Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

P aige's shoulders slumped. "You always say that. No matter what it is, you go straight for the doomed bit."

"This time it's true."

"Why? What do we have to do?"

Dewey flicked his gaze up to the stone tiles on the wall and shook his head. "Something neither of us will want to do…or can do."

Paige studied the tiles, wondering if some sort of magic was needed to transform them or move them.

"We have to…" He paused, heaving a sigh as he prepared to impart the news. "We must…"

He buried his head in his hands again before he raised his gaze to her, his features pinched. "Make a picture out of those tiles."

Paige's features registered shock as warmth rushed through her. She snapped her gaze back to the wall. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," Dewey said. "It's…a slider puzzle."

"Nooooooo!" Paige wailed.

Dewey let himself descend to the stone floor and collapsed, throwing himself onto his back. "This is terrible. I hate sliders."

"Me too! We're doomed. I can't do them."

"Nope. Me either. I can't even do them when I know what the picture should look like. This? We don't even know what that should be."

Paige settled onto the floor next to him. "Do you think Drucinda is any good at slider puzzles?"

Dewey scoffed. "Are you joking? She probably came out of the womb with a completed slider puzzle."

"Okay, so we wait to be rescued."

"Good plan. We'll just sit here and wait. Drucinda can handle this kind of thing. Sliders just aren't our deal."

Paige drummed her fingers on her thigh as she stared at the tiles. "Wait, there's a picture next to it. Looks like a spider. I bet that's what we have to make."

"Hmm, you may be right. But so what? We have the pattern. I still can't do sliders. Not even the little nine by nines. And this is a whopping twenty-five by twenty-five."

"You're right. I can't even reach the top to move the tiles. Drucinda will probably just scale the wall."

"Right," Dewey said. "Well, looks like we're waiting for the almighty Drucinda."

Paige frowned, still eyeing the wall. "I don't like this plan. We're not helpless."

"We are when it comes to sliders."

"I think we can do it. We should try at least."

"Why?" Dewey cried. "It'll just make it harder when Drucinda gets here. Then she'll yell at us for messing up the puzzle and making it harder for her."

"So what? At least we tried. Come on, get up."

"Hard pass." Dewey crossed his arms and refused to move off the stone floor .

Paige tugged on the tip of his wing. "Get up. We can get the first piece into place."

Dewey heaved a sigh as he climbed to his feet and rose into the air. "Fine. But I'm not happy."

"Neither am I. Now…" She tapped a tile in the middle of the puzzle. "This has to go up in the corner. So, let's just move everything around until we can get this up there."

"That may make it worse."

"Dewey, it can't get any worse than it is right now. I mean, honestly. We're trapped in a tomb…again. We can't keep depending on Drucinda who weirdly used to be our enemy and now we constantly hope she'll save us."

"Because she was nearly your mom."

Paige slid a few tiles around to free a space near the first piece containing the end of one of the spider's eight legs. "Stop reminding me of that. I have nightmares about what it would have been like growing up with Drucinda as my mom."

"Would you have spoken with a British accent, I wonder?" Dewey slid the tile up, pushed a few others around, and moved it into place before dusting off his hands. "There. We got one into place."

"Yeah, I'm looking for the second one now." Paige scanned the tiles, finding it near the bottom. "Way down here, of course."

"Of course. Okay, move it on up, and I'll get it into place."

Paige shifted tile after tile before she slid it up toward Dewey. "‘Ere you go, luv."

"Ewwww, don't ever do that again, Eliza Doolittle."

Paige wrinkled her nose as she searched for the next piece. "I thought that was pretty decent."

"First of all, Paige, that was Cockney. Drucinda does not speak like she sells flowers on the street corner. Also, her accent is very chic. Of course, that voice she has…wow. Like a cat purring in your ear."

"Oh, stop. You really are in love with her."

"I am so not. But if she wanted to feed me peeled grapes, I wouldn't say no."

"You really are stuck on the peeled grapes." Paige shoved another piece up. "Put that over in the other corner first, then slide this one in and the first row will be done."

"Oh, good, twenty percent of the way done."

"Better than zero percent. Anyway, okay, so my British accent isn't great. Big deal. Just another reason it's a good thing Drucinda didn't raise me."

