The Complete Kane Chronicles

CHAPTER


22. Friends in the Strangest Places
MENSHIKOV LOOKED LIKE HE’D SWUM through the Lake of Fire without a magic shield. His curly gray hair had been reduced to black stubble. His white suit was shredded and peppered with burn holes. His whole face was blistered, so his ruined eyes didn’t seem out of place. As Bes might’ve said, Menshikov was wearing his ugly outfit.

The memory of Bes made me angry. Everything we’d gone through, everything we’d lost, was all Vlad Menshikov’s fault.

The sun boat ground to a halt on the scarab-shell beach.

Ra warbled, “Hel-lo-o-o-o-o!” and stumbled to his feet. He began chasing a blue servant orb around the deck as if it were a pretty butterfly.

The demons dropped their shovels and assembled on the shore. They looked at each other uncertainly, no doubt wondering if this were some sort of clever trick. Surely this doddering old fool could not be the sun god.

“Wonderful,” Menshikov said. “You brought Ra, after all.”

It took me a moment to realize what was different about his voice. The gravelly breathing was gone. His tone was a deep, smooth baritone.

“I was worried,” he continued. “You took so long in the Fourth House, I thought you’d be trapped for the night. We could have freed Lord Apophis without you, of course, but it would’ve been so inconvenient to hunt you down later. This is much better. Lord Apophis will be hungry when he wakes. He’ll be most pleased that you brought him a snack.”

“Wheee, snack,” Ra giggled. He hobbled around the boat, trying to smash the servant light with his flail.

The demons began to laugh. Menshikov gave them an indulgent smile.

“Yes, quite amusing,” he said. “My grandfather entertained Peter the Great with a dwarf wedding. I will do even better. I will entertain the Lord of Chaos himself with a senile sun god!”

The voice of Horus spoke urgently in my mind: Take back the weapons of the pharaoh. This is your last chance!

Deep inside, I knew it was a bad idea. If I claimed the weapons of the pharaoh now, I’d never return them. And the powers I’d gain wouldn’t be enough to defeat Apophis. Still, I was tempted. It would feel so good to grab the crook and flail from that stupid old god Ra and smash Menshikov into the ground.

The Russian’s eyes glittered with malice. “A rematch, Carter Kane? By all means. I notice you don’t have your dwarf babysitter this time. Let’s see what you can do on your own.”

My vision turned red, and it had nothing to do with the light in the cavern. I stepped off the boat and summoned the hawk god’s avatar. I’d never tried the spell so deep in the Duat before. I got more than I asked for. Instead of being encased in a glowing holograph, I felt myself growing taller and stronger. My eyesight grew sharper.

Sadie made a strangled sound. “Carter?”

“Large bird!” Ra said.

I looked down and found I was a flesh-and-blood giant, fifteen feet tall, dressed in the battle armor of Horus. I brought my enormous hands to my head and patted feathers instead of hair. My mouth was a razor-sharp beak. I shouted with elation, and it came out as a screech, echoing through the cavern. The demons scrambled back nervously. I looked down at Menshikov, who now seemed as insignificant as a mouse. I was ready to pulverize him, but Menshikov sneered and pointed his staff.

Whatever he was planning, Sadie was faster. She threw down her own staff, and it transformed into a kite (the bird of prey kind) as large as a pterodactyl.

Typical. I pull something really cool like morphing into a hawk warrior, and Sadie has to show me up. Her kite buffeted the air with its massive wings. Menshikov and his demons went somersaulting backward across the beach.

“Two large birds!” Ra started to clap.

“Carter, guard me!” Sadie pulled out the Book of Ra. “I need to start the spell.”

I thought the giant kite was doing a pretty good job with guard duty, but I stepped forward and got ready to fight.

Menshikov rose to his feet. “By all means, Sadie Kane, start your little spell. Don’t you understand? The spirit of Khepri created this prison. Ra gave part of his own soul, his ability to be reborn, to keep Apophis chained.”

Sadie looked like he’d slapped her in the face. “‘The last scarab—’”

“Exactly,” Menshikov agreed. “All these scarabs were multiplied from one—Khepri, the third soul of Ra. My demons will find it eventually, digging through the shells. It’s one of the only scarabs still alive now, and once we crush it, Apophis will be free. Even if you summon it back to Ra, Apophis will still be freed! Either way, Ra is too weak to fight. Apophis will devour him, as the ancient prophecies predicted, and Chaos will destroy Ma’at once and for all. You can’t win.”

“You’re insane,” I said, my voice much deeper than usual. “You’ll be destroyed too.”

I saw the fractured light in his eyes, and I realized something that shocked me to the core. Menshikov didn’t want this any more than we did. He’d lived with grief and despair so long that Apophis had twisted his soul, made him a prisoner of his own hateful feelings. Vladimir Menshikov pretended to gloat, but he didn’t feel any sense of triumph. Inside he was terrified, defeated, miserable. He was enslaved by Apophis. I almost felt sorry for him.

“We’re already dead, Carter Kane,” he said. “This place was never meant for humans. Don’t you feel it? The power of Chaos is seeping into our bodies, withering our souls. But I have bigger plans. A host can live indefinitely, no matter what sickness he may have, no matter how injured he may be.

Apophis has already healed my voice. Soon I will be whole again. I will live forever!”

“A host…” When I realized what he meant, I almost lost control of my new giant form. “You’re not serious. Menshikov, stop this before it’s too late.”

“And die?” he asked.

Behind me, a new voice said, “There are worse things than death, Vladimir.”

I turned and saw a second boat gliding toward the shore —a small gray skiff with a single magic oar that rowed itself. The eye of Horus was painted on the boat’s prow, and its lone passenger was Michel Desjardins. The Chief Lector’s hair and beard were now white as snow. Glowing hieroglyphs floated from his cream-colored robes, making a trail of divine words behind him.

Desjardins stepped ashore. “You toy with something much worse than death, my old friend. Pray that I kill you before you succeed.”

Of all the weird things I’d experienced that night, Desjardins stepping up to fight on our side was definitely the weirdest.

He walked between my giant hawk warrior and Sadie’s mega-kite like they were no big deal, and planted his staff in the dead scarabs.

“Surrender, Vladimir.”

Menshikov laughed. “Have you looked at yourself lately, my lord? My curses have been sapping your strength for months, and you didn’t even realize it. You’re nearly dead now. I am the most powerful magician in the world.”

It was true that Desjardins didn’t look good. His face was almost as gaunt and wrinkled as the sun god’s. But the cloud of hieroglyphs seemed stronger around him. His eyes blazed with intensity, just as they had months ago in New Mexico, when he’d battled us in the streets of Las Cruces and vowed to destroy us. He took another step forward, and the mob of demons edged away. I suppose they recognized the leopard-skin cape around his shoulders as a mark of power.

“I have failed in many things,” Desjardins admitted. “But I will not fail in this. I will not let you destroy the House of Life.”

“The House?” Menshikov’s voice turned shrill. “It died centuries ago! It should’ve been disbanded when Egypt fell.” He kicked at the dried scarab shells. “The House has as much life as these hollow bug husks. Wake up, Michel! Egypt is gone, meaningless, ancient history. It’s time to destroy the world and start anew. Chaos always wins.”

“Not always.” Desjardins turned to Sadie. “Begin your spell. I will deal with this wretch.”

The ground surged under us, trembling as Apophis tried to rise.

