CHAPTER
2. An Explosion for Christmas
I’D BEEN TO THE BRITISH MUSEM BEFORE. In fact I’ve been in more museums than I like to admit—it makes me sound like a total geek.
[That’s Sadie in the background, yelling that I am a total geek. Thanks, Sis.]
Anyway, the museum was closed and completely dark, but the curator and two security guards were waiting for us on the front steps.
“Dr. Kane!” The curator was a greasy little dude in a cheap suit. I’d seen mummies with more hair and better teeth. He shook my dad’s hand like he was meeting a rock star. “Your last paper on Imhotep—brilliant! I don’t know how you translated those spells!”
“Im-ho-who?” Sadie muttered to me.
“Imhotep,” I said. “High priest, architect. Some say he was a magician. Designed the first step pyramid. You know.”
“Don’t know,” Sadie said. “Don’t care. But thanks.”
Dad expressed his gratitude to the curator for hosting us on a holiday. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “Dr. Martin, I’d like you to meet Carter and Sadie.”
“Ah! Your son, obviously, and—” The curator looked hesitantly at Sadie. “And this young lady?”
“My daughter,” Dad said.
Dr. Martin’s stare went temporarily blank. Doesn’t matter how open-minded or polite people think they are, there’s always that moment of confusion that flashes across their faces when they realize Sadie is part of our family. I hate it, but over the years I’ve come to expect it.
The curator regained his smile. “Yes, yes, of course. Right this way, Dr. Kane. We’re very honored!”
The security guards locked the doors behind us. They took our luggage, then one of them reached for Dad’s workbag.
“Ah, no,” Dad said with a tight smile. “I’ll keep this one.”
The guards stayed in the foyer as we followed the curator into the Great Court. It was ominous at night. Dim light from the glass-domed ceiling cast crosshatched shadows across the walls like a giant spiderweb. Our footsteps clicked on the white marble floor.
“So,” Dad said, “the stone.”
“Yes!” the curator said. “Though I can’t imagine what new information you could glean from it. It’s been studied to death—our most famous artifact, of course.”
“Of course,” Dad said. “But you may be surprised.”
“What’s he on about now?” Sadie whispered to me.
I didn’t answer. I had a sneaking suspicion what stone they were talking about, but I couldn’t figure out why Dad would drag us out on Christmas Eve to see it.
I wondered what he’d been about to tell us at Cleopatra’s Needle—something about our mother and the night she died. And why did he keep glancing around as if he expected those strange people we’d seen at the Needle to pop up again? We were locked in a museum surrounded by guards and high-tech security. Nobody could bother us in here—I hoped.
We turned left into the Egyptian wing. The walls were lined with massive statues of the pharaohs and gods, but my dad bypassed them all and went straight for the main attraction in the middle of the room.
“Beautiful,” my father murmured. “And it’s not a replica?”
“No, no,” the curator promised. “We don’t always keep the actual stone on display, but for you—this is quite real.”
We were staring at a slab of dark gray rock about three feet tall and two feet wide. It sat on a pedestal, encased in a glass box. The flat surface of the stone was chiseled with three distinct bands of writing. The top part was Ancient Egyptian picture writing: hieroglyphics. The middle section…I had to rack my brain to remember what my dad called it: Demotic, a kind of writing from the period when the Greeks controlled Egypt and a lot of Greek words got mixed into Egyptian. The last lines were in Greek.
“The Rosetta Stone,” I said.
“Isn’t that a computer program?” Sadie asked.
I wanted to tell her how stupid she was, but the curator cut me off with a nervous laugh. “Young lady, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics! It was discovered by Napoleon’s army in 1799 and—”
“Oh, right,” Sadie said. “I remember now.”
I knew she was just saying that to shut him up, but my dad wouldn’t let it go.
“Sadie,” he said, “until this stone was discovered, regular mortals…er, I mean, no one had been able to read hieroglyphics for centuries. The written language of Egypt had been completely forgotten. Then an Englishman named Thomas Young proved that the Rosetta Stone’s three languages all conveyed the same message. A Frenchman named Champollion took up the work and cracked the code of hieroglyphics.”
Sadie chewed her gum, unimpressed. “What’s it say, then?”
Dad shrugged. “Nothing important. It’s basically a thank-you letter from some priests to King Ptolemy V. When it was first carved, the stone was no big deal. But over the centuries…over the centuries it has become a powerful symbol. Perhaps the most important connection between Ancient Egypt and the modern world. I was a fool not to realize its potential sooner.”
He’d lost me, and apparently the curator too.
“Dr. Kane?” he asked. “Are you quite all right?”
