Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15 The door clanged open. Lights went on. "Dan? Amy? Kiddos?" "It's Nellie!" Amy cried. "We're here!" Nellie rushed down the second set of stairs into the burial chamber. She threw herself at them and gave them a fierce hug. "Will you just stop doing this?" she demanded. "My nerves are shot! You could have been down here for, like, eternity!" Suddenly, Theo came rushing down toward them. "Amy? Dan? Nellie!" Theo grabbed Nellie by the elbows. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine," Nellie said. "Amy and I are fine, thanks," Dan said. "I was looking everywhere for you!" Theo said

frantically to Nellie. "Are you certain you're all right?" "Perfectly okay," Dan said. "We were just shut up in a tomb. No problem." "What do you mean, Theo?" Nellie asked. "I woke up and saw Amy and Dan were gone. I knew they would head back here. Basically, I just pick the thing that would freak me the most, and they do it." Theo wiped at the sweat on his forehead. "I got a text message on my phone that you were in trouble. I've been looking everywhere." "Did you see anyone when you entered the tomb?" Amy asked Nellie. Nellie shook her head. "I just rushed down the stairs when I heard you calling." "We heard someone," Dan said. "A sort of shuffling noise." Theo tried not to smile. "A mummy?" "We didn't imagine it," Dan said, annoyed. "Whoever it was could have hidden in one of the side chambers, then gone out after Nellie came down to the burial chamber."

"Oh, no! Grace's guidebook!" Amy said. "I must have dropped it." They searched over the entire tomb but didn't find it. "Are you sure you had it?" Theo asked. "Of course she's sure," Dan said. "She never lets it out of her sight. You see?" He looked around the tomb. "Someone else was here." "And they took Grace's book," Amy said. Amy and Dan were silent as they sat in the cabin of the boat after dinner. Theo had suggested going to Luxor for dessert— he knew a "super" rooftop restaurant with a view of the river and the Temple of Luxor. But they couldn't think about dessert or great touristy views. Misery hung over Amy like a cloud. Dan knew just how she felt. The book was gone. It was the same way he'd felt after he lost the photograph of his parents back in the train tunnel in Paris. It was like he'd lost a piece of them. Now they'd lost a piece of Grace. A crucial piece. They kept losing piece after piece of their old

lives. Falling down, falling away. Until you felt like you were on a world without gravity, and soon you'd have nothing to hold on to. Tonight, the motion of the boat made Dan feel almost dizzy. It was time to work, not think. Thinking about stuff too much didn't get you anywhere, no matter what his sister thought. Dan pushed a piece of paper toward Amy. "Here." He'd written out the hieroglyphs they'd found on the stairs of Nefertari's tomb. Amy didn't bother asking if he was sure he remembered them right. She sprang up and went over to the crammed bookshelves. She slid out a heavy book. "I saw this before. It's a hieroglyphic dictionary." They flipped through the book. It took them awhile to find the explanations for the hieroglyphs. Dan copied them down.

"River, cliff, island, obelisk," Dan said, pointing to each. "These are easy. But we can't find this last one." "Okay, here we are in Luxor," Amy said. "There's a river. There are cliffs. Islands in the river. Obelisks. But Katherine can't just be listing random things." "If Katherine made those glyphs," Dan said. "We don't know that for sure. She wouldn't know how to decode hieroglyphs in the sixteenth century. Hieroglyphs weren't translated until a couple of centuries later, when they found the Rosetta

Stone." "These are pretty simple, though," Amy said. "They're pictograms— they mean what they are. She would have figured them out. We could, even without the dictionary. Except for this last one." "Things just aren't adding up," Dan said. "Maybe there is a fourth Sakhet. Remember that note we found from that guy Drovetti? He said the clue had been shipped to the palace of L." "Louis the Fourteenth, maybe," Amy said. "Versailles is right outside Paris." "Maybe we shouldn't be here at all," Dan said. "Some Lucian shipped the most important hint to Paris. This feels like it could be a dead end." Amy's gaze wandered to the porthole. "Dan? Did you notice that the lights of town are… kinda far away?" Dan stood up. "Our line came loose! We're going toward the middle of the river!" "Excellent work, homies!" Jonah Wizard's head appeared at the top of the steps leading to the deck. "Good lead. Paris is my city! They love me in Paris!"