“See what?” he asked.
Of course not, I thought. What fun would it be if other people saw my vision of Uncle Vinnie? Then I couldn’t wonder if I were going stark raving mad.
“Nothing,” I said, and I ran to catch up.
The entrance to the next room was flanked by two giant obsidian sphinxes with the bodies of lions and the heads of rams. Carter says that particular type of sphinx is called a criosphinx. [Thanks, Carter. We were all dying to know that bit of useless information.]
“Agh!” Khufu warned, holding up five fingers.
“Five minutes left,” Carter translated.
“Give me a moment,” JD said. “This room has the heaviest protective spells. I’ll need to modify them to let you through.”
“Uh,” I said nervously, “but the spells will still keep out enemies, like giant Chaos snakes, I hope?”
JD gave me an exasperated look, which I tend to get a lot.
“I do know a thing or two about protective magic,” he promised. “Trust me.” He raised his wand and began to chant.
Carter pulled me aside. “You okay?”
I must have looked shaken from my encounter with Uncle Vinnie. “I’m fine,” I said. “Saw something back there. Probably just one of Apophis’s tricks, but…”
My eyes drifted to the other end of the corridor. Walt was staring at a golden throne in a glass case. He leaned forward with one hand on the glass as if he might be sick.
“Hold that thought,” I told Carter.
I moved to Walt’s side. Light from the exhibit bathed his face, turning his features reddish brown like the hills of Egypt.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Tutankhamen died in that chair,” he said.
I read the display card. It didn’t say anything about Tut dying in the chair, but Walt sounded very sure. Perhaps he could sense the family curse. King Tut was Walt’s great-times-a-billion granduncle, and the same genetic poison that killed Tut at nineteen was now coursing through Walt’s bloodstream, getting stronger the more he practiced magic. Yet Walt refused to slow down. Looking at the throne of his ancestor, he must have felt as if he were reading his own obituary.
“We’ll find a cure,” I promised. “As soon as we deal with Apophis…”
He looked at me, and my voice faltered. We both knew our chances of defeating Apophis were slim. Even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee Walt would live long enough to enjoy the victory. Today was one of Walt’s good days, and still I could see the pain in his eyes.
“Guys,” Carter called. “We’re ready.”
The room beyond the criosphinxes was a “greatest hits” collection from the Egyptian afterlife. A life-sized wooden Anubis stared down from his pedestal. Atop a replica of the scales of justice sat a golden baboon, which Khufu immediately started flirting with. There were masks of pharaohs, maps of the Underworld, and loads of canopic jars that had once been filled with mummy organs.
Carter passed all that by. He gathered us around a long papyrus scroll in a glass case on the back wall.
“This is what you’re after?” JD frowned. “The Book of Overcoming Apophis? You do realize that even the best spells against Apophis aren’t very effective.”
Carter reached in his pocket and produced a bit of burned papyrus. “This is all we could salvage from Toronto. It was another copy of the same scroll.”
JD took the papyrus scrap. It was no bigger than a postcard and too charred to let us make out more than a few hieroglyphs.
“‘Overcoming Apophis…’” he read. “But this is one of the most common magic scrolls. Hundreds of copies have survived from ancient times.”
“No.” I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, in case any giant serpents were listening in. “Apophis is after only one particular version, written by this chap.”
I tapped the information plaque next to the display. “‘Attributed to Prince Khaemwaset,’” I read, “‘better known as Setne.’”
JD scowled. “That’s an evil name…one of most villainous magicians who ever lived.”