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Rick turned to Rana. "Are you ready?"
"I am ready to leave."
"We can't leave until we find the necklace."
"You, and you—" She turned her black-rimmed gaze from Rick to Jonathan and back again. "Said there was no danger, the passage was clear."
"It was," Jonathan protested. "I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been."
Her look of disgust spoke volumes. "You would have me believe this magician can bring mummies to life?"
"We've seen it before," Evelyn told her. "At Hamunaptra."
"You? You have been at Hamunaptra?"
"Yes."
"I see. You finished what you began, then?" she asked Rick.
"Not exactly," he said uncomfortably.
"You did not discover the resting place of the treasures of Egypt?"
Bitterly, Jonathan said, "Oh, we found it, all right. Moments before it was swallowed up by the desert."
"Better for you, my friend," Ardeth told him. "This chasing after treasure and despoiling the graves of the ancients never goes well."
Rick glanced at Evelyn, thinking it had worked out for him better than he could ever have imagined. She gave him a quick smile, clearly thinking the same thing.
"So, what is it that we do now?" Rana asked of them all. "I wish to be gone from here."
"We need to find the Lost Tomb and finish the ritual before Osiris can get here himself."
"What if he's already here, Evie? The mummies and …" Jonathan looked at the pouch at Rick's belt, where the piece of lapis lazuli rested.
Evelyn resisted the urge to look at Alex and see what the other woman's reaction to that suggestion would be. She listened hard for any sound, but there was none.
"If he's already here, that makes things easier," she said crisply. "We'll just kill him."
There was silence as everyone else stared at her.
"What? Were you planning to just talk to him and reasonably explain why he can't be a god? I didn't notice anyone trying to talk Imhotep out of that same plan."
"Imhotep wasn't much on the talking," Rick pointed out. "Osiris, on the other hand …"
"Yes, he droned on and on," Jonathan agreed.
Evelyn frowned at him. "How would you know? You were too busy eating all the poisoned food."
"Well, that's because you had all the talking under control, Evie."
She rolled her eyes. "So, what's our plan, then? We have to go farther in to find the Lost Tomb—"
"Are we even sure it's here?" Alex asked, piping up for the first time in the conversation. "What if this isn't the right place and Osiris is somewhere else?"
"It's here." Evelyn was certain of it. The car had been smashed near enough to here that this was the most logical place for them to take shelter. She had to think that they had been led here. She remembered that before the car was disabled, Alex had been supposed to be leading them, and turned on the other woman. "Isn't it? You would know, wouldn't you?"
"Of—of course. It must be here," Alex stammered.
"You didn't actually know where you were going, did you?"
"I …" Alex looked around at all of them, her eyes wide and desperate. "I was … I was looking for signs," she said at last, her voice growing stronger either as if she had remembered what her plan had been or as if she had decided on a lie. "There were landmarks I had memorized to remember how to get there."
Ardeth helpfully filled in the details for her. "And then we were forced to leave the car, and that made you unsure?"
She turned to him gratefully. "Yes. That's it, exactly."
"But do you recognize it now that you're in it?" Rick asked.
"I … never came inside."
Evelyn sighed. This was getting them nowhere, and they weren't any closer to coming up with a plan either to deal with Osiris or to complete the ritual so he couldn't. "Look, we need to move further in," she said abruptly. "That's all there is to it. Move further in, find the tomb and the re—the necklace, and complete the ritual."
"Osiris has the necklace," Alex said scornfully.
"Then we destroy the tomb and make certain he can't complete the ritual," Evelyn snapped in response. "Unless you have a better idea, of course."
Alex didn't, or at least, not one she wanted to share, so she lapsed into a sullen silence while they packed everything up again. Rick led the way, torch held high. Evelyn brought up the rear, not so much to keep an eye on everyone else as to move slowly, scuffing her toes in the dirt to feel if she could find any other pieces of the necklace. It occurred to her to wonder if Osiris had been taking it to pieces on purpose, or if he had dropped the piece they found accidentally. If the first, then they were playing right into his hands. If the second, they had a valuable advantage. She supposed she would find out which it was when they caught up to him again.
Evelyn didn't realize how far she had fallen back from the main group until she noticed how dark it had suddenly become. She stopped moving and listened carefully, hearing their voices faintly. It would not be wise to go too fast in the dark, but she moved more briskly in order to catch up, her fingers occasionally brushing the walls to make certain of them. She wouldn't want to miss a passageway in the darkness. She thought about calling out to the others to wait for her, but some instinct told her not to. Situated where she was, if she could avoid making noise, she would be difficult to detect. If anyone was following the rest of the group, she would know.
Carefully she picked her way along, stopping entirely when she saw the light of a very small flame—a candle, she surmised—coming back along the passage toward her. She flattened herself against the wall and waited to see who it was, and what they were up to.