Losing two museum workers on the tricky side streets of the old city wasn’t that big a challenge. For kids used to battling the undead, the merely out of shape proved easy. The friends headed straight for the ferry, and from there to a taxi to the Valley of the Kings.

They rode fast and with the windows down, the warm wind whipping through the boxy car. Alex’s thoughts were just as turbulent, and he sat in the front seat just to be a few feet closer to their destination. He remembered the hot buzz of his amulet in the tomb, the carefully printed name from his past. It seemed like everyone and everything was trying to tell him something. He needed to know what!

He checked his phone one last time before they lost service. Nothing. Why hadn’t Todtman called? Even the silence seemed telling. He pictured the old scholar, alone in the vipers’ nest Cairo had become. The last bar vanished from his phone, and it felt like a door slamming between them.

The friends climbed out of the cab a hundred yards from the mouth of the valley, but the heat coming from it still hit Alex’s face as if he’d opened the oven to check on a frozen pizza. Rather than getting an inch closer, the taxi backed up to turn around.

Once the friends were alone in the unforgiving desert, the weight of their mission hit them. They were quiet for a few long moments. They could die out here, and no one would know. “We’ll have to wait till sunset to head into the valley to look for the Spells and destroy the Walker,” said Alex at last. He looked up at the sun as Ren looked down at her watch. “Let’s head back to camp and see if we can figure out which spell we need. Maybe we can use your amulet.”

Ren looked at him like he was dense. “What?” he said. “It’s a good idea.”

Luke started heading up the slope for the long walk back to camp, and Ren turned and followed him. The sun was just beginning to set by the time they arrived. Alex had been worried that they might find the place ransacked. But he’d never expected this.

The most famous eighteen-year-old king in human history — dead some 3,300 years — sat in the saggy-bottomed nylon camp chair idly petting a mummy cat.

Luke raised his hands and looked at the sky: What next?

Ren eyed Pai, her loyalty suddenly in question.

Tut began to speak. It took Alex a few seconds to get his hand around his amulet, and he only caught the last few words: “no need to bow.”

Alex hadn’t planned on it, but it did raise the question: What exactly do you say to the earthly incarnation of a long-dead boy king?

“We, uh, we were at your place yesterday,” he ventured.

Tut looked at him. With his sculpted features, he looked like a well-tanned boy band member, albeit one in robes and a funny hat. “That dump?” said Tut.

“Are you kidding?” said Alex. “It was full of the most famous treasure in the world!”

“There’s no treasure there now,” said Tut. “Just a few rooms and some sloppy paintings. Have you even seen Ramses’s tomb? Magnificent!”

“Yours was done in a hurry, wasn’t it?” said Alex.

Tut shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes,” he admitted. “Everyone was in a terrible rush after the murder.”

“You really were murdered?” said Ren. Alex looked over and saw her grasping her amulet.

“I was betrayed,” said Tut.

“But why?” said Ren. “You seem like such a …” She paused, fumbling for the rest of the sentence. “… good king?”

“She means a handsome king,” said Alex.

Ren glared at him, but Tut took the exchange in stride. “I was both,” he said. “But I made enemies.”

“The sun cult that you abolished?” said Alex. “The one started by your father, Akhenaten.”

“Yes,” said Tut, wincing slightly at the memory. “Dad got a little … carried away with that. Banned the old gods, worshipped the sun — my whole childhood I was sunburned from praying to the thing. So, yes, I changed that right away. Brought back the old gods — and paid for it.”

“What language are you all speaking, Goofball-ese?” said Luke, taking a seat in the sand.

Ren, who now spoke impeccable New Kingdom Goofball, tried to explain it all to Luke. “Tut’s father was pharaoh before him. He abolished the old religion — Amun-Re, Horus, Anubis, those guys — and created a new one. Tut brought the old gods back when he, like, took over. And then he was killed for it.”

“Hey, Ren,” said Alex, lifting the scarab slightly from his chest and lifting his chin toward her ibis. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” admitted Ren. “I guess.”

“Yes,” confirmed Tut, thinking they were talking about him rather than their amulets’ translation abilities. “I am that, too.”

Alex had a few things he’d been hoping to ask Tut, and now seemed like the time. “Do you know anything about the Lost Spells?” he began. “Or a Death —”

“You know,” interrupted Tut, slightly annoyed. “I am usually the one asking the questions. If you had —” But this time he was the one interrupted, by a cat. Pai made a sudden leap out of Tut’s lap and headed toward Ren.