"I bet if she had, you'd have been married to Devon already."

"Reason number two on why it's a good thing she didn't raise me."

"Yep, you'd have been a teenage vampire bride. Never would have become a librarian. You'd have been busy raising a brood of little daywalkers and going to parties. Eating all that good food. Champagne. Jet-setting. Summers in Paris, winters in the Alps. Wait…it would have been way better for you to have been raised by Drucinda."

"I don't want summers in Paris and winters in the Alps." Paige wiped at a bead of sweat running down her temple as she manipulated another stone tile toward its final resting place.

"Are you crazy?"

Paige waited for him to move the tile into place, but he didn't budge. "That goes right there."

"Yeah, I know where it goes. I'd like an answer. Who wouldn't want summers in Paris and winters in Alps?"

"Me," Paige said, shoving her hands into her back pockets. "I want to live my own life. I want to find my mom. I don't want to summer in Paris. I have a brain. "

"So, do I," Dewey said as he finally slid the piece into place, "and my brain says you'd be a fool to not want to live the high life. You could use your brain for…other things, like researching new magic and so on. In fact, you'd have so much time on your hands, you could do anything you wanted."

"All while raising a brood of day-walkers." She sighed and slid another tile up to him. "We're doing pretty good with this. We may beat it."

"Doubt it. What's going to happen is, we're going to get down to the last few tiles, and they'll be all out of order and we won't be able to get them right."

"Think positive."

They continued to slide pieces into place, building the second row before they moved to the third. They slid tiles into place, completing that one before they studied the fourth row.

"Now, it gets tricky."

"We can get the first one into place, but the second will be an issue," Dewey said.

They worked to move the first tile to its correct spot, then Paige shuffled several tiles around to slide the second next to it.

"Yeah, good, but now you messed up the order here and it won't be right."

"Dang it." Paige frowned at the puzzle. "I hate sliders."

"Me too. There's a readers' group on SupNet that posts a puzzle a night. When it's a slider, I'm so mad at the admin. That lady really likes to torture people."

"Maybe she likes those kind of puzzles."

"Bull. She's some kind of masochist. Her name is Stephanie. What do you expect?"

"Sounds like a normal name to me." Paige shuffled a few pieces around before she stepped back with a shake of her head.

"Well, I don't like it. Stupid Stephanie and her stupid sliders. Just post more calculation puzzles, Stephanie! We all like those."

"If we ever solve this and get out of here alive, you can message her and tell her."

"I just might." Dewey shoved Paige's hands away from the tiles and slid a few around. "There we go. This row is nearly done. One more on the end and we've got it."

"Yeah, and then a mess in the last row."

Dewey puckered his lips as he stared at the puzzle. A second later, his eyes went wide. "Wait! Wait just a second!"

"What?" Paige's heart skipped a beat. "What is it?"

"I got it. I got it! OMG, I got it. Move this down, these all slide over, this up, this down, these back into place, this into its spot…"

"Slide these three into place," Paige said as she slid pieces to the left, "and we are done!"

Paige pushed the final tile into place with a grin. A loud crack split the otherwise silent chamber, making them both clamp their hands over their ears.

Musty air poured out from the opening that split the puzzle board in two. Paige's eyebrows furrowed as she peered into the blackness of the ever-growing hole.

"Mama, good!" Bones cheered. "Mama meet Pharoah."

Paige wrinkled her nose as her heart started to pound against her ribs. That had been exactly what she was afraid of. Beyond this puzzle, the Mummy Lord lay in wait.

Would she and Dewey be able to defeat this entity? Given their current track record, probably not. But she had to retrieve the scepter.

Maybe Bones could help them. He'd been instrumental in getting them through the tomb, maybe he could parlay on their behalf.

She exchanged a glance with Dewey, his eyes also wide with fear. He swallowed hard before he said, "You go first."

"What? Why me?" she hissed.

"Because you're bigger. And stronger. Also, smarter."

"That's not true," she said with a shake of her head. "Just bigger. But I'm pretty wimpy otherwise. You go first."

"No," Dewey said with a shake of his head as he crossed his arms. "No way."

