Force of Nature ▸ House of Anubis [3]

chapter seventy-eight. house of calls

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            Harriet drives us to safety in the woods, which is probably one of the only places a sinner won't think to look for us. It's too large, too thick, for them to find a place where we could be. Especially since we're nowhere near our usual spots.

            "Seriously?" Eddie asks Harriet. "You stole a van from the hospital?"

            "I stopped taking my medication," answers Harriet, freshly escaped from a mental clinic, "and my head cleared. I had to escape, and this was my only chance. And I knew you'd be running out of time here."

            "We really thought the staff would stop Ammit," KT tells her. Willow sits in the back, chewing on her nails.

            "The Staff of Osiris—a terrible thing. I never had a chance to warn you."

            "So we gave Ammit a way to come into the world," Eddie recalls, "and now—"

            "And now she's here, her power has increased," Harriet informs. "Not enough to get out of the tank room yet. But it won't take long. And when she does, it means the end of everything."

            I shake my head, crossing my arms as I lean against the van. "She's collecting souls, a whole roomful. Frobisher has some book, and I'm pretty it's the one Denby took from Victor's office. He must've had it in the tank room the whole time, I'd have had no chance of finding it in the study when I went to the gatehouse."

            "Except some people must be immune like Willow," Eddie points out.

            "I'm not so sure about," I comment. "I think Willow's the exception."

            "No one is immune," Harriet agrees. "Not even the Bringer of Death." Willow's eyes go wide. "There is only one way to protect yourself, and, well, it requires a very special object." Oh. Well, that blows my whole 'this girl has never sinned once in her life' theory out of the water. Maybe that just counted for the sarcophagi. "A key."

            "Oh!" Willow exclaims, pulling something out of her pocket. KT's key! "You mean like this?"

            "You have the key!" I state incredulously. It must've fallen out of Eddie's pocket when we ran into her in the woods.

            "Willow, I think I love you," Eddie comments.

            "Hold on a second," KT says, "so you're telling me that the key that my grandpa gave me offers protection from Ammit?"

            "Well, of course," Harriet confirms, like it's the most normal thing in the world for a key to do. "You don't think your granddad just gave it to you to open doors, do you?" I shrug, letting out a light laugh. There's an immunity protection on the key, that's new. "Ammit has been freed to walk the earth before, but the ancients had a way to control her. You see," she explains, "they created a key in two halves. The moon key could be used to protect against Ammit. Pair it with the sun half, and you could lock her away in the beyond."