CHAPTER
22. Leroy Meets the Locker of Doom
I’D NEVER GONE THROUGH SECURITY with a live bird of prey before. I thought it would cause a holdup, but instead the guards moved us into a special line. They checked our paperwork. Bast smiled a lot, flirted with the guards and told them they must be working out, and they waved us through. Bast’s knives didn’t set off the alarms, so maybe she’d stored them in the Duat. The guards didn’t even try to put Sadie through the X-ray machine.
I was retrieving my shoes when I heard a scream from the other side of security.
Bast cursed in Egyptian. “We were too slow.”
I looked back and saw the Set animal charging through the terminal, knocking passengers out of its way. Its weird rabbit ears swiveled back and forth. Foam dripped from its curved, toothy snout, and its forked tail lashed around, looking for something to sting.
“Moose!” a lady screamed. “Rabid moose!”
Everyone started screaming, running in different directions and blocking the Set animal’s path.
“Moose?” I wondered.
Bast shrugged. “No telling what mortals will perceive. Now the idea will spread by power of suggestion.”
Sure enough, more passengers started yelling “Moose!” and running around as the Set animal plowed through the lines and got tangled up in the stanchions. TSA officers surged forward, but the Set animal tossed them aside like rag dolls.
“Come on!” Bast told me.
“I can’t just let it hurt these people.”
“We can’t stop it!”
But I didn’t move. I wanted to believe Horus was giving me courage, or that maybe the past few days had finally woken up some dormant bravery gene I’d inherited from my parents. But the truth was scarier. This time, nobody was making me take a stand. I wanted to do it.
People were in trouble because of us. I had to fix it. I felt the same kind of instinct I felt when Sadie needed my help, like it was time for me to step up. And yes, it terrified me. But it also felt right.
“Go to the gate,” I told Bast. “Take Sadie. I’ll meet you there.”
“What? Carter—”
“Go!” I imagined opening my invisible locker: 13/32/33. I reached out my hand, but not for my dad’s magic box. I concentrated on something I’d lost in Luxor. It had to be there. For a moment, I felt nothing. Then my hand closed around a hard leather grip, and I pulled my sword out of nowhere.
Bast’s eyes widened. “Impressive.”
“Get moving,” I said. “It’s my turn to run interference.”
“You realize it’ll kill you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Now, scat!”
Bast took off at top speed, Sadie flapping to stay balanced on her arm.
A shot rang out. I turned and saw the Set animal plow into a cop who’d just fired at its head to no effect. The poor cop flew backward and toppled over the metal detector gate.
“Hey, moose!” I screamed.
The Set animal locked its glowing eyes on me.
Well done! Horus said. We will die with honor!
Shut up, I thought.
I glanced behind me to make sure Bast and Sadie were out of sight. Then I approached the creature.
“So you’ve got no name?” I asked. “They couldn’t think of one ugly enough?”
The creature snarled, stepping over the unconscious policeman.
“Set animal is too hard to say,” I decided. “I’ll call you Leroy.”
Apparently, Leroy didn’t like his name. He lunged.
I dodged his claws and managed to smack him in the snout with the flat of my blade, but that barely fazed him. Leroy backed up and charged again, slavering, baring his fangs. I slashed at his neck, but Leroy was too smart. He darted to the left and sank his teeth into my free arm. If it hadn’t been for my makeshift leather armguard, I would’ve been minus one arm. As it was, Leroy’s fangs still bit clear through the leather. Red-hot pain shot up my arm.
I yelled, and a primal surge of power coursed through my body. I felt myself rising off the ground and the golden aura of the hawk warrior forming around me. The Set animal’s jaws were pried open so fast that it yelped and let go of my arm. I stood, now encased in a magical barrier twice my normal size, and kicked Leroy into the wall.
Good! said Horus. Now dispatch the beast to the netherworld!
Quiet, man. I’m doing all the work.
I was vaguely aware of security guards trying to regroup, yelling into their walkie-talkies and calling for help. Travelers were still screaming and running around. I heard a little girl shout: “Chicken man, get the moose!”
You know how hard it is to feel like an extreme falcon-headed combat machine when somebody calls you “chicken man”?
I raised my sword, which was now at the center of a ten-foot-long energy blade.
Leroy shook the dust off his cone-shaped ears, and came at me again. My armored form might’ve been powerful, but it was also clumsy and slow; moving it around felt like moving through Jell-O. Leroy dodged my sword strike and landed on my chest, knocking me down. He was a lot heavier than he looked. His tail and claws raked against my armor. I caught his neck in my glowing fists and tried to keep his fangs away from my face, but everywhere he drooled, my magical shield hissed and steamed. I could feel my wounded arm going numb.
Alarms blared. More passengers crowded toward the checkpoint to see what was happening. I had to end this soon—before I passed out from pain or more mortals got hurt.
I felt my strength fading, my shield flickering. Leroy’s fangs were an inch from my face, and Horus was offering no words of encouragement.
Then I thought about my invisible locker in the Duat. I wondered if other things could be put in there too…large, evil things.
I closed my hands around Leroy’s throat and wedged my knee against his rib cage. Then I imagined an opening in the Duat—in the air right above me: 13/32/33. I imagined my locker opening as wide as it could go.
With my last bit of strength, I pushed Leroy straight up. He flew toward the ceiling, his eyes widening with surprise as he passed through an unseen rift and disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” someone yelled.
“Hey, kid!” another guy called. “You okay?”
My energy shield was gone. I wanted to pass out, but I had to leave before the security guys came out of their shock and arrested me for moose fighting. I got to my feet and threw my sword at the ceiling. It disappeared into the Duat. Then I wrapped the torn leather around my bleeding arm as best I could and ran for the gates.
I reached our flight just as they were closing the door.
Apparently, word of the chicken man incident hadn’t spread quite yet. The gate agent gestured back toward the checkpoint as she took my ticket. “What’s all the noise up there?”
“A moose got through security,” I said. “It’s under control now.” Before she could ask questions, I raced down the jetway.
I collapsed into my seat across the aisle from Bast. Sadie, still in kite form, was pacing in the window seat next to me.
Bast let out a huge sigh of relief. “Carter, you made it! But you’re hurt. What happened?”
I told her.
Bast’s eyes widened. “You put the Set animal in your locker? Do you know how much strength that requires?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was there.”
The flight attendant started making her announcements. Apparently, the security incident hadn’t affected our flight. The plane pushed back from the gate on time.
I doubled forward in pain, and only then did Bast notice how bad my arm was. Her expression turned grim.
“Hold still.” She whispered something in Egyptian, and my eyes began to feel heavy.
“You’ll need sleep to heal that wound,” she said.
