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Alex took a step inside and then hesitated, his hand still on the strange doorway. This wasn’t a hiding place for him; it was a path forward. Whatever he’d been sensing in this tomb, it was stronger in here, coming from inside this secret section. He knew it was dangerous, but he was drawn to it. Could this really be where his mom hid the Spells? “You two don’t have to come,” he said. “But I feel like everything is trying to tell me something, and this time I need to listen.”

“Alex,” said Ren, and he was afraid she was going to say “chicken bone” again. Instead, she said: “Shut it. We’re coming.”

Alex felt a little swell of emotion. His best friend might argue with him sometimes, but she had never once abandoned him. “Thanks,” he whispered, before Luke ruined the moment.

“Move it, guys,” he said, brushing past. “The faster we get inside this weird door, the quicker we can shut it behind us.”

Neither of them argued with that. For all they knew, The Order was already entering Tut’s tomb. The three friends turned and pushed and prodded the edgeless doorway closed. It made a small, dry hiss as stone met stone, leaving them staring at a blank wall. It was a careful-what-you-wish-for moment.

“Uh,” said Luke. “Guys? What if that doesn’t open again?”

Alex closed his hand around the amulet and tried to sense the workings of the wall in the same way he sensed the inner movements of the locks he picked with the scarab. “I should be able to open this,” he said.

Ren exhaled. The three turned back toward the tunnel. It was lit by an intense, unnatural light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The tunnel sloped downward and curved slightly, hiding what was at the end. And it was hot. Really hot.

“There’s definitely something down here,” said Alex, still holding his amulet. “This feels … bigger than anything we’ve experienced before.” Alex hoped his suspicion was right. “We’ll be quiet,” he whispered. “Spy mode.” It was a game he and Ren had played back at the Met, back when they were just kids who played at adventure.

Ren nodded. “And if you’re wrong — if it’s the Death Walker’s tomb?”

“Then it will tell us who he is — we can figure out the right spell to use and —”

“Not if we’re deep-fried first,” Luke cut in.

And so they crept forward — carefully — and the deeper they went, the hotter it got.

“Look at the walls,” said Ren, reaching up to wipe sweat from her forehead.

Alex was already looking. Intricate hieroglyphic writing covered nearly every inch of the walls near the entrance. Some of the symbols were painted on and some were cut deep into the stone. He wrapped his hand around the scarab, and once again his mind lit up with a single, nearly overwhelming signal. He forced himself to concentrate on the symbols on the wall, and the meanings revealed themselves. The same few words echoed over and over again within the texts: concealed, hidden, secret, cloaked, guarded.

“What does it mean?” whispered Ren.

Alex could see her hand wrapped around her ibis, her eyes scanning the walls. She was reading the same things he was.

“I think they’re spells,” he said. “Prayers. Just like in the Book of the Dead.”

“But for what?”

Alex looked again, saw the same words take the starring role. The prayers in the Book of the Dead were to help the spirit cross safely over into the afterlife. Words like protect, safe, and spirit were everywhere. But these … “I think they’re supposed to hide something,” he said. A surge of relief and excitement went through him: It really was a hiding place! He looked closer at the faded paint and added, “But they’re ancient, thousands of years old.”

“So the Walker didn’t make them?”

Alex shook his head and whispered as they rounded a bend in the tunnel. “If he’s here, I think he found this place,” he said.

“Hey, Sherlock,” hissed Luke. “Eyes on the prize, huh?”

“Right,” said Alex. “Sorry.” They were deeper now, with an unknowable danger ahead. They stopped talking and crept carefully forward. Forward and down.

The hieroglyphs grew sparser the deeper they went, and the heat increased. Alex’s excitement mixed with fear. A fat drop of sweat rolled down his forehead and into one wide-open eye. He wiped the salty sting away with the back of his hand. The hieroglyphs spoke of hiding, but this heat meant danger.

For just a second, he thought he heard a smooth sliding sound coming from behind them, but then they rounded the corner. A large circular chamber lay before them, and the phantom sound was forgotten.

