As if someone wanted to recreate a mummy and used those ancient statues to do it.
I want to tell myself it’s a prop. A stuffed dummy swathed in plaster cloth. I crouch in front of the figure and tap the knee. I expect my finger to sink into cloth. Instead, it makes a dull thunk, like touching wood.
I tap harder. The sound comes, and it pings a memory. When Kate and I were little, we jumped from a second-floor window in our house. We’d seen our parents do it, and it seemed a perfectly rational way to get outside faster. So we jumped, and Kate sprained her wrist, and I twisted my ankle. When Kate wouldn’t keep her arm in a sling, Jeremy put a cast on it. This is what that cast sounded like when we flicked it with our fingers. A hollow thunk.
It’s not just the memory of that sound, either. It’s the smell. I pick at a cloth and peel it away to see plaster beneath.
I inhale. Another smell wafts out, the faintest whiff of a scent that should not permeate the plaster. Meaning there’s a crack. I move around the figure, looking and sniffing, and I find it.
I’d noticed the hands earlier, so perfectly placed on the figure’s thighs. That’s because they’re plastered in place. The job is imperfectly done, though, and there’s a crack under the left hand. I peel back the outer cloth, and the stench hits me.
I turn to see Holly at my shoulder, hand over her nose.
“Would you get Kate, please?” I ask.
“I’ll go,” Allan says. “Something tells me I do not want to see what’s inside that thing.”
He jogs off. Holly and I exchange a look. I finger the crack in the plaster, and it crumbles at the edges.
I know what’s inside, and I should leave it alone. This is a crime scene, after all. Whoever put a person in this macabre tableau wasn’t performing a burial ritual. As for what they did intend . . .
I glance at Holly. “Does this mean anything to you? Embalming a person this way?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Holly,” I say, my voice a little sharper than I intend. “I have no idea what we’re dealing with here, and if you know, I could use some help.”
“It’s ritual desiccation,” she says. “Some spells require mummified parts, which aren’t easy to obtain even on the black market.”
I know about using desiccated remains in spells. Like Holly said earlier, getting Egyptian mummies isn’t simple or inexpensive. Someone is making their own.
I look back at the mummy. “Why is he seated, though? Someone killed him and then plastered him, which is a lot more difficult to do sitting up. Also, why bother with the old-school mummification? There are easier ways to desiccate a corpse.”
Again, Holly says nothing.
“Holly?” I say.
She steps away from the mummy. “We’re in a witch’s lair. A witch who practices dark magic. If we needed more reason to get out as fast as we can, we have it right here.”
She starts for the hatch. I sit on a nearby crate.
When she looks back, I say, “You’re right. We’re in the cabin of a dark witch. And our resident witch is you. We need your expertise, and you’re hedging.”
“Because I’m not a dark witch.”
“Okay. But you are a research geek, like me. Why the ducking and weaving when you have a legitimate excuse for knowing what this is?”
“I’m not ducking— Fine. It’s a ritual. Very old, very dark magic. It isn’t done to a corpse.”
I frown. “I smell decomp. There’s definitely a person in there.”
She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks, her eyes are closed, the words coming in a strangely detached voice as if she’s reading from a textbook. “The subject must be bound to a chair of willow wood and given a paralyzing tonic. When the tonic takes effect, the bonds are removed and the mummy is cast.”
“Paralyzing . . .” I say the word slowly, my mind working through it, flinching from where it leads.
“The victim was alive. Paralyzed and sealed up in that mummy. I dodged the question because I didn’t want to freak anyone out, okay?”
I’m turning to the mummified figure when Allan clambers up the ladder calling, “Logan?”
I turn, my mind still on the mummy, on the horror of what was done to this man.
“Hmm?” I say, distracted.
“It’s your sister. I can’t find her. She’s . . . she’s gone.”
Chapter Six
Kate
“We did hear something, right?” I ask as Elijah and I pause in front of yet another junction in the tunnel.
“Footsteps. One distinct set.”
I nod. “Okay, so auditory hallucinations isn’t our answer. We both heard the same thing.”
We’ve been following the footsteps for at least ten minutes. Every time I think we’re close, they disappear, only to come again somewhere farther off.
If there’s an exit to this tunnel, we haven’t found it. All we find are more branches and more passages. Like an underground maze.
“Does this make sense?” Elijah whispers at my ear exactly as I’m thinking the same thing.
“So many routes and no destinations?”
He nods, his gaze shooting from side to side, watching all three directions.
“No . . . but also, yes,” I say. “It’s weird, and I don’t like it, but if you have a warded secret cabin, and you’re as security paranoid as this spellcaster seems to be, you won’t want your back door running straight to the cabin.” I look around. “I bet when our homeowner is in residence, these are magically alarmed.”
“Giving her—or him—the chance to hear an intruder and ambush them while they’re wandering around, lost.” He pauses. “Kind of like we are.”
Yep, that thought did occur to me.
I open my mouth to say that I think we should retreat. Then I look ahead to the fork in the passage where a single footprint mars loose dirt. I walk over to it and bend.
“Should have done this earlier,” I mutter as I lower my nose to the ground. I pick up a scent, frown and turn to Elijah. “Lift your shoe.”
He does, and the tread matches the imprint.
“Shit,” I mutter. “We’ve been going in circles.”
I sniff around the footprint, seeing whether I can detect anyone else. Elijah walks past me and gets down on all fours, his nose coming close enough to the dirt that he backs up fast, hand over his mouth as he sneezes. I resist the urge to chuckle.
He’s still learning to use his secondary powers, and tracking by scent is new to him. He’ll figure out the nuances on his own . . . like keeping your nose high enough that you don’t snort dirt.
Neither of us detects a scent other than ours and another old one that smells human—well, human as in “not animal.” Except for werewolves and vampires, supernaturals smell like regular humans. I try a few others spots down an adjoining corridor and find two human scents, both old.
“I don’t think there’s anyone down here,” I say. “I don’t smell them in the air or on the ground.”
“So what have we been chasing?”
“I . . . I don’t know. We both heard footsteps, but . . .” I look around. “Whatever it was, I don’t believe we’re being followed. We’re being lured in.”