“But if Leroy comes back—”
“Who?”
“Nothing.”
Bast studied me as if seeing me for the first time. “That was extraordinarily brave, Carter. Facing the Set monster—you have more tomcat in you than I realized.”
“Um—thanks?”
She smiled and touched my forehead. “We’ll be in the air soon, my tomcat. Sleep.”
I couldn’t really object. Exhaustion washed over me, and I closed my eyes.
Naturally my soul decided to take a trip.
I was in ba form, circling above Phoenix. It was a brilliant winter morning. The cool desert air felt good under my wings. The city looked different in the daylight—a vast grid of beige and green squares dotted with palm trees and swimming pools. Stark mountains rose up here and there like chunks of the moon. The most prominent mountain was right below me—a long ridge with two distinct peaks. What had Set’s minion called it on my first soul visit? Camelback Mountain.
Its foothills were crowded with luxury homes, but the top was barren. Something caught my attention: a crevice between two large boulders, and a shimmer of heat coming from deep within the mountain—something that no human eye would’ve noticed.
I folded my wings and dove toward the crevice.
Hot air vented out with such force that I had to push my way through. About fifty feet down, the crevice opened up, and I found myself in a place that simply couldn’t exist.
The entire inside of the mountain had been hollowed out. In the middle of the cavern, a giant pyramid was under construction. The air rang with the sound of pickaxes. Hordes of demons cut blood-red limestone into blocks and hauled it to the middle of the cave, where more swarms of demons used ropes and ramps to hoist the blocks into place, the way my dad said the Giza pyramids were built. But the Giza pyramids had taken, like, twenty years each to complete. This pyramid was already halfway done.
There was something odd about it, too—and not just the blood-red color. When I looked at it I felt a familiar tingle, as if the whole structure were humming with a tone…no, a voice I almost recognized.
I spotted a smaller shape floating in the air above the pyramid—a reed barge like Uncle Amos’s riverboat. On it stood two figures. One was a tall demon in leather armor. The other was a burly man in red combat fatigues.
I circled closer, trying to stay in the shadows because I wasn’t sure I was really invisible. I landed on the top of the mast. It was a tricky maneuver, but neither of the boat’s occupants looked up.
“How much longer?” asked the man in red.
He had Set’s voice, but he looked completely different than he had in my last vision. He wasn’t a slimy black thing, and he wasn’t on fire—except for the scary mixture of hatred and amusement burning in his eyes. He had a big thick body like a linebacker’s, with meaty hands and a brutish face. His short bristly hair and trimmed goatee were as red as his combat fatigues. I’d never seen camouflage that color before. Maybe he was planning on hiding out in a volcano.
Next to him, the demon bowed and scraped. It was the weird rooster-footed guy I’d seen before. He was at least seven feet tall and scarecrow thin, with bird talons for feet. And unfortunately, this time I could see his face. It was almost too hideous to describe. You know those anatomy exhibits where they show dead bodies without skin? Imagine one of those faces alive, only with solid black eyes and fangs.
“We’re making excellent progress, master!” the demon promised. “We conjured a hundred more demons today. With luck, we will be done at sunset on your birthday!”
“That is unacceptable, Face of Horror,” Set said calmly.
The servant flinched. I guessed his name was Face of Horror. I wondered how long it had taken his mom to think of that. Bob? No. Sam? No. How about Face of Horror?
“B-but, master,” Face stammered. “I thought—”
“Do not think, demon. Our enemies are more resourceful than I imagined. They have temporarily disabled my favorite pet and are now speeding toward us. We must finish before they arrive. Sunrise on my birthday, Face of Horror. No later. It will be the dawn of my new kingdom. I will scour all life from this continent, and this pyramid shall stand as a monument to my power—the final and eternal tomb of Osiris!”
My heart almost stopped. I looked down at the pyramid again, and I realized why it felt so familiar. It had an energy to it—my father’s energy. I can’t explain how, but I knew his sarcophagus lay hidden somewhere inside that pyramid.
Set smiled cruelly, as if he would be just as happy to have Face obey him or to rip Face to pieces. “You understand my order?”
“Yes, lord!” Face of Horror shifted his bird feet, as if building up his courage. “But may I ask, lord…why stop there?”
Set’s nostrils flared. “You are one sentence away from destruction, Face of Horror. Choose your next words carefully.”
The demon ran his black tongue across his teeth. “Well, my lord, is the annihilation of only one god worthy of your glorious self? What if we could create even more chaos energy—to feed your pyramid for all time and make you the eternal lord of all worlds?”
A hungry light danced in Set’s eyes. “‘Lord of all worlds’…that has a nice ring to it. And how would you accomplish this, puny demon?”
“Oh, not I, my lord. I am an insignificant worm. But if we were to capture the others: Nephthys—”
Set kicked Face in the chest, and the demon collapsed, wheezing. “I told you never to speak her name.”
“Yes, master,” Face panted. “Sorry, master. But if we were to capture her, and the others…think on the power you could consume. With the right plan…”
Set began nodding, warming to the idea. “I think it’s time we put Amos Kane to use.”
I tensed. Was Amos here?
“Brilliant, master. A brilliant plan.”
“Yes, I’m glad I thought of it. Soon, Face of Horror, very soon, Horus, Isis, and my treacherous wife will bow at my feet—and Amos will help. We’ll have a nice little family reunion .”
Set looked up—straight at me, as if he’d known I was there all along, and gave me that rip-you-to-pieces smile. “Isn’t that right, boy?”
I wanted to spread my wings and fly. I had to get out of the cavern and warn Sadie. But my wings wouldn’t work. I sat there paralyzed as Set reached out to grab me.
SADIE
23. Professor Thoth’s Final Exam
SADIE HERE. SORRY FOR THE DELAY, though I don’t suppose you’d notice on a recording. My nimble-fingered brother dropped the microphone into a pit full of…oh, never mind. Back to the story.
Carter woke with such a start, he banged his knees against the drinks tray, which was quite funny.
“Sleep well?” I asked.
He blinked at me in confusion. “You’re human.”
“How kind of you to notice.”
I took another bite of my pizza. I’d never eaten pizza from a china plate or had a Coke in a glass (with ice no less—Americans are so odd) but I was enjoying first class.
“I changed back an hour ago.” I cleared my throat. “It—ah—was helpful, what you said, about focusing on what’s important.”
Awkward saying even that much, as I remembered everything he’d told me while I was in kite form about his travels with Dad—how he’d gotten lost in the Underground, gotten sick in Venice, squealed like a baby when he’d found a scorpion in his sock. So much ammunition to tease him with, but oddly I wasn’t tempted. The way he’d poured out his soul… Perhaps he thought I didn’t understand him in kite form—but he’d been so honest, so unguarded, and he’d done it all to calm me down. If he hadn’t given me something to focus on, I’d probably still be hunting field mice over the Potomac.