Dad breathed deeply. “My apologies, Dr. Martin. I was just…thinking aloud. If I could have the glass removed? And if you could bring me the papers I asked for from your archives.”
Dr. Martin nodded. He pressed a code into a small remote control, and the front of the glass box clicked open.
“It will take a few minutes to retrieve the notes,” Dr. Martin said. “For anyone else, I would hesitate to grant unguarded access to the stone, as you’ve requested. I trust you’ll be careful.”
He glanced at us kids like we were troublemakers.
“We’ll be careful,” Dad promised.
As soon as Dr. Martin’s steps receded, Dad turned to us with a frantic look in his eyes. “Children, this is very important. You have to stay out of this room.”
He slipped his workbag off his shoulder and unzipped it just enough to pull out a bike chain and padlock. “Follow Dr. Martin. You’ll find his office at the end of the Great Court on the left. There’s only one entrance. Once he’s inside, wrap this around the door handles and lock it tight. We need to delay him.”
“You want us to lock him in?” Sadie asked, suddenly interested. “Brilliant!”
“Dad,” I said, “what’s going on?”
“We don’t have time for explanations,” he said. “This will be our only chance. They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” Sadie asked.
He took Sadie by the shoulders. “Sweetheart, I love you. And I’m sorry…I’m sorry for many things, but there’s no time now. If this works, I promise I’ll make everything better for all of us. Carter, you’re my brave man. You have to trust me. Remember, lock up Dr. Martin. Then stay out of this room!”
Chaining the curator’s door was easy. But as soon as we’d finished, we looked back the way we’d come and saw blue light streaming from the Egyptian gallery, as if our dad had installed a giant glowing aquarium.
Sadie locked eyes with me. “Honestly, do you have any idea what he’s up to?”
“None,” I said. “But he’s been acting strange lately. Thinking a lot about Mom. He keeps her picture…”
I didn’t want to say more. Fortunately Sadie nodded like she understood.
“What’s in his workbag?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He told me never to look.”
Sadie raised an eyebrow. “And you never did? God, that is so like you, Carter. You’re hopeless.”
I wanted to defend myself, but just then a tremor shook the floor.
Startled, Sadie grabbed my arm. “He told us to stay put. I suppose you’re going to follow that order too?”
Actually, that order was sounding pretty good to me, but Sadie sprinted down the hall, and after a moment’s hesitation, I ran after her.
When we reached the entrance of the Egyptian gallery, we stopped dead in our tracks. Our dad stood in front of the Rosetta Stone with his back to us. A blue circle glowed on the floor around him, as if someone had switched on hidden neon tubes in the floor.
My dad had thrown off his overcoat. His workbag lay open at his feet, revealing a wooden box about two feet long, painted with Egyptian images.
“What’s he holding?” Sadie whispered to me. “Is that a boomerang?”
Sure enough, when Dad raised his hand, he was brandishing a curved white stick. It did look like a boomerang. But instead of throwing the stick, he touched it to the Rosetta Stone. Sadie caught her breath. Dad was writing on the stone. Wherever the boomerang made contact, glowing blue lines appeared on the granite. Hieroglyphs.
It made no sense. How could he write glowing words with a stick? But the image was bright and clear: ram’s horns above a box and an X.“Open,” Sadie murmured. I stared at her, because it sounded like she had just translated the word, but that was impossible. I’d been hanging around Dad for years, and even I could read only a few hieroglyphs. They are seriously hard to learn.
Dad raised his arms. He chanted: “Wo-seer, i-ei.” And two more hieroglyphic symbols burned blue against the surface of the Rosetta Stone.As stunned as I was, I recognized the first symbol. It was the name of the Egyptian god of the dead.
“Wo-seer,” I whispered. I’d never heard it pronounced that way, but I knew what it meant. “Osiris.”
“Osiris, come,” Sadie said, as if in a trance. Then her eyes widened. “No!” she shouted. “Dad, no!”
Our father turned in surprise. He started to say, “Children—” but it was too late. The ground rumbled. The blue light turned to searing white, and the Rosetta Stone exploded.
When I regained consciousness, the first thing I heard was laughter—horrible, gleeful laughter mixed with the blare of the museum’s security alarms.
I felt like I’d just been run over by a tractor. I sat up, dazed, and spit a piece of Rosetta Stone out of my mouth. The gallery was in ruins. Waves of fire rippled in pools along the floor. Giant statues had toppled. Sarcophagi had been knocked off their pedestals. Pieces of the Rosetta Stone had exploded outward with such force that they’d embedded themselves in the columns, the walls, the other exhibits.
Sadie was passed out next to me, but she looked unharmed. I shook her shoulder, and she grunted. “Ugh.”
