, but this strange cat she was happy to let in.

There were rats here, after all.