Alex looked through the bars to find the guard sitting on the cot with his head in his hands. “He’s totally awake,” he whispered back to the others.

But like many guards, this one had excellent hearing. “Because if they find me in here, I am done for,” he said into his hands. After a brief pause he added, “Stupid boy.”

The false bravado didn’t fool any of them. This was a desperate man, and a deal was struck quickly. He seemed to like the idea of giving them the combination. “Yes,” he said. “You free me, you open it and find what is inside. Then you cause the troubles, and I slip away. Am gone.”

“Okay, but first you give us the combination, then we let you go,” said Alex.

The man was silent, considering it. Finally, he looked up at Alex. “Bring to me pen and paper, from table,” he said, his face pushed out through the bars.

“Why the paper?” asked Ren.

“Because the combination is in hieroglyphs, of course.”

They grabbed the pen and paper from the guardroom, and a few minutes later he had scrawled a string of hieroglyphs — the small symbols the ancient Egyptians used to communicate information. The guard’s last words as he scrawled the symbols: “You will want what is inside, yes, but wait a little. Then come back with the keys! You are the good ones, yes? The Amulet Keepers?”

Alex heard the fear in the man’s voice. He wondered what horrible punishment he’d get if he was caught. “Sure,” Alex called, as he rushed across the hall. Did he mean it? They were Amulet Keepers, not Boy Scouts.

Back in the guardroom, his hands shook as he began turning the large dial. The others crowded around, looking over his shoulders. Two turns to the falcon symbol, one back to the snake, three forward to a set of scales, back to a stack of lines.

KLICK!

“Sweet!” said Luke. “Open it!”

Alex began to pull, but Ren stopped him. “Wait a little,” she said, quoting the guard.

Alex paused a few long seconds. Then he pulled the heavy steel door open. He peered into the dim shadowy interior and saw two vaporous, glowing orbs staring back at him. His breath caught as he realized they were eyes.

“What the —” blurted Luke, jumping back.

“Oh, shoot,” said Ren. “It’s a sheut!”

Alex gave the slightest of nods. It was a sheut, or shadow, a sort of ancient Egyptian ghost, a supernatural shell that had lost its self and soul. One of these had nearly drained him of his own life one very dark night in Vienna. But this one wasn’t attacking. It was just …

“It’s watching you,” whispered Ren, her voice horrified, her small body leaning back and away.

Not wanting to provoke it, Alex forced himself to stay very still. It seemed to work. The murky eyes narrowed.

“Is it falling asleep?” whispered Ren.

Alex nodded slowly. Opening the safe had woken the sleepy spirit, but now its eyes were little more than two narrow white lines hanging in the shadows. Alex exhaled and scanned the dim interior behind the drowsy apparition.

He saw something so familiar on a small shelf that the shadows did nothing to obscure it. “The scarab!” he blurted.

Forgetting himself, he lunged for it.

“No, wait!” said Ren, but Alex had already pushed his hand through the veil of shadows inside the safe.

The spirit eyes popped open.

Alex’s fingers brushed the scarab, but before his hand could close on it, the shadow rushed forth. It hit Alex like an ice-cold wave, and a feeling of profound emptiness made him gasp and fall back to the floor.

Luke backpedaled expertly, like a cornerback dropping into coverage. Alex crab-walked awkwardly back, hands and feet underneath him, as Ren tugged unhelpfully on his shoulders. “That’s what we were supposed to wait for,” she moaned. “Till it went back to sleep!”

The sheut rose to its full height in front of the safe, looming above them. A mouth formed underneath its milky eyes — a trembling circle of deeper darkness. There was a hissing gasp — a quick, deep inhalation — and then:

ssskkrreeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Alex had never heard a scream more piercing or terrible. Still on the floor, he clamped his hands over his ears.

Luke had one index finger jammed into each ear and was shouting, “We have to get out of here!”

The desolate scream filled Alex with an unspeakable sorrow and he felt tears filling his eyes. The sadness was supernatural, he knew, but his fear was very real. The piercing scream would carry forever in the echoing stone tunnels.

They had to get out now, get as far away as possible. Luke already had one foot out the door, and Ren wasn’t far behind. But Alex couldn’t bring himself to go — and not just because he was still on his butt. His eyes were focused not on the wailing apparition, but on the open safe behind it.

He took one last deep breath and darted forward.

“Nooooo!” screamed Ren.

Alex tried to duck around the sheut, but the ringing in his ears made him disoriented and clumsy. Instead, he went right through. He felt as if he’d been painted with ice as he reluctantly removed his right hand from his ear. The scream pierced him down to his very soul, but he groped around inside the safe, grabbing the first shiny object he saw.

He stumbled back and looked down. An amulet — Ren’s ibis!

He held it up and saw her eyes gleam with recognition. He delivered the delicate carving of an Egyptian wading bird in an underhand arc. As it descended toward her, she lowered her left hand from her ear and plucked the amulet from the air.

As soon as she had a hold of it, she dropped her right hand and thrust it forward, shouting into the horrible noise all around: “Go!”

A loud FWOOOP cut through the horrid scream as a flash of brilliant white moonlight filled the room.

The ibis was a symbol of Thoth, the Egyptian god of moonlight, writing, and wisdom. He was also the one who kept track of where each spirit belonged — so when the light faded, the deathly shadow was gone from this world. Alex was pretty sure the screaming had stopped, too, but it was hard to tell with his ears ringing like fire alarms.

He wasted no more time, rushing forward and ransacking the safe.

He grabbed the scarab, instantly feeling the current of ancient energy flow through him as he threw the chain over his head.

Next to it was a third amulet: Todtman’s falcon, the powerful mind-bending artifact known as the Watcher. He grabbed that, as well as a fistful of money from a tall stack of bills and stuffed it all in his pocket.

“Why would they keep the amulets right here, so close to us?” shouted Ren as they rushed out of the room and into the hallway.

“Because they planned to make us use the amulets — for them!” called Alex.

“Who cares why?” called Luke. “You got your bug back, dude,” he said to Alex. He turned to Ren: “And you got your, like, seagull!”

They all grinned crazily. None of them realized they were shouting. Alex even took a moment to step across the hall and unlock the cell door. The guard had done his part, he figured, and posed no real danger to them now that they had their amulets. Alex knew time was tight, so he hurried.

But he didn’t know how tight.

With his ears ringing, he couldn’t hear the stampede of approaching footsteps. He did wonder, briefly, why the guard suddenly refused to leave his cell.