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“If there was no way to open the door from the inside,” Gina said, “then someone had to have pushed it from the outside.”
“Theoretically.”
“Maybe whoever pushed it took the body. Or the burial pots.”
“Probably,” Matt agreed, but then his gaze caught on something interesting. “Except…” He pointed at the ground. “The only footsteps here are ours.”
CHAPTER 15
“What does that mean?” Gina asked.
“I haven’t a clue.”
“But you’ve got that Ph.D. thingy after your name.”
Teo smiled. “Sometimes that Ph.D. thingy isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
Interesting. Gina had always thought it must be worth a helluva lot.
“Why the glyphs?” she continued. “Why the door, if there was never anything in there at all?”
“Never’s a long time.”
“Now you’re just talking gibberish.”
He glanced at her, and his eyes had gone dark in the lamplight. They almost didn’t look like Teo’s eyes at all. “Maybe someone took whatever was in here, then covered their tracks.”
“If someone found a mummy, don’t you think we’d have heard about it?”
“Not necessarily. Tomb raiders have been around as long as the tombs. And when one of them snatches something to sell to private collectors, or even witch doctors, they usually do so without letting anyone know about it.”
“Witch—” Gina stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it. “What?”
“Certain spells require all sorts of weird things for ingredients.”
“You said you didn’t believe in magic,” Gina pointed out.
“Just because I don’t doesn’t mean there aren’t others who do. Others who’d be willing to do anything, or pay anything, to get what they think they need.”
Gina opened her mouth, t
hen shut it again. He should know. She certainly didn’t.
“This place was cursed. No one ever came here.”
“Grave robbers love curses,” Teo said. “ A curse pretty much puts an X right on the spot.”
She hadn’t thought of that.
“What happened to the footsteps of the grave robbers?”
“They brushed them out, or maybe they were here so long ago … Other things that happened afterward…” He paused, casting her a concerned glance. “They could have changed everything.”
If grave robbers had come before she and Jase had been buried, before her parents had died and the cavern had been searched and then filled in again, the idea that footsteps would still be visible was ludicrous.
Gina had another thought. She’d been avoiding shadowy corners, afraid of what she might see, but now her gaze flicked around the room, back through the door, and down the shadowy hall. She hadn’t seen any bodies out there, either. Maybe, just as the “experts” had said, they’d only fallen in deeper, being pulled lower in a maze of catacombs as every granule of earth was dislodged. Then again, maybe they hadn’t.
The idea of strangers snatching up what was left of her parents and—
