“I feel sticky,” said Ren.

“Are you sure this stuff is medicine and not toothpaste?” said Luke. He pulled the tube they’d just purchased out of his pack and squinted at the label, as if narrowing his eyes would somehow transform the Arabic alphabet.

“Pretty sure?” said Ren, flapping her guidebook and its glossary of Arabic terms in his general direction.

“I think it’s working,” said Alex. “My neck feels a little better.”

“Yeah,” said Luke, looking down at the angry red skin on his upper arm. “At least my bicep won’t get any cavities.”

They stayed close to the buildings and did their best to keep out of sight. The lioness was in the city, but there was no way they were leaving until they’d found clues to the Death Walker’s identity, and a copy of the Book of the Dead. They headed down a street called Corniche el-Nile toward their first destination, Luxor’s famous Mummification Museum.

“Wait, I’ve got to call home,” said Luke as they passed a quiet stretch of small, seemingly deserted buildings. “It’s been days.” He pulled out his phone and disappeared around the corner of one of the buildings.

He came back a few minutes later looking pale, which was impressive considering his sunburn. Alex gave him a What’s up? look. Luke looked down and avoided his eyes. “I’m in serious trouble,” he said.

Alex got the point. He knew it was a tenuous web of excuses and cover stories that allowed them to be here at all. Luke’s parents thought he was still at a sports camp in London — at least they had — and Ren’s parents thought she was still on a summer internship at the British Museum — at least he hoped.

“I should call, too,” Ren said.

Alex thought it could wait, but he didn’t say so. He knew Ren was homesick. The other two waited as she disappeared into the alleyway-turned-phone booth. She returned a few minutes later, looking like her call had gone better than Luke’s — or Alex’s still unreturned call to Todtman. She flipped her guidebook open for one last look at the map. “We’re just a few blocks away now,” she said.

A minute later, they walked down a flight of broad white stairs to enter the museum. Of course it’s underground, thought Alex.

The mummy museum was operating with a skeleton crew.

As near as Ren could tell it was just two guys. The younger one took their money at the door.

“Here are your tickets,” he said in a thick French accent. “Merci.”

Once he was out of earshot, they got down to business. “We’re looking for the Book, but also missing mummies,” whispered Alex.

“Why are we looking for mummies in town when there’s a valley full of tombs out there?” said Luke, his tone somewhere between annoyed and defeated.

“The Valley of the Kings has been heavily excavated,” whispered Alex. “The important mummies were really coveted. A lot of them are in museums here. If we can find out which ones have gone walking, it might give us a clue to the Death Walker’s identity. We need to know who he was in life so we know which spell will work on him now.”

Luke knew that part already but barely managed half a nod. Ren could tell he was still upset. She walked a little closer. “Is it your parents?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Kind of.”

“Bummer,” she said, taking out her pen. Her own hadn’t caught on yet. They were still watching the British Broadcasting Corporation news every night, as if they might catch sight of her — and it had been nice to talk to them.

They searched the sleepy museum.

The Frenchman shadowed them discretely for the first few rooms. He faded away after he saw that they were on their best museum behavior.

In the next room, they caught their first glimpse of the Book of the Dead.

“Here’s some of it,” said Alex, lifting his chin toward the mummy in front of him.

“Where?” said Ren.

“On the wrappings.”

She looked closely. The ink was faded and the linen had gone brown with age, but now she saw it: neat rows of hieroglyphic symbols leading to tiny paintings. She recognized the depiction of the weighing of the heart ceremony by now: There was the scale with a heart on one side and a feather on the other. The god Thoth stood by to record the result: Would the heart be weighed down by guilt and be destroyed forever?

Thoth had the head of an ibis. For this guy’s sake, she thought, looking over at the mummy, I hope that ibis is more reliable than mine. She didn’t understand why her amulet was failing her so often. She tried so hard every time she used it …

“I hope you don’t expect us to cart this dude out of here,” she whispered to Alex.