Carter had spoken about Dad as if their travels together had been a great thing, yes, but also quite a chore, with Carter always struggling to please and be on his best behavior, with no one to relax with, or talk to. Dad was, I had to admit, quite a presence. You’d be hard-pressed not to want his approval. (No doubt that’s where I get my own stunningly charismatic personality.) I saw him only twice a year, and even so I had to prepare myself mentally for the experience. For the first time, I began to wonder if Carter really had the better end of the bargain. Would I trade my life for his?
I also decided not to tell him what had finally changed me back to human. I hadn’t focused on Dad at all. I’d imagined Mum alive, imagined us walking down Oxford Street together, gazing in the shop windows and talking and laughing—the kind of ordinary day we’d never gotten to share. An impossible wish, I know. But it had been powerful enough to remind me of who I was.
Didn’t say any of that, but Carter studied my face, and I sensed that he picked up my thoughts a little too well.
I took a sip of Coke. “You missed lunch, by the way.”
“You didn’t try to wake me?”
On the other side of the aisle, Bast burped. She’d just finished off her plate of salmon and was looking quite satisfied. “I could summon more Friskies,” she offered. “Or cheese sandwiches.”
“No thanks,” Carter muttered. He looked devastated.
“God, Carter,” I said. “If it’s that important to you, I’ve got some pizza left—”
“It’s not that,” he said. And he told us how his ba had almost been captured by Set.
The news gave me trouble breathing. I felt as if I were stuck in kite form again, unable to think clearly. Dad trapped in a red pyramid? Poor Amos used as some sort of pawn? I looked at Bast for some kind of reassurance. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Her expression was grim. “Sadie, I don’t know. Set will be most powerful on his birthday, and sunrise is the most auspicious moment for magic. If he’s able to generate one great explosion of storm energy at sunrise on that day—using not only his own magic, but augmenting it with the power of other gods he’s managed to enslave…the amount of chaos he could unleash is almost unimaginable.” She shuddered. “Carter, you say a simple demon gave him this idea?”
“Sounded like it,” Carter said. “Or he tweaked the original plan, anyway.”
She shook her head. “This is not like Set.”
I coughed. “What do you mean? It’s exactly like him.”
“No,” Bast insisted. “This is horrendous, even for him. Set wishes to be king, but such an explosion might leave him nothing to rule. It’s almost as if…” She stopped herself, the thought seemingly too disturbing. “I don’t understand it, but we’ll be landing soon. You’ll have to ask Thoth.”
“You make it sound like you’re not coming,” I said.
“Thoth and I don’t get along very well. Your chances of surviving might be better—”
The seat belt light came on. The captain announced we’d started our descent into Memphis. I peered out the window and saw a vast brown river cutting across the landscape—a river larger than any I’d ever seen. It reminded me uncomfortably of a giant snake.
The flight attendant came by and pointed to my lunch plate. “Finished, dear?”
“It seems so,” I told her gloomily.
Memphis hadn’t gotten word that it was winter. The trees were green and the sky was a brilliant blue.
We’d insisted Bast not “borrow” a car this time, so she agreed to rent one as long as she got a convertible. I didn’t ask where she got the money, but soon we were cruising through the mostly deserted streets of Memphis with our BMW’s top down.
I remember only snapshots of the city. We passed through one neighborhood that might’ve been a set from Gone with the Wind—big white mansions on enormous lawns shaded by cypress trees, although the plastic Santa Claus displays on the rooftops rather ruined the effect. On the next block, we almost got killed by an old woman driving a Cadillac out of a church parking lot. Bast swerved and honked her horn, and the woman just smiled and waved. Southern hospitality, I suppose.
After a few more blocks, the houses turned to rundown shacks. I spotted two African American boys wearing jeans and muscle shirts, sitting on their front porch, strumming acoustic guitars and singing. They sounded so good, I was tempted to stop.
On the next corner stood a cinder block restaurant with a hand-painted sign that read chicken & waffles. There was a queue of twenty people outside.
“You Americans have the strangest taste. What planet is this?” I asked.
Carter shook his head. “And where would Thoth be?”
Bast sniffed the air and turned left onto a street called Poplar. “We’re getting close. If I know Thoth, he’ll find a center of learning. A library, perhaps, or a cache of books in a magician’s tomb.”
“Don’t have a lot of those in Tennessee,” Carter guessed.
Then I spotted a sign and grinned broadly. “The University of Memphis, perhaps?”
“Well done, Sadie!” Bast purred.
Carter scowled at me. The poor boy gets jealous, you know.
A few minutes later, we were strolling through the campus of a small college: red brick buildings and wide courtyards. It was eerily quiet, except for the sound of a ball echoing on concrete.
As soon as Carter heard it, he perked up. “Basketball.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “We need to find Thoth.”
But Carter followed the sound of the ball, and we followed him. He rounded the corner of a building and froze. “Let’s ask them.”
I didn’t understand what he was on about. Then I turned the corner and yelped. On the basketball court, five players were in the middle of an intense game. They wore an assortment of jerseys from different American teams, and they all seemed keen to win—grunting and snarling at each other, stealing the ball and pushing.
Oh…and the players were all baboons.
“The sacred animal of Thoth,” Bast said. “We must be in the right place.”
One of the baboons had lustrous golden hair much lighter than the others, and a more, er, colorful bottom. He wore a purple jersey that seemed oddly familiar.
“Is that…a Lakers jersey?” I asked, hesitant to even name Carter’s silly obsession.
He nodded, and we both grinned.
“Khufu!” we yelled.
True, we hardly knew the baboon. We’d spent less than a day with him, and our time at Amos’s mansion seemed like ages ago, but still I felt like we’d recovered a long-lost friend.
Khufu jumped into my arms and barked at me. “Agh! Agh!” He picked through my hair, looking for bugs, I suppose [No comments from you, Carter!], and dropped to the ground, slapping the pavement to show how pleased he was.
Bast laughed. “He says you smell like flamingos.”
“You speak Baboon?” Carter asked.
The goddess shrugged. “He also wants to know where you’ve been.”
“Where we’ve been?” I said. “Well, first off, tell him I’ve spent the better part of the day as a kite, which is not a flamingo and does not end in -o, so it shouldn’t be on his diet. Secondly—”
“Hold on.” Bast turned to Khufu and said, “Agh!” Then she looked back at me. “All right, go ahead.”
I blinked. “Okay…um, and secondly, where has he been?”
She relayed this in a single grunt.