In front of us, where the Rosetta Stone had been, stood a smoking, sheared-off pedestal. The floor was blackened in a starburst pattern, except for the glowing blue circle around our father.
He was facing our direction, but he didn’t seem to be looking at us. A bloody cut ran across his scalp. He gripped the boomerang tightly.
I didn’t understand what he was looking at. Then the horrible laughter echoed around the room again, and I realized it was coming from right in front of me.
Something stood between our father and us. At first, I could barely make it out—just a flicker of heat. But as I concentrated, it took on a vague form—the fiery outline of a man.
He was taller than Dad, and his laugh cut through me like a chainsaw.
“Well done,” he said to my father. “Very well done, Julius.”
“You were not summoned!” My father’s voice trembled. He held up the boomerang, but the fiery man flicked one finger, and the stick flew from Dad’s hand, shattering against the wall.
“I am never summoned, Julius,” the man purred. “But when you open a door, you must be prepared for guests to walk through.”
“Back to the Duat!” my father roared. “I have the power of the Great King!”
“Oh, scary,” the fiery man said with amusement. “And even if you knew how to use that power, which you do not, he was never my match. I am the strongest. Now you will share his fate.”
I couldn’t make sense of anything, but I knew that I had to help my dad. I tried to pick up the nearest chunk of stone, but I was so terrified my fingers felt frozen and numb. My hands were useless.
Dad shot me a silent look of warning: Get out. I realized he was intentionally keeping the fiery man’s back to us, hoping Sadie and I would escape unnoticed.
Sadie was still groggy. I managed to drag her behind a column, into the shadows. When she started to protest, I clamped my hand over her mouth. That woke her up. She saw what was happening and stopped fighting.
Alarms blared. Fire circled around the doorways of the gallery. The guards had to be on their way, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing for us.
Dad crouched to the floor, keeping his eyes on his enemy, and opened his painted wooden box. He brought out a small rod like a ruler. He muttered something under his breath and the rod elongated into a wooden staff as tall as he was.
Sadie made a squeaking sound. I couldn’t believe my eyes either, but things only got weirder.
Dad threw his staff at the fiery man’s feet, and it changed into an enormous serpent—ten feet long and as big around as I was—with coppery scales and glowing red eyes. It lunged at the fiery man, who effortlessly grabbed the serpent by its neck. The man’s hand burst into white-hot flames, and the snake burned to ashes.
“An old trick, Julius,” the fiery man chided.
My dad glanced at us, silently urging us again to run. Part of me refused to believe any of this was real. Maybe I was unconscious, having a nightmare. Next to me, Sadie picked up a chunk of stone.
“How many?” my dad asked quickly, trying to keep the fiery man’s attention. “How many did I release?”
“Why, all five,” the man said, as if explaining something to a child. “You should know we’re a package deal, Julius. Soon I’ll release even more, and they’ll be very grateful. I shall be named king again.”
“The Demon Days,” my father said. “They’ll stop you before it’s too late.”
The fiery man laughed. “You think the House can stop me? Those old fools can’t even stop arguing among themselves. Now let the story be told anew. And this time you shall never rise!”
The fiery man waved his hand. The blue circle at Dad’s feet went dark. Dad grabbed for his toolbox, but it skittered across the floor.
“Good-bye, Osiris,” the fiery man said. With another flick of his hand, he conjured a glowing coffin around our dad. At first it was transparent, but as our father struggled and pounded on its sides, the coffin became more and more solid—a golden Egyptian sarcophagus inlaid with jewels. My dad caught my eyes one last time, and mouthed the word Run! before the coffin sank into the floor, as if the ground had turned to water.
“Dad!” I screamed.
Sadie threw her stone, but it sailed harmlessly through the fiery man’s head.
He turned, and for one terrible moment, his face appeared in the flames. What I saw made no sense. It was as if someone had superimposed two different faces on top of each other—one almost human, with pale skin, cruel, angular features, and glowing red eyes, the other like an animal with dark fur and sharp fangs. Worse than a dog or a wolf or a lion—some animal I’d never seen before. Those red eyes stared at me, and I knew I was going to die.
Behind me, heavy footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the Great Court. Voices were barking orders. The security guards, maybe the police—but they’d never get here in time.
The fiery man lunged at us. A few inches from my face, something shoved him backward. The air sparked with electricity. The amulet around my neck grew uncomfortably hot.
The fiery man hissed, regarding me more carefully. “So…it’s you.”
The building shook again. At the opposite end of the room, part of the wall exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Two people stepped through the gap—the man and the girl we’d seen at the Needle, their robes swirling around them. Both of them held staffs.
The fiery man snarled. He looked at me one last time and said, “Soon, boy.”
