Mummy Dearest: The XOXO Files, Book 1 Read Online Free Page B

Here’s the main camera. It’s stationary. Then Arturo, to your left, is using a handheld. He’s going to be moving around. Just ignore him. Don’t talk to the camera, but don’t freak out if you happen to look directly at it or something. It’s not a big deal.”
    I nodded. My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I could unstick my tongue to make words. So this was what stage fright felt like. Like your first day at school. Attending or teaching.
    I must have looked as petrified as I felt because Fraser’s tone changed. He said kindly, “Just do what you would normally do, only talk to yourself as you’re doing it.”
    I nodded.
    “Try and forget we’re here.”

    I nodded again.
    “You already got the part, Drew, so relax.”
    I threw him a deadly look and everyone, including Fraser, laughed. “ That’s the spirit. Okay, ready? Jeannie has the clapperboard, so don’t jump…”
    I did jump, but after that it all seemed to run pretty smoothly. In fact, my fifteen minutes of fame turned out to be a lot easier than I thought.
    After all, I did know how to talk, and there was nothing I liked to talk about more than history and Egypt and archeology.
    “Her approximate measurements are…height through nose…eight times width of shoulders…so twenty times length…sixty-two inches. I’ve never actually seen a mummy taller than about five and a half feet. Generally when a body is excavated, the archeologist will record all the important details. The condition, the measurements, the other items found in the grave or tomb. But things were less systematic back when Merneith was discovered. In fact, archeology was sometimes not much more than a free-for-all treasure hunt. So, unfortunately, we don’t have anything but legend as far as her mummy’s provenance.”
    I moved around the display case, aware of Fraser a few feet across from me and of Arturo hovering to my left with his camera which seemed to be unnervingly directed at my profile. I tried to think only of the fragile wrappings in the large glass case. Merneith’s teeth were actually in remarkably good shape, all things considered. Her hair, not so much.
    “Now days everything gets x-rayed, which means we don’t have to damage the mummy to study it. Back in the nineteenth century, mummies were literally torn to pieces in order to examine them. In fact, unwrapping a mummy was often turned into a social event, and pieces were sometimes given as souvenirs. There were lots of weird theories. Some people believed the mummies had magical powers or that crushed mummy powder could be used in medicine. Mummies have been used for making paint and paper and for railway fuel, though some scholars argue over whether that last is true or whether we got that from Mark Twain exaggerating in The Innocents Abroad .”
    I turned my attention to the sarcophagus, which was in suspiciously beautiful shape. It seemed likely to me that some restoration had probably taken place. I knelt for a better look.
    “Cut!”
    I looked up over the edge of the case, surprised.
    “Where’d you go?” Fraser asked.
    I gestured. “I was just…”
    He shook his head, but he was laughing. “You can get on your hands and knees and crawl around the case to your heart’s content later, okay? For now, stay topside so we can follow you.”
    “Right. Sorry.”
    He seemed inordinately amused as we resumed shooting.
    I bent over the case again. There was an inscription in ink-black hieratic. Hieratic was a cursive style of writing, predating the more elaborate and better-known hieroglyphics or the hieroglyphic script which it closely resembled. In movies it’s almost always hieroglyphics used as they’re more visually striking. That’s because the symbols in hieratic were simplified for speed and clarity. By the Sixth Dynasty, hieratic was used almost exclusively in religious texts such as the Book of the Dead .
    It happened to be my area of expertise. I silently began to read.
    For who shall