Page 153 of Marked By the Pack
“Um…what?” Emma said.
“Egyptian tombs.” She smiled and turned around in a circle, soaking it all in. “It wasn’t just pharaohs in the tombs. It was all their belongings. And their whole family and servants and pets were also killed. So they could all enter the afterlife together. Their bodies all embalmed for preservation.”
“Ew.” I couldn’t even pretend to hide the look of disgust on my face.
“Embalming isn’t gross. The human body is the home for your spirit. You embalm dead bodies so that the soul can live on in the afterlife. It’s an artform. It’s very delicate and complicated. And it’s kind of romantic in a way.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t say “ew” again. Embalming was not romantic in any way. “Let’s focus and find this coin.”
“Oh my God,” Kebe said and lifted up a little statue of an Egyptian pharaoh.
At least, I was pretty sure that’s what it was because of its painted blue headdress. It looked so fragile. If itwas made of clay or something…one slip and it could be in a million pieces.
“I really don’t think we should be touching anything besides the coin,” Emma said.
At least the two of us were on the same page.
“These artifacts don’t belong locked up in a vault. They should be put back in the tombs they were stolen from. I should have brought a bag or something. Can we empty out your duffel and take…”
“We’re not taking anything but the coin. Focus, Kebe.”
“But…”
“Put the weird little statue back and help us search for the coin.”
She put it down and then grabbed something else. “Ah, a sistrum!”
“A what?”
“It’s an Egyptian instrument.” She stared at me like I was dense.
I shrugged. It looked like one of those devices you learned to count on.
She put that back too and gasped. “No. Way. The scales of Anubis? My dad is going to lose his shit when I tell him I found this. I have to take them. I can’t let…”
“Kebe, stop!” Emma said. “We need a coin with Anubis’ head on it, not his scales. Come on, we need to get out of here. Climbing down the side of the building was a huge chunk of our time allotment. And Bennett said a lot of these items are magical. He doesn’t know what all of them do. It could be dangerous.”
“Emma’s right.” I walked over to the adjacent wall and scanned it for the coin. But my eyes landed on a ruby sitting inside a glass container. Why was it the onlything behind glass? For some reason I couldn’t look away.
I reached out to open the lid.
Emma grabbed my hand. “It’s probably drawing you in. If you touch it you’ll probably die or something.”
I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was to die in this vault.
“Are we sure this is the only vault with relics in it?” Emma asked. “I’m not seeing any coins.”
“It’s definitely in here,” Kebe said. “I feel its aura.”
She’d talked about auras before when she said Emma had an artsy one. It was one thing to describe a person’s aura that you’d just met, but Kebe had never even seen this object. “How do you know what kind of aura it’s giving off?”
“Well, it’s supposed to be the cure for werecats and vampires. That’s good vibes. So the aura would be green.”
“Would be? You just said you could feel it’s aura. Is green not the color you’re sensing?”
“No, it is.” She shuddered. “Sorry, I just got distracted.” She reached out and touched the scales of Anubis again. There was a frown on her face.
“Stop touching that, Kebe.”