Then the entire room erupted in flames. A blast of heat sucked all the air of out my lungs and I crumpled to the floor.
The last thing I remember, the man with the forked beard and the girl in blue were standing over me. I heard the security guards running and shouting, getting closer. The girl crouched over me and drew a long curved knife from her belt.
“We must act quickly,” she told the man.
“Not yet,” he said with some reluctance. His thick accent sounded French. “We must be sure before we destroy them.”
I closed my eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.
SADIE
3. Imprisoned with My Cat
[Give me the bloody mic.]
Hullo. Sadie here. My brother’s a rubbish storyteller. Sorry about that. But now you’ve got me, so all is well.
Let’s see. The explosion. Rosetta Stone in a billion pieces. Fiery evil bloke. Dad boxed in a coffin. Creepy Frenchman and Arab girl with the knife. Us passing out. Right.
So when I woke up, the police were rushing about as you might expect. They separated me from my brother. I didn’t really mind that part. He’s a pain anyway. But they locked me in the curator’s office for ages. And yes, they used our bicycle chain to do it. Cretins.
I was shattered, of course. I’d just been knocked out by a fiery whatever-it-was. I’d watched my dad get packed in a sarcophagus and shot through the floor. I tried to tell the police about all that, but did they care? No.
Worst of all: I had a lingering chill, as if someone was pushing ice-cold needles into the back of my neck. It had started when I looked at those blue glowing words Dad had drawn on the Rosetta Stone and I knew what they meant. A family disease, perhaps? Can knowledge of boring Egyptian stuff be hereditary? With my luck.
Long after my gum had gone stale, a policewoman finally retrieved me from the curator’s office. She asked me no questions. She just trundled me into a police car and took me home. Even then, I wasn’t allowed to explain to Gran and Gramps. The policewoman just tossed me into my room and I waited. And waited.
I don’t like waiting.
I paced the floor. My room was nothing posh, just an attic space with a window and a bed and a desk. There wasn’t much to do. Muffin sniffed my legs and her tail puffed up like a bottlebrush. I suppose she doesn’t fancy the smell of museums. She hissed and disappeared under the bed.
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered.
I opened the door, but the policewoman was standing guard.
“The inspector will be with you in a moment,” she told me. “Please stay inside.”
I could see downstairs—just a glimpse of Gramps pacing the room, wringing his hands, while Carter and a police inspector talked on the sofa. I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Could I just use the loo?” I asked the nice officer.
“No.” She closed the door in my face. As if I might rig an explosion in the toilet. Honestly.
I dug out my iPod and scrolled through my playlist. Nothing struck me. I threw it on my bed in disgust. When I’m too distracted for music, that is a very sad thing. I wondered why Carter got to talk to the police first. It wasn’t fair.
I fiddled with the necklace Dad had given me. I’d never been sure what the symbol meant. Carter’s was obviously an eye, but mine looked a bit like an angel, or perhaps a killer alien robot.Why on earth had Dad asked if I still had it? Of course I still had it. It was the only gift he’d ever given me. Well, apart from Muffin, and with the cat’s attitude, I’m not sure I would call her a proper gift.
Dad had practically abandoned me at age six, after all. The necklace was my one link to him. On good days I would stare at it and remember him fondly. On bad days (which were much more frequent) I would fling it across the room and stomp on it and curse him for not being around, which I found quite therapeutic. But in the end, I always put it back on.
At any rate, during the weirdness at the museum—and I’m not making this up—the necklace got hotter. I nearly took it off, but I couldn’t help wondering if it truly was protecting me somehow.
I’ll make things right, Dad had said, with that guilty look he often gives me.
Well, colossal fail, Dad.
What had he been thinking? I wanted to believe it had all been a bad dream: the glowing hieroglyphs, the snake staff, the coffin. Things like that simply don’t happen. But I knew better. I couldn’t dream anything as horrifying as that fiery man’s face when he’d turned on us. “Soon, boy,” he’d told Carter, as if he intended to track us down. Just the idea made my hands tremble. I also couldn’t help wondering about our stop at Cleopatra’s Needle, how Dad had insisted on seeing it, as if he were steeling his courage, as if what he did at the British Museum had something to do with my mum.
My eyes wandered across my room and fixed on my desk.
No, I thought. Not going to do it.
But I walked over and opened the drawer. I shoved aside a few old mags, my stash of sweets, a stack of maths homework I’d forgotten to hand in, and a few pictures of me and my mates Liz and Emma trying on ridiculous hats in Camden Market. And there at the bottom of it all was the picture of Mum.