“Think first, children,” Menshikov warned. “The world will end no matter what you do. Mortals can’t leave this cavern alive, but the two of you have been godlings. Combine with Horus and Isis again, pledge to serve Apophis, and you could survive this night. Desjardins has always been your enemy. Slay him for me now and present his body as a gift to Apophis! I will assure you both positions of honor in a new world ruled by Chaos, unrestricted by any rules. I can even give you the secret of curing Walt Stone.”

He smiled at Sadie’s stunned expression. “Yes, my girl. I do know how. The remedy was passed down for generations among the priests of Amun-Ra. Kill Desjardins, join Apophis, and the boy you love will be spared.”

I’ll be honest. His words were persuasive. I could imagine a new world where anything was possible, where no laws applied, not even the laws of physics, and we could be anything we wanted.

Chaos is impatient. It’s random. And above all it’s selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want. And there was so much that I wanted. Menshikov’s restored voice was smooth and confident, like Amos’s tone whenever he used magic to persuade mortals.

That was the problem. Menshikov’s promise was a trick. His words weren’t even his own. They were being forced out of him. His eyes moved like they were reading a teleprompter. He spoke the will of Apophis, but when he finished he locked eyes with me, and just briefly I saw his real thoughts—a tortured plea he would’ve screamed if he had control of his own mouth: Kill me now. Please.

“I’m sorry, Menshikov,” I said, and I sincerely meant it. “Magicians and gods have to stand together. The world may need fixing, but it’s worth preserving. We won’t let Chaos win.”

Then a lot of things happened at once. Sadie opened her scroll and began to read. Menshikov screamed, “Attack!” and the demons rushed forward. The giant kite spread its wings, deflecting a blast of green fire from Menshikov’s staff that probably would’ve incinerated Sadie on the spot. I charged to protect her, while Desjardins summoned a whirlwind around his body and flew toward Vlad Menshikov.

I waded through demons. I knocked over one with a razor-blade head, grabbed his ankles, and swung him around like a weapon, slicing his allies into piles of sand. Sadie’s giant kite picked up two more in its claws and tossed them into the river.

Meanwhile Desjardins and Menshikov rose into the air, locked inside a tornado. They whirled around each other, firing blasts of fire, poison, and acid. Demons who got too close melted instantly.

In the midst of all this, Sadie read from the Book of Ra. I didn’t know how she could concentrate, but her words rang out clear and loud. She invoked the dawn and the rise of a new day. Golden mist began to spread around her feet, weaving through the dried shells as if searching for life. The entire beach shuddered, and far underground, Apophis roared in outrage.

“Oh, noes!” Ra yelled behind me. “Vegetables!”

I turned and saw one of the largest demons boarding the sun boat, wicked knives in all four of his hands. Ra gave him the raspberry and scampered away, hiding behind his fiery throne.

I threw Razor-blade Head into a crowd of his friends, grabbed a spear from another demon, and threw it toward the boat.

If it had just been me throwing, my complete lack of long-shot skills might have caused me to impale the sun god, which would have been pretty embarrassing. Fortunately, my new giant form had aim worthy of Horus. The spear hit the four-armed demon square in the back. He dropped his knives, staggered to the edge of the boat, and fell into the River of Night.

Ra leaned over the side and gave him one last raspberry for good measure.

Desjardins’ tornado still spun him around, locked in combat with Menshikov. I couldn’t tell which magician had the upper hand. Sadie’s kite was doing its best to protect her, impaling demons with its beak and crushing them in its huge claws. Somehow Sadie kept her concentration. The golden mist thickened as it spread over the beach.

The remaining demons began to pull back as Sadie spoke the last words of her spell: “‘Khepri, the scarab who rises from death, the rebirth of Ra!’”

The Book of Ra vanished in a flash. The ground rumbled, and from the mass of dead shells, a single scarab rose into the air, a living golden beetle that floated toward Sadie and came to rest in her hands.

Sadie smiled triumphantly. I almost dared to hope we’d won. Then hissing laughter filled the cavern. Desjardins lost control of his whirlwind, and the Chief Lector went flying toward the sun boat, slamming into the prow so hard he broke the rail and lay absolutely still.

Vladimir Menshikov dropped to the ground, landing in a crouch. Around his feet, the dead scarab shells dissolved, turning into bloodred sand.

“Brilliant,” he said. “Brilliant, Sadie Kane!”

He stood, and all the magical energy in the cavern seemed to race toward his body—golden mist, red light, glowing hieroglyphs—all of it collapsing into Menshikov as if he’d taken on the gravity of a black hole.

His ruined eyes healed. His blistered face became smooth, young, and handsome. His white suit mended itself, then the fabric turned dark red. His skin rippled, and I realized with a chill that he was growing snake scales.

On the sun boat, Ra muttered, “Oh, noes. Need zebras.”

The entire beach turned to red sand.

Menshikov held out his hand to my sister. “Give me the scarab, Sadie. I will have mercy on you. You and your brother will live. Walt will live.”

Sadie clutched the scarab. I got ready to charge. Even in the body of a giant hawk warrior, I could feel the Chaos energy getting stronger and stronger, sapping my strength. Menshikov had warned us that no mortal could survive this cavern, and I believed him. We didn’t have much time, but we had to stop Apophis. In the back of my mind, I accepted the fact that I would die. I was acting now for the sake of our friends, for the Kane family, for the whole mortal world.

“You want the scarab, Apophis?” Sadie’s voice was full of loathing. “Then come and get it, you disgusting—” She called Apophis some words so bad, Gran would’ve washed her mouth out with soap for a year. [And no, Sadie, I’m not going to say them into the microphone.]

Menshikov stepped toward her. I picked up a shovel one of the demons had dropped. Sadie’s giant kite flew at Menshikov, its talons poised to strike, but Menshikov flicked his hand like he was shooing away a fly. The monster dissolved into cloud of feathers.

“Do you take me for a god?” Menshikov roared.

As he focused on Sadie, I skirted behind him, doing my best to sneak closer—which is not easy when you’re a fifteen-foot-tall birdman.

“I am Chaos itself!” Menshikov bellowed. “I will unknit your bones, dissolve your soul, and send you back to the primordial ooze you came from. Now, give me the scarab!”

“Tempting,” Sadie said. “What do you think, Carter?”

Menshikov realized the trap too late. I lunged forward and hit him upside the head with the shovel. Menshikov crumpled. I body-slammed him into the sand, then stood up and stomped him in a little deeper. I buried him as best I could, then Sadie pointed at his burial site and spoke the glyph for fire. The sand melted, hardening into a coffin-size block of solid glass.

I would’ve spit on it, too, but I wasn’t sure I could do that with a falcon beak.

The surviving demons did the sensible thing. They fled in panic. A few jumped into the river and let themselves dissolve, which was a real time-saver for us.

“That wasn’t so hard,” Sadie said, though I could tell the Chaos energy was starting to wear her down, too. Even when she was five and had pneumonia, I don’t think she looked this bad.

“Hurry,” I said. My adrenaline was fading quickly. My avatar form was starting to feel like an extra five hundred pounds of dead weight. “Get the scarab to Ra.”

She nodded, and ran toward the sun boat; but she’d only made it halfway when Menshikov’s glass grave blew up.

The most powerful explosive magic I’d ever seen was Sadie’s ha-di spell. This blast was about fifty times more powerful.

A high-powered wave of sand and glass shards knocked me off my feet and shredded my avatar. Back in my regular body, blind and in pain, I crawled away from the laughing voice of Apophis.

“Where did you go, Sadie Kane?” Apophis called, his voice now as deep as a cannon shot. “Where is that bad little girl with my scarab?”

