Which was how Oscar found himself sitting in the dark, listening to the distant sounds of fighting and the plashing of the fountain beside them, straining to make out shapes in the dark and secretly glad that Maggs was holding his hand.
The plan was simple and he was secretly afraid that it stood a good chance of working: if the Wild Ride had come for Oscar and Maggs before, then why wouldn't they again? Especially if they thought the two of them were all on their own in the dark.
Ridley had jumped at the idea, and at the time Oscar had been pleased to have thought of it, but now they were actually sitting there, in the terrible shadowy silence, it didn't seem like such great plan at all.
In the dim light, however, Oscar became gradually aware that they might not be completely alone: he could see shapes moving, something that looked like the shadows of people criss-crossing the room.
This gallery was dedicated to everyday objects from ancient times and gradually Oscar realised that what he was seeing was ordinary people - the people who had once owned the objects on display - going about their ordinary business just as they had thousands of years before.
Greeks bargaining in the agora, Romans gossiping in their villas, women in the kitchens, men at the plough, merchants weighing out spices and actors practicing with their masks.
The shades were, at first, muddled and confused, walking though each other, getting lost in each other's history, but Oscar soon discovered that by squinting and sort of focusing on different parts of the room, you could make the little scenes stand out clearly.
Close to him were the more recent events: a dark-skinned legionary sitting on the edge of his camp bed in the bleak Northumbrian winter, lacing up his sandals and shivering into his cloak. But at the far end of the room he could just glimpse some exotically braided and painted Greek bowing before the small statue, asking some unknown favour of his god.
Oscar was about to nudge Maggs to see if she had noticed this strange display when he realised that something was changing in the scenes: now the legionary was leaping from bed, alarmed, grabbing up his gladius and his helmet, ready for battle. The merchant in the forum was packing away his spices as quickly as he could, the cook, panicked, doused her fire with water, the worshipper imploring the gods frantically.
Some terrible doom was descending on all the ghosts: Scythians, Persians, Huns, Picts, Barbarians and Monsters: rampaging warriors at the walls of the town - revolution and battle, chaos and confusion... Oscar could feel their panic rising in him and he looked desperately around the room, trying to see what they were afraid of...
...A natural disaster! - Walls were shaking, cracks opening at their feet: an earthquake! Mighty Poseidon, god of the sea, whose hand was on the roots of the mountains, was displeased with men! The earth shook and roared and the sea rose up in a great tidal wave...
And Oscar found himself frozen with terror as the surface of the fountain beside him bunched itself up and reached out towards them.
Then all the water began to move, faces and shapes passing across it - ancient ocean gods, monstrous fish of the deep, the long forgotten, pallid faces of the drowned - and a hundred tiny water spouts reaching out for them, searching and feeling their way, shining in the dim light, like the grasping arms of a sea anemone.
Oscar tried to cry out, to warn Ridley and Maggs, to trip their trap, but he was terrified that the sound of his voice would attract those blindly waving arms and then something touched him, the slimy touch of something long dead and deep submerged, that passed over his face and, just as suddenly, was gone.
The warmth of the museum and the noises of the night rushed in on him as the shadow receded, shouts and the clattering of boots and the rattling of swords and under it all, the fountain still playing beside him.
"Move, all of you! Oscar, are you alright? Can you speak?"
It was Ridley, running down the steps behind him, from the gallery where she had been hiding. Oscar tried, shakily, to get to his feet, but before he could she had picked him up and carried him to the doorway, away from the fountain where the faint, sour smell of the deeps still lingered.
Magi were everywhere now with lights, running through the galleries, trying to track the Darklings. Oscar had the impression that there was something very wrong, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it - he was still stunned by his close encounter.
"I'm sorry Ridley..." he stammered, thinking she was cross that his plan hadn't worked, "I just couldn't..."
"Oh, Oscar," Ridley grabbed his arms, rubbing them as if to try and drive out the cold, "No one could - I couldn't - I just wasn't ready... so stupid... poor Maggs... I should have waited for more men..."
But Oscar wasn't listening. He had stopped listening at: 'Poor Maggs'. That was what was wrong. He looked around, wildly, trying to spot the old woman in the rushing lights and running figures around them. Poor Maggs. Where was she?