Gran and Gramps have loads of pictures. They keep a shrine to Ruby in the hall cupboard—Mum’s childhood artwork, her O-level results, her graduation picture from university, her favorite jewelry. It’s quite mental. I was determined not to be like them, living in the past. I barely remembered Mum, after all, and nothing could change the fact she was dead.
But I did keep the one picture. It was of Mum and me at our house in Los Angeles, just after I was born. She stood out on the balcony, the Pacific Ocean behind her, holding a wrinkled pudgy lump of baby that would some day grow up to be yours truly. Baby me was not much to look at, but Mum was gorgeous, even in shorts and a tattered T-shirt. Her eyes were deep blue. Her blond hair was clipped back. Her skin was perfect. Quite depressing compared to mine. People always say I look like her, but I couldn’t even get the spot off my chin much less look so mature and beautiful.
[Stop smirking, Carter.]
The photo fascinated me because I hardly remembered our lives together at all. But the main reason I’d kept the photo was because of the symbol on Mum’s T-shirt: one of those life symbols—an ankh.My dead mother wearing the symbol for life. Nothing could’ve been sadder. But she smiled at the camera as if she knew a secret. As if my dad and she were sharing a private joke.
Something tugged at the back of my mind. That stocky man in the trench coat who’d been arguing with Dad across the street—he’d said something about the Per Ankh.
Had he meant ankh as in the symbol for life, and if so, what was a per? I supposed he didn’t mean pear as in the fruit.
I had an eerie feeling that if I saw the words Per Ankh written in hieroglyphics, I would know what they meant.
I put down the picture of Mum. I picked up a pencil and turned over one of my old homework papers. I wondered what would happen if I tried to draw the words Per Ankh. Would the right design just occur to me?
As I touched pencil to paper, my bedroom door opened. “Miss Kane?”
I whirled and dropped the pencil.
A police inspector stood frowning in my doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Maths,” I said.
My ceiling was quite low, so the inspector had to stoop to come in. He wore a lint-colored suit that matched his gray hair and his ashen face. “Now then, Sadie. I’m Chief Inspector Williams. Let’s have a chat, shall we? Sit down.”
I didn’t sit, and neither did he, which must’ve annoyed him. It’s hard to look in charge when you’re hunched over like Quasimodo.
“Tell me everything, please,” he said, “from the time your father came round to get you.”
“I already told the police at the museum.”
“Again, if you don’t mind.”
So I told him everything. Why not? His left eyebrow crept higher and higher as I told him the strange bits like the glowing letters and serpent staff.
“Well, Sadie,” Inspector Williams said. “You’ve got quite an imagination.”
“I’m not lying, Inspector. And I think your eyebrow is trying to escape.”
He tried to look at his own eyebrows, then scowled. “Now, Sadie, I’m sure this is very hard on you. I understand you want to protect your father’s reputation. But he’s gone now—”
“You mean through the floor in a coffin,” I insisted. “He’s not dead.”
Inspector Williams spread his hands. “Sadie, I’m very sorry. But we must find out why he did this act of…well…”
“Act of what?”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Your father destroyed priceless artifacts and apparently killed himself in the process. We’d very much like to know why.”
I stared at him. “Are you saying my father’s a terrorist? Are you mad?”
“We’ve made calls to some of your father’s associates. I understand his behavior had become erratic since your mother’s death. He’d become withdrawn and obsessive in his studies, spending more and more time in Egypt—”
“He’s a bloody Egyptologist! You should be looking for him, not asking stupid questions!”
“Sadie,” he said, and I could hear in his voice that he was resisting the urge to strangle me. Strangely, I get this a lot from adults. “There are extremist groups in Egypt that object to Egyptian artifacts being kept in other countries’ museums. These people might have approached your father. Perhaps in his state, your father became an easy target for them. If you’ve heard him mention any names—”
I stormed past him to the window. I was so angry I could hardly think. I refused to believe Dad was dead. No, no, no. And a terrorist? Please. Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say “tell the truth,” and when you do, they don’t believe you. What’s the point?
I stared down at the dark street. Suddenly that cold tingly feeling got worse than ever. I focused on the dead tree where I’d met Dad earlier. Standing there now, in the dim light of a streetlamp, looking up at me, was the pudgy bloke in the black trench coat and the round glasses and the fedora—the man Dad had called Amos.
I suppose I should’ve felt threatened by an odd man staring up at me in the dark of night. But his expression was full of concern. And he looked so familiar. It was driving me mad that I couldn’t remember why.
Behind me, the inspector cleared his throat. “Sadie, no one blames you for the attack on the museum. We understand you were dragged into this against your will.”
I turned from the window. “Against my will? I chained the curator in his office.”
The inspector’s eyebrow started to creep up again. “Be that as it may, surely you didn’t understand what your father meant to do. Possibly your brother was involved?”
