Necropolis

pulled on a fresh T-shirt. "We'll have to meet and decide."
    "Will we still go to England?"
    "Yes."
    Pedro hadn't spoken very much about the journey, and Matt suspected that he was finding it difficult to get his head around it. He had never been out of Peru in his life. Even the notion of getting on a plane was completely alien to him. He had only flown once and that had been in a helicopter that had crashed.
    The thought of spending fifteen hours in the air and landing in a completely different world must have unnerved him.
    "I am sad that the professor is dead," he said. "She was very kind."
    "I know." Matt still wondered if he could have saved her. Was her death his fault? It seemed to him now that she had been doomed from the moment they had arrived, although he knew she would never have seen it that way. Even so… It had been two days since they had received the fax with the news about Scar. He wished now that they had all left at once.
    There were now just five of them remaining: Matt, Pedro, Scott, Jamie, and Richard. They met outside, sitting at a wooden table in the shade of a silk-cotton tree — a kapok, as it was also known. Professor Chambers had liked taking the boys around her garden, showing them all the different plants and talking about them. This one had somehow found its way out of the rain forest, she had said, and she couldn't understand how it was growing here at all. The table had been set up in the shade, the umbrella-shaped canopy and creamy-white flowers of the kapok shielding them from the sun.
    They might have been safer in the house, but they could hardly bear to look at it, the ruin that it had become. Somehow, it didn't seem likely that the Old Ones would return…not in the daylight. And anyway, the Incas were somewhere close, guarding them. Richard had brought out a tray of iced lemonade and a plate of empanadas, the little cheese pastries that they had often devoured. But nobody was hungry. They were exhausted and unhappy. Nobody knew what they were supposed to do.
    One thing was sure: They couldn't stay here much longer. The house still had water and electricity, and they might even be able to repair the roof. But there was no alarm system. The Incas couldn't protect them indefinitely. And, more to the point, none of them wanted to be here. The moment Professor Chambers had been taken from the hacienda, all of its life seemed to have gone with her.
    "Okay…" It was Richard who was the first to speak, and Matt was grateful to him for breaking the silence, for taking control. He was wearing a clean polo shirt and jeans, but he looked completely worn out, as if he hadn't slept at all.
    "This is a council of war," he said. "Because it looks as if the war has finally arrived. We have to talk about last night. We have to deal with it and put it behind us. And I might as well start by saying that it was mainly my fault." He held up a hand before anyone could interrupt him. "When Ramon came to the house, I turned off the security system. But I never put it back on again. Not the radar, anyway. Maybe that was the idea. Maybe that was why he was sent to us. A diversion…"
    "It was my fault too," Scott cut in. "Matt wanted me to look into his mind and I did. But somehow he managed to fool me. I thought he was telling the truth."
    "Maybe he was telling the truth," Matt said. "He brought us the diary…and do you really think he would have just sat there and allowed himself to be killed? Maybe they followed him from Lima. The whole point of last night could have been simply that they wanted the diary back."
    "The question we've got to ask ourselves is — what are we going to do next?" Richard said. "It's been more than forty-eight hours since Scarlett Adams appeared in the newspapers. The Nexus are still watching her, but we can't leave her on her own much longer. On the other hand…" He nodded at Matt.
    "Matt has lost his passport, so he's not flying anywhere."

    "We can use the door," Jamie said. "The same one that Scott and I came through. All we have to do is get to the Temple of Coricancha in Cuzco. We walk in… we walk out in London. We don't need a plane."
    It seemed obvious. It was exactly the reason why the doors had been built in the first place. But Richard shook his head. "We can't use the doors," he said. "Think about it, Jamie. Salamanda had the diary and he obviously studied it carefully. If the Old Ones are looking for us — and it seems pretty likely that they are —