“Akhenaton’s curse runs in my family,” he said. “Kind of a genetic disease. Not every generation, not every person, but when it strikes, it’s bad. Tut died at nineteen. Most of the others…twelve, thirteen. I’m sixteen now. My dad…my dad was eighteen. I never knew him.”
“Eighteen?” That alone brought up a host of new questions, but I tried to stay focused. “Can’t it be cured…?” Guilt washed over me, and I felt like a total imbecile. “Oh, god. That’s why you were talking to Jaz. She’s a healer.”
Walt nodded grimly. “I thought she might know spells that I hadn’t been able to find. My dad’s family—they spent years searching. My mom has been looking for a cure since I was born. The doctors in Seattle couldn’t do anything.”
“Doctors,” Mad Claude said with disgust. “I had one in the legion, loved to put leeches on my legs. Only made me worse. Now, about this connection to Anubis, and using that knife…”
Walt shook his head. “Claude, we’ll try to help you, but not with the knife. I know magic items. I’m pretty sure it can be used only once, and we can’t just make another. If Sadie needs it for Ra, she can’t risk using it before that.”
“Excuses!” Claude roared.
“If you don’t shut up,” I warned, “I’m going to find your mummy and draw a mustache on your portrait!”
Claude turned as white as…well, a ghost. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Walt,” I said, trying to ignore the Roman, “was Jaz able to help?”
“She tried her best. But this curse has been defying healers for three thousand years. Modern doctors think it’s related to sickle cell anemia, but they don’t know. They’ve been trying for decades to figure out how King Tut died, and they can’t agree. Some say poison. Some say a genetic disease. It’s the curse, but of course they can’t say that.”
“Isn’t there any way? I mean we know gods. Perhaps I could cure you like Isis did Ra. If I knew your secret name—”
“Sadie, I’ve thought of that,” he said. “I’ve thought of everything. The curse can’t be cured. It can only be slowed down if…if I avoid magic. That’s why I got into talismans and amulets. They store magic in advance, so they don’t require as much from the user. But it’s only helped a little bit. I was born to do magic, so the curse progresses in me no matter what I do. Some days it’s not so bad. Some days my whole body is in pain. When I do magic, it gets worse.”
“And the more you do—”
“The faster I die.”
I punched him in the chest. I couldn’t help it. All my grief and guilt flipped right to anger. “You idiot! Why are you here, then? You should’ve told me to shove off! Bes warned you to stay in Brooklyn. Why didn’t you listen?”
What I told you earlier about Walt’s eyes not melting me? I take it back. When he looked at me in that dusty tomb, his eyes were every bit as dark, tender, and sad as Anubis’s. “I’m going to die anyway, Sadie. I want my life to mean something. And…I want to spend as much time as I can with you.”
That hurt me worse than a punch in the chest. Much worse.
I think I might’ve kissed him. Or possibly slapped him.
Mad Claude, however, was not a sympathetic audience. “Very sweet, I’m sure, but you promised me payment! Come back to the Roman tombs. Release my spirit from my mummy. Then release the others. After that, you can do as you like.”
“The others?” I asked. “Are you mad?”
He stared at me.
“Silly question,” I conceded. “But there are thousands of mummies. We have one knife.”
“You promised!”
“We did not,” I said. “You said we’d discuss a fee after we found the scroll. We’ve found nothing but a dead end here.”
The ghost growled, more like a wolf than a human. “If you won’t come to us,” he said, “we’ll come to you.”
His spirit glowed, then disappeared in a flash.
I looked nervously at Walt. “What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we should figure out how to get through that rubble and get out of here—quickly.”
Despite our best efforts, nothing happened quickly. We couldn’t move the debris. There were too many large boulders. We couldn’t dig around, over, or under it. I didn’t dare risk a ha-di spell or use the black knife’s magic. Walt had no amulets that would help. I was frankly stumped. The statue of Ptah smiled at us but didn’t offer any helpful suggestions, nor did he seem interested in the beef jerky and juice.
Finally, covered with dust, drenched with sweat, I plopped down on a stone sarcophagus and examined my blistered fingers.