Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

P aige scrambled back a few steps, falling into the sand and kicking to propel herself further away.

The mummy reached a bandaged hand toward her.

"Get away!" she shrieked.

The creature stopped and cocked its head. "Get away!"

"You're the echo?"

"You're the echo?"

"OMG!"

"OMG!"

Paige slowly climbed to her feet, afraid one false move would send the thing into a frenzy. "Okay."

"Okay."

"Nice and easy."

"Nice and easy."

She narrowed her eyes at it. "That's getting annoying."

"That's getting annoying."

"I'm just gonna back away real slow." Paige began to inch backward.

"I'm just gonna back away real slow." The mummy took a step toward Paige.

"Stop!" Paige held out a hand as she ceased her backward crawl.

"Stop!" the mummy repeated.

"You stay here."

"You stay here."

Paige tried to take a step, but the mummy followed. "Are you kidding?"

"Are you kidding?"

She pressed her lips together to stop herself from saying anything else for the creature to repeat. At least it hadn't killed her yet. Maybe it was only a matter of time. Her eyebrows flicked up as she tried to form an escape plan. "My bracelet!"

"My bracelet!"

Maybe she could use her bracelet to stop the creature in its tracks. She held up her arm and let it dangle from her wrist. It caught the dim starlight, sparkling as she moved it.

"Stop there."

"Stop there," the mummy repeated.

"Don't move."

"Don't move."

Paige ignored its mimic and backed away. The mummy followed her. She wrinkled her nose as her attempt at harnessing the beast-controlling powers of the bracelet failed. "Uh…"

"Uh…"

"Stay where you are."

"Stay where you are."

She gritted her teeth as the thing continued to follow her unbidden. "Fine."

"Fine."

She closed her eyes. She had to start using her internal voice when reassuring herself unless she wanted to hear her words repeated over and over. It's fine, Paige. Just lure him into the camp and let someone else help you with the magic part.

She rolled her eyes at herself. "So Drucinda can laugh at me."

"So Drucinda can lau–"

"Will you shut up?"

"Will you shut up?"

Paige let out a muffled scream, mimicked by the mummy as she plodded down the sand mound to the tents in the distance. The creature slogged behind her, its bandaged feet shuffling through the sand. She glanced over her shoulder, not thrilled with her newest buddy.

Her pace quickened. She had no idea what this thing was capable of doing to her or the others. Mummies were dangerous, right? Maybe it would wait until they reached the encampment, then attack.

As she closed the gap toward what she hoped was safety, she spun to walk backward, keeping an eye on the beast.

"Hey, I need a little help out here," she called as the tents filled in around her.

The mummy repeated her phrase.

A second later, tents unzipped on both sides of her. Paige stood with a grimace on her features as she let her gaze slide to the others to gauge their responses.

"Paige!" Dewey shouted as he fluttered into the night air. "Why did you bring a mummy home?"

"It followed me."

"It followed me."

"What in the world?" Drucinda crossed her arms as she circled around the creature. "Why is it repeating what you say?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know."

"It whistles, too. "

"It whistles, too."

Paige shook her head and gestured toward Dewey. "Huh?"

With an annoyed crinkled of her nose, she slapped at her palm then mimicked the gesture of writing.

Devon ran his hands through his hair before he thrust one forward. "I got it. Write. She wants to write."

Paige bobbed her head up and down as she pointed to him.

"Ohhhh." Dewey flew back to the tent and retrieved the RP. After toggling on the free writing notepad, he handed it to Paige. "Here, just writing with our finger."

Paige scrawled a few words on the screen, then spun it to face her fellow adventurers. It came up to me in the desert and followed me home. It keeps mimicking me.

Tarik crinkled his brow and shook his head. "Mummies are not known to mimic, though they do whistle."

Paige erased her page and wrote a new message. Well, this one does .

Drucinda circled around it again, studying it up and down. "It does not seem to be dangerous. Very odd."

"Do you want me to incinerate it?" Thorn asked, smoking puffing from his nostrils.

"No, no, it's quite interesting. Mummies are usually quite violent toward their prey."

