Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris-Theo 2 (23 page)

He bowed low, but before I could tell him to stop that, he left the room and I was blissfully alone. Which lasted for exactly two minutes before Miss Sharpe burst through the door, looking most put out. "Where is he?"

"Who?" Although I knew perfectly well whom she meant.

"Mr. Stilton, of course! The constable had no idea what I was talking about. Said he'd never asked to see me. I looked a right fool."

"I'm sure it was an honest mistake," I said, wanting to keep Stilton out of as much trouble as possible.

She sniffed. "I shall have to report him to Mr. Weems, as he is the only one who seems to have any sense around here."

Which just went to show you how poor her judgment was.

***

It was a long, tortuous afternoon. Miss Sharpe was in a beastly mood for having been made a fool of in front of the police (and wouldn't I have loved to see that!). She took it out on me by making me copy all sorts of rubbish from
Mrs. Primbottom's Guide to Raising Perfect Children.

It was all utter rot, and she was a fiend about my handwriting, which wasn't at it's best because I startled at every little sound I heard, thinking it was Stilton come to report on Trawley's decision.

Imagine my surprise when Vicary Weems interrupted us.
I can quite safely say it was the first time I was ever glad to see him.

"Excuse me," he said, his chin high.

"Yes, Weems?" I asked.

"I wasn't talking to
you,
" he said pointedly. "I was wondering if perhaps Miss Sharpe would like to share a cab ride home. To cut down on expense, you know."

Miss Sharpe reached up and patted her hair. Honestly! Had someone delivered a cache of Cupid's arrows that no one had told me about?

"That is very kind of you, Mr. Weems, but I don't think it's a good idea," Miss Sharpe said.

In spite of all the pinches and knuckle rappings, in spite of all the wretched lines I'd been made to do, I leaned forward and whispered, "Don't worry. I shan't breathe a word to Grandmother about this."

Her eyes grew round and she looked at me with charity for the first time since we'd met. "Oh. Well then, yes, thank you, Mr. Weems. That would be lovely."

I nearly danced a jig. Everyone was finally leaving. Even better, as soon as Weems had escorted Miss Sharpe from the room, Stilton arrived.

"Well?" I asked. "What did Trawley say?"

Stilton gave me a slightly reproachful look. "The grand
master said that he would allow us to perform this favor for you if you would in turn do him a favor."

"What? I thought it was just about giving you permission to leave my side?"

Stilton's left shoulder twitched, and he looked sheepish. "The grand master wishes you to perform a small bit of magic for him. If you will agree to that, he will allow us to follow your mummy."

"What sort of magic?" I asked, immediately suspicious.

"To be determined at a later date, but mutually agreed upon by the both of you."

If we had to mutually agree upon the feat of magic, that gave me some wiggle room. "Very well. If that's the only condition under which he will agree."

"It is."

These Black Sunners were shaping up to be far more trouble than they were worth. I checked my watch. "It's six thirty now. I'm fairly sure that mummies are only ambulatory when the moon is out."

"Moonrise is at five after ten."

I blinked. "How'd you know that?"

"The almanac. In our rituals, we pay very close attention to the phases of the moon."

"Yes, but you're called the Black Sun."

"It's a code name for the dark of the moon, when magic is at it's most powerful."

"Very well. Let's meet at the top of the stairs leading down to the basement at ten o'clock, then. I've got something I've got to do beforehand."

***

The newest round of missing mummies had poor Father stretched to the breaking point. He was convinced our mummies would go missing any minute. In fact, Father was so nervous that he had sworn to spend the night in the museum again—with shotgun firmly in hand.

Which was why I needed to rid the museum of this most recent disgruntled spirit that had attached itself to us; to protect Father. Why couldn't it have stayed with the mummy it rode in on? It wasn't as if I didn't have enough to do, what with mummies running loose in London, Will dabbling in questionable behavior and being followed by the Grim Nipper, a wretched governess stifling my every move, an ancient Egyptian god in jackal form coming to life, and seven inept scorpion guards acting, quite frankly, mad as hatters.

