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Rick went to Burns, kneeling next to the three Americans. The eyes and tongue had been removed cleanly—they would heal well, he judged, as if that was any consolation.

"Those bastards," Hendrickson spat.

"They didn't do it." Rick was pretty sure he knew how the monster had been brought to life, and he bitterly regretted asking Evelyn anything about that black book. "That thing did."

"What—what is that?" Daniels asked.

"Let's not find out." Rick had been shaken by the certainty on the man in black's face. "Can I help you pack?"

"No. We've got it."

Between the two of them, they helped Burns to his feet. Rick returned to his own fire, where Jonathan and Evelyn were both almost completely packed.

Neither camp wasted any time. Before the first gray light of dawn was on the horizon, they were out of the ruins of Hamunaptra. Rick hoped he would never have to see the accursed place again.

The ride home was long, and exhausting. None of them spoke. Rick was torn between anger at what had happened, worry about what might come after them—a worry he despised himself for but also recognized had been hovering in the back of his mind since the first time he had been at Hamunaptra. And the very real, if somewhat selfish, concern that once he got her back to Cairo, he would never see Evelyn Carnahan again.

For her part, Evelyn struggled all the way back with the evidence of her senses. She didn't believe in fairy tales, or ancient curses, or any of the silly blather about a mummy that would come to life and protect the secrets of Hamunaptra. But she had seen the strangely fresh corpse from the sarcophagus come to life, seeing with Mr. Burns' eyes and speaking with his tongue. She had smelled it, in fact, and she had heard it speak its ancient language to her and call her Anck-su-namun.

Moreover, she had to grapple with the idea that she had been the one to awaken it. That she had read out loud from the book like some simpering show-off, just to impress Rick O'Connell, and had in the process raised the dead.

For all Evelyn's lifetime spent immersed in the history and culture of Egypt, there was a strong part of her that was also stolidly prosaic and English, thanks to the maiden aunts who had raised her and their complete and utter lack of imagination. They had been alarmed by their sainted brother's fascination with Egypt, and his disappearance, leaving them to raise his two half-Egyptian children, had caused them to try their hardest to stamp out any trace in Evelyn of her Egyptian heritage.

Obviously, that hadn't worked at all, because here she was, possibly being pursed by a mummified Egyptian priest. She wondered if her parents would be proud of her.

And then she wondered if she—and all of them—was going mad. A mummified Egyptian priest? Such a thing was simply not possible, she told herself. No matter what she had seen. Or heard. Or smelled.

Even the return to the familiarity of the fort didn't help. In these prosaic streets, filled with normal people going about their business, it seemed impossible that she might have raised the dead. And yet—Mr. Burns had to be helped down from his horse and led inside his hotel, because somehow his eyes and his tongue were missing. There was no rational explanation for that, just the completely fantastic one.

As thunder rumbled above her head, Evelyn made a decision. For once in her life, she would believe, because she had no other choice ... and since she had raised the dead, she was going to just ... unraise it.

Unbeknownst to her, Rick O'Connell had made a decision, too. He had no problems running with his tail between his legs—live to fight another day had always been his motto. And he had run from Hamunaptra before, after all.

No. He was getting out of Cairo, far from the creature they had left behind in the ruins, and he was taking Evelyn Carnahan with him, because somehow her safety had become necessary to his peace of mind.

He said as much to her as he helped her down from his camel. "Go get packed and we'll be on the first boat out of here."

"Good man," Jonathan said, patting him on the shoulder with approval.

Evelyn glared at both of them. "What is wrong with the two of you? We can't leave. Not until that … thing has been taken care of."

"Evie, what exactly do you plan to do?"

"Well, I don't know," she admitted. "But … something. I'll do something."

She stalked off, leaving Rick and Jonathan to exchange glances. "There's no talking to her when she's like this," Jonathan said at last, shrugging his shoulders and heading for the nearest bar.

Rick wasn't prepared to give up that fast. He caught up with Evelyn in the hallway. She ostentatiously ignored him, and he followed her to her room, where he walked in and started hunting for suitcases.

"Mr. O'Connell, what do you think you are doing?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm packing your things."

"How dare you! Besides, I have no intention of leaving. I am going to stay here and do something about this."

Rick emerged from her closet with handfuls of clothing. "I thought you said you didn't believe in that fairy tales and hokum stuff. Shoo!" he said to her cat, which was perched on top of her suitcase. He opened it as Evelyn snatched the cat away.

"Well, having an encounter with a 3,000-year-old walking, talking corpse does tend to convert one."

"Forget it," Rick told her, picking up an armload of frilly things. He was so irritated with her he didn't even stop to think about what kind of frilly things they might be, or notice that the clothes he had already put in the suitcase had been taken out again. "We're out the door, we're down the hall, and we're gone."

"Oh, no, we are not."

"Oh, yes, we are."

"Oh, no, we are not," Evelyn repeated stubbornly. "We woke him up, and we are going to stop him."

"'We'? What we?" Rick demanded, dropping an armload of books into the suitcase, which was empty again. "We didn't read that book. I told you not to play around with that thing. Didn't I tell you not to play around with that thing?"

"Yes, then, me me me me, I I I, I woke him up and I intend to stop him."

"Yeah? How? You heard the man. No mortal weapons can kill this guy."

"Well, then, we are just going to have to find some immortal ones," Evelyn argued, picking books back out of the suitcase.

Rick picked up her typewriter and started to drop it in, but she took it out of his hands. "There goes that 'we' again."

"Will you listen to me? We have to do—" She closed the suitcase on his fingers, ignoring his howl of pain. "Once this creature has been reborn, his curse is going to spread until the whole of the Earth has been destroyed."

"Yeah? Is that my problem?" He thought wistfully of his old life, when he didn't have to care about things like that.

"Well, it is everybody's problem."

"Evelyn, I appreciate you saving my life and all, but when I signed on, I agreed to take you out there and to bring you back. And I have done that. End of job, end of story, contract terminated!"

"That's all I am to you, a contract?" she asked softly.

Rick felt that in a jolt all the way down to his feet, but he was too angry that she refused to save herself—or him—to let it stop him. He shook his finger in her face. "Look, you can either tag along with me, or you can stay here and try and save the world. What's it going to be?"

"I'm staying."

"Fine!" He turned away from her before he could try to shake some sense into her.

"Fine," she repeated, following him.

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine." He opened the door, glancing over his shoulder, waiting for her to come after him. Even as it closed, he was sure she would.

But she didn't.