I blinked the sand out of my eyes. Vlad Menshikov—no, he might look like Vlad, but he was Apophis now—was about fifty feet away, stalking around the rim of the crater he’d made in the beach. He either didn’t see me, or he assumed I was dead. He was looking for Sadie, but she was nowhere. The blast must’ve buried her in the sand, or worse.

My throat closed up. I wanted to get to my feet and tackle Apophis, but my body wouldn’t work. My magic was depleted. The power of Chaos was sapping my life force. Just from being near Apophis I felt like I was coming undone—my brain synapses, my DNA, everything that made me Carter Kane was slowly dissolving.

Finally, Apophis spread his arms. “No matter. I’ll dig your body up later. First, I’ll deal with the old man.”

For a second I thought he meant Desjardins, who was still crumpled lifelessly over the broken railing, but Apophis climbed into the boat, ignoring the Chief Lector, and approached the throne of fire.

“Hello, Ra,” he said in a kindly voice. “It’s been a long time.”

A feeble voice from behind the chair said, “Can’t play. Go away.”

“Would you like a treat?” Apophis asked. “We used to play so nicely together. Every night, trying to kill each other. Don’t you remember?”

Ra poked his bald head above the throne. “Treat?”

“How about a stuffed date?” Apophis pulled one out of the air. “You used to love stuffed dates, didn’t you? All you have to do is come out and let me devour—I mean, entertain you.”

“Want a cookie,” Ra said.

“What kind?”

“Weasel cookie.”

I’m here to tell you, that comment about weasel cookies probably saved the known universe.

Apophis stepped back, obviously confused by a comment that was even more chaotic than he was. And in that moment, Michel Desjardins struck.

The Chief Lector must have been playing dead, or maybe he just recovered quickly. He rose up and launched himself at Apophis, slamming him against the burning throne.

Menshikov screamed in his old raspy voice. Steam hissed like water on a barbecue. Desjardins’ robes caught fire. Ra scrambled to the back of the boat and poked his crook in the air like that would make the bad men go away.

I struggled to my feet, but I still felt like I was carrying a few hundred extra pounds. Menshikov and Desjardins grappled with each other in front of the throne. This was the scene I’d witnessed in the Hall of Ages: the first moment in a new age.

I knew I should help, but I scrambled along the beach, trying to gauge the spot where I’d last seen Sadie. I fell to my knees and started to dig.

Desjardins and Menshikov struggled back and forth, shouting out words of power. I glanced over and saw a cloud of hieroglyphs and red light swirling around them as the Chief Lector summoned Ma’at, and Apophis just as quickly dissolved his spells with Chaos. As for Ra, the almighty sun god, he had scrambled to the stern of the boat and was cowering under the tiller.

I kept digging.

“Sadie,” I muttered. “Come on. Where are you?”

Think, I told myself.

I closed my eyes. I thought about Sadie—every memory we’d shared since Christmas. We’d lived apart for years, but over the last three months, I’d become closer to her than to anyone else in the world. If she could figure out my secret name while I was unconscious, surely I could find her in a pile of sand.

I scrambled a few feet to the left and began to dig again. Immediately I scratched Sadie’s nose. She groaned, which at least meant she was alive. I brushed off her face and she coughed. Then she raised her arms, and I pulled her out of the sand. I was so relieved, I almost sobbed; but being a macho guy and all, I didn’t.

[Shut up, Sadie. I’m telling this part.]

Apophis and Desjardins were still fighting back and forth on the sun boat.

Desjardins yelled, “Heh-sieh!” and a hieroglyph blazed between them:Apophis went flying off the boat like he’d been hooked by a moving train. He sailed right over us and landed in the sand about forty feet away.

“Nice one,” Sadie muttered in a daze. “Glyph for ‘Turn back.’”

Desjardins staggered off the sun boat. His robes were still smoldering, but from his sleeve he pulled a ceramic statuette —a red snake carved with hieroglyphs.

Sadie gasped. “A shabti of Apophis? The penalty for making those is death!”

I could understand why. Images had power. In the wrong hands, they could strengthen or even summon the being they represented, and a statue of Apophis was way too dangerous to play with. But it was also a necessary ingredient for certain spells….

“An execration,” I said. “He’s trying to erase Apophis.”

“That’s impossible!” Sadie said. “He’ll be destroyed!”

Desjardins began to chant. Hieroglyphs glowed in the air around him, swirling into a cone of protective power. Sadie tried to get to her feet, but she wasn’t in much better shape than I was.

Apophis sat up. His face was a nightmare of burns from the throne of fire. He looked like a half-cooked hamburger patty someone had dropped in the sand. [Sadie says that’s too gross. Well, I’m sorry. It’s accurate.]

When he saw the statue in the Chief Lector’s hands, he roared in outrage. “Are you insane, Michel? You can’t execrate me!”

“Apophis,” Desjardins chanted, “I name you Lord of Chaos, Serpent in the Dark, Fear of the Twelve Houses, the Hated One—”

“Stop it!” Apophis bellowed. “I cannot be contained!”

He shot a blast of fire at Desjardins, but the energy simply joined the swirling cloud around the Chief Lector, turning into the hieroglyph for “heat.” Desjardins stumbled forward, aging before our eyes, becoming more stooped and frail, but his voice remained strong. “I speak for the gods. I speak for the House of Life. I am a servant of Ma’at. I cast you underfoot.”

Desjardins threw down the red snake, and Apophis fell to his side.

The Lord of Chaos hurled everything he had at Desjardins —ice, poison, lightning, boulders—but nothing connected. They all simply turned into hieroglyphs in the Chief Lector’s shield, Chaos forced into patterns of words—into the divine language of creation.

Desjardins smashed the ceramic snake under his foot. Apophis writhed in agony. The thing that used to be Vladimir Menshikov crumbled like a wax shell, and a creature rose out of it—a red snake, covered in slime like a new hatchling. It began to grow, its red scales glistening and its eyes glowing.

Its voice hissed in my mind: I cannot be contained!

But it was having trouble rising. The sand churned around it. A portal was opening, anchored on Apophis himself.

“I erase your name,” Desjardins said. “I remove you from the memory of Egypt.”

Apophis screamed. The beach imploded around him, swallowing the serpent and sucking the red sand into the vortex.

I grabbed Sadie and ran for the boat. Desjardins had collapsed to his knees in exhaustion, but somehow I managed to hook his arm and drag him to the shore. Together Sadie and I hauled him aboard the sun boat. Ra finally scrambled out from his hiding place under the tiller. The glowing servant lights manned the oars, and we pulled away as the entire beach sank into the dark waters, flashes of red lightning rippling under the surface.

Desjardins was dying.

The hieroglyphs had faded around him. His forehead was burning hot. His skin was as dry and thin as rice paper, and his voice was a ragged whisper.

“Execration w-won’t last,” he warned. “Only bought you some time.”

I gripped his hand like he was an old friend, not a former enemy. After playing senet with the moon god, buying time wasn’t something I took lightly. “Why did you do it?” I asked. “You used all your life force to banish him.”

Desjardins smiled faintly. “Don’t like you much. But you were right. The old ways…our only chance. Tell Amos…tell Amos what happened.” He clawed feebly at his leopard-skin cape, and I realized he wanted to remove it. I helped him, and he pressed the cape into my hands. “Show this to…the others.… Tell Amos…”

His eyes rolled into his head, and the Chief Lector passed. His body disintegrated into hieroglyphs—too many to read, the story of his entire life. Then the words floated away down the River of Night.

“Bye-bye,” Ra muttered. “Weasels are sick.”