Khufu snorted and grabbed the basketball, which sent his baboon friends into a frenzy of barking and scratching and snarling.
“He dove into the river and swam back,” Bast translated, “but when he returned, the house was destroyed and we were gone. He waited a day for Amos to return, but he never did. So Khufu made his way to Thoth. Baboons are under his protection, after all.”
“Why is that?” Carter asked. “I mean, no offense, but Thoth is the god of knowledge, right?”
“Baboons are very wise animals,” Bast said.
“Agh!” Khufu picked his nose, then turned his Technicolor bum our direction. He threw his friends the ball. They began to fight over it, showing one another their fangs and slapping their heads.
“Wise?” I asked.
“Well, they’re not cats, mind you,” Bast added. “But, yes, wise. Khufu says that as soon as Carter keeps his promise, he’ll take you to the professor.”
I blinked. “The prof— Oh, you mean…right.”
“What promise?” Carter asked.
The corner of Bast’s mouth twitched. “Apparently, you promised to show him your basketball skills.”
Carter’s eyes widened in alarm. “We don’t have time!”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Bast promised. “It’s best that I go now.”
“But where, Bast?” I asked, as I wasn’t anxious to be separated from her again. “How will we find you?”
The look in her eyes changed to something like guilt, as if she’d just caused a horrible accident. “I’ll find you when you get out, if you get out….”
“What do you mean if?” Carter asked, but Bast had already turned into Muffin and raced off.
Khufu barked at Carter most insistently. He tugged his hand, pulling him onto the court. The baboons immediately broke into two teams. Half took off their jerseys. Half left them on. Carter, sadly, was on the no-jersey team, and Khufu helped him pull his shirt off, exposing his bony chest. The teams began to play.
Now, I know nothing about basketball. But I’m fairly sure one isn’t supposed to trip over one’s shoes, or catch a pass with one’s forehead, or dribble (is that the word?) with both hands as if petting a possibly rabid dog. But that is exactly the way Carter played. The baboons simply ran him over, quite literally. They scored basket after basket as Carter staggered back and forth, getting hit with the ball whenever it came close to him, tripping over monkey limbs until he was so dizzy he turned in a circle and fell over. The baboons stopped playing and watched him in disbelief. Carter lay in the middle of the court, covered in sweat and panting. The other baboons looked at Khufu. It was quite obvious what they were thinking: Who invited this human? Khufu covered his eyes in shame.
“Carter,” I said with glee, “all that talk about basketball and the Lakers, and you’re absolute rubbish! Beaten by monkeys!”
He groaned miserably. “It was…it was Dad’s favorite game.”
I stared at him. Dad’s favorite game. God, why hadn’t that occurred to me?
Apparently he took my gobsmacked expression as further criticism.
“I…I can tell you any NBA stat you want,” he said a bit desperately. “Rebounds, assists, free throw percentages.”
The other baboons went back to their game, ignoring Carter and Khufu both. Khufu let out a disgusted noise, half gag and half bark.
I understood the sentiment, but I came forward and offered Carter my hand. “Come on, then. It doesn’t matter.”
“If I had better shoes,” he suggested. “Or if I wasn’t so tired—”
“Carter,” I said with a smirk. “It doesn’t matter. And I’ll not breathe a word to Dad when we save him.”
He looked at me with obvious gratitude. (Well, I am rather wonderful, after all.) Then he took my hand, and I hoisted him up.
“Now for god’s sake, put on your shirt,” I said. “And Khufu, it’s time you took us to the professor.”
Khufu led us into a deserted science building. The air in the hallways smelled of vinegar, and the empty classroom labs looked like something from an American high school, not the sort of place a god would hang out. We climbed the stairs and found a row of professors’ offices. Most of the doors were closed. One had been left open, revealing a space no bigger than a broom closet stuffed with books, a tiny desk, and one chair. I wondered if that professor had done something bad to get such a small office.
“Agh!” Khufu stopped in front of a polished mahogany door, much nicer than the others. A newly stenciled name glistened on the glass: Dr. Thoth.
Without knocking, Khufu opened the door and waddled inside.
“After you, chicken man,” I said to Carter. (And yes, I’m sure he was regretting telling me about that particular incident. After all, I couldn’t completely stop teasing him. I have a reputation to maintain.)
I expected another broom closet. Instead, the office was impossibly big.
The ceiling rose at least ten meters, with one side of the office all windows, looking out over the Memphis skyline. Metal stairs led up to a loft dominated by an enormous telescope, and from somewhere up there came the sound of an electric guitar being strummed quite badly. The other walls of the office were crammed with bookshelves. Worktables overflowed with weird bits and bobs—chemistry sets, half-assembled computers, stuffed animals with electrical wires sticking out of their heads. The room smelled strongly of cooked beef, but with a smokier, tangier scent than I’d ever smelled.
Strangest of all, right in front of us, half a dozen longnecked birds—ibises—sat behind desks like receptionists, typing on laptop computers with their beaks.
Carter and I looked at each other. For once I was at a loss for words.
“Agh!” Khufu called out.
Up in the loft, the strumming stopped. A lanky man in his twenties stood up, electric guitar in hand. He had an unruly mane of blond hair like Khufu’s, and he wore a stained white lab coat over faded jeans and a black T-shirt. At first I thought blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. Then I realized it was some sort of meat sauce.
“Fascinating.” He broke into a wide grin. “I’ve discovered something, Khufu. This is not Memphis, Egypt.”
Khufu gave me a sideways look, and I could swear his expression meant, Duh.
“I’ve also discovered a new form of magic called blues music,” the man continued. “And barbecue. Yes, you must try barbecue.”
Khufu looked unimpressed. He climbed to the top of a bookshelf, grabbed a box of Cheerios, and began to munch.
The guitar man slid down the banister with perfect balance and landed in front of us. “Isis and Horus,” he said. “I see you’ve found new bodies.”
His eyes were a dozen colors, shifting like a kaleidoscope, with hypnotic effect.
I managed to stutter, “Um, we’re not—”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “Trying to share the body, eh? Don’t think I’m fooled for a minute, Isis. I know you’re in charge.”
“But she’s not!” I protested. “My name is Sadie Kane. I assume you’re Thoth?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You claim not to know me? Of course I’m Thoth. Also called Djehuti. Also called—”
I stifled a laugh. “Ja-hooty?”
Thoth looked offended. “In Ancient Egyptian, it’s a perfectly fine name. The Greeks called me Thoth. Then later they confused me with their god Hermes. Even had the nerve to rename my sacred city Hermopolis, though we’re nothing alike. Believe me, if you’ve ever met Hermes—”
“Agh!” Khufu yelled through a mouthful of Cheerios.
