The two miniatures moved faster than Larry had ever seen, vaulting from the overturned wreck of the model car at a speed he couldn't follow with the beam of his flashlight; it was only a sudden tug on the leg of his pants that let him know they were climbing him to safety.

Jed emerged on his left shoulder, Octavius on his right. He had to crane his neck around to check on them both. "You guys okay?" Nothing broken or missing, at least, although Jed was dishevelled and clutching his hat in both hands – there was a deep claw-gouge across its centre they'd need to repair before sunrise. Octavius, dripping wet and looking furious, had obviously come off the worst.

"Weee-hew." Jed collapsed against Larry's collar. "I don't mind tellin' you, I thought we were near done for. Thanks, Gigantor."

"I'm not complaining," Octavius complained, "and yes, thank you, Larry, but maybe stepping in a tiny bit quicker would have been helpful. Before it tried to eat me."

They were both fine, Larry decided. "They're okay," he called to Ahkmenrah, who'd taken a split second to check their friends were free of the car and then turned back to the corner of the storage bay where they'd been trapped. He was crouched there now, one hand outstretched. Larry swung the flashlight in his direction and caught a gleam of yellow eyes. Something growled in the dark.

"Hope Ahk ain't too fond of those fingers," Jed muttered. "He made that hell-beast drop Octavius, now it'll just eat him instead."

"You, uh, need any help over there?" Larry said, but Ahkmenrah waved him away without looking back. "I thought you guys liked cats."

"Cats, we like," Octavius said. "Cats are soft and adorable. That bloodthirsty monster is not a cat. That is some evil spirit made corporeal."

Larry guessed they were exaggerating a little – but only a little, considering the huge, hissing, spitting ball of grey fur that had had them cornered. He circled around Ahkmenrah, moving slowly so as not to either dislodge Jed and Octavius or panic the hell-beast-slash-evil-spirit, but wanting to be close enough to join a fight if he was needed.

Where the hell were those jackal-headed guards when you needed them? Oh, sure, they'd charge in ready to kill any time he so much as put his hands on Ahk in the sarcophagus room, no matter how many times they both protested that Larry wasn't hurting him, but put an actual dangerous animal in their master's way...

The storage room lights, whole minutes after he'd flipped the switches, finally flickered to life. The cat let out a yowl of surprise at the sudden change of scenery.

"It's going for his throat!" Octavius shouted and Larry's hand constricted around the flashlight, his heart freezing in his chest, as if he was just another exhibit and the sun was rising...

...for all of two seconds, before Ahkmenrah rose to his feet and turned around, the monster-cat rumbling contentedly in his arms.

Larry felt Jed and Octavius shuffle behind his collar.

"She was just frightened," Ahk murmured, stroking the back of his fingers over the cat's matted fur. "She must have come in from the street and found herself trapped. There, there, did the tiny men scare you?"

Outraged noises from the back of Larry's neck objected to this in the strongest possible terms.

"I don't know if that's a normal cat," Larry said dubiously. "Maybe it got out of Prehistory, or the Hall of African Mammals, or..."

Ahkmenrah shot him one of his fourth king of the fourth king looks, and he shut up. Right. If it was one of theirs Ahk would have already found it, named it, and it would have been hanging around his chamber with all the rest of them.

Jed and Octavius sidled back onto his shoulder, both on the left this time, as Ahkmenrah stepped away from them all. His attention was back on the cat, talking to it now in his own language, his voice very soft and very low.

Larry was not, he told himself, jealous of a flea-bitten, half-feral animal.

Jed said, "He better be telling that mangy mammal to skedaddle."

Larry rolled his eyes. "No. No, he's not. Unless he's leading up to that with 'most beautiful one, most precious, god among' I'm guessing that word is 'cats', 'my darling'..." He trailed off, very aware of the fascinated silence on his shoulder.

The two of them were probably close enough to feel the heat rising up in his face and neck. Dammit.

"That's some mighty interesting vocabulary you've acquired yourself," Jed said, all solicitous innocence. "Where've you been hearing all of those Egyptian pet names, Gigantor?"

"Now, Jedediah," Octavius scolded him, barely-disguised glee in his voice, "you know Larry's terribly interested in Ancient Egyptian culture. He and Ahkmenrah are always going off by themselves for... conversation."

"Oh, that's true enough, I was forgetting. Debatin', and such."

"A bracing cultural exchange of views. An intercourse, you might sayyyyooh nooo..."

Larry had scooped them both off of him one-handed. "You really want to go there, guys?" he snapped, holding them at his eye-level and wishing he'd remembered before picking them up that Octavius had recently seen the inside of a cat's mouth. "What were you even doing driving down here? You've been taking off by yourselves a lot lately."

They were both suddenly avoiding his eyes.

"Well, you know. Exploring."

"New frontiers, sort of our thing."

"Uh-huh. What's up with your shirt, Jed?"

The cowboy tried to shrug in his grasp. "Came undone in the fight?"

"And the cat turned it inside out and put it back on you?"

Jedediah peered down at himself. "Cats are very talented," he mumbled.

"That's true," Octavius offered, just as unconvincingly. "Playing the keyboard, jumping into boxes, jumping out of boxes, they can do it all."

"Oh, leave them alone," Ahkmenrah said, finally deigning to rejoin them, his hand resting between the cat's flat ears. "It's not as if we've been very good at keeping it a secret. And it was going to get out eventually; my guards are terrible gossips."

"We're very happy for you both," Octavius said. "Many congratulations. Now could you put us down far away from the cat-beast, please?" Jed nodded vigorously at his side, though Larry couldn't have said which part of that he was agreeing with.

He lowered his friends to the ground – gently, but not until they'd been told "One more word and I'm not carrying you on the stairs, okay?" – and wiped his hand on his pants. He was about to caution Ahkmenrah not to put the cat down until the two of them were back in their exhibits, then stopped himself. Ahk was already hugging the thing like he might never let it go.

Larry sighed. "So we're keeping the cat." He didn't bother to even make it a question.

The museum's newest resident opened one eye and hissed at him, but Ahk beamed like the sun that they were never going to see together, and he would suddenly have defended the stupid cat with his life. "Fine," he said, giving in to the inevitable. "Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll scare your jackal guys away."