Read Chapter 15: Negotiating with Voices

The Greek statue’s mouth wasn’t moving. Eamon knew that. He’d been staring at it long enough to check twice, three times, past the point of sanity. The marble lips were still, frozen in that familiar, pitying smile. And yet the voice came again, not from the air but from somewhere behind his sternum, like a memory he hadn’t made.

*You carry the blade’s debt, but not its purpose.*

Eamon’s hand went to the bronze dagger at his belt. The metal was cold, almost painfully so, and it hummed with a low frequency that matched the grinding beneath the museum floor. That howl had become a constant companion now—the stone door below was close. He could feel it in his teeth.

“I don’t have time for riddles,” he said, keeping his voice low. The Egyptian hall stretched around him, shadows pooling between sarcophagi. Somewhere in the dark, the cat statue glowed with that sickly, unnatural light. “The Codex is gone. The city is flickering with ghost ships and temples. Tell me something useful.”

*You carry the blade’s debt, but not its purpose,* the voice repeated. *Only a true keeper can convince the spirits to return to their vessels. You are not a keeper.*

“I know.” Eamon’s jaw tightened. “Maggie told me. She’s too old to do whatever needs doing. And Wainwright is gone—“

*Wainwright is not gone. Wainwright is hidden.*

The words landed like a slap. Eamon’s breath caught. “Hidden? He’s dead. The curator said—“

*The curator is a fool with a cult’s leash around his neck.* There was a dry, ancient amusement in the tone, the sound of stone grinding against stone. *Wainwright knew what the museum truly was. He prepared. He is where the old records said he would be. The diary. The place with the amber light and the smell of yeast.*

The diary. Maggie’s words from earlier came back to him: *“The diary mentioned his location.”* He’d assumed it was a cryptic reference to some hidden archive in the museum’s depths. But a place with amber light and yeast—that wasn’t a storage room. That was a pub.

Eamon looked at the statue’s face. Still marble. Still unmoving. But he felt the weight of its attention like a physical pressure.

“You’re telling me Wainwright’s alive and drinking in some pub.”

*Wainwright is alive because he knew when to step away. He knew the price of staying too long. You do not yet know that price. But you will.*

The dagger hummed louder, and for a moment Eamon felt the viking’s presence push against his mind—a cold, hungry rage, a thirst for battle that made his knuckles whiten. He’d seen the man’s death. The funeral ship, the flames, the sword laid across his chest. That fragment of spirit wanted out. It wanted to fight.

“How do I find him?” Eamon asked.

*Follow the scarab. It knows the way better than you. And when you find Wainwright, ask him what he saw in the crescent blade. Ask him why he drew it in the margins of his diary. Ask him why he was afraid.*

The voice faded, and the marble mouth seemed to settle back into simple stone. The presence was gone. Eamon exhaled, realizing he’d been holding his breath. The scarab at his chest stirred, its legs scratching against his shirt, and then it crawled up to his collarbone, antennae twitching, orienting itself.

He looked down at the small gold beetle. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

The scarab didn’t answer, but it turned its head toward the museum’s main exit.

Eamon moved.

He passed through the Great Court, past the glass roof where London’s sky flickered with impossible shapes—a pyramid’s shadow, a Norse hall, the silhouette of a ziggurat rising where the Shard should have been. The city was becoming a palimpsest, every civilization the museum had ever housed bleeding through the cracks. And the howl from below was growing louder, more insistent. It wasn’t just grinding anymore. It was a voice, wordless and hungry, calling the spirits home.

He hit the staff exit at a jog, badge beeping him through, and burst into the damp night air. The streets were wrong. Streetlights cast shadows that didn’t match the objects beneath them. A bus drove past with a Roman standard flying from its roof, the driver oblivious. A couple walked arm in arm, and for a moment their shadows showed the shape of a pharaoh and his consort, crowns etched in shade.

The scarab crawled onto Eamon’s hand, turned, and pointed its antennae toward a narrow lane off Great Russell Street.

“A pub,” Eamon muttered. “Of course it’s a pub.”

