"Of course, Miss Theo. I told you I'd do anything I could to make it up to you." His eyebrows were drawn together in an earnest frown.
"So you did. Well, this is going to sound strange, but I need you to kidnap a coffin."
His jaw dropped open and one eyebrow began twitching so fiercely I thought it would launch itself clean off his face.
"But only for a little while," I rushed to add. "You can take it right back in a matter of hours."
"Am I to know why you need this coffin, miss?"
"Probably the less you know, the better, don't you think?"
"I suppose that depends. When did you need me to, um, procure this coffin for you? And was there a specific coffin you had in mind, or would any old coffin do?"
"Oh, no. It's a very specific coffin. And I need it by tomorrow night. Here's where you can find it..." And I proceeded to explain.
From my earlier research, I had made a small list of items I would need for the ceremony. Luckily, we had most of them here in the museum, although part of me felt I really had to quit treating the Egyptian exhibit as if it were a shop and I was on a shopping expedition. But another part of me simply didn't care. Someone had to tend to all the dark magic roaming around.
With the museum closed for the upcoming exhibition and everyone else busy in the foyer, I had the Egyptian room to myself. I was able to collect four small brass chafing dishes for incense burners, then I located two of the four vessels I would need for the purification ceremony. I found the other two down in the catacombs. I would also need a small bag of rock chips, red carnelian, to be exact. Hmm. Those would be tough, as I'd used up all my red stones a few weeks ago making Blood of Isis amulets for all the mummies in our museum during the Staff of Osiris crisis.
The only place I could think of to find carnelian chips was the repair table out in Receiving. We usually had a good supply of semiprecious stones and other odds and ends that the curators used to repair things that came in broken or damaged.
I paused at the door to Receiving, remembering my earlier encounter with the mut that lurked here. It could have been the one that had now attached itself to Henry, or it could have been a completely different one. Best to be on my guard.
I stepped inside the room, and my eyes searched all the corners of the ceiling. There was nothing there, which meant the shadow was most likely upstairs, attached to Henry like a limpet.
I hurried to the worktable and located a dozen small pieces of carnelian. It would just have to be enough. Shoving those into my pocket, I headed for the reading room.
There were two more vital ingredients to the ceremony. I needed seven sacred oils, which I would have to scrounge up from our pantry at home. I also needed an Egyptian Book of the Dead—a collection of spells and incantations that guided Egyptian souls through the trials and tribulations of the netherworld. Without them, the ba might be waylaid or defeated on its journey and never reach the Egyptian underworld, or what they called Duat.
I wanted to bury Tetley, but my conscience wouldn't allow me to bury the museum's only copy of the Book of the Dead with him, so I'd have to write out some of the more important spells on a piece of paper. That would take at least half the night, I was certain, which meant I'd have to take the papyrus home with me.
Bother. I hated homework.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A Tisket, a Tasket, a Please-Forgive-Me Basket
I HAD SO MUCH TO DO ON SATURDAY THAT, for the first time ever, I was hoping Mum would forget her promise to help me and Henry dye Easter eggs. It had sounded like a lot of fun a week ago, but now, with the Emerald Tablet and mut hauntings, I was simply too busy for something as frivolous as Easter eggs.
Not to mention I'd been up half the night writing down spells from The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Henry continued acting strangely when he came down for breakfast. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes unnaturally bright as he surveyed the sideboard. He helped himself to a bowl of porridge, a plateful of scrambled eggs, a second plate piled high with bacon and kippers, and a dozen slices of toast drenched in butter and jam.
He stolidly plowed through his meal, uttering nary a word of greeting or a whisper of conversation. My parents and I finished our meager-by-comparison breakfasts and then simply sat back to watch. When he had finally finished and licked the last remnant of jam from his fingers, Father looked at Mother in vague alarm. "Is he ill, or growing, do you think?"
"Growing," Mother said firmly, although the look she cast at Henry was a bit doubtful, and when she got up from the table, she rather casually felt his forehead.
When Father left for work, Mother promised to join him shortly then shooed Cook out of the kitchen, donned an apron, and rolled up her sleeves. "Let's get started, shall we? I'll put the water to boil. Theo, you get out the dye stuffs, if you please. Henry, go into the pantry and fetch the basket of hard-boiled eggs Cook left for us."
Mother set four pans with water on the stove while I rummaged around for the dye ingredients. When we had finished setting everything up, I went to join Henry at the kitchen table—where he was steadily eating his way through all the hard-boiled eggs.
"Henry!"
He flinched and dropped the egg he'd been cracking. "What?"
"We're not supposed to eat them! We're decorating them."
Mother left the stove to come peer at Henry in a worried fashion. "Didn't you get enough to eat for breakfast, dear?"
He shrugged. "I dunno."
Honestly! He was like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter.
Or the afterlife.
Suddenly he pushed himself away from the table, stood, and unbuttoned the top button on his trousers. "I don't feel so well," he said with a groan. Then he waddled from the room.
With Henry gone, Mother and I attacked the remaining eggs with efficient precision. We both had more important things to do, after all. When all the eggs had been put to soak in their pans, Mum left me to watch them while she went to get ready for work.
That's the hardest part about egg dyeing: waiting for the eggs to absorb enough color. If you take them out too soon, they are too pale. Luckily, I had lots to think about and plan for as I watched them bobbing around in the colored water like little buoys.
I needed to contact Will. He hadn't shown up at the museum yesterday afternoon, and I was desperate to hear his side of the suspension story.
Which meant I would have to pay him a visit. I'd been very lucky in the past about being in the general vicinity of where I thought him to be, then having him find me. Perhaps that luck would hold. If not, well, Ratsy had announced their address to the entire Alcazar Theater.
Besides, we had more eggs than we could ever eat. Either that or Henry would make himself violently ill eating them all. I bet they would make Will an excellent peace offering.
An hour later, when Mum had left for the museum and Henry had retired to his room with a cup of peppermint tea for his stomach, I sneaked into the pantry and prepared for my visit.
I pulled down one of Cook's old shopping baskets from its hook and filled it with a dozen of the colored eggs we had just dyed. It looked quite cheerful, if a bit empty.
I went back into the pantry and climbed up on a stool, reaching for the place on the top shelf that Henry had shown me, where Cook and Mum hid the sweets. I found a bag of lemon drops, some peppermint sticks, and some leftover ribbon candy from Christmas. There was also another stash of colored eggs, but these were much heavier than the ones I had made with Mum. These were most likely the ones Cook had filled with chocolate. My hand hovered over the bowl. These were Henry's and my most cherished Easter treat, and there were only a dozen of them. However, Henry was clearly going to eat himself into a stupor, given the chance, and I—well, there would be more next year. With a small sigh of regret, I removed seven of the chocolate-filled eggs and put them into the basket.