I’d almost forgotten about the old god. He slumped in his throne again, resting his head on the loop of his crook and swatting his flail halfheartedly at the servant lights.

Sadie took a shaky breath. “Desjardins saved us. I—I didn’t like him either, but—”

“I know,” I said. “But we have to keep going. Do you still have the scarab?”

Sadie pulled the wriggling golden scarab from her pocket. Together we approached Ra.

“Take it,” I told him.

Ra wrinkled his already wrinkled nose. “Don’t want a bug.”

“It’s your soul!” Sadie snapped. “You’ll take it, and you’ll like it!”

Ra looked cowed. He took the beetle, and to my horror, popped it in his mouth.

“No!” Sadie yelped.

Too late. Ra had swallowed.

“Oh, god,” Sadie said. “Was he supposed to do that? Maybe he was supposed to do that.”

“Don’t like bugs,” Ra muttered.

We waited for him to change into a powerful youthful king. Instead, he burped. He stayed old, and weird, and disgusting.

In a daze, I walked with Sadie back to the front of the ship. We’d done everything we could, and yet I felt like we’d lost. As we sailed on, the magic pressure seemed to ease. The river appeared level, but I could sense we were rising rapidly through the Duat. Despite that, I still felt like my insides were melting. Sadie didn’t look any better.

Menshikov’s words echoed in my head: Mortals can’t leave this cavern alive.

“It’s Chaos sickness,” Sadie said. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

“We have to hold on,” I said. “At least until dawn.”

“All that,” Sadie said, “and what happened? We retrieved a senile god. We lost Bes and the Chief Lector. And we’re dying.”

I took Sadie’s hand. “Maybe not. Look.”

Ahead of us, the tunnel was getting brighter. The cavern walls dissolved, and the river widened. Two pillars rose from the water—two giant golden scarab statues. Beyond them gleamed the morning skyline of Manhattan. The River of Night was emptying out into New York Harbor.

“Each new dawn is a new world,” I remembered our dad saying. “Maybe we’ll be healed.”

“Ra, too?” Sadie asked.

I didn’t have an answer, but I was starting to feel better, stronger, like I’d had a good night’s sleep. As we passed between the golden scarab statues, I looked to our right. Across the water, smoke was rising from Brooklyn—flashes of multicolored light and streaks of fire as winged creatures engaged in aerial combat.

“They’re still alive,” Sadie said. “They need help!”

We turned the sun boat toward home—and sailed straight into battle.
SADIE


23. We Throw a Wild House Party
[FATAL MISTAKE, CARTER. Giving me the microphone at the most important part? You’ll never get it back now. The end of the story is mine. Ha-ha-ha!]

Oh, that felt good. I’d be excellent at world domination.

But I digress.

You might’ve seen news reports about the strange double sunrise over Brooklyn on the morning of March twenty-first. There were many theories: haze in the air from pollution, a temperature drop in the lower atmosphere, aliens, or perhaps another sewer-gas leak causing mass hysteria. We love sewer gas in Brooklyn!

I can confirm, however, that there briefly were two suns in the sky. I know this because I was in one of them. The normal sun rose as usual. But there was also the boat of Ra, blazing as it rose from the Duat, out of New York Harbor and into the sky of the mortal world.

To observers below, the second sun appeared to merge with the light of the first. What actually happened? The sun boat dimmed as it descended toward Brooklyn House, where the mansion’s antimortal camouflage shielding enveloped it, and made it seem to disappear.

The shielding was already working overtime, as a full-fledged war was in progress. Freak the Griffin was diving through the air, engaging the winged flaming snakes, the uraei, in aerial combat.

[I know that’s a horrible word to pronounce, uraei, but Carter insists it’s the plural for uraeus, and there’s no arguing with him. Just say you’re right and leave off the t, and you’ve got it.]

Freak yelled, “Freaaaak!” and gobbled up a uraeus, but he was sorely outnumbered. His fur was singed, and his buzzing wings must’ve been damaged, as he kept spinning in circles like a broken helicopter.

His rooftop nest was on fire. Our portal sphinx was broken, and the chimney was stained with a massive black star-burst where something or someone had exploded. A squad of enemy magicians and demons had taken cover behind the air conditioning unit and were pinned in combat against Zia and Walt, who were guarding the stairwell. Both sides threw fire, shabti, and glowing hieroglyphic bombs across the no-man’s land of the roof.

As we descended over the enemy, old Ra (yes, he was still just as senile and withered as ever) leaned over the side and waved at everyone with his crook. “Hel-lo-o-o-o! Zebras!”

Both sides looked up in amazement. “Ra!” one demon screamed. Then everyone took up the cry: “Ra?” “Ra!” “Ra!”

They sounded like the world’s most terrified pep squad.

The uraei stopped spitting fire, much to Freak’s surprise, and immediately flew to the sun boat. They began circling us like an honor guard, and I remembered what Menshikov had said about them originally being creatures of Ra. Apparently they recognized their old master (emphasis on old.)

Most of the enemies below us scattered as the boat came down, but the slowest of the demons said, “Ra?” and looked up just as our sun boat landed on top of him with a satisfying crunch.

Carter and I jumped into battle. In spite of all we’d be through, I felt wonderful. The Chaos sickness had disappeared as soon as we’d risen from the Duat. My magic was strong. My spirits were high. If I’d just had a shower, some fresh clothes, and a proper cup of tea, I would’ve been in paradise. (Strike that; now that I’d seen Paradise, I didn’t much like it. I’d settle for my own room.)

I zapped one demon into a tiger and unleashed him on his brethren. Carter popped into avatar form—the glowing golden kind, thank goodness; the three-meter-tall birdman had been a bit too scary for me. He smashed his way through the terrified enemy magicians, and with a sweep of his hand sent them sailing into the East River. Zia and Walt came out from the stairwell and helped us mop up the stragglers. Then they ran to us with big grins on their faces. They looked battered and bruised but still very much alive.

“FREEEEK!” said the griffin. He swooped down and landed next to Carter, head-butting his combat avatar, which I hoped was a sign of affection.

“Hey, buddy.” Carter rubbed his head, careful to avoid the monster’s chain-saw wings. “What’s happening, guys?”

“Talking didn’t work,” Zia said drily.

“The enemy’s been trying to break in all night,” Walt said. “Amos and Bast have held them off, but—” He glanced at the sun boat, and his voice faltered. “Is that—that isn’t—”

“Zebra!” Ra called, tottering toward us with a big toothless grin.

He walked straight up to Zia and pulled something out of his mouth—the glowing gold scarab, now quite wet but undigested. He offered it to her. “I like zebras.”

Zia backed up. “This is—this is Ra, the Lord of the Sun? Why is he offering me a bug?”

“And what does he mean about zebras?” Walt asked.

Ra looked at Walt and clucked disapprovingly. “Weasels are sick.”

Suddenly a chill went through me. My head spun as if the Chaos sickness was returning. In the back of mind, an idea started to form—something very important.

Zebras…Zia. Weasels… Walt.

Before I could think about this further, a large BOOM! shook the building. Chunks of limestone flew from the side of the mansion and rained down on the warehouse yard.

“They’ve breached the walls again!” Walt said. “Hurry!”

I consider myself fairly scattered and hyper, but the rest of the battle happened too fast even for me to keep track of. Ra absolutely refused to be parted from Zebra and Weasel (sorry, Zia and Walt), so we left him in their care at the sun boat while Freak lowered Carter and me to the deck below. We dropped from his claws onto the buffet table and found Bast whirling around with her knives in hand, slicing demons to sand and kicking magicians into the swimming pool, where our albino crocodile, Philip of Macedonia, was only too happy to entertain them.