The lane was barely wide enough for two people, brick walls rising on either side, damp and slick with years of London rain. The scarab’s legs tickled his palm, steering him left, then right, past bins and a boarded-up shopfront. And then the lane opened onto a small courtyard, dominated by a squat, sagging building with a sign swinging in the wind: *The Wandering Ox.*

The amber light the Greek statue had mentioned bled through the pub’s frosted windows, warm against the cold night. Eamon pushed the door open.

The smell hit him first—ale, woodsmoke, and something older, something like dust and old paper. The pub was nearly empty. A few figures hunched over their glasses at the bar, and in the corner, half-hidden in shadow, sat an old man with a white beard and a cane resting across his knees.

He was watching the door like he’d been waiting years for someone to walk through it.

Eamon crossed the room, boots loud on the creaking floorboards. The old man didn’t move, but his eyes tracked Eamon’s approach with a sharpness that belied his age. He wore a threadbare tweed jacket, a stained tie, and a look of tired recognition.

“You’re shorter than I expected,” the old man said.

Eamon stopped. “You know who I am?”

“No.” The old man reached into his jacket, pulled out a battered leather diary, and laid it on the table. “But I know why you’re here. And I know you’re carrying the scarab’s mark. Saw it the moment you walked in. It’s on your hand. Dull glow. Hard to miss for someone who knows what to look for.”

Eamon looked at his palm. There it was—the faint outline of the scarab’s bite, a small golden sigil that had bloomed on his skin hours ago and hadn’t faded. He’d been so focused on the dagger, on the Codex, on the singing statues, that he hadn’t registered it.

“You’re Wainwright.”

“In the flesh. And a little bit out of it.” Wainwright gestured to the empty chair across from him. “Sit down, son. You’ve got about ten minutes before the door below finishes opening, and I’d rather not explain the next part standing up.”

Eamon sat. Wainwright tapped the diary with one gnarled finger.

“You’ve seen the crescent blade. The drawings in here. You’ve seen the faceless thing that took the Codex. And you’ve seen what happens to the relics when spirits get pulled free.” He paused, eyes darkening. “But you haven’t seen what happens when they don’t get pulled back. And that, son, is the part that should terrify you.”

Wainwright opened the diary to a page near the back. Eamon leaned in. The drawing showed the crescent blade, but not as it appeared in the museum’s cases. Here, it was whole—a full moon of silver, etched with symbols that matched the dagger’s markings, the screen’s markings, the scarab’s sigil. Surrounding it were names. Dozens of them, in handwriting that varied across centuries.

“Keepers,” Wainwright said. “Every one of them failed. Every one of them died when the night of many gods came. Except me.” He looked up, and there was something raw in his eyes. “I ran. I found a way to hide. But the museum always collects its debts. And now that scarab has chosen you to carry mine.”

Eamon’s blood went cold. “Chosen me?”

“You’ve no ties to the past,” Wainwright said. “That’s what it looks for. No family. No roots. Just a debt you carry like a stone. The scarab sees that. Feeds on it. And it’s pinned you as the next keeper.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small object—a bone whistle, worn smooth, carved with the same crescent motif.

“This won’t stop the Codex,” Wainwright said. “But it’ll buy you time. One blast, and every spirit in the museum goes quiet for half a minute. Long enough to get close to the blade.”

He pressed the whistle into Eamon’s palm. It was warm, alive with years of use.

“The blade isn’t in the museum anymore,” Wainwright added, and Eamon’s grip tightened. “It was never in the museum. It’s where the Codex is going. It’s the vessel it plans to use. And when that door opens, it’s going to call the blade to it—and every spirit it carries with it.”

Outside, the howl beneath the museum rose into a shriek, audible even through the pub’s walls. The glasses on the bar rattled. The lights flickered.

Eamon stared at the whistle in his hand, then at the old man who had run from his duties for years, and understood with a cold certainty that he had just been handed a weapon he didn’t fully understand, to fight a war he hadn’t signed up for.

But the scarab thought he was ready.

He had to hope it was right.