“You’re right,” Thoth agreed. “I’m getting off track. So you claim to be Sadie Kane. And…” He swung a finger toward Carter, who was watching the ibises type on their laptops. “I suppose you’re not Horus.”
“Carter Kane,” said Carter, still distracted by the ibises’ screens. “What is that?”
Thoth brightened. “Yes, they’re called computers. Marvelous, aren’t they? Apparently—”
“No, I mean what are the birds typing?” Carter squinted and read from the screen. “‘A Short Treatise on the Evolution of Yaks’?”
“My scholarly essays,” Thoth explained. “I try to keep several projects going at once. For instance, did you know this university does not offer majors in astrology or leechcraft? Shocking! I intend to change that. I’m renovating new headquarters right now down by the river. Soon Memphis will be a true center of learning!”
“That’s brilliant,” I said halfheartedly. “We need help defeating Set.”
The ibises stopped typing and stared at me.
Thoth wiped the barbecue sauce off his mouth. “You have the nerve to ask this after last time?”
“Last time?” I repeated.
“I have the account here somewhere….” Thoth patted the pockets of his lab coat. He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper and read it. “No, grocery list.”
He tossed it over his shoulder. As soon as the paper hit the floor, it became a loaf of wheat bread, a jug of milk, and a six-pack of Mountain Dew.
Thoth checked his sleeves. I realized the stains on his coat were smeared words, printed in every language. The stains moved and changed, forming hieroglyphs, English letters, Demotic symbols. He brushed a stain off his lapel and seven letters fluttered to the floor, forming a word: crawdad. The word morphed into a slimy crustacean, like a shrimp, which wiggled its legs for only a moment before an ibis snapped it up.
“Ah, never mind,” Thoth said at last. “I’ll just tell you the short version: To avenge his father, Osiris, Horus challenged Set to a duel. The winner would become king of the gods.”
“Horus won,” Carter said.
“You do remember!”
“No, I read about it.”
“And do you remember that without my help, Isis and you both would’ve died? Oh, I tried to mediate a solution to prevent the battle. That is one of my jobs, you know: to keep balance between order and chaos. But no-o-o, Isis convinced me to help your side because Set was getting too powerful. And the battle almost destroyed the world.”
He complains too much, Isis said inside my head. It wasn’t so bad.
“No?” Thoth demanded, and I got the feeling he could hear her voice as well as I could. “Set stabbed out Horus’s eye.”
“Ouch.” Carter blinked.
“Yes, and I replaced it with a new eye made of moonlight. The Eye of Horus—your famous symbol. That was me, thank you very much. And when you cut off Isis’s head—”
“Hold up.” Carter glanced at me. “I cut off her head?”
I got better, Isis assured me.
“Only because I healed you, Isis!” Thoth said. “And yes, Carter, Horus, whatever you call yourself, you were so mad, you cut off her head. You were reckless, you see—about to charge Set while you were still weak, and Isis tried to stop you. That made you so angry you took your sword— Well, the point is, you almost destroyed each other before you could defeat Set. If you start another fight with the Red Lord, beware. He will use chaos to turn you against each other.”
We’ll defeat him again, Isis promised. Thoth is just jealous.
“Shut up,” Thoth and I said at the same time.
He looked at me with surprise. “So, Sadie…you are trying to stay in control. It won’t last. You may be blood of the pharaohs, but Isis is a deceptive, power-hungry—”
“I can contain her,” I said, and I had to use all my will to keep Isis from blurting out a string of insults.
Thoth fingered the frets of his guitar. “Don’t be so sure. Isis probably told you she helped defeat Set. Did she also tell you she was the reason Set got out of control in the first place? She exiled our first king.”
“You mean Ra?” Carter said. “Didn’t he get old and decide to leave the earth?”
Thoth snorted. “He was old, yes, but he was forced to leave. Isis got tired of waiting for him to retire. She wanted her husband, Osiris, to become king. She also wanted more power. So one day, while Ra was napping, Isis secretly collected a bit of the sun god’s drool.”
“Eww,” I said. “Since when does drool make you powerful?”
Thoth scowled at me accusingly. “You mixed the spit with clay to create a poisonous snake. That night, the serpent slipped into Ra’s bedroom and bit him on the ankle. No amount of magic, even mine, could heal him. He would’ve died—”
“Gods can die?” Carter asked.
“Oh, yes,” Thoth said. “Of course most of the time we rise again from the Duat—eventually. But this poison ate away at Ra’s very being. Isis, of course, acted innocent. She cried to see Ra in pain. She tried to help with her magic. Finally she told Ra there was only one way to save him: Ra must tell her his secret name.”
“Secret name?” I asked. “Like Bruce Wayne?”
“Everything in Creation has a secret name,” Thoth said. “Even gods. To know a being’s secret name is to have power over that creature. Isis promised that with Ra’s secret name, she could heal him. Ra was in so much pain, he agreed. And Isis healed him.”
“But it gave her power over him,” Carter guessed.
“Extreme power,” Thoth agreed. “She forced Ra to retreat into the heavens, opening the way for her beloved, Osiris, to become the new king of the gods. Set had been an important lieutenant to Ra, but he could not bear to see his brother Osiris become king. This made Set and Osiris enemies, and here we are five millennia later, still fighting that war, all because of Isis.”
“But that’s not my fault!” I said. “I would never do something like that.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Thoth asked. “Wouldn’t you do anything to save your family, even if it upset the balance of the cosmos?”
His kaleidoscope eyes locked on mine, and I felt a surge of defiance. Well, why shouldn’t I help my family? Who was this nutter in a lab coat telling me what I could and couldn’t do?
Then I realized I didn’t know who was thinking that: Isis or me. Panic started building in my chest. If I couldn’t tell my own thoughts from those of Isis, how long before I went completely mad?
“No, Thoth,” I croaked. “You have to believe me. I’m in control—me, Sadie—and I need your help. Set has our father.”
I let it spill out, then—everything from the British Museum to Carter’s vision of the red pyramid. Thoth listened without comment, but I could swear new stains developed on his lab coat as I talked, as if some of my words were being added to the mix.
“Just look at something for us,” I finished. “Carter, hand him the book.”
Carter rummaged through his bag and brought out the book we’d stolen in Paris. “You wrote this, right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.”
Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?”
Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball, please?
I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I kept her under control.
“Look, Thoth,” I said. “Ja-hooty, whatever. Set is about to destroy North America at the very least, possibly the world. Millions of people will die. You said you care about balance. Will you help us or not?”
For a moment, the only sounds were ibis beaks tapping on keyboards.
“You are in trouble,” Thoth agreed. “So let me ask, why do you think your father put you in this position? Why did he release the gods?”
