He couldn’t finish that sentence.

A shadow fell over Kady’s face. “Then they’d be dead.”

Marika hurried forward and hugged Kady. But her emerald green eyes also found Jake’s. “You can’t know that.”

Bach’uuk nodded. “Sand is a river. Flows back and forth. But never stops.”

Lost in a dark funk, Jake had little patience for his friend’s Ur philosophy.

Kady gave Marika a quick return hug, then stepped back. “Bach’uuk is right.”

Jake stared at her.

She gave him an exasperated look. “He’s clearly talking about time. Sand’s a metaphor. Try taking some English classes sometime instead of all that geek stuff. He’s saying time is fluid, like a river.” She waved her hand back and forth. “You can travel up or down it. I mean, look what happened to us. Who knows where Mom and Dad ended up?”

Jake wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t shake off his despair. Still, Kady’s words did stoke a small ember of hope in his heart. In the end, she was right. Who knew where—or when—his parents were? All he knew for sure was that they had to get moving.

Jake turned toward the main doors; but Pindor tugged him back, coming close to pulling him off his feet. “Did you see this?”

“What?”

Pindor moved him a few steps farther along the mosaic. “In your mother’s hand. Look!”

Too shocked at seeing his mother’s face, Jake had missed the obvious. In his mother’s right hand he saw a ruby crystal, perfectly round, fashioned to look like an eye.

“Looks the same size as the emerald crystal you just took.”

Could Pindor be right?

Jake wiggled around and snagged his backpack. He pulled out the green crystal. He hadn’t given it much of a look. He lifted it toward one of the torches. Through the fiery light, he saw a streak of black, like a vein of obsidian that cut through the center, making the gem look like a cat’s eye.

In the mosaic, his mother’s crystal had the same defect.

At that moment, Jake felt a close connection to his mother. He held a stone, twin to hers, only a different color. She must have taken it, too. From Ankh Tawy.

Like mother, like son.

As he lowered the stone, he found the old man’s gaze upon him. His eyes glowed with strange contemplation, hinting at a sharper intelligence than he’d shown. Then he dug something out of his gray beard, something tiny with squirming legs, and crunched it between his teeth.

At the sound of a door opening, Jake jumped, then waved everyone down.

Voices echoed across the hall as two people entered the chamber. Jake crawled over to get a look. Were they guards? Were they dangerous?

He spotted the pair standing under one of the torches by the door. The two men searched the chamber for a breath, then hunched together in a conspiratorial fashion. One was a thin shadow cloaked in the priestly black robe of the Blood of Ka; the other had a round belly, draped in fancy linens. He wore the soft sandals of a palace servant. From his red-painted face and tattooed black eyeliner, Jake guessed that he was someone of importance, perhaps a royal attendant.