“Betrayed again,” said Tut as he watched the freaky feline pad across the sand.

Ren knelt down to greet her, but the mummy cat slid right past her. They all turned to watch as Pai sat down and stared into the distance. Her tail began to flick back and forth in a quick, agitated way. She looked like a tabby cat watching sparrows through a window.

“She sees something,” said Ren.

Alex tried to follow her gaze, but all he saw was the darkness gathering at the base of the slope. He suddenly got a bad feeling. “Maybe you’d better get the binoculars,” he said.

Pai was still staring in the same direction when Ren returned. There was something there all right. Pai released a long, low hisssssss.

“We should get out of here,” said Luke, standing suddenly and brushing the sand from his legs.

“What do you mean?” said Alex, but Luke didn’t answer.

Ren was adjusting the knob of the binoculars and pointing it down the slope. They were all waiting for her verdict. Even Tutankhamun seemed to be leaning forward slightly in his modest nylon throne.

“Oh no,” she whispered softly, as if all the air had just been knocked from her lungs.

“What is it?” said Alex, his own fear spiking at the dread in her voice.

“We need to go,” she said, holding out the binoculars.

Alex took them and pointed them down the slope.

The day was dying and the sun was half hidden behind the ridge now, but even in the dim glow that remained, the clean white bone of the skull stood out. Pai hadn’t spotted birds; she’d spotted another cat.

As Alex peered through the lenses, he saw the gaping eyeholes of the lioness skull peering back at him. Shapes shifted behind her. Alex struggled to refocus the binoculars with shaking hands. Half a dozen men, rifles slung over their shoulders, the barrels rising and falling with each step.

“They’re coming for us,” he said.

The group was marching directly up the slope. Alex looked around. Their campsite was tucked into a shady notch on a remote ridge, nearly invisible from a distance, and yet their pursuers seemed to know exactly where to go.

He looked at those around him, living and dead. They were far from Cairo now, far from Hesaan and whispers in the night …

Tut said something behind him. Alex had let go of his scarab and couldn’t understand the words, but he was pretty sure he knew what Tut was asking. Alex grasped his amulet to answer.

“It’s a hunting party,” he said. “It looks like you’re not the only one who’s been betrayed.”

Tut rose from his throne. “Well,” he said. “That sounds horrible. I have no interest in being hunted — again.” He began walking away, in the opposite direction from the one he’d taken the night before. “And I still have so much ground to search.”

“What are you looking for anyway?” said Ren as he passed.

“A little piece of me,” Tut said cryptically.

“Dude’s got the right idea,” said Luke as Tut headed away along the ridge.

Alex nodded. “We need to go. They’re moving fast.”

“But how did they know we were here?” said Ren.

“What does it matter?” said Luke, the strain evident in his usually chill voice.

They grabbed their small packs and hesitated. “Where are we going to go?” whispered Ren.

Alex paused. Could they risk the valley? The sun was low enough that they wouldn’t be crisped, but they still hadn’t figured out what spell to use if they ran into the Death Walker. It was too risky. They’d have to head down the slope and away from Peshwar.

But then Alex looked in that direction, and his heart sank.

It was hard to see the shapes in the dusk, but he could see the movement — and the rifle barrels caught the fading light well. More men, coming from the other direction. They were cut off.

“We have to head into the valley,” Alex said, starting to scramble up to the top of the ridge. The last of the daylight bled away as they climbed.

“I don’t like this!” said Ren. “We’re not ready.”

“I don’t, either,” said Alex, “but we don’t have a choice. There are too many of them on this side —”

“Maybe we could lose them in the dark,” said Luke.

Alex pictured Peshwar, those gaping eyeholes. He didn’t know much about lions, but he knew cats could see in the dark. “We can’t lose her,” he said. “But maybe we’ll be safe in the valley. Maybe they won’t follow us.”

“Of course they will!” said Ren.

Alex was getting frustrated. It was hard to argue and climb at the same time, and he didn’t see what choice they had. “All right, so where do you want to go?”

His question was answered not by Ren but by a rifle. A far-off crack turned into a nearby snap as a bullet crashed into the stony ground at their feet. The Order men were well equipped — and in range.

The time for discussion was over. The friends reached the top of the ridge and paused for one fateful moment on the precipice. Another rifle crack pushed them on.

Pursued like animals under a darkening sky, they scrambled down into a valley of death.