I almost said, To bring back Mum. But I didn’t believe that anymore.
“My mum saw the future,” I guessed. “Something bad was coming. I think she and Dad were trying to stop it. They thought the only way was to release the gods.”
“Even though using the power of the gods is incredibly dangerous for mortals,” Thoth pressed, “and against the law of the House of Life—a law that I convinced Iskandar to make, by the way.”
I remembered something the old Chief Lector had told me in the Hall of Ages. “Gods have great power, but only humans have creativity.” “I think my mum convinced Iskandar that the rule was wrong. Maybe he couldn’t admit it publicly, but she made him change his mind. Whatever is coming—it’s so bad, gods and mortals are going to need each other.”
“And what is coming?” Thoth asked. “The rise of Set?” His tone was coy, like a teacher trying a trick question.
“Maybe,” I said carefully, “but I don’t know.”
Up on the bookshelf, Khufu belched. He bared his fangs in a messy grin.
“You have a point, Khufu,” Thoth mused. “She does not sound like Isis. Isis would never admit she doesn’t know something.”
I had to clamp a mental hand over Isis’s mouth.
Thoth tossed the book back to Carter. “Let’s see if you act as well as you talk. I will explain the spell book, provided you prove to me that you truly have control of your gods, that you’re not simply repeating the same old patterns.”
“A test?” Carter said. “We accept.”
“Now, hang on,” I protested. Maybe being homeschooled, Carter didn’t realize that “test” is normally a bad thing.
“Wonderful,” Thoth said. “There is an item of power I require from a magician’s tomb. Bring it to me.”
“Which magician’s tomb?” I asked.
But Thoth took a piece of chalk from his lab coat and scribbled something in the air. A doorway opened in front of him.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Bast said we can’t summon portals during the Demon Days.”
“Mortals can’t,” Thoth agreed. “But a god of magic can. If you succeed, we’ll have barbecue.”
The doorway pulled us into a black void, and Thoth’s office disappeared.
SADIE
24. I Blow Up Some Blue Suede Shoes
“WHERE ARE WE?” I ASKED.
We stood on a deserted avenue outside the gates of a large estate. We still seemed to be in Memphis—at least the trees, the weather, the afternoon light were all the same.
The estate must’ve been several acres at least. The white metal gates were done in fancy designs of silhouetted guitar players and musical notes. Beyond them, the driveway curved through the trees up to a two-story house with a white-columned portico.
“Oh, no,” Carter said. “I recognize those gates.”
“What? Why?”
“Dad brought me here once. A great magician’s tomb…Thoth has got to be kidding.”
“Carter, what are you talking about? Is someone buried here?”
He nodded. “This is Graceland. Home to the most famous musician in the world.”
“Michael Jackson lived here?”
“No, dummy,” Carter said. “Elvis Presley.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or curse. “Elvis Presley. You mean white suits with rhinestones, big slick hair, Gran’s record collection—that Elvis?”
Carter looked around nervously. He drew his sword, even though we seemed to be totally alone. “This is where he lived and died. He’s buried in back of the mansion.”
I stared up at the house. “You’re telling me Elvis was a magician?”
“Don’t know.” Carter gripped his sword. “Thoth did say something about music being a kind of magic. But something’s not right. Why are we the only ones here? There’s usually a mob of tourists.”
“Christmas holidays?”
“But no security?”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s like what Zia did at Luxor. Maybe Thoth cleared everyone out.”
“Maybe.” But I could tell Carter was still uneasy. He pushed the gates, and they opened easily. “Not right,” he muttered.
“No,” I agreed. “But let’s go pay our respects.”
As we walked up the drive, I couldn’t help thinking that the home of “the King” wasn’t very impressive. Compared to some of the rich and famous homes I’d seen on TV, Elvis’s place looked awfully small. It was just two stories high, with that white-columned portico and brick walls. Ridiculous plaster lions flanked the steps. Perhaps things were simpler back in Elvis’s day, or maybe he spent all his money on rhinestone suits.
We stopped at the foot of the steps.
“So Dad brought you here?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Carter eyed the lions as if expecting them to attack. “Dad loves blues and jazz, mostly, but he said Elvis was important because he took African American music and made it popular for white people. He helped invent rock and roll. Anyway, Dad and I were in town for a symposium or something. I don’t remember. Dad insisted I come here.”
“Lucky you.” And yes, perhaps I was beginning to understand that Carter’s life with Dad hadn’t been all glamour and holiday, but still I couldn’t help being a bit jealous. Not that I’d ever wanted to see Graceland, of course, but Dad had never insisted on taking me anywhere—at least until the British Museum trip when he disappeared. I hadn’t even known Dad was an Elvis fan, which was rather horrifying.
We walked up the steps. The front door swung open all by itself.
“I don’t like that,” Carter said.
I turned to look behind us, and my blood went ice cold. I grabbed my brother’s arm. “Um, Carter, speaking of things we don’t like…”
Coming up the driveway were two magicians brandishing staffs and wands.
“Inside,” Carter said. “Quick!”
I didn’t have much time to admire the house. There was a dining room to our left and a living room–music room to our right, with a piano and a stained glass archway decorated with peacocks. All the furniture was roped off. The house smelled like old people.
“Item of power,” I said. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” Carter snapped. “They didn’t have ‘items of power’ listed on the tour!”
I glanced out the window. Our enemies were getting close. The bloke in front wore jeans, a black sleeveless shirt, boots, and a battered cowboy hat. He looked more like an outlaw than a magician. His friend was similarly dressed but much heftier, with tattooed arms, a bald head, and a scraggly beard. When they were ten meters away, the man with the cowboy hat lowered his staff, which morphed into a shotgun.
“Oh, please!” I yelled, and pushed Carter into the living room.
The blast shattered Elvis’s front door and set my ears ringing. We scrambled to our feet and ran deeper into the house. We passed through an old-fashioned kitchen, then into the strangest den I’d ever seen. The back wall was made of vine-covered bricks, with a waterfall trickling down the side. The carpet was green shag (floor and ceiling, mind you) and the furniture was carved with creepy animal shapes. Just in case all that wasn’t dreadful enough, plaster monkeys and stuffed lions had been strategically placed around the room. Despite the danger we were in, the place was so horrid, I just had to stop and marvel.
“God,” I said. “Did Elvis have no taste?”
“The Jungle Room,” Carter said. “He decorated it like this to annoy his dad.”
“I can respect that.”
Another shotgun blast roared through the house.
“Split up,” Carter said.
“Bad idea!” I could hear the magicians tromping through the rooms, smashing things as they came closer.
“I’ll distract them,” Carter said. “You search. The trophy room is through there.”
“Carter!”