I snorted. “Carter? Please.”
“So you are determined to protect him as well. You consider him a proper brother, do you?”
I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to smack his face. “What’s that supposed to mean? Because he doesn’t look like me?”
The inspector blinked. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. Of course he’s my brother!”
Inspector Williams held up his hands apologetically, but I was still seething. As much as Carter annoyed me, I hated it when people assumed we weren’t related, or looked at my father askance when he said the three of us were a family—like we’d done something wrong. Stupid Dr. Martin at the museum. Inspector Williams. It happened every time Dad and Carter and I were together. Every bloody time.
“I’m sorry, Sadie,” the inspector said. “I only want to make sure we separate the innocent from the guilty. It will go much easier for everyone if you cooperate. Any information. Anything your father said. People he might’ve mentioned.”
“Amos,” I blurted out, just to see his reaction. “He met a man named Amos.”
Inspector Williams sighed. “Sadie, he couldn’t have done. Surely you know that. We spoke with Amos not one hour ago, on the phone from his home in New York.”
“He isn’t in New York!” I insisted. “He’s right—”
I glanced out the window and Amos was gone. Bloody typical.
“That’s not possible,” I said.
“Exactly,” the inspector said.
“But he was here!” I exclaimed. “Who is he? One of Dad’s colleagues? How did you know to call him?”
“Really, Sadie. This acting must stop.”
“Acting?”
The inspector studied me for a moment, then set his jaw as if he’d made a decision. “We’ve already had the truth from Carter. I didn’t want to upset you, but he told us everything. He understands there’s no point protecting your father now. You might as well help us, and there will be no charges against you.”
“You shouldn’t lie to children!” I yelled, hoping my voice carried all the way downstairs. “Carter would never say a word against Dad, and neither will I!”
The inspector didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed.
He crossed his arms. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Sadie. I’m afraid it’s time we went downstairs…to discuss consequences with your grandparents.”
SADIE
4. Kidnapped by a Not-So-Stranger
I JUST LOVE FAMILY MEETINGS. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you.
Carter slumped on the sofa, cradling Dad’s workbag. I wondered why the police had let him keep it. It should have been evidence or something, but the inspector didn’t seem to notice it at all.
Carter looked awful—I mean even worse than usual. Honestly, the boy had never been in a proper school, and he dressed like a junior professor, with his khaki trousers and a button-down shirt and loafers. He’s not bad looking, I suppose. He’s reasonably tall and fit and his hair isn’t hopeless. He’s got Dad’s eyes, and my mates Liz and Emma have even told me from his picture that he’s hot, which I must take with a grain of salt because (a) he’s my brother, and (b) my mates are a bit crazed. When it came to clothes, Carter wouldn’t have known hot if it bit him on the bum.
[Oh, don’t look at me like that, Carter. You know it’s true.]
At any rate, I shouldn’t have been too hard on him. He was taking Dad’s disappearance even worse than I was.
Gran and Gramps sat on either side of him, looking quite nervous. The pot of tea and a plate of biscuits sat on the table, but no one was having any. Chief Inspector Williams ordered me into the only free chair. Then he paced in front of the fireplace importantly. Two more police stood by the front door—the woman from earlier and a big bloke who kept eyeing the biscuits.
“Mr. and Mrs. Faust,” Inspector Williams said, “I’m afraid we have two uncooperative children.”
Gran fidgeted with the trim of her dress. It’s hard to believe she’s related to Mum. Gran is frail and colorless, like a stick person really, while Mum in the photos always looked so happy and full of life. “They’re just children,” she managed. “Surely you can’t blame them.”
“Pah!” Gramps said. “This is ridiculous, Inspector. They aren’t responsible!”
Gramps is a former rugby player. He has beefy arms, a belly much too big for his shirt, and eyes sunk deep in his face, as if someone had punched them (well, actually Dad had punched them years ago, but that’s another story). Gramps is quite scary looking. Usually people got out of his way, but Inspector Williams didn’t seem impressed.
“Mr. Faust,” he said, “what do you imagine the morning headlines will read? ‘British Museum attacked. Rosetta Stone destroyed.’ Your son-in-law—”
“Former son-in-law,” Gramps corrected.
“—was most likely vaporized in the explosion, or he ran off, in which case—”
“He didn’t run off!” I shouted.
“We need to know where he is,” the inspector continued. “And the only witnesses, your grandchildren, refuse to tell me the truth.”
“We did tell you the truth,” Carter said. “Dad isn’t dead. He sank through the floor.”
