Father sighed and stabbed his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Yes, Weems. But as you can see, I'm a little busy at the moment trying to get this new exhibit ready for the opening."
"Yes, sir. I understand. But the opening is two weeks away, while the inventory was due three days ago. I find that it is all a question of managing one's time proper—"
"Thank you, Weems," Father interrupted, not sounding the least bit thankful. "I'll have it to him directly."
Weems quivered in righteous indignation as he gave a crisp "Very well, sir," then high-stepped it out of there. Honestly, how does he not trip over his own feet like that?
"Theodosia?"
Oops. "Yes, Father?"
"Have you finished inventorying the basement yet?"
"Almost done, Father. Just one more shelf, really."
"Well then, get to it. I need it by the end of business today so I can get it to Chudleigh first thing in the morning."
"Yes, Father." Assigning me to inventory the basement had been a combination treat/punishment. (Yes, only my father would try to combine those two!) It was also an attempt to keep me occupied, since Grandmother had been unsuccessful in finding a governess who'd stick.
My research on the oracle rituals would have to wait. I changed direction and hurried to my small closet to fetch my ledger.
A miasma of cursed magic had hung over the basement for some time, but I hadn't been able to pinpoint it to a particular artifact. Since I was running out of time, I decided to just grab every last bit of wax I owned and conduct a mass Second Level Test on everything at once.
I reached my closet and fetched the ledger from the washstand, where I'd carelessly set it. Next I went to the large satchel where I kept all my curse-removing supplies and rummaged around until I had a handful of wax bits—candle stubs, mostly. Thus equipped, I headed for the catacombs.
On my way, I called softly for Isis, wondering where she'd gotten to. She normally came to greet visitors, so I was surprised she hadn't turned up in the foyer when Henry had.
Unfortunately, she didn't turn up on my way to the basement either. Which was too bad, as I always preferred a bit of company down there.
The problem with the catacombs was that so many forgotten relics had been stacked on top of one another, it was nearly impossible to tell which ones were responsible for the vile magic and dark curses that swirled about. What made matters even worse was that the Staff of Osiris hadn't even felt cursed, and I had no idea how to distinguish a power-laden artifact from an uncursed one.
I opened the door, turned up the gaslights, and then paused as the force of the dark magic hit me. I shuddered once and gripped the three amulets I wore around my neck. Just as I lifted my foot to head down, a voice behind me said, "Can I come too?"
My pulse slowed a bit at this reprieve. "Henry!" Heartened considerably by the idea of a companion—even if it was only Henry—I said, "Why, of course you can come down. If you want to. But I didn't think this sort of thing interested you all that much."
Henry shrugged. "It's not like there's anything else to do in this stuffy old place."
"Very well, then. Come along. But you need to wear this." I lifted one of the amulets from my neck and held it out to him.
He recoiled as if I had offered him a plate of boiled suet. "I'm not wearing one of your stupid necklaces."
"It's not a necklace, Henry. It's protection. Remember? I gave one to Stokes when he was injured in St. Paul's churchyard."
He shook his head at me. "Quit pretending to be all magical and mystical," he said. "You're not fooling anyone, and you just look stupid." Then, before I could stop him, he shoved past me and raced down the stairs. His words stung, and I had half a mind to leave him to the mercies of whatever magic he might find. Then we would see who was pretending. However, just the thought of that had me hurrying down the stairs after him. At the bottom step, instead of stopping, I kept right on going until I bumped smack into him.
"Watch it!" he said, pushing me away.
"Sorry," I murmured as I slipped the amulet into his coat pocket under the guise of steadying myself. Once that important business had been taken care of, I turned my attention to the catacombs.
The gaslights barely penetrated the shadowed corners of the room, mostly because they weren't run-of-the-mill shadows. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of an unprotected Henry. In front of me, Henry sniffed. "It smells like wet dog."
My eyes flew to the Anubis statue sitting atop the Canopic shrine. He was sleek black stone, not a twitch of a whisker or tail, thank goodness. He hadn't come to life again, not since I'd returned the Orb of Ra to his shrine. But I'd been alone every other time I'd come down here. I wasn't sure if a second person's ka would have an effect on him. Some curses remained dormant for centuries until they were exposed to a person's life force, which activated the magic in much the same way that the sun caused a flower to bloom.
"What's your cat doing down here?" Henry pointed to where Isis lay, curled up between the statue's front paws.
"What on earth are you doing here, Isis?"
She raised her head and blinked her golden eyes at me, then gave a meow of greeting.
Henry whistled, pulling my attention from the cat. His eyes were big and round as he stared at the mummies against the wall. "All right," he finally said. "Now I see why you call it the catacombs. This place is creepy."
I found it heartening that he finally felt a niggle of discomfort. He'd never admitted to that. "You should have seen it before I straightened it up some," I told him as I headed for the shelves in the far corner, the very place I'd found the Staff of Osiris. Ever since I'd learned that the staff had come to us as part of an entire warehouse of artifacts of unknown provenance, I'd been trying to identify the rest of the batch. That was why I'd been dragging my feet on this inventory. If there were other powerful artifacts that wielded the power of the gods, I wasn't sure I wanted to record them for all the world to see. Best to let them hide until I could get them to the Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers and let them take it from there.
I glanced over my shoulder at Henry, who was still examining the row of mummies, paying particular attention to the mummy formerly known as Tetley. "I say, this fellow is rather odd-looking compared to the others."
"You're correct, Henry. He is from a much more recent time period than the others are." Would Henry recognize him? He had seen him once before, when Tetley was alive and we had been following him. As Henry continued to stare at the mummy, my worries grew.
"Here." I took a blank page out of my ledger and handed it to him. "Could you go write down the names of all those weapons over in the corner? I haven't had a chance to do it yet." Actually, I had, but I knew that Henry had a keen interest in weaponry and it seemed like a good place to sit him.
"Weapons?" Henry's whole face brightened. He took the sheet I held out and went over to the corner.
When he was safely occupied with that task, I proceeded toward the last shelf. As I'd inventoried the basement, I'd also done a bit of organizing, and this shelf was where all the stone tablets had ended up, along with a few nearly unidentifiable odds and ends.
Hoping for a hint of latent power, I picked up the first stone tablet and held it tight. The stele featured a pharaoh offering wine to the god Amen-Ra and looked to be from the New Kingdom. However, there was no hint of power or magical energy. Of course, there hadn't been a trickle of power when I'd first held the staff either. However, there had been a distinct flicker when I had accidentally activated it by setting the Orb of Ra into the jackal's jaws. I stared at the stele in my hands. How on earth would one activate a stele? I wondered. I shook it slightly, but nothing happened. I turned it over and over in my hands, looking for a small aperture such as a key might fit in, but there was nothing. If there was a way to activate this particular stele, it was a mystery to me.