“What the what?” said Luke.

Alex stared at the chamber. He knew exactly what it was. “It’s a temple,” he whispered. “At least … it is now.”

The walls of this chamber bore no ancient peeling hieroglyphs. Instead, the broad limestone walls were covered in new ones. And these writings had a recurring theme as well: the Aten.

The sun disk — the symbol of the pure light religion imposed by Tut’s father, Akhenaten — was everywhere. All along the wall, royal figures stood staring up at the sky as lines of light and life descended toward them from a massive sun disk on the ceiling. The lines ended in ankhs, held to the figures’ mouths and noses like the breath of life.

And in the bright light of the chamber there could be no more doubt about how the symbols were made — or by whom. All the images were black, standing out starkly against the light sandstone walls. Alex stepped forward and carefully touched one of the lines. Dark flakes brushed free on his finger. “Burned,” he said. “Burned into the stone.”

His heart pounded as he looked around. Fear made the walls feel like they were closing in on him. Calm down, he told himself. This is the Walker’s tomb, but the Walker isn’t here … Focus on the room. The first thing he saw was the false door — a pair of raised columns framing a painted indentation in the wall — the same ceremonial gateway to the afterlife they’d found in all the other tombs. But he saw none of the treasure and stolen finery they’d found in those other chambers. The room was sparsely decorated and dominated by a low sandstone table in the center. A single ancient clay jar rested atop it. The heat in the chamber was so intense that it stung Alex’s lungs as he drew the breath for his next words: “It’s an altar.”

He’d seen enough. He knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt in the shadowless room. “The Death Walker is the priest,” he said. “From the museum.”

Alex heard Ren unzip her pack. He turned and saw her riffling through her notebook. “Akhenotra,” she read, “royal priest in the court of pharaoh Akhenaten, died circa 1319 BC.”

“That’s him,” he said. “It has to be. This whole thing is a chapel, a priest’s chapel. The Aten is the symbol of Akhenaten’s sun cult.”

“Okay, great,” said Luke. “But we’re going to burst into flames. Let’s hide in the tunnel until The Order goes away.”

Alex knew they couldn’t stand this heat much longer, but his eyes continued to scan the room. He still hadn’t found what he was looking for. Then he saw it. The little alcove didn’t look like much, just a scooped-out hole in the wall with a little shelf inside. The only reason he even looked twice was the hieroglyphs. Small and finely carved, they surrounded the little hole in the wall. He didn’t even need to grasp his amulet to recognize the now familiar symbols: conceal, cloak, hide

He was sure now. This whole thing: the edgeless doorway, the tunnel, the ancient chamber, the alcove. It wasn’t built as a tomb or even as a chapel. It was built to hide one thing.

The Lost Spells.

He turned toward Ren. She’d followed his gaze, and he watched her eyes size up the shelf and light up as she made the same connection. This is where the signal was coming from. It wasn’t from where the Spells were but from where they had been. Like a radioactive trace, thought Alex in open awe. Just how powerful are these things?

“Guys?” said Luke from near the tunnel entrance. “Why aren’t we moving yet?”

His mom had been here, in Tut’s tomb and in this chamber, he thought. This is where she’d found the Spells. And now he was pretty sure he knew why she hadn’t put them back: She’d come back only to find that the hiding place had been discovered.

But the friends had pushed their luck too far. And now they had been discovered, too.

Words echoed through the chamber. Luke put his hands up in front of him and began backing slowly away from the tunnel.

Alex reached up for his amulet. He needed to: The words coming from the tunnel were in ancient Egyptian.

“He’s here,” gasped Ren.

Alex barely heard her over the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. But he saw the first sandaled foot step into the chamber clearly enough, and he saw the second one bring the Walker with it. The old priest turned to regard them — and smiled. A blister on the cheek of his heat-ravaged face burst and the pus ran down his chin, but still he smiled.

“Little blasphemers,” he said. “Delivered unto me.”