“Sadie!” she cried with relief. [Yes, Carter, she called my name instead of yours, but she’s known me longer, after all.] She seemed to be having a great deal of fun, but her tone was urgent. “They’ve breached the east wall. Get inside!”

We ran through the doorway, dodging a random wombat that went flying over our heads—possibly someone’s spell gone awry—and stepped into complete pandemonium.

“Holy Horus,” Carter said.

In fact, Horus was about the only thing not doing battle in the Great Room. Khufu, our intrepid baboon, was riding an old magician around the room, choking him with his own wand and steering him into walls as the mage turned blue. Felix had unleashed a squad of penguins on another magician, who cowered in a magic circle with some sort of posttraumatic stress, screaming, “Not Antarctica again! Anything but that!” Alyssa was summoning the powers of Geb to repair a massive hole the enemy had blasted in the far wall. Julian had summoned a combat avatar for the first time, and was slicing demons with his glowing sword. Even bookish Cleo was dashing about the room, pulling scrolls from her pouch and reading random words of power like “Blind!” “Horizontal!” and “Gassy!” (which, by the way, work wonders to incapacitate an enemy). Everywhere I looked, our initiates were ruling the day. They fought as if they’d been waiting all night for the chance to strike, which I suppose was exactly the case. And there was Jaz—Jaz! Up and looking quite healthy!—knocking an enemy shabti straight into the fireplace, where it broke into a thousand pieces.

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride, and not a small amount of amazement. I’d been so worried about our young trainees’ surviving, yet they were quite simply dominating a much more seasoned group of magicians.

Most impressive, though, was Amos. I’d seen him do magic, but never like this. He stood at the base of Thoth’s statue, swirling his staff and summoning lightning and thunder, blasting enemy magicians, and flinging them away in miniature storm clouds. A woman magician charged at him, her staff glowing with red flames, but Amos simply tapped the floor. The marble tiles turned to sand at her feet, and the woman sank up to her neck.

Carter and I looked at each other, grinned, and joined the fight.

It was a complete rout. Soon the demons had been reduced to sand piles, and the enemy magicians began scattering in panic. No doubt they’d been expecting to fight a band of untrained children. They hadn’t counted on the full Kane treatment.

One of the women managed to open a portal in the far wall.

Stop them, the voice of Isis spoke in my mind, which was quite a shock after such a long silence. They must hear the truth.

I don’t know where I got the idea, but I raised my arms and shimmering rainbow wings appeared on either side of me—the wings of Isis.

I swept my arms. A blast of wind and multicolored light knocked our enemies off their feet, leaving our friends perfectly unharmed.

“Listen!” I bellowed.

Everyone fell silent. My voice normally sounds bossy, but now it seemed magnified by a factor of ten. The wings probably commanded attention as well.

“We’re not your enemies!” I said. “I don’t care if you like us, but the world has changed. You need to hear what’s happened.”

My magic wings faded as I told everyone about our trip through the Duat, Ra’s rebirth, Menshikov’s betrayal, the rising of Apophis, and Desjardins’ sacrifice to banish the Serpent.

“Lies!” An Asian man in charred blue robes stepped forward. From the vision Carter had described, I supposed that he was Kwai.

“It’s true,” Carter said. His avatar no longer surrounded him. His clothes had reverted to the normal mortal ones we’d bought him in Cairo, but somehow he still looked quite imposing, quite confident. He held up the leopard-skin cape of the Chief Lector, and I could feel a ripple of shock spread through the room.

“Desjardins fought at our side,” Carter said. “He defeated Menshikov and execrated Apophis. He sacrificed his life to buy us a little time. But Apophis will be back. Desjardins wanted you to know. With his last words, he told me to show you this cape and explain the truth. Especially you, Amos. He wanted you to know—the path of gods has to be restored.”

The enemy’s escape portal was still swirling. No one had stepped through yet.

The woman who’d summoned it spit on our floor. She had white robes and spiky black hair. She shouted to her comrades, “What are you waiting for? They bring us the Chief Lector’s cape and tell us this crazy story. They’re Kanes! Traitors! They probably killed Desjardins and Menshikov themselves.”

Amos’s voice boomed across the Great Room: “Sarah Jacobi! You of all people know that isn’t true. You’ve devoted your life to studying the ways of Chaos. You can sense the unleashing of Apophis, can’t you? And the return of Ra.”

Amos pointed out through the glass doors leading to the deck. I don’t know how he sensed it without looking, but the sun boat was just floating down, coming to rest in Philip’s swimming pool. It was quite an impressive landing. Zia and Walt stood on either side of the throne of fire. They’d managed to prop up Ra so that he looked a bit more regal with his crook and flail in his hands, though he still had a goofy grin on his face.

Bast, who’d been standing on the deck frozen in shock, fell to her knees. “My king!”

“Hel-llo-o-o-o-o,” Ra warbled. “Goood-bye!”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but Bast shot to her feet, suddenly alarmed.

“He’s going to rise into the heavens!” she said. “Walt, Zia, jump off!”

They did, just in time. The sun boat began to glow. Bast turned to me and called, “I’ll escort him to the other gods! Don’t worry. Back soon!” She jumped on board, and the sun boat floated into the sky, turning into a ball of fire. Then it blended with the sunlight and was gone.

“There is your proof,” Amos announced. “The gods and the House of Life must work together. Sadie and Carter are right. The Serpent will not stay down for long, now that he has broken his chains. Who will join us?”

Several enemy magicians threw down their staffs and wands.

The woman in white, Sarah Jacobi, snarled, “The other nomes will never recognize your claim, Kane. You are tainted with the power of Set! We’ll spread the word. We’ll let them know you murdered Desjardins. They’ll never follow you!”

She leaped through the portal. The man in blue, Kwai, studied us with contempt, then followed Jacobi. Three others did as well, but we let them leave in peace.

Reverently, Amos took the leopard-skin cape from Carter’s hands. “Poor Michel.”

Everyone gathered around the statue of Thoth. For the first time, I realized how badly the Great Room had been damaged. Walls had been cracked, windows broken, relics smashed, and Amos’s musical instruments half melted. For the second time in three months, we’d almost destroyed Brooklyn House. That had to be a record. And yet I wanted to give everyone in the room a huge hug.

“You all were brilliant,” I said. “You destroyed the enemy in seconds! If you can fight so well, how were they able to keep you pinned down all night?”

“But we could barely keep them out!” Felix said. He looked mystified by his own success. “By dawn, I was, like, completely out of energy.”

The others nodded grimly.

“And I was in a coma,” said a familiar voice. Jaz pushed through the crowd and embraced Carter and me. It was so good to see her, I felt ridiculous that I’d ever been jealous of her and Walt.

“You’re all right now?” I held her shoulders and studied her face for any sign of sickness, but she looked her usual bubbly self.

“I’m fine!” she said. “Right at dawn, I woke up feeling great. I guess as soon as you arrived…I don’t know. Something happened.”

“The power of Ra,” Amos said. “When he rose, he brought new life, new energy to all of us. He revitalized our spirit. Without that, we would’ve failed.”

I turned to Walt, not daring to ask. Was it possible he’d been cured as well? But the look in his eyes told me that prayer had not been answered. I suppose he could feel the pain in his limbs after doing so much magic.

Weasels are sick, Ra had often repeated. I wasn’t sure why Ra was so interested in Walt’s condition, but apparently it was beyond even the sun god’s power to fix.

