Amulet Keepers by Michael Northrop

Author:Michael Northrop
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

Ren could see Alex getting antsy again as they waited by the curb, scanning the street for familiar cars. He’d nearly gotten her killed, and all he’d had to say about it so far was “you look awful” and “you’re late.”

“Hey,” he said. “What did the Walker’s outfit look like to you?”

“His outfit?” said Ren sleepily.

“Yeah, like, what material?”

She closed her eyes and tried to remember an image she’d been trying to forget. “I don’t know what material it was,” she said finally, “but it had buttons.”

“Yeah!” said Alex, loud enough to startle her. “They didn’t button their clothing in ancient Egypt.”

“You don’t have to shout. We’re the only ones here.”

He looked at her blankly and continued. “So this one’s not Egyptian, and not as old. Like, I don’t know how old, but definitely in the button age.”

Alex was talking fast, rolling over Ren’s groggy mind.

“He wasn’t exactly young,” she mumbled.

“What?”

As out of it as she was, she still didn’t want to sound stupid. She searched her sleepy brain for something smart. “But no one makes mummies anymore,” she managed. She could still picture the Stung Man rising from his ancient sarcophagus, and later, once he’d replaced his wrappings with robes.

Alex just shrugged. “People aren’t supposed to be filling English crypts with provisions for the afterlife, either,” he said. “That must’ve been what he was there for: going back for seconds.”

But then something did occur to Ren, something smart. She pictured the hand in the newspaper photo, covered in fresh linen. “If this Walker was newer, maybe they … I mean, maybe someone is still … like …” She paused to piece the thought together, but Alex had run out of patience.

“Where is she?” he blurted, turning to scan the road again.

Ren exhaled loudly. She was annoyed at being cut off, but it was more than that. She still felt so tired. It wasn’t that she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. She’d basically passed out as soon as she hit the bed. It was something else. She felt beaten up, hollowed out.

“I think I —” she began, but once again, Alex cut her off.

“We’re wasting time,” he said. There was no question who would keep talking, so Ren let him. “We’ll just do it on our own until we hear from her.”

“Yeah, ’cause that worked so well yesterday,” she said.

Alex rolled on. “She’s mad at us. She’s probably out searching right now.”

Ren doubted that. “She’ll call soon,” she said. “She left, like, a million messages yesterday. We just have to wait.”

“We’ve waited too much already!” Alex sputtered, a fleck of saliva making it all the way to Ren’s cheek. “What we need now is information. We need to find out who was in that tomb, for one. Really old info — the kind of stuff that won’t be online. We need, like, a big library. Is there one in —”

“The British Library is one of the biggest in the world, Alex. How do you not know that?”

Finally, he looked over. Really looked.

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