"Fine, get on my shoulder, and we'll go together."

"Or…hear me out…you go first, then I go behind you, and–"

"Just get over here. I'm not going by myself."

"But I'd have your six. Like, that's the worst place to be is the back. Every time there's a killer, he takes the people in the back of the line. Not the front. The first person never even knows until they're suddenly alone."

"Dewey!" Paige said with a stamp of her foot.

"Fine, fine." He fluttered over to her and landed on her shoulder. "When we're both dead, you'll be sorry."

"Yep," Paige said with a nod as she stepped toward the cool air floating from the newly opened chamber.

The thin opening only allowed her to pass through sideways before she spilled into the large, new chamber. She swallowed hard, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light in the space.

She held her breath, scanning the large room before her eyes fell on an object floating in a glass case at the far end.

"The scepter," she whispered.

"Yeah," Dewey answered. "Go get it. I'll wait here."

"You go get it," Paige argued. "You can fly. You'd be way faster and quieter. "

"I can't get that! It looks heavy. Suppose I can't carry it back."

"You'll manage."

"That's cruel, Paige. Come on, we'll go together."

With a sigh, she nodded. "Fine. We'll both go." She took one step before she shook her head. "No, wait. We're idiots. We'll send Bones."

"Riiiiight." Dewey grinned at her. "Now, we're using our brains. Send him. He's practically indestructible."

Paige nodded before she spun to face the Mummy. "Hey, buddy, can you do me a favor?"

Bones cocked his head. "Help."

"Yes, help. Can you help us by just heading over there and grabbing that scepter?"

He flicked his red eyes over to the scepter before he returned them to Paige and shook his head. "No, Mama."

Dewey clicked his tongue. "Are you kidding me? What's the sense of having this joker around if he's not going to help us out? Come on, Band-Aid, hop to and get that scepter. We don't have all day."

"No," he answered. "Pharaoh mad. Pharaoh hurt Bones. Pharaoh crush Bones."

"He's soooo dramatic."

Paige studied the Mummy in front of her. His bandages crinkled as though his features pinched. "Dewey, I think he's really afraid. And maybe we should be, too."

Dewey scoffed. "Paige, he's almost invincible. He's just being a big baby. Go get the thing, lunkhead!"

"Dewey, stop it. He's scared." Paige glanced around over her shoulder. "Though it doesn't seem like anyone is here."

Dewey rolled his eyes. "Well, maybe we should just make a break for it. I mean, if no one is here, we can just grab it and go. "

"We're going to have to try for it," Paige said as she studied the scepter again.

"Wait here, Wimp," Dewey said as Paige took another step toward it. "We'll show you how this is done."

She made it halfway across the chamber when Dewey patted her on the head. "Good going, Paige. We're halfway there and no signs of anything fatal. Just a few more steps, and we'll have it."

She reached the pedestal, the glow from the floating scepter warming her face. "Should I just grab it?"

"Uhhh, I guess. I mean…what else would we do?"

"Switch it out for a fake scepter like Indiana Jones?"

"Oh, right, here let me grab the fake scepter I carry for just such occasions."

Paige glanced at him. "Seriously?"

"No, Paige. Just grab the dang thing."

"Well, I didn't know. You hide stuff in your scales all the time." Paige reached a hand toward the floating artifact.

"Small stuff, duh. Not a scepter. Sometimes, Paige, sometimes."

She blew out a shaky breath as her skin tingled as it closed in around the magical item. She closed her fingers around it, her eyebrows shooting up. With a grin, she tugged it toward her. "Haha! I did it!"

"Yeah, and we're still alive, too."

"Oh, yes, we are. Way to go, buddy!" She lifted her hand for a high-five, and this time, they connected.

"Wow, look at that. We've really got it together this time."

"Yeah, baby, we finally made it." Paige let out a loud laugh as she pumped a fist in the air. She spun with the grin still on her face, ready to return to the outer chamber.

Almost immediately after turning, she froze, the grin slipping from her face. She stared ahead at a beast twice her size. Her eyes rose up the human chest to the human face of an Egyptian Pharaoh mounted on a spider's body. "Uh-oh."

"Uhh, not good, Paige. We're dead meat."