But of course, that was the whole point of chaos, wasn't it? My life was absolute bedlam. If the Egyptian god of Chaos were watching, he'd be deliriously happy.

Well, as soon as I got rid of this vicious spirit, that would be one less chaotic element to deal with.

I just had to decide where to set my
mut
trap. Spirits tended to lurk close to the final resting place of their mummified bodies, so I had to assume that this spirit would lurk close to it's mummy's last known location: the foyer. This created a bit of a complication, because I had to get the trap set before Father wandered down with his shotgun to post guard.

I had managed to remain fairly purified throughout the day. The diciest moment came when Mother sent Dolge round for meat pies for dinner. I was starving by then but didn't dare have one for fear of ruining all the purification bother I'd gone through that morning. I settled for two jam sandwiches instead and tried not to feel sorry for myself. (Have I mentioned the extreme amount of fortitude one must have for curse removal?)

I stood at the edge of the foyer, trying to determine the best place to set the traps. Ideally, I should set one in each corner, corresponding with the four points of the compass.

In order to prepare the area for the ritual, the first step was to sprinkle the area with holy water (which had been most difficult to obtain). Using as little as possible in order to conserve my supply, I sprinkled drops across the entire
floor. Next, I was to sweep the room of any evil influences with a broom made from the branches of a persea tree. As London had none of these that I knew of, I settled for a broom made of willow twigs, the willow being sacred to Osiris and as such would hopefully have some authority over dead spirits.

Once I'd swept the floor with the broom, my next step was to cleanse the air with holy smoke or incense. This was tricky because I was specifically prohibited from using lucifer matches, but how else did one get holy smoke than by fire? It had taken me quite a bit of thinking to work out a solution to this one, but I finally decided a mist of perfume from my curse-removal kit would work, it being the next best way to fill the air with cloying scent. Of course, I couldn't afford the kind that smelled truly lovely. Instead I had bought something called "An Evening's Enchantment" (even the name was perfect!), which smelled like a combination of wood smoke, violets, and vanilla.

Once I'd sprayed that throughout the foyer, I was ready to begin.

According to T. R. Nectanebus, I could use either clap nets or lassos of rope to catch the evil spirit. The museum did have two clap nets, but it would certainly raise all sorts of questions if Father found them hanging in the foyer. Rope
was a little less noticeable and could hopefully be explained away as building maintenance.

The trick would be getting the rope up into the corners of the ceiling. I was rather short (as most eleven-year-old girls are), and the two ladders we had in the museum were much too heavy for me to drag into the foyer.

Not to mention someone would surely notice.

I had to settle for leaving the lassos on the floor. In order to compensate for this, I made sure to place something inside the traps to attract the evil spirits: horehound candy. Now, I know that horehound tastes vile, and whoever thought to call it a sweet should have their head examined. However, the Egyptians believed that the demon and ghost worlds were upside down and backwards from ours, so whatever was sweet and tasty to us would be bitter to them and whatever was horrid to us would taste sweet to them.

Besides, how else was I going to get rid of this foul stuff that Grandmother had given me for Christmas?

After placing a piece of the horehound candy into the middle of each loop of rope, I also placed a small bit of wax. If it became discolored, I would know a disgruntled or cursed spirit had crossed into the loop.

"Good heavens!" Father's voice boomed from behind me, making me jump. "What is that foul stench?"

It was "An Evening's Enchantment" cologne mixed with horehound candy, of course, but all I said was, "What stench, Father? I don't smell anything."

(I must say, keeping as many secrets as I do is an awful burden. I don't like it one bit. It makes me feel sneaky, which I'm not. Not really. It's just that I've learned the need for caution when discussing magic with grownups. They simply refuse to even entertain the possibility! What's worse, they give you worried, squinty-eyed looks if you bring it up, and you can be sure a nice long stay in a sanitarium or boarding school out in the country is your next stop. So really, it's all their own fault I couldn't confide in them.)

"And what on earth are you doing here?" he asked. "You should have been asleep hours ago."

