❝death is only the beginning.❞
Mara El-Masri's fascination with the long-ago world of ancient Egypt started with the stories her stepfather would tell her when she was a child. Her brother Talib El-Masri is missing, left after their mother's funera...
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☾ ☽
IT FELT STRANGE TO MARA that night had fallen, that even though things had worsened as quickly as they did, and throughout all the plagues they'd lived through and all the deaths they'd seen in just a few hours out of the day, the sun would still set at night and rise in the morning. Would it still rise in the morning? Mara hoped so, and she hoped that it wouldn't be the last sunrise she would ever see.
With three of the four men who opened the chest at Hamunaptra dead, the only thing they could do was return to the museum to see if Jamil, Bey, and Ardeth had discovered anything that could kill the creature and to inform them of what had occurred in the few hours they had been apart. Jamil was not with them when they found them; when Mara asked, Bey said he was searching for something and left it at that.
"According to legend, the black book that the Americans found at Hamunaptra is supposed to bring people back from the dead," said Evy as they followed Bey and Ardeth up the stairs at the museum. The black book of legend was now in the hands of the creature who sought to kill Daniels and sacrifice Evy. "Until now, it was a notion I was unwilling to believe."
"Believe it, sister," O'Connell said. "That's what brought our buddy back to life."
"Yes. And I'm thinking that if the black book can bring people to life—"
"—then maybe the gold book can kill him."
"That's the myth. Now we just have to find out where the gold book is hidden."
It sounded easier in theory than in practice. It was initially believed that the Book of Amun-Ra was hidden in a secret compartment at the legs of the Anubis statue in Hamunaptra, but that was where the Book of the Dead had been hidden. The answers to where the Book of Amun-Ra was would be somewhere in the museum's collection, it had to be.
Mara inquired, directing the question to Bey and Ardeth, "I'm sorry, what exactly did Imhotep do three thousand years ago that they would have him suffer something as horrible as the Hom-Dai, and what has Anck-Su-Namun have to do with it?"
The answer came, accompanied by heavy, anxious footfalls, from Jamil behind them as he rushed to catch up with them. There was a quiver of arrows on his back and he carried a wooden bow in one of his hands. He said, causing everyone to glance back at him as he arrived, "Anck-Su-Namun was the mistress of Seti I. She and Imhotep were lovers. After he discovered their affair, they killed Seti and Anck-Su-Namun killed herself hoping Imhotep would resurrect her. He was stopped before he could and suffered the Hom-Dai because of his actions."
"That'll do it," Jonathan remarked.
Jamil looked past them at Bey and Ardeth. "We have a problem."