“No,” he said. “It’s just a few spells anyway. And we still don’t know which one we need.”

Ren nodded. In London, they’d used a spell of protection against grave robbers to banish a Walker who’d been a notorious tomb raider. The right missing mummy could tell them who this Death Walker was — and what spell to use against him. They had more luck with that search. Three of the museum’s mummy exhibits were hidden under solemn tents of black cloth, as if camping out in the afterlife.

“Do you think they’re gone?” said Ren. “Or they’re just moving around under there?” They’d seen two mummies moving at the Met: a little girl twisting in her open coffin, and the Stung Man, climbing out of his.

“Dunno,” said Alex, but that was before he took hold of his amulet.

His eyes turned black, windows onto a world that made Ren shiver, and she looked away.

“Gone,” he said, the white and brown returning to his eyes as he released the scarab. “All three.”

Is one of these missing mummies the Death Walker? Ren walked around and wrote down the info on each in her ever-present notebook. The information plaque by the first one said:

KHAEMKHEMWY, NOBLEMAN, DIED CIRCA 2217 BC

The second one was a priest:

AKHENOTRA, ROYAL PRIEST IN THE COURT OF THE PHARAOH AKHENATEN, DIED CIRCA 1319 BC

“This one’s young!” she said, when she came to the third plaque. “Died around 100 BC.”

Luke pulled his eyes up off the floor and scanned the plaque. “Wealthy desert trader,” he said. “Bet that dude rocked some robes.”

Ren remembered the Walker’s appearance as he approached them across the sandy terrain. She wrote down the name, Thetan-Ankh, and underlined it twice.

They took one more look around the small museum, but all the other mummies still seemed to be present — and dead. They were nearly back where they started before she saw it: another weighing of the heart ceremony. But the heart in this painting was so tiny that it was more like the weighing of a flea.

Alex turned to look where Ren was pointing and his eyes opened wide. “Is that the whole thing?” he said, eyeing the two flattened scrolls. Each was mounted on a board no more than two feet wide.

Ren was already leaning in to read the information plaque under the glass case. “The Book of the Dead of Hebsany,” it read. “Hebsany was a wealthy scribe who gained fame for his skill as a draughtsman and copyist. Given his profession, it is likely that he prepared his own Book of the Dead. It remains the smallest complete copy ever found.”

“Complete!” Ren jumped back — and bumped into Alex, who was reading over her shoulder. “Watch it!” she said.

He put one finger up to his lips and shushed her. “It’s perfect,” he whispered, and right away she knew he meant to take it.

“How?” she mouthed.

Alex nodded down toward his amulet. “If I can get the case open without setting off any alarms, I can just stack the boards and put them in my pack …”

Ren and Luke both instinctively glanced across the room. The entrance was just through the door, and they could hear the muffled conversation of the two museum workers.

Ren thought about it. “I can handle the guards,” she said. “Just be careful — and hurry.”

Then she turned sharply on the heel of her boot and strode out into the entrance room. “Bonjour!” she said brightly. “Mon nom est Ren!”

Her French wasn’t the greatest, she knew, but what better reason to practice? She just hoped she didn’t end up completing the lesson in jail.

There was a loud plonk from the next room. The Frenchman shot his petit inquisiteur a sharp look and strode past her. She fired questions at his back: “Comment allez-vous? Oú sont les toilettes?”

As he was about to round the corner into the room, Alex and Luke came marching out. “Oh, there you are, Ren!” said Alex. She wondered if anyone else noticed the thin layer of sweat on his forehead. “We were looking for you. Well, time to go!”

“Thanks, dudes,” said Luke as the three friends filed out the front door. “Sweet museum.”

The two men gave them small waves and slightly baffled looks. Ren was halfway up the stairs to the street when she heard the door fly open behind them. The friends broke into a run as the men shouted for them to stop.