"Yes, I know. I was just coming to tell you and Mother good night."

"Oh, well, good night, then."

"Good night, Father."

I skedaddled off to find Stilton. It was time to let loose a mummy.

I
THOUGHT LONG AND HARD
about which mummy to send. In the end, there was only one choice: Tetley. I simply couldn't bring myself to desecrate one of the genuine mummies by making him wander around London at night. Tetley used to be a part of the Serpents of Chaos, so really, it was rather like releasing him so he could return home.

"Why are we going down to the basement?" Stilton asked.

"I don't want to defile an ancient mummy, so I thought I'd use Chudleigh's fake and it's down here."

"Won't that be defiling an Englishman, then?" Stilton asked, slightly shocked.

"Not really. He used to work with these men. It seems much more fair to have him do it rather than a royal scribe from the Middle Dynasty. Now, come on."

I started down the stairs, surprised at how comforting it was to have another person coming with me. I waited on the bottom step, listening for any sign of movement. There was none.

"I say, what's Weems's coat doing down here?" Stilton asked, breaking the silence. "He's been looking for that. Making a huge stink, too, he is."

"Oh, sorry. I snagged it because I was cold. I mistook it for Father's." I did not want to tell Stilton about the Anubis statue. The more I learned about Trawley and his organization, the less I wanted them to know about me and the magic around here. "Come on. Tetley's over there."

Tetley stood where I had left him, propped against the wall in his desiccated combination suit.

"So, how are you going to get him to move?"

I took a deep breath and tried not to look into Tetley's face. "By removing this." I plucked the Blood of Isis amulet from Tetley's skinny, sunken chest. The air around us gave a shudder, as if an invisible wall of some sort had come down.

"I say, what was that?" Stilton asked in a hushed voice.

"The protection being removed."

Tetley slowly turned his head to the sound of my voice. My mouth went dry.

"It appears to be working," Stilton said.

I said nothing but watched as the mummy formerly known as Tetley straightened away from the wall and took one step forward. My hands crept up to the amulets around my neck. Tetley took another step forward and another. I quickly backed out of the way so I wasn't between him and the staircase. As he passed Stilton and me, his empty gaze lingered on us, a faint look of puzzlement crossing his mummified features. "Go on," I whispered. "The staff is calling you."

Tetley turned toward the stairs and, lifting his legs in a disjointed manner, made his way up. Halfway to the top, he looked back at me. Goose bumps rippled across my arms. I rushed forward to follow Tetley up the steps, realizing he'd need me to open a door for him or we'd risk his punching straight through a window as the jackal had. "Come on," I told Stilton.

"Coming," he said. "I just want to get Weems's coat. Perhaps if he had it back, he wouldn't be so foul tempered."

When we reached the top of the stairs, there was a dicey moment when Tetley really wanted to go through the foyer to the front entrance. I had to prod him rather grimly to redirect him to the west one.

When we reached the side door, I hurried around in front and opened it for him. Without so much as a pause, he stepped over the threshold and into the night.

Beside me, Stilton quivered in excitement. "I'll have a report for you first thing in the morning."

"Excellent! And do be careful, won't you? Don't try to stop Tetley or redirect him."

"I won't. Good night." And with that, Stilton exited the museum to follow Tetley. Three more scorpions detached themselves from the shadows and joined Stilton. I closed the door and hoped this would work. If not, I was out of ideas.

I was so lost in thought, trying to find holes in my plan, that I was halfway past Stilton's office before I realized there was a faint sliver of light shining from beneath the door. Odd. He must have forgotten to turn it off.

I stopped and retraced my steps, then opened the door.

Behind the desk, Clive Fagenbush shot to his feet. He'd been rummaging through the desk drawers! "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Me? What are
you
doing here?"

"Museum business," he blurted out.

Of course I didn't believe a word of it. "Museum business requires you to go through Stilton's desk?"

Fagenbush looked down his nose at me. "Not that it's any
of your concern, but he was working on an assignment that he was supposed to have for me this afternoon. He left before he turned it in, so I hoped to find it here."