Inspector Williams glanced at Gramps, as if to say, There, you see? Then he turned to Carter. “Young man, your father has committed a criminal act. He’s left you behind to deal with the consquences—”
“That’s not true!” I snapped, my voice trembling with rage. I couldn’t believe Dad would intentionally leave us at the mercy of police, of course. But the idea of him abandoning me—well, as I might have mentioned, that’s a bit of a sore point.
“Dear, please,” Gran told me, “the inspector is only doing his job.”
“Badly!” I said.
“Let’s all have some tea,” Gran suggested.
“No!” Carter and I yelled at once, which made me feel bad for Gran, as she practically wilted into the sofa.
“We can charge you,” the inspector warned, turning on me. “We can and we will—”
He froze. Then he blinked several times, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing.
Gramps frowned. “Er, Inspector?”
“Yes…” Chief Inspector Williams murmured dreamily. He reached in his pocket and took out a little blue booklet—an American passport. He threw it in Carter’s lap.
“You’re being deported,” the inspector announced. “You’re to leave the country within twenty-four hours. If we need to question you further, you’ll be contacted through the FBI.”
Carter’s mouth fell open. He looked at me, and I knew I wasn’t imagining how odd this was. The inspector had completely changed direction. He’d been about to arrest us. I was sure of it. And then out of the blue, he was deporting Carter? Even the other police officers looked confused.
“Sir?” the policewoman asked. “Are you sure—”
“Quiet, Linley. The two of you may go.”
The cops hesitated until Williams made a shooing motion with his hand. Then they left, closing the door behind them.
“Hold on,” Carter said. “My father’s disappeared, and you want me to leave the country?”
“Your father is either dead or a fugitive, son,” the inspector said. “Deportation is the kindest option. It’s already been arranged.”
“With whom?” Gramps demanded. “Who authorized this?”
“With…” The inspector got that funny blank look again. “With the proper authorities. Believe me, it’s better than prison.”
Carter looked too devastated to speak, but before I could feel sorry for him, Inspector Williams turned to me. “You, too, miss.”
He might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer.
“You’re deporting me?” I asked. “I live here!”
“You’re an American citizen. And under the circumstances, it’s best for you to return home.”
I just stared at him. I couldn’t remember any home except this flat. My mates at school, my room, everything I knew was here. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“Inspector,” Gran said, her voice trembling. “This isn’t fair. I can’t believe—”
“I’ll give you some time to say good-bye,” the inspector interrupted. Then he frowned as if baffled by his own actions. “I—I must be going.”
This made no sense, and the inspector seemed to realize it, but he walked to the front door anyway. When he opened it, I almost jumped out of my chair, because the man in black, Amos, was standing there. He’d lost his trench coat and hat somewhere, but was still wearing the same pinstripe suit and round glasses. His braided hair glittered with gold beads.
I thought the inspector would say something, or express surprise, but he didn’t even acknowledge Amos. He walked right past him and into the night.
Amos came inside and closed the door. Gran and Gramps stood up.
“You,” Gramps growled. “I should’ve known. If I was younger, I would beat you to a pulp.”
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Faust,” Amos said. He looked at Carter and me as if we were problems to be solved. “It’s time we had a talk.”
Amos made himself right at home. He flopped onto the sofa and poured himself tea. He munched on a biscuit, which was quite dangerous, because Gran’s biscuits are horrid.
I thought Gramps’s head would explode. His face went bright red. He came up behind Amos and raised his hand as if he were about to smack him, but Amos kept munching his biscuit.
“Please, sit down,” he told us.
And we all sat. It was the strangest thing—as if we’d been waiting for his order. Even Gramps dropped his hand and moved round the sofa. He sat next to Amos with a disgusted sigh.
Amos sipped his tea and regarded me with some displeasure. That wasn’t fair, I thought. I didn’t look that bad, considering what we’d been through. Then he looked at Carter and grunted.
“Terrible timing,” he muttered. “But there’s no other way. They’ll have to come with me.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “I’m not going anywhere with some strange man with biscuit on his face!”
He did in fact have biscuit crumbs on his face, but he apparently didn’t care, as he didn’t bother to check.
“I’m no stranger, Sadie,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”
It was creepy hearing him talk to me in such a familiar way. I felt I should know him. I looked at Carter, but he seemed just as mystified as I was.
“No, Amos,” Gran said, trembling. “You can’t take Sadie. We had an agreement.”
“Julius broke that agreement tonight,” Amos said. “You know you can’t care for Sadie anymore—not after what’s happened. Their only chance is to come with me.”
“Why should we go anywhere with you?” Carter asked. “You almost got in a fight with Dad!”