“Amos,” Carter said, interrupting my thoughts, “what did Jacobi mean about the other nomes not recognizing your claim?”

I couldn’t help it. I sighed and rolled my eyes at him. My brother can be quite thick sometimes.

“What?” he demanded.

“Carter,” I said, “do you remember our talking about the most powerful magicians in the world? Desjardins was the first. Menshikov was the third. And you were worried about who the second might be?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But—”

“And now that Desjardins is dead, the second-most powerful magician is the most powerful magician. And who do you think that is?”

Slowly, his brain cells must’ve fired, which is proof that miracles can happen. He turned to stare at Amos.

Our uncle nodded solemnly.

“I’m afraid so, children.” Amos draped the leopard-skin cape around his shoulders. “Like it or not, the responsibility of leadership falls to me. I am the new Chief Lector.”
SADIE


24. I Make an Impossible Promise
I DON’T LIKE GOOD-BYES, and yet I have to tell you about so many of them.

[No, Carter. That wasn’t an invitation to take the microphone. Push off!]

By sunset, Brooklyn House was back in order. Alyssa took care of the masonry almost single-handedly with the power of the earth god. Our initiates knew the hi-nehm spell well enough to fix most of the other broken things. Khufu showed as much dexterity with rags and cleaning fluid as he did with a basketball, and it’s truly amazing how much polishing, dusting, and scrubbing one can accomplish by attaching large dusting cloths to the wings of a griffin.

We had several meetings during the day. Philip of Macedonia kept guard in the pool, and our shabti army patrolled the grounds, but no one tried to attack—neither the forces of Apophis nor our fellow magicians. I could almost feel the collective shock spreading throughout the three hundred and sixty nomes as they learned the news: Desjardins was dead, Apophis had risen, Ra was back, and Amos Kane was the new Chief Lector. Which fact was most alarming to them, I didn’t know, but I thought we’d have at least a little breathing space while the other nomes processed the turn of events and decided what to do.

Just before sunset, Carter and I were back on the roof as Zia opened a portal to Cairo for herself and Amos.

With her black hair freshly cut and a new set of beige robes, Zia looked like she hadn’t changed a bit since we first spoke with her at the Metropolitan Museum, even though so much had happened since then. And I suppose, technically speaking, that hadn’t been her at the museum at all, since it was her shabti.

[Yes, I know. Horribly confusing to keep track of all that. You should learn the spell for summoning headache medicine. It works wonders.]

The swirling gate appeared, and Zia turned to say her good-byes.

“I’ll accompany Amos—I mean the Chief Lector—to the First Nome,” she promised. “I’ll make sure he is recognized as the leader of the House.”

“They’ll oppose you,” I said. “Be careful.”

Amos smiled. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

He was dressed in his usual dapper style: a gold silk suit that matched his new leopard-skin cape, a porkpie hat, and gold beads in his braided hair. At his side sat a leather duffel bag and a saxophone case. I imagined him sitting on the steps of the pharaoh’s throne, playing tenor sax—John Coltrane, perhaps—as a new age unfolded in purple light and glowing hieroglyphs popped out of his horn.

“I’ll keep in touch,” he promised. “Besides, you have things well in hand here at Brooklyn House. You don’t need a mentor anymore.”

I tried to look brave, though I hated his leaving. Just because I was thirteen didn’t mean I wanted adult responsibilities. Certainly I didn’t want to run the Twenty-first Nome or lead armies into war. But I suppose no one who’s put in such a position ever feels ready.

Zia put her hand on Carter’s arm. He jumped as if she’d touched him with a defibrillator paddle.

“We’ll talk soon,” she said, “after…after things have settled. But, thank you.”

Carter nodded, though he looked crestfallen. We all knew things wouldn’t settle anytime soon. There was no guarantee we’d even live long enough to see Zia again.

“Take care of yourself,” Carter said. “You’ve got an important role to play.”

Zia glanced at me. A strange sort of understanding passed between us. I think she’d begun to have a suspicion, a deep-seated dread, about what her role might be. I can’t say I understood it yet myself, but I shared her disquiet. Zebras, Ra had said. He’d woken up talking about zebras.

“If you need us,” I said, “don’t hesitate. I’ll pop over and give those First Nome magicians a proper thrashing.”

Amos kissed my forehead. He patted Carter on the shoulder. “You’ve both made me proud. You’ve given me hope for the first time in years.”

I wanted them to stay longer. I wanted to talk with them a bit more. But my experience with Khonsu had taught me not to be greedy about time. It was best to appreciate what you had and not yearn for more.

Amos and Zia stepped through the portal and disappeared.

Just as the sun was setting, an exhausted-looking Bast appeared in the Great Room. Instead of her usual bodysuit, she wore a formal Egyptian dress and heavy jewelry that looked quite uncomfortable.

“I’d forgotten how hard it is riding the sun boat through the sky,” she said, wiping her brow. “And hot. Next time, I’ll bring a saucer and a cooler full of milk.”

“Is Ra okay?” I asked.

The cat goddess pursed her lips. “Well…he’s the same. I steered the boat to the throne room of the gods. They’re getting a fresh crew ready for tonight’s journey. But you should come see him before he leaves.”

“Tonight’s journey?” Carter asked. “Through the Duat? We just brought him back!”

Bast spread her hands. “What did you expect? You’ve restarted the ancient cycle. Ra will spend the days in the heavens and the nights on the river. The gods will have to guard him as they used to. Come on; we only have a few minutes.”

I was about to ask how she planned on getting us to the gods’ throne room. Bast had repeatedly told us she’s no good at summoning portals. Then a door of pure shadow opened in the middle of the air. Anubis stepped through, looking annoyingly gorgeous as usual in his black jeans and leather jacket, with a white cotton shirt that hugged his chest so well I wondered if he was showing off on purpose. I suspected not. He probably rolled out of bed in the morning looking that perfect.

Right…that image did not help improve my concentration.

“Hello, Sadie,” he said. [Yes, Carter. He addressed me first, too. What can I say? I’m just that important.]

I tried to look cross with him. “So it’s you. Missed you in the underworld while we were gambling our souls away.”

“Yes, I’m glad you survived,” he said. “Your eulogy would’ve been hard to write.”

“Oh, ha-ha. Where were you?”

Extra sadness crept into his brown eyes. “A side project,” he said. “But right now, we should hurry.”

He gestured toward the door of darkness. Just to show him I wasn’t afraid, I marched through first.

On the other side, we found ourselves in the throne room of the gods. A crowd of assembled deities turned to face us. The palace seemed even grander than the last time we’d been there. The columns were taller, more intricately painted. The polished marble floor swirled with constellation designs, as if we were stepping across the galaxy. The ceiling blazed like one giant fluorescent panel. The dais and throne of Horus had been moved to one side, so it looked more like an observer’s chair now, rather than the main event.

In the center of the room, the sun boat glowed in dry dock scaffolding. Its light-orb crew fluttered about, cleaning the hull and checking the rigging. Uraei circled the throne of fire, where Ra sat dressed in the raiment of an Egyptian king, his flail and crook in his lap. His chin was on his chest, and he snored loudly.

A muscular young man in leather armor stepped toward us. He had a shaven head and two different-colored eyes—one silver, one gold.

“Welcome, Carter and Sadie,” Horus said. “We are honored.”

His words didn’t match his tone, which was stiff and formal. The other gods bowed respectfully to us, but I could feel their hostility simmering just below the surface. They were all dressed in their finest armor and looked quite imposing. Sobek the crocodile god (not my favorite) wore glittering green chain mail and carried a massive staff that flowed with water. Nekhbet looked about as cleaned-up as a vulture can, her feathered black cloak silky and plush. She inclined her head to me, but her eyes told me she still wanted to tear me apart. Babi the baboon god had gotten his teeth brushed and his fur combed. He was holding a rugby ball—possibly because Gramps had infected him with the obsession.