"Yes," Tarik said with a nod. "I've never seen a mummy this docile."

"Exactly," Drucinda answered, "which makes me curious."

"Did you try zapping it with your magic bracelet?" Dewey asked.

Paige bobbed her head up and down before she wrote another note. I tried "Don't move," "Stay where you are," and "Stop there."

"Did you try Stop there you foul beast?" Dewey questioned. "That worked for me on the crystal bear when we body swapped."

Paige lifted her eyebrows and shook her head while she poked a finger at him. She raised her bracelet and said, "Stop there, you foul beast."

The mummy repeated the phrase.

"Try moving," Drucinda said.

Paige backed up a few steps. The mummy followed.

"Damn it," she murmured.

"Damn it," the mummy repeated.

Paige scrawled on the RP. "Can we at least figure out how to stop it from doing that? It's really annoying."

"Give me the RP," Drucinda said, waving her hand in the air for it.

"I've honestly never seen a mummy do anything like this," Tarik answered, approaching the bandaged beast and studying it closer. "It seems very attached to Paige."

"Another admirer," Dewey said with a sigh. "It's getting a little unbelievable, Paige."

She offered him an incredulous glance with a wrinkled nose.

Dewey fluttered around her with his fleshy eyebrows raised as Drucinda typed. "You know what I just realized? Paige can't talk at all. So, we could say anything to her and unless she wants her mummy friend to repeat it, she can't answer."

Paige offered him an unimpressed stare.

"Paige," Devon said, approaching her, "there are some things I've been meaning to say."

Paige shook her head vehemently and thrashed her arms around in the air. She glared at him, offering him a "no" signal in no uncertain terms.

"The thing is, though, we never get to talk. You said we could way back when you were in the castle and needed the Living Goo. I got you the Goo, still nothing."

Paige mimed a series of symbols at him. He wrinkled his forehead. "I'm not getting that."

She jabbed a finger at him.

"Oh, charades again. Oh, uh, you," Dewey said. Paige nodded.

She squeezed her thumb and forefinger together and lifted them in the air. Dewey narrowed his eyes. "Pinch. You pinch…oh, wait, this is getting weird."

Paige shook her head.

"No, dude, pinch is wrong."

Paige tried again, tugging on her ear.

"Sounds like…"

Paige held her stomach and let her tongue roll out of her mouth.

"Sick. Sounds like sick. Uhh…" Dewey eyes went wide, and he slid them to Devon before returning them to Paige. "Paige, there's no need for that language."

She wagged a fist in the air at him and motioned for him to move forward in the alphabet. "Oh, not a d at the start. Got it. Uhhh, kick? No. Li–"

Before he finished that work, she cut him off.

"Pick! You pick!" Dewey exclaimed.

Paige nodded and finished her phrase with her miming.

"You pick something time." Dewey crinkled his nose. "I'm not getting it."

Paige let her head fall between her shoulders. "You pick the worst times!"

"You pick the worst times!" The mummy shouted after she did.

"Oh, I could have gotten that if you worked at it a little more," Dewey said. "You didn't have to give it away like that."

"Sorry," she mouthed .

Devon kicked a foot in the sand. "So…it's a no on talking right now then?"

Paige crossed her arms, a scowl on her features as she stared at him.

"Okay, fine, we'll just keep waiting."

Paige mimed another charade phrase to Dewey.

"Don't give this one away this time," Dewey said as he rubbed his chin. "Uh…"

Paige frantically mimed on her end, shooting him a signal for four words.

"Four words…" Dewey said. "First word…"

Paige shrugged her shoulders and pointed to Drucinda and Tarik who still huddled over the RP.

"Oh, ah…Drucinda and Tarik."

Paige nodded before she shielded her eyes and scanned the desert.

"Look."

She shook her head.

"Not look…search…uh…find!"

Paige poked a finger at him as she grinned.

"Drucinda and Tarik find…Ohhhh, did Drucinda and Tarik find anything?"

Paige emphatically shook her head.

"Let me check." Dewey buzzed over to them as Devon closed the gap between him and Paige.

She leaned around him to study the scene with Dewey.

