Hypnos groaned. “But there’s got to behundredsof Eyes!”
“All the more reason to get started.” Séverin moved to the first shelf. “Shall we?”
There were fifty sections, ten for each of them. Séverin began reaching for the Horus Eyes. Every time he could see his shoes through the glass, he put an Eye back and reached for another. One after another after another, and each time he saw the ground reflected at him. Three sections. All of them decoys.
Séverin slid yet another decoy into its section when a slip of silvercloth fell. When he reached for it, his fingers skimmed across the surface, as if it were a pane of ice. He’d never seen anything like it. And frankly it was just solustrous, like a mirror poured onto the ground. He pinched the edges of it, lifting it off the floor and stowing it away.
Across from him, Laila paused in running her hands along the Horus Eyes. Her gaze swept from his face to his jacket pocket and lingered there. He couldn’t seem to hide anything from her.
Séverin cleared his throat. “Enrique? Zofia? Anything?”
Enrique shook his head. Zofia didn’t answer. Séverin turned, about to move back to the shelf when he saw Laila struggling to pull a Horus Eye from its shelf. There was a large, black tome wedged next to it. The base of its spine seemed stuck to the wooden board.
“I can’t get to it!” said Laila. “The Horus Eye is stuck behind this book.”
Séverin couldn’t have explained why the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly raised. He didn’t like how that book was stuck to the shelf. It felt too intentional. Besides, there was something unnerving about the ink-stained pages and how the charred leather-bound cover looked far too smooth to be made of animal skin. Even the library felt entirely too still and silent in that moment. Before he could warn her, Laila pried the book off the shelf. The moment she wrenched it from its spot, it split down the middle. Indigo plumes spilling out from the opened pages.
“Get back!” yelled Séverin.
Laila dropped the book and darkness erupted from the pages. Amidst the dark, a snatch of white slipped from the page to the floor. It was a slender white feather.
Before, he thought the cavernous library had been still and silent. He was wrong.Thiswas silence. All the sounds he had taken for granted—rustling fabric, whirring insect wings, runningwater—disappeared. Shadows seeped in from all sides of the library, rushing to give the book’s smoke new shape. A snout formed. Teeth glinted. Paws covered in blood-slick fur outstretched. Séverin could see Laila, her mouth shaped into a scream. He darted between the thing’s legs toward her just as a low snarl reverberated through the library. Slowly, the five of them looked up.
The shadow creature towered above them, the top of its head stretching far above the high shelves. The front of its body belonged to a lion, the hindquarters belonged to a hippo, and its head swung back and forth, crocodile jaws snapping. The creature slammed its paw against the floor.
“Duck!” hollered Séverin.
The five of them ran to the end of their respective sections.
“Ammit,” said Enrique, loudly.
“What?”
“That’s whatthatis,” he said. “The devourer of souls from Egyptian mythology.”
“But we’re not in Egypt!” wailed Hypnos. “What’s it doing here?”
“I’m guessing they brought it over to protect a powerful Horus Eye,” said Enrique.
“Which means you must have found the true one,” said Séverin.
The ground thundered. The snuffling sound of an animal searching for something filled the air.
“If we went back and got the Eye, maybe it will disappear,” said Zofia.
Hypnos choked back a laugh. “That’syourexperiment,ma chère. Enjoy. I amnotgoing out there.”
“Not all of us have to,” said Séverin.
He looked over his shoulder.
Ammit breathed heavily, its head lowered, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. Near its foot was the white feather that had fallen ontothe ground. Ammit paced back and forth across that small section. The fur on its body bristled as it hunched protectively near the shelves.
“It’s definitely guarding something,” said Séverin.
Now all they had to do was lure it away from that thing.
“You four go around the other side of the shelf and get to the section with the Horus Eye. When you’re close enough, signal me. I’ll jump out. Ammit will come after me. Then all you have to do is close the book and grab the Eye. Got it?”