Khonsu stood in his glittery silver suit, tossing a coin in the air and smiling. I wanted to punch him, but he nodded as if we were old friends. Even Set was there, in his devilish red disco suit, leaning against a column at the back of the crowd, holding his black iron staff. I remembered that he’d promised not to kill me only until we freed Ra, but at the moment, he seemed relaxed. He tipped his hat and grinned at me as if enjoying my discomfort.

Thoth the knowledge god was the only one who hadn’t dressed up. He wore his usual jeans and lab coat covered with scribbles. He studied me with his strange kaleidoscope eyes, and I got the feeling he was the only one in the room who actually pitied my discomfort.

Isis stepped forward. Her long black hair was braided down behind the shoulders of her gossamer dress. Her rainbow wings shimmered behind her. She bowed to me formally, but I could feel the waves of cold coming off her.

Horus turned to the assembled gods. I realized he was no longer wearing the pharaoh’s crown.

“Behold!” he told the crowd. “Carter and Sadie Kane, who awakened our king! Let there be no doubt: Apophis the enemy has risen. We must unite behind Ra.”

Ra muttered in his sleep, “Fish, cookie, weasel,” then went back to snoring.

Horus cleared his throat. “I pledge my loyalty! I expect you all to do the same. I will protect Ra’s boat as we pass through the Duat tonight. Each of you shall take turns with this duty until the sun god is…fully recovered.”

He sounded absolutely unconvinced this would ever happen.

“We will find a way to defeat Apophis!” he said. “Now, celebrate the return of Ra! I embrace Carter Kane as a brother.”

Music began to play, echoing through the halls. Ra, still on his throne on his boat, woke up and started clapping. He grinned as gods swirled around him, some in human form, some dissolving into wisps of cloud, flame, or light.

Isis took my hands. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Sadie,” she said in a frigid voice. “Our greatest enemy rises, and you have dethroned my son and made a senile god our leader.”

“Give it a chance,” I said, though my ankles felt like they were turning to butter.

Horus clasped Carter’s shoulders. His words weren’t any friendlier.

“I am your ally, Carter,” Horus promised. “I will lend you my strength whenever you ask. You will revive the path of my magic in the House of Life, and we will fight together to destroy the Serpent. But make no mistake: you have cost me a throne. If your choice costs us the war, I swear my last act before Apophis swallows me will be to crush you like a gnat. And if it comes to pass that we win this war without Ra’s help, if you have disgraced me for nothing, I swear that the death of Cleopatra and the curse of Akhenaton will look like nothing compared to the wrath I will visit on you and your family for all time. Do you understand?”

To Carter’s credit, he held up under the gaze of the war god.

“Just do your part,” Carter said.

Horus laughed for the audience as if he and Carter had just shared a good joke. “Go now, Carter. See what your victory has cost. Let us hope all your allies do not share such a fate.”

Horus turned his back on us and joined the celebration. Isis smiled at me one last time and dissolved into a sparkling rainbow.

Bast stood at my side, holding her tongue, but she looked as if she wanted to shred Horus like a scratching post.

Anubis looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Sadie. The gods can be—”

“Ungrateful?” I asked. “Infuriating?”

His face flushed. I supposed he thought I was referring to him.

“We can be slow to realize what is important,” he said at last. “Sometimes, it takes us a while to appreciate something new, something that might change us for the better.”

He fixed me with those warm eyes, and I wanted to melt into a puddle.

“We should go,” Bast interrupted. “One more stop, if you’re up for it.”

“The cost of victory,” Carter remembered. “Bes? Is he alive?”

Bast sighed. “Difficult question. This way.”

The last place I wanted to see again was Sunny Acres.

Nothing much had changed in the nursing home. No renewing sunlight had helped the senile gods. They were still wheeling their IV poles around, banging into walls, singing ancient hymns as they searched in vain for temples that no longer existed.

A new patient had joined them. Bes sat in a hospital gown in a wicker chair, gazing out the window at the Lake of Fire.

Tawaret knelt at his side, her tiny hippo eyes red from crying. She was trying to get him to drink from a glass.

Water dribbled down his chin. He gazed blankly at the fiery waterfall in the distance, his craggy face awash in red light. His curly hair was newly combed, and he wore a fresh blue Hawaiian shirt and shorts, so he looked quite comfortable. But his brow was furrowed. His fingers gripped the armrests, as if he knew he should remember something, but couldn’t.

“That’s all right, Bes.” Tawaret’s voice quivered as she dabbed a napkin under his chin. “We’ll work on it. I’ll take care of you.”

Then she noticed us. Her expression hardened. For a kindly goddess of childbirth, Tawaret could look quite scary when she wanted to.

She patted the dwarf god’s knee. “I’ll be right back, dear Bes.”

She stood, which was quite an accomplishment with her swollen belly, and steered us away from his chair. “How dare you come here! As if you haven’t done enough!”

I was about to break into tears and apologize when I realized her anger wasn’t aimed at Carter or me. She was glaring at Bast.

“Tawaret…” Bast turned up her palms. “I didn’t want this. He was my friend.”

“He was one of your cat toys!” Tawaret shouted so loudly, a few of the patients started crying. “You’re as selfish as all your kind, Bast. You used him and discarded him. You knew he loved you, and took advantage of it. You played with him like a mouse under your paw.”

“That’s not fair,” Bast murmured, but her hair started to puff up as it does when she’s scared. I couldn’t blame her. There’s almost nothing more frightening than an enraged hippo.

Tawaret stomped her foot so hard, her high heel broke. “Bes deserved better than this. He deserved better than you. He had a good heart. I—I never forgot him!”

I sensed a very violent, one-sided cat–hippo fight about to begin. I don’t know if I spoke up to save Bast, or to spare the traumatized patients, or to assuage my own guilt, but I stepped between the goddesses. “We’ll fix this,” I blurted out. “Tawaret, I swear on my life. We will find a way to heal Bes.”

She looked at me, and the anger drained from her eyes until there was nothing left but pity. “Child, oh child…I know you mean well. But don’t give me false hope. I’ve lived with false hopes too long. Go—see him if you must. See what’s happened to the best dwarf in the world. Then leave us alone. Don’t promise me what can’t happen.”

She turned and hobbled on her broken shoe to the nurses’ desk. Bast lowered her head. She wore a very uncatlike expression: shame.

“I’ll wait here,” she announced.

I could tell that was her final answer, so Carter and I approached Bes by ourselves.

The dwarf god hadn’t moved. He sat in his wicker chair, his mouth slightly open, his eyes fixed on the Lake of Fire.

“Bes.” I put my hand on his arm. “Can you hear me?”

He didn’t answer, of course. He wore a bracelet on his wrist with his name written in hieroglyphs, lovingly decorated, probably by Tawaret herself.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We’ll get your ren back. We’ll find a way to heal you. Won’t we, Carter?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, and I can assure you he was not acting very macho at that moment. “Yeah, I swear it, Bes. If it’s…”

He was probably going to say if it’s the last thing we do, but he wisely decided against it. Given the impending war with Apophis, it was best not to think about how soon our lives might end.