But the fool ran off to protect me. I hate it when he does that. I should have followed him, or run the other way, but I stood frozen in shock as he turned the corner with his sword raised, his body beginning to glow with a golden light…and everything went wrong.
Blam! An emerald flash brought Carter to his knees. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d been hit with the shotgun, and I had to stifle a scream. But immediately, Carter collapsed and began to shrink, clothes, sword and all—melting into a tiny sliver of green.
The lizard that used to be my brother raced toward me, climbed up my leg and into my palm, where it looked at me desperately.
From around the corner, a gruff voice said, “Split up and find the sister. She’ll be somewhere close.”
“Oh, Carter,” I whispered fondly to the lizard. “I will so kill you for this.”
I stuffed him in my pocket and ran.
The two magicians continued to smash and crash their way through Graceland, knocking over furniture and blasting things to bits. Apparently they were not Elvis fans.
I ducked under some ropes, crept through a hallway, and found the trophy room. Amazingly, it was full of trophies. Gold records crowded the walls. Rhinestone Elvis jumpsuits glittered in four glass cases. The room was dimly lit, probably to keep the jumpsuits from blinding visitors, and music played softly from overhead speakers: Elvis warning everyone not to step on his blue suede shoes.
I scanned the room but found nothing that looked magical. The suits? I hoped Thoth did not expect me to wear one. The gold records? Lovely Frisbees, but no.
“Jerrod!” a voice called to my right. A magician was coming down the hallway. I darted toward the other exit, but a voice just outside it called back, “Yeah, I’m over here.”
I was surrounded.
“Carter,” I whispered. “Curse your lizard brain.”
He fluttered nervously in my pocket but was no help.
I fumbled through my magician’s bag and grasped my wand. Should I try drawing a magic circle? No time, and I didn’t want to duel toe-to-toe with two older magicians. I had to stay mobile. I took out my rod and willed it into a full-length staff. I could set it on fire, or turn it into a lion, but what good would that do? My hands started to tremble. I wanted to crawl into a ball and hide beneath Elvis’s gold record collection.
Let me take over, Isis said. I can turn our enemies to dust.
No, I told her.
You will get us both killed.
I could feel her pressing against my will, trying to bust out. I could taste her anger with these magicians. How dare they challenge us? With a word, we could destroy them.
No, I thought again. Then I remembered something Zia had said: Use whatever you have available. The room was dimly lit…perhaps if I could make it darker.
“Darkness,” I whispered. I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, and the lights flickered off. The music stopped. The light continued to dim—even the sunlight faded from the windows until the entire room went black.
Somewhere to my left, the first magician sighed in exasperation. “Jerrod!”
“Wasn’t me, Wayne!” Jerrod insisted. “You always blame me!”
Wayne muttered something in Egyptian, still moving towards me. I needed a distraction.
I closed my eyes and imagined my surroundings. Although it was pitch-black, I could still sense Jerrod in the hallway to my left, stumbling through the darkness. I sensed Wayne on the other side of the wall to the right, only a few steps from the doorway. And I could visualize the four glass display cases with Elvis’s suits.
They’re tossing your house, I thought. Defend it!
A stronger pull in my gut, as if I were lifting a heavy weight—then the display cases blew open. I heard the shuffling of stiff cloth, like sails in the wind, and was dimly aware of four pale white shapes in motion—two heading to either door.
Wayne yelled first as the empty Elvis suits tackled him. His shotgun lit up the dark. Then to my left, Jerrod shouted in surprise. A heavy clump! told me he’d been knocked over. I decided to go in Jerrod’s direction—better an off-balance bloke than one with a shotgun. I slipped through the doorway and down a hall, leaving Jerrod scuffling behind me and yelling, “Get off! Get off!”
Take him while he’s down, Isis urged. Burn him to ashes!
Part of me knew she had a point: if I left Jerrod in one piece, he would be up in no time and after me again; but it didn’t seem right to hurt him, especially while he was being tackled by Elvis suits. I found a door and burst outside into the afternoon sunlight.
I was in the backyard of Graceland. A large fountain gurgled nearby, ringed by grave markers. One had a glass-encased flame at the top and was heaped with flowers. I took a wild guess: it must be Elvis’s.
A magician’s tomb.
Of course. We’d been searching the house, but the item of power would be at his gravesite. But what exactly was the item?
Before I could approach the grave, the door burst open. The big bald man with the straggly beard stumbled out. A tattered Elvis suit had its sleeves wrapped around his neck like it was getting a piggyback ride.
“Well, well.” The magician threw off the jumpsuit. His voice confirmed for me that he was the one called Jerrod. “You’re just a little girl. You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, missy.”
He lowered his staff and fired a shot of green light. I raised my wand and deflected the bolt of energy straight up. I heard a surprised coo—the cry of a pigeon—and a newly made lizard fell out of the sky at my feet.
“Sorry,” I told it.
Jerrod snarled and threw down his staff. Apparently, he specialized in lizards, because the staff morphed into a komodo dragon the size of a London taxicab.
The monster charged me with unnatural speed. It opened its jaws and would’ve bitten me in half, but I just had time to wedge my staff in its mouth.
Jerrod laughed. “Nice try, girl!”
I felt the dragon’s jaws pressing on the staff. It was only a matter of seconds before the wood snapped, and then I’d be a komodo dragon’s snack. A little help, I told Isis. Carefully, very carefully, I tapped in to her strength. Doing so without letting her take over was like riding a surfboard over a tidal wave, trying desperately to stay on my feet. I felt five thousand years of experience, knowledge, and power course through me. She offered me options, and I selected the simplest. I channeled power through my staff and felt it grow hot in my hands, glowing white. The dragon hissed and gurgled as my staff elongated, forcing the creature’s jaws open wider, wider, and then: boom!
The dragon shattered into kindling and sent the splintered remains of Jerrod’s staff raining down around me.
Jerrod had only a moment to look stunned before I threw my wand and whapped him solidly on the forehead. His eyes crossed, and he collapsed on the pavement. My wand returned to my hand.
That would’ve been a lovely happy ending…except I’d forgotten about Wayne. The cowboy-hatted magician stumbled out the door, almost tripping over his friend, but he recovered with lightning speed.
He shouted, “Wind!” and my staff flew out of my hands and into his.
He smiled cruelly. “Well fought, darlin’. But elemental magic is always quickest.”
He struck the ends of both staffs, his and mine, against the pavement. A wave rippled over the dirt and pavement as if the ground had become liquid, knocking me off my feet and sending my wand flying. I scrambled backwards on hands and knees, but I could hear Wayne chanting, summoning fire from the staffs.
Rope, Isis said. Every magician carries rope.
