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"This is what's been eating my every waking hour since we left Egypt." He collects his laptop and clicks through a series of images of glyphs I can immediately tell are not the normal funerary markings of the day. The kind that would have made my daily research so much easier, finally settling on the one I remember as the seal for the tomb. "I can't figure it out. This writing is a mix of Egyptian hieroglyphics and some other language I am not familiar with. It's like cuneiform but not."

I gesture for the laptop. He awkwardly tries to show me the screen, but I take it from his hands with a deftness I didn’t know I had. I scan the text and instantly see he’s at least partly right—they’re definitely cuneiform. Stranger still, I’ve never seen this language before, except at the dig, and yet, somehow, I know it’s supposed to be read left to right. I even sense what it’s meant to say.

"That's Old Persian cuneiform," Kayvon says from over my shoulder as if the answer couldn't be more obvious.

"What's it say?" Anthony asks.

"I don't know, I can't read it," Kayvon shoots back. "It was only used for a handful of centuries and..."

Kayvon seems to realize the same thing I do by the way he quiets. I hold my finger to the screen to read along the cuneiform, and while obviously the language is lost to me, the two of us recite the same words in unison.

"Here lies Merytamun, warden of the darkness. Should her tomb ever be disturbed, pray for my return."

I stare long and hard at every symbol, but I stare hardest at my own name. It's written differently, but it's definitely my name. I look to Kayvon, who returns the stare.

The gravity of the moment is shattered as Anthony mutters, "Pray for who?"

"Maybe for Mary?" Kayvon asks, a look of worry dancing on his face.

Anthony strokes his own stubble. "No, that doesn't make sense. Why would they bury her and then ask you to pray for her in a different tense? She didn't bury herself."

"Tony! Are you not concerned that my name is in the cursed inscription?" I huff.

Anthony pauses and then looks at the screen. "Am I concerned that you are named after someone with a common name for the region, and someone else in Egypt's long history has it? No."

"This is a bit more than a coincidence." Kayvon gently suggests.

Anthony looks between us. "Jesus, don't indulge her fantasies. This is why I was hesitant to share what we found on the dig. You’ve had plenty to show off before the exhibit returns to Egypt. I’m sure you’ll get all the funding you wanted. Last thing I needed was you dragging my research down with you as hokum."

Anthony’s words chip away at me, even though he won’t look in my direction. Then, like a Magi, Kayvon steps between us.

"Hey! This is serious! She isn't doing hokum or whatever that is. She's a talented researcher, and you are being an asshole."

"Oh my God, mummy curses aren't real," Anthony shoots back.

"Maybe not. But Druj is, and whatever you guys brought back from Egypt is in danger of threatening the whole city, and she's the only one who seems remotely interested, let alone determined enough to stop it."

Anthony stands tall, chest to chest with Kayvon, and then says something to him in Arabic, something he knows is meant to be a slight against me simply by the fact he’s saying it in Arabic. The act is his way of posturing that he's the real archeologist who gets to go on so many digs, who gets to properly practice his Arabic in the field. It’s belittling.

Then Kayvon says something back, his Arabic just as fluent, and Anthony's expression sours. Anthony ponders something—he seems to ponder a lot of things—then, in English, he says, "Fine, I'll help."

After that, he’s oddly docile, barely snapping or saying anything snide. We settle into an easy rhythm, working through the day and ordering from a different Famous Ray’s pizza. Kayvon and I decipher each bit of cuneiform, and Anthony helps us put it in context.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know if there’s a prayer or a person to pray to. What we do uncover is a saga: a great shadow grew over Luxor, bringing death and pestilence. A traveler from a distant land was sent by their leader to hunt the shadow and protect the people, but the shadow was too strong. No matter what the traveler tried, the praise of Luxor’s misguided citizens let the shadow grow uncontested.

In the end, only the union of an Egyptian priest and the traveler was strong enough to overcome the shadow, but at great cost. The priest didn’t survive. Their sacrifice sealed the shadow in the canopic jar. She was entombed with the jar, so her soul could stand guard, with wards placed around the tomb as the shadow’s final prison.

"Well... Then I guess that's it," I mutter as I look back over our notes. "I guess I have to die to stop this thing, and then we entomb me in a subway station or something."

"How is that what you got from any of this?" Anthony asks.

"Because it all makes sense! I unsealed the tomb. Crazy stuff has been happening to me since I got back. I can read ancient Persian cuneiform out of nowhere. I'm the mummy. It's me. I got cursed when I opened the tomb!"

"Oh my God, would you knock it off?! If I knew it would lead to all this, I would never have let you convince me to have you fill in for Rob," Anthony shoots back.

"See! If Rob hadn't met an unfortunate fate, I wouldn't have been fated to go!"

"Rob didn't die; he got the flu!" Anthony pushes back. "And dark shadows and corruption can mean anything. Most historians still believe the plagues Moses summoned were caused in part by nearby tectonic activity, not divine intervention."