"Hey, Paige, I know you don't want to talk right now, but…"

She pressed a hand over his mouth, her eyes wide.

He tugged it away with a huff. "That's childish, come on. I just wanted to let you know that–"

"Nothing yet!" Dewey shouted over to her.

She broke away from Devon and hurried closer to the group researching the situation with the mummy. The creature followed closely behind her, bumping into her as she stopped. She shot a glare over her shoulder at it before she frantically poked at the screen and held her hands out to the sides with a shrug.

"Nothing yet. There isn't anything about a mummy following people around outside of to kill them." Drucinda heaved a sigh at her. "Leave it to you to have this problem."

For a woman who had as much knowledge as Drucinda had, she wondered if she was just testing her patience or if she really had no idea.

Dewey scanned the screen as Drucinda read something on it. "Give me that. It's going to take forever going that way."

Drucinda wrestled it back from him. "I have been doing research since the 1800s, I think I can handle this."

"That's the problem. Who searches for things like mummy plus echoing speech plus nonaggressive?"

"That is a perfectly good search. Specific but nonspecific enough not to return zero results."

Dewey snatched the RP from her hands and shook his head as he tapped on it. "That's ridiculous. No one searches like that these days. The system is robust enough to handle an extremely verbose search that uses specific keywords."

"Like what?"

"Like has a mummy ever followed someone home and repeated all their words." Dewey tapped around on the screen before he gave one final emphatic smack.

Paige lifted her chin to peer over the top of the device as results populated.

"Now, see what you've done?" Drucinda asked. "You've gotten bad results with your broad search."

"Not really." Dewey flicked the page up to peruse the results. "You just need to vet them through a little more carefully. "

"Which you did not have to do with my list."

"But your list wasn't getting us anything. Something like this isn't going to exist in the big sources. You've got to do a deep dive for this type of stuff. Blogs, tabloids, that sort of thing."

Drucinda scowled at him. "We all know tabloids are one of the best sources of information. That's ridiculous to even suggest I did not know that."

Paige crinkled her nose. The tabloids were primary sources?

"Paige didn't know that. Look at her. She's thinking…really, the tabloids?"

Drucinda arched an eyebrow at her. "Seriously? You didn't know that? They're rife with paranormal news."

"She probably thought it was all fake." Dewey continued to scan the results before he froze, his fleshy brows pinching together.

He poked at the screen and slowly slid a digit up to peruse the article.

"Did you find something?" Tarik asked.

"I may be on to something. This sounds similar to what Paige has going on."

"What is it?" Drucinda asked.

Dewey's eyes went wide, and he swiped the article away. "No, I was wrong. That's not it."

Drucinda held a finger in the air. "Wait a moment, why did you say that? You seemed convinced you were on to something, and now you've suddenly decided against it."

"Yep, it was stupid."

Drucinda set her hands on her hips. "You said it sounded very similar. Even if it's not this exactly, it could lead us to a solution. Now what is it?"

Dewey pressed his lips together. "Really, I'd rather–"

"What is it, little man? "

Dewey heaved a sigh. "It's…Snow White Syndrome."

Paige screwed up her face. What the heck was Snow White Syndrome?"

"I can't say I've heard of it. What is it?" Drucinda asked.

Dewey shrugged. "You know…her milkshake brings all the supernatural creatures to the yard."

Drucinda frowned at him. "What a ridiculous turn of phrase."

"Not really," Dewey said. "When you think about the symbolism of those lyrics–"

Drucinda held a hand up. "I would prefer not to, thank you."

Dewey swallowed hard before he read from the article. "Snow White Syndrome. A rare condition where supernatural creatures are drawn to a female. This typically involves creatures following or mimicking their chosen Snow White."

He quickly flicked past something but Drucinda stopped him. "Wait, just a moment, what did this bit say?"

"Nothing," Dewey said as he tried to scroll past it again.

"Yes, it did say something important." Drucinda slid the page back up and read from it. "Snow White syndrome is usually only an annoyance, however, it can in some cases, be fatal."

Paige's heart skipped a beat. Fatal? Was she suffering from another fatal disease?