Spending the summer of 1896 in London, Amelia is drawn into a mystery at the British Museum after a night watchman is found dead in the Egyptian collection. Sensational newspapers attribute the death to a mummy’s curse, and further disturbances spread fear among museum staff and the public.
Amelia, Emerson and Ramses investigate a circle that includes dissolute aristocrats, a woman connected with Emerson’s past and a figure dressed as an ancient priest. As theatrical threats give way to murder, Amelia must separate manufactured superstition from the secrets and resentments that allow a killer to move through Victorian London under cover of public panic.