Alex blinked in the sudden light and saw Ren holding a bizarre device. A pointy, bent piece of metal stuck out of one side of a wooden bowl, while a strip of plastic stuck out of the other, its end shredded into a sort of fork.

“I am so glad to see you!” he said. He considered hugging her out of sheer gratitude, but it wasn’t really something they did. Plus, she had that pointy thing in her hand.

“I’m glad I found you,” she said, and then stepped forward and, awkwardly, hugged him. He hugged her back.

When they pulled apart, Alex pointed to the device. “Did you open the door with that thing?”

“Yeah!” she said. “It’s a lot easier from the outside. It took me forever to get under the plate thingy from inside my cell. But I finally got the spoon underneath to pry it open a little.”

“Where’d you get a spoon?”

Ren produced a slightly mangled spoon from her pocket. She was in the same outfit as the last time he’d seen her and looked pretty grubby. “It was for my soup.”

Alex allowed himself a moment of amazement at his resourceful friend, then blurted, “Wait, where was your cell? Is my mom there, too? Is Todtman?”

Ren shook her head. “I haven’t seen them since they brought us here. This is the first cell I found.” She made a big circle with the spoon and added, “This place is big.”

Alex stepped out of the cell and looked down the tunnel. It curved gradually and had a slight slope to it. The ceilings were at least twelve feet high, as if made for some other species entirely.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We need to find my mom and Todtman.”

“Okay, we should go this way,” said Ren, pointing farther down the hallway, converting his vague wishes into an actual plan. “Because I came from the other direction, and I think mine was the first cell in this section.”

They walked cautiously, sticking close to the walls and heading farther down the slope. Here and there, flickering lights buzzed above them. Alex peered through the uneven glow until he spotted something up ahead. Two doors, one on each side of the tunnel. One was solid and painted black, but the other had a barred window at face height — another cell!

Forgetting his caution, Alex rushed toward it. My mom could be in there!

The faintest hint of light escaped from the small window. Alex knew immediately that it came from another small electric lamp. Someone was inside.

“It could be anyone,” whispered Ren. “Be careful.”

Alex put his ear up to the barred window and heard a faint sound, like a cornered animal breathing. He peered inside.

“Who is it?” said Ren. “Do we know them?”

“Oh yeah,” Alex managed despite his surprise. “Definitely.”

On the floor of the cell, in between the cot and the lamp, a teenage boy was doing sit-ups. His arms were crossed over his chest and his head was just now rising above his raised knees. His eyes met Alex’s and froze somewhere between the sit and the up. “Hey, cuz!” he said.

“Hey, Luke,” said Alex. It was his cousin from home, Luke Bauer, the jock who had been spying on them for The Order. The one whose betrayal in the Valley of the Kings had nearly cost them their lives.

“Luke?” said Ren. She shoulder-checked Alex aside and, small for her age, hopped up to get a quick glimpse in the window.

“Hey, Ren,” he said. “We have seriously got to stop meeting like this.”

Despite the tension of the situation, Alex couldn’t help but smile. The last time they’d seen Luke was in a different Order cell, in the lair of a Death Walker. But that Walker had been destroyed, and that location was no longer secret. Clearly, the cult was consolidating its holdings here.

“What do we do?” whispered Ren, keeping her voice low enough so that only Alex could hear.

Alex knew his answer immediately. The last time, they’d had to leave Luke in his cell, his pale, dirty face pressed up to the bars, as they fled from The Order. Alex had regretted it ever since.

Luke had betrayed them, but he’d also been betrayed by the treacherous cult. His captivity seemed proof enough of that, but it was his words last time that had clinched it for Alex. Alex remembered his cousin’s desperate cry: They were going to kill my parents. Alex didn’t doubt that The Order would make such a threat — or that they’d follow through. In his mind, it was clear: Luke had been lured into spying on them by the promise of easy money. Once he realized what bad news The Order really was, it was too late. He’d been kept in line by the worst threat imaginable.

No, Alex would not leave his cousin to rot in a cell a second time.

“Can you open this lock, too?” he said to Ren.

“Yeah,” she said, then softer: “But are you sure?”

He nodded. “I think we can trust him now.”

Ren shrugged. “Keep an eye on him,” she said. As she knelt down and got to work on the lock, she called up: “This doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you!”

It was way too loud. Almost immediately, there was a muffled exclamation from inside the door across the tunnel.

“Dudes,” hissed Luke, “that’s the guardroom!”

Alex glared at his cousin’s face. Now you tell us?

His heart began to hammer in his chest as something toppled over in the room across the way, the sound of a man standing up too quickly. “Hurry!” he hissed to Ren. “We need him.”

Ren seemed to understand. Without their amulets, their only weapon was the two-time New York State Junior Olympic gold medalist behind the still-locked door. “Right,” she said. She gave the curled piece of metal one final wiggle in the keyhole and then stuck the small piece of flayed plastic in beneath it.

The door flew open across the hall as Ren fished around in the lock.

The guard rushed straight toward them. Alex threw himself at his legs, but the man easily brushed aside the awkward tackle attempt. “Stupid boy,” he said as Alex hit the ground.

Suddenly, there was a crisp, metallic click.

Ren dove to the side, and Luke’s door flew open — smacking the lunging guard in the forehead just as he was straightening up.

Luke burst forth, crazy-eyed and ready for a fight.

But there was no need. The guard stumbled backward, holding his head in both hands, and crumpled gracelessly to the floor.

“Thanks for the spoon and stuff,” Ren said as they locked the unconscious guard in the cell with his own keys. They left the lamp on for him, a small kindness in return for some bad soup.

They crept across the tunnel toward the open door of the guardroom. Ren kept a close eye on Luke as he padded silently beside them in high-tech running sneakers, a dirt-streaked Under Armour top, and basketball shorts. In her mind, it was clear: He’d betrayed them again and again, and only stopped when he got caught. She kept Alex between her and Luke. If her friend trusted him so much, he could be the one to deal with the next betrayal.

As they approached the door, Alex whispered: “Hopefully there’s a map of the other cells in here, or a list of prisoners, or … something.”

Hopefully there’s not another guard, thought Ren. “Shhh!” she hissed.

But the guardroom was unguarded now, just a small, simply furnished square. The soup can was still open on the counter of the tiny kitchenette, next to a bag of Egyptian bread and a stack of trays like the one she’d peeled her lockpick off of. The only thing out of the ordinary was a heavy-looking steel door built into the wall.

The three examined it closely. “I would love to see what’s inside there,” said Alex longingly. “Maybe weapons.” Remembering his father’s words, he thought of another possibility. The scarab …

Ren eyed the safe. The door was almost as tall as she was, and the lock was as big as her head. She tossed the remains of her lockpick kit on the table. “There’s no way we can crack that thing.”

“Oh, there’s a way,” said Luke, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “The guard’s still in my cell. Probably awake by now.”

“Why would he help us?” said Ren.

Luke smiled — a devilish smile that Ren couldn’t help but be a little charmed by. “Because if his bosses find him in there, after he let us escape, he is toast. So toast. Like the super burned kind you just have to throw away because —”

“I got it,” she said. “Toast.”

“Wait,” said Alex. “You want us to, what, let him go in exchange for the combination?”

Luke shrugged. “How bad do you want to get in there?”

“Pretty bad,” Alex admitted.

He looked over at Ren, and they both nodded.

“Okay,” she said to Luke.

He was standing there watching them with that same look on his face. The problem with devilish grins, thought Ren, is you can never tell if you’re making a deal with the devil.