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The Egyptologist wasn't in his office … but someone else was. Someone Rick had wanted to find almost as badly.

Beni was desperately pulling out drawers and dumping their contents on the floor. It looked inefficient to Rick, but Beni always did waste his energy by acting first and thinking later.

"Well, well, well," Rick said from the doorway, enjoying the way Beni jumped at the sound of his voice. "Let me guess. Spring cleaning."

Whimpering, Beni ran for the window. Rick picked up a chair and threw it after him, clipping him on the back so that he went sprawling across the rug with a howl of pain.

Jonathan gave a low whistle. "Nice shot."

"Oh, Beni, did you fall down? Here, let me help you up." Rick reached for Beni's shirt, hauling him to his feet. He shoved the little weasel up against a wall, holding him there. "You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn't you, Beni?" It all made so much sense. Beni always had an eye for where his best advantage was, and right now, that was with the monster.

"What friend?" Beni protested. "You are my only friend." He shrieked as Rick yanked him away from the wall and slammed him onto a desk instead. The Egyptologist's office had been destroyed by Beni's search, anyway, and really, the Egyptologist had much bigger problems than some mess.

"What the hell are you doing with this creep, huh, Beni? What's in it for you?" Rick demanded.

"It is better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path." Probably the most honest thing Beni had ever said. "As long as I serve him, I am immune." He smiled, pleased with his own cleverness.

No matter who got hurt—as long as there was something in it for Beni, that was all that mattered to him. All that had ever mattered to him. And yet, some part of Rick still couldn't help liking him. That was what was really fueling his rage right now, that he couldn't find it in himself to dismiss this slimy little viper as a lost cause. He jerked Beni to his feet and dragged him across to another wall. "Immune from what?"

"Piszkas allat."

"What did you say?"

"I don't want to tell you," Beni whined. "You'll just hurt me some more."

This called for more desperate measures. Rick took a firmer grip on Beni's shirt and pulled him into the center of the room, lifting him so that the whirring blades of the ceiling fan were very close to his face. "What are you looking for? And try not to lie to me."

As expected, Beni shrieked and started spilling the truth. "The book! The black book they found at Hamunaptra. He wants it back. He said to me it would be worth its weight in gold."

"What does he want the book for?" Jonathan asked.

"Oh, come on, I don't know."

Rick had let Beni down a little in reward for his honesty, but that had clearly been a mistake. He lifted him again.

Beni screamed as the air from the blades brushed his face. "Something about bringing his dead girlfriend back to life. But that's all. He just wants the book, I swear. Just the book. I swear." As Rick lowered him again, he caught his breath in a sob, then turned to look at Jonathan. "And your sister. But other than that—"

This time it didn't take a fan to scare him. The look on Rick's face, which must have matched the anger and terror that flooded him at the idea of that … thing getting its hands on Evelyn, made Beni scream again.

Or—no. That scream had come from outside, from the streets below. Both Beni and Rick turned toward the sound. Beni used the moment to knee Rick in the groin, escaping his slackened grip and throwing himself out the window. Anyone else might have broken something—a leg, maybe a neck. But not Beni. He sat up, shook himself, and was off, running through the streets like the rat he was.

Jonathan and Rick reached the window in time to see Beni disappear … and to see the crowd on the street below fall back, leaving a black-robed figure kneeling over the body of a man in a white suit. The Egyptologist. As they watched, the figure in black lifted one of the canopic jars from the dead man's grip. Then he straightened, turning toward Rick and Jonathan as though he knew they were there. He held the jar in one hand, and in the other he had the book. The black book. The one that had started this whole thing.

The monster, whose face was now covered in decaying flesh, stared at them for a moment before opening its mouth. Something black came out of it, flying toward the window where they stood. Rick managed to slam the shutters closed just in time, before the cloud of flies reached them. But the shrieks they could hear said the people on the street hadn't been so lucky.

They locked the shutters from the inside. Rick looked at Jonathan. "That's two down, two to go." He wished he felt worse for the Egyptologist—but mostly he felt bad for the innocent people who would suffer if the curse was completed.

"And then he'll be coming after Evie," Jonathan said. They exchanged a worried glance, then moved as one toward the door, Rick's pulse pounding, counting the seconds until he could make sure she was safe.