"Where's Maggs?"
Ridley stopped talking and stared at him, then she seized him and hugged him hard and that's when he knew that something really was terribly wrong.
"He took her, Oscar: the Darklings took her," Ridley squeezed him hard, "They took her and escaped with her and it was my fault - not your fault, you understand? Mine. But you'll see, we'll get her back, I promise, we'll find him and we'll get her back, if it's the last thing I do."
Ridley seemed determined to make good on her promise as soon as she could. She sent scouts out to try and pick up the trail of the Wild Ride beyond the museum and then set about trying to discover what they had been up to inside.
They followed a Wish Hound called Diamond, his head now down to the tiled floor, now lifted up, snuffing the air, down through an endless gallery, across the head of a monumental flight of stairs, down a long corridor, through more galleries and finally to a tall wooden door, left half open in the shadows.
"Of course," said Ridley, "The Magical Gallery - well, that makes sense - but what were they doing here?"
She pulled the door open further and Oscar followed her inside. Illuminated by the glow from Ridley's staff, Oscar could see that the room was small and cramped. It seemed little more than a circular corridor, with glass display cases set into every wall.
"Are these all magical things?" he asked Ridley.
"Spot on - a lot of the people who helped set up the British Museum were Magi - and they had a large collection of magical objects for a while - these days the more powerful objects are kept in the Temple, but we leave a small exhibition here."
They moved round the room, following Diamond. Oscar now saw that, rather than being a corridor, there was actually another room within the room, a central, circular space with large display cases in the middle of it.
Diamond was sat in front of one of these cases, looking back over his shoulder at Ridley, expectantly. She came up behind him and ruffled his ears.
"What is, eh, Diamond, old chap, what have you found?"
Oscar joined her and discovered that they were looking a white, life-sized sculpture of a man's face. It was an extraordinarily detailed sculpture: Oscar could even see sparse hairs on the man's upper lip and a mole under one eye.
"Hm... Adam Cowper, eh?"
Oscar looked at the label: 'Death mask of Adam Cowper'.
"What's a death mask?"
"Oh, when someone dies they take a plaster cast of their face."
So it wasn't a sculpture at all! It was an actual cast of a dead man's face! There was something about that that made Oscar shiver a little, standing here in the dark, staring down at a dead face. Ridley was still speaking.
"In this case we have Adam Cowper, who, I think I've got this right, was a rebel who tried to destroy the Temple. You, what did the demons want with you?"
For a moment Oscar thought Ridley was talking to him, and was shocked at her being so rude, but before he could speak, the death mask suddenly jerked and twisted, the eyebrows knotting up and the mouth writhing to one side with a gritty sound that Oscar could hear though the glass of the display. The mouth opened and Oscar discovered that he could see through it to the objects behind it in the case. The voice was little more than a grainy whisper.
"I will not speak to such as you..."
"In the name of the Order I compel you to speak!"
"I cannot speak to such as you..."
"You cannot do otherwise!"
"I cannot speak: I am forbidden!" The face was contorted now into a grimace as it were being tortured.
"Its been enchanted," said Ridley, "Forbidding him to answer us: I command you..."
The mouth opened in a silent cry and the expression was so desperate that Oscar grabbed Ridley's arm:
"Stop it! Please, Ridley, stop him, you're hurting him!"
"It's just a spirit ensorcelled to the mask, Oscar, it's not a person, I promise you."
"Please stop it, listen, I have an idea..." he lent in closer to the mask, "If you can't tell us anything directly, can you at least give us a clue?"
The mask's features gave one last spasm and then relaxed. For a moment nothing happened and then it opened its mouth again.
"Held captive long in fear and pain, beyond mere human punishments and chains."
Then the face relaxed again into its cast expression.
"Well," said Ridley, "That's helpful." She turned and walked away from the case, "None of this makes any sense - they've broken in here, spent all this time fighting us, delaying us, but they get here and nothing's gone, nothing's... Oh, my stars..."
"Ridley? What is it?"
"What if that's precisely what they were doing, Oscar? What they were just trying to distract us? We thought we were trapping them here, but what if this was the trap - a trap to draw us all away from... the Temple!"