Amos looked at the workbag in Carter’s lap. “I see you kept your father’s bag. That’s good. You’ll need it. As for getting into fights, Julius and I did that quite a lot. If you didn’t notice, Carter, I was trying to stop him from doing something rash. If he’d listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
I had no idea what he was on about, but Gramps apparently understood.
“You and your superstitions!” he said. “I told you we want none of it.”
Amos pointed to the back patio. Through the glass doors, you could see the lights shining on the Thames. It was quite a nice view at night, when you couldn’t notice how run-down some of the buildings were.
“Superstition, is it?” Amos asked. “And yet you found a place to live on the east bank of the river.”
Gramps turned even redder. “That was Ruby’s idea. Thought it would protect us. But she was wrong about many things, wasn’t she? She trusted Julius and you, for one!”
Amos looked unfazed. He smelled interesting—like old-timey spices, copal and amber, like the incense shops in Covent Garden.
He finished his tea and looked straight at Gran. “Mrs. Faust, you know what’s begun. The police are the least of your worries.”
Gran swallowed. “You…you changed that inspector’s mind. You made him deport Sadie.”
“It was that or see the children arrested,” Amos said.
“Hang on,” I said. “You changed Inspector Williams’s mind? How?”
Amos shrugged. “It’s not permanent. In fact we should get to New York in the next hour or so before Inspector Williams begins to wonder why he let you go.”
Carter laughed incredulously. “You can’t get to New York from London in a hour. Not even the fastest plane—”
“No,” Amos agreed. “Not a plane.” He turned back to Gran as if everything had been settled. “Mrs. Faust, Carter and Sadie have only one safe option. You know that. They’ll come to the mansion in Brooklyn. I can protect them there.”
“You’ve got a mansion,” Carter said. “In Brooklyn.”
Amos gave him an amused smile. “The family mansion. You’ll be safe there.”
“But our dad—”
“Is beyond your help for now,” Amos said sadly. “I’m sorry, Carter. I’ll explain later, but Julius would want you to be safe. For that, we must move quickly. I’m afraid I’m all you’ve got.”
That was a bit harsh, I thought. Carter glanced at Gran and Gramps. Then he nodded glumly. He knew that they didn’t want him around. He’d always reminded them of our dad. And yes, it was a stupid reason not to take in your grandson, but there you are.
“Well, Carter can do what he wants,” I said. “But I live here. And I’m not going off with some stranger, am I?”
I looked at Gran for support, but she was staring at the lace doilies on the table as if they were suddenly quite interesting.
“Gramps, surely…”
But he wouldn’t meet my eyes either. He turned to Amos. “You can get them out of the country?”
“Hang on!” I protested.
Amos stood and wiped the crumbs off his jacket. He walked to the patio doors and stared out at the river. “The police will be back soon. Tell them anything you like. They won’t find us.”
“You’re going to kidnap us?” I asked, stunned. I looked at Carter. “Do you believe this?”
Carter shouldered the workbag. Then he stood like he was ready to go. Possibly he just wanted to be out of Gran and Gramps’s flat. “How do you plan to get to New York in an hour?” he asked Amos. “You said, not a plane.”
“No,” Amos agreed. He put his finger to the window and traced something in the condensation—another bloody hieroglyph.“A boat,” I said—then realized I’d translated aloud, which I wasn’t supposed to be able to do.
Amos peered at me over the top of his round glasses. “How did you—”
“I mean that last bit looks like a boat,” I blurted out. “But that can’t be what you mean. That’s ridiculous.”
“Look!” Carter cried.
I pressed in next to him at the patio doors. Down at the quayside, a boat was docked. But not a regular boat, mind you. It was an Egyptian reed boat, with two torches burning in the front, and a big rudder in the back. A figure in a black trench coat and hat—possibly Amos’s—stood at the tiller.
I’ll admit, for once, I was at a loss for words.
“We’re going in that,” Carter said. “To Brooklyn.”
“We’d better get started,” Amos said.
I whirled back to my grandmother. “Gran, please!”
She brushed a tear from her cheek. “It’s for the best, my dear. You should take Muffin.”
“Ah, yes,” Amos said. “We can’t forget the cat.”
He turned towards the stairs. As if on cue, Muffin raced down in a leopard-spotted streak and leaped into my arms. She never does that.
“Who are you?” I asked Amos. It was clear I was running out of options, but I at least wanted answers. “We can’t just go off with some stranger.”
“I’m not a stranger.” Amos smiled at me. “I’m family.”
And suddenly I remembered his face smiling down at me, saying, “Happy birthday, Sadie.” A memory so distant, I’d almost forgotten.
“Uncle Amos?” I asked hazily.
“That’s right, Sadie,” he said. “I’m Julius’s brother. Now come along. We have a long way to go.”