Panic had made my mind go blank, but my hand instinctively went for my magic bag. I pulled out a small bit of twine. Hardly a rope, but it triggered a memory—something Zia had done in the New York museum. I threw the twine at Wayne and yelled a word Isis suggested: “Tas!”
A golden hieroglyph burned in the air over Wayne’s head:The twine whipped toward him like an angry snake, growing longer and thicker as it flew. Wayne’s eyes widened. He stumbled back and sent jets of flame shooting from both staffs, but the rope was too quick. It lashed round his ankles and toppled him sideways, wrapping round his whole body until he was encased in a twine cocoon from chin to toes. He struggled and screamed and called me quite a few unflattering names.
I got up unsteadily. Jerrod was still out cold. I retrieved my staff, which had fallen next to Wayne. He continued straining against the twine and cursing in Egyptian, which sounded strange with an American Southern accent.
Finish him, Isis warned. He can still speak. He will not rest until he destroys you.
“Fire!” Wayne screamed. “Water! Cheese!”
Even the cheese command did not work. I reckoned his rage was throwing his magic off balance, making it impossible to focus, but I knew he would recover soon.
“Silence,” I said.
Wayne’s voice abruptly stopped working. He kept screaming, but no sound came out.
“I’m not your enemy,” I told him. “But I can’t have you killing me, either.”
Something wriggled in my pocket, and I remembered Carter. I took him out. He looked okay, except of course for the fact he was still a lizard.
“I’ll try to change you back,” I told him. “Hopefully I don’t make things worse.”
He made a little croak that didn’t convey much confidence.
I closed my eyes and imagined Carter as he should be: a tall boy of fourteen, badly dressed, very human, very annoying. Carter began to feel heavy in my hands. I put him down and watched as the lizard grew into a vaguely human blob. By the count of three, my brother was lying on his stomach, his sword and pack next to him on the lawn.
He spit grass out of his mouth. “How’d you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You just seemed…wrong.”
“Thanks a lot.” He got up and checked to make sure he had all his fingers. Then he saw the two magicians and his mouth fell open. “What did you do to them?”
“Just tied one up. Knocked one out. Magic.”
“No, I mean…” He faltered, searching for words, then gave up and pointed.
I looked at the magicians and yelped. Wayne wasn’t moving. His eyes and mouth were open, but he wasn’t blinking or breathing. Next to him, Jerrod looked just as frozen. As we watched, their mouths began to glow as if they’d swallowed matches. Two tiny yellow orbs of fire popped out from between their lips and shot into the air, disappearing in the sunlight.
“What—what was that?” I asked. “Are they dead?”
Carter approached them cautiously and put his hand on Wayne’s neck. “It doesn’t even feel like skin. More like rock.”
“No, they were human! I didn’t turn them to rock!”
Carter felt Jerrod’s forehead where I’d whacked him with my wand. “It’s cracked.”
“What?”
Carter picked up his sword. Before I could even scream, he brought the hilt down on Jerrod’s face and the magician’s head cracked into shards like a flowerpot.
“They’re made of clay,” Carter said. “They’re both shabti.”
He kicked Wayne’s arm and I heard it crunch under the twine.
“But they were casting spells,” I said. “And talking. They were real.”
As we watched, the shabti crumbled to dust, leaving nothing behind but my bit of twine, two staffs, and some grungy clothes.
“Thoth was testing us,” Carter said. “Those balls of fire, though…” He frowned as if trying to recall something important.
“Probably the magic that animated them,” I guessed. “Flying back to their master—like a recording of what they did?”
It sounded like a solid theory to me, but Carter seemed awfully troubled. He pointed to the blasted back door of Graceland. “Is the whole house like that?”
“Worse.” I looked at the ruined Elvis jumpsuit under Jerrod’s clothes and scattered rhinestones. Maybe Elvis had no taste, but I still felt bad about trashing the King’s palace. If the place had been important to Dad… Suddenly an idea perked me up. “What was it Amos said, when he repaired that saucer?”
Carter frowned. “This is a whole house, Sadie. Not a saucer.”
“Got it,” I said. “Hi-nehm!”
A gold hieroglyphic symbol flickered to life in my palm.I held it up and blew it towards the house. The entire outline of Graceland began to glow. The pieces of the door flew back into place and mended themselves. The tattered bits of Elvis clothing disappeared.
“Wow,” Carter said. “Do you think the inside is fixed too?”
“I—” My vision blurred, and my knees buckled. I would’ve knocked my head on the pavement if Carter hadn’t caught me.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You did a lot of magic, Sadie. That was amazing.”
“But we haven’t even found the item Thoth sent us for.”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Maybe we have.”
He pointed to Elvis’s grave, and I saw it clearly: a memento left behind by some adoring fan—a necklace with a silver loop-topped cross, just like the one on Mum’s T-shirt in my old photograph.
“An ankh,” I said. “The Egyptian symbol for eternal life.”
Carter picked it up. There was a small papyrus scroll attached to the chain.
“What’s this?” he murmured, and unrolled the sheet. He stared at it so hard I thought he’d burn a hole in it.
“What?” I looked over his shoulder.
The painting looked quite ancient. It showed a golden, spotted cat holding a knife in one paw and chopping the head off a snake.Beneath it, in black marker, someone had written: Keep up the fight!
“That’s vandalism, isn’t it?” I asked. “Marking up an ancient drawing like that? Rather an odd thing to leave for Elvis.”
Carter didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve seen this picture before. It’s in a lot of tombs. Don’t know why it never occurred to me…”
I studied the picture more closely. Something about it did seem rather familiar.
“You know what it means?” I asked.
“It’s the Cat of Ra, fighting the sun god’s main enemy, Apophis.”
“The snake,” I said.
“Yeah, Apophis was—”
“The embodiment of chaos,” I said, remembering what Nut had said.
Carter looked impressed, as well he should have. “Exactly. Apophis was even worse than Set. The Egyptians thought Doomsday would come when Apophis ate the sun and destroyed all of Creation.”
“But…the cat killed it,” I said hopefully.
“The cat had to kill it over and over again,” Carter said. “Like what Thoth said about repeating patterns. The thing is…I asked Dad one time if the cat had a name. And he said nobody knows for sure, but most people assume it’s Sekhmet, this fierce lion goddess. She was called the Eye of Ra because she did his dirty work. He saw an enemy; she killed it.”
“Fine. So?”
“So the cat doesn’t look like Sekhmet. It just occurred to me…”
I finally saw it, and a shiver went down my back. “The Cat of Ra looks exactly like Muffin. It’s Bast.”
Just then the ground rumbled. The memorial fountain began to glow, and a dark doorway opened.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got some questions for Thoth. And then I’m going to punch him in the beak.”