I leaned down and kissed Bes’s forehead. I remembered how we’d met at Waterloo Station, when he’d chauffeured Liz and Emma and me to safety. I remembered how he’d scared away Nekhbet and Babi in his ridiculous Speedo. I thought about the silly chocolate Lenin head he’d bought in St. Petersburg, and how he’d pulled Walt and me to safety from the portal at Red Sands. I couldn’t think of him as small. He had an enormous, colorful, ludicrous, wonderful personality—and it seemed impossible that it was gone forever. He’d given his immortal life to buy us one extra hour.

I couldn’t help sobbing. Finally Carter had to pull me away. I don’t remember how we got back home, but I remember feeling as if we were falling rather than ascending—as if the mortal world had become a deeper and sadder place than anywhere in the Duat.

That evening I sat alone on my bed with the windows open. The first night of spring had turned surprisingly warm and pleasant. Lights glittered along the riverfront. The neighborhood bagel factory filled the air with the scent of baking bread. I was listening to my SAD playlist and wondering how it was possible that my birthday had been only a few days ago.

The world had changed. The sun god had returned. Apophis was free from his cage, and although he’d been banished to some deep part of the abyss, he’d be working his way back very quickly. War was coming. We had so much work to do. Yet I was sitting here, listening to the same songs as before, staring at my poster of Anubis and feeling helplessly conflicted about something as trivial and infuriating as…yes, you guessed it. Boys.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said without much enthusiasm. I assumed it was Carter. We often chatted at the end of the day, just to debrief. Instead, it was Walt, and suddenly I was very aware that I was wearing a ratty old T-shirt and pajama bottoms. My hair no doubt looked as horrible as Nekhbet’s. Carter’s seeing me this way wouldn’t be a problem. But Walt? Bad.

“What are you doing here?” I yelped, a bit too loudly.

He blinked, obviously surprised by my lack of hospitality. “Sorry, I’ll go.”

“No! I mean…that’s all right. You just surprised me. And —you know…we have rules about boys’ being in the girls’ rooms without, um, supervision.”

I realize that sounded terribly stodgy of me, almost Carteresque. But I was nervous.

Walt folded his arms. They were very nice arms. He was wearing his basketball jersey and running shorts, his usual collection of amulets around his neck. He looked so healthy, so athletic, it was difficult to believe he was dying of an ancient curse.

“Well, you’re the instructor,” he said. “Can you supervise me?”

No doubt I was blushing horribly. “Right. I suppose if you leave the door ajar…Er, what brings you here?”

He leaned against the closet door. With some horror, I realized it was still open, revealing my poster of Anubis.

“There’s so much going on,” Walt said. “You’ve got enough to worry about. I don’t want you worrying about me as well.”

“Too late,” I admitted.

He nodded, as if he shared my frustration. “That day in the desert, at Bahariya…would you think I’m crazy if I tell you that was the best day of my life?”

My heart fluttered, but I tried to stay calm. “Well, Egyptian public transportation, roadside bandits, smelly camels, psychotic Roman mummies, and possessed date farmers… Gosh, it was quite a day.”

“And you,” he said.

“Yes, well…I suppose I belong in that list of catastrophes.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I was feeling like quite a bad supervisor—nervous and confused, and having very un-supervisory thoughts. My eyes strayed to the closet door. Walt noticed.

“Oh.” He pointed to Anubis. “You want me to close this?”

“Yes,” I said. “No. Possibly. I mean, it doesn’t matter. Well, not that it doesn’t matter, but—”

Walt laughed as if my discomfort didn’t bother him at all. “Sadie, look. I just wanted to say, whatever happens, I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I came to Brooklyn. Jaz is working on a cure for me. Maybe she’ll find something, but either way…it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” I think my anger surprised me more than it did him. “Walt, you’re dying of a bloody curse. And—and I had Menshikov right there, ready to tell me the cure, and…I failed you. Like I failed Bes. I didn’t even bring back Ra properly.”

I was furious with myself for crying, but I couldn’t help it. Walt came over and sat next to me. He didn’t try to put his arm around me, which was just as well. I was already confused enough.

“You didn’t fail me,” he said. “You didn’t fail anybody. You did what was right, and that takes sacrifice.”

“Not you,” I said. “I don’t want you to die.”

His smile made me feel as if the world had been reduced to just two people.

“Ra’s return may not have cured me,” he said, “but it still gave me new hope. You’re amazing, Sadie. One way or another, we’re going to make this work. I’m not leaving you.”

That sounded so good, so excellent, and so impossible. “How can you promise that?”

He eyes drifted to the picture of Anubis, then back to me. “Just try not to worry about me. We have to concentrate on defeating Apophis.”

“Any idea how?”

He gestured toward my bedside table, where my beaten-up old tape recorder sat—a gift from my grandparents ages ago.

“Tell people what really happened,” he said. “Don’t let Jacobi and the others spread lies about your family. I came to Brooklyn because I got your first message—the recording about the Red Pyramid, the djed amulet. You asked for help, and we answered. It’s time to ask for help again.”

“But how many magicians did we really reach the first time —twenty?”

“Hey, we did pretty well last night.” Walt held my eyes. I thought he might kiss me, but something made us both hesitate—a sense that it would only make things more uncertain, more fragile. “Send out another tape, Sadie. Just tell the truth. When you talk…” He shrugged, and then stood to leave. “Well, you’re pretty hard to ignore.”

A few moments after he left, Carter came in, a book tucked under his arm. He found me listening to my sad music, staring at the tape recorder on the dresser.

“Was that Walt coming out of your room?” he asked. A little brotherly protectiveness crept into his voice. “What’s up?”

“Oh, just…” My eyes fixed on the book he was carrying. It was a tattered old textbook, and I wondered if he meant to assign me some sort of homework. But the cover looked so familiar: the diamond design, the multicolored foil letters. “What is that?”

Carter sat next to me. Nervously, he offered me the book. “It’s, um…not a gold necklace. Or even a magic knife. But I told you I had a birthday present for you. This—this is it.”

I ran my fingers over the title: Blackley’s Survey of the Sciences for First-Year College, Twelfth Edition. Then I opened the book. On the inside cover, a name was written in lovely cursive: Ruby Kane.

It was Mum’s college textbook—the same one she used to read to us from at bedtime. The very same copy.

I blinked back tears. “How did you—”

“The retrieval shabti in the library,” Carter said. “They can find any book. I know it’s…kind of a lame present. It didn’t cost me anything, and I didn’t make it, but—”

“Shut up, you idiot!” I flung my arms around him. “It’s an amazing birthday present. And you’re an amazing brother!”

[Fine, Carter. There it is, recorded for all time. Just don’t get a big head. I spoke in a moment of weakness.]

We turned the pages, smiling at the crayon mustache Carter had drawn on Isaac Newton and the outdated diagrams of the solar system. We found an old food stain that was probably my applesauce. I loved applesauce. We ran our hands over the margin notes done in Mum’s beautiful cursive.

I felt closer to my mother just holding the book, and amazed by Carter’s thoughtfulness. Even though I’d learned his secret name and supposed I knew everything about him, the boy had still managed to surprise me.

“So, what were you saying about Walt?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

Reluctantly, I closed Blackley’s Survey of the Sciences. And yes, that’s probably the only time in my life I’d ever closed a textbook with reluctance. I rose and set the book on my dresser. Then I picked up my old cassette recorder.

“We have work to do,” I told Carter. I tossed him the microphone.

So now you know what really happened on the equinox, how the old Chief Lector died, and how Amos took his place. Desjardins sacrificed his life to buy us time, but Apophis is quickly working his way out of the abyss. We may have weeks, if we’re lucky. Days, if we’re not.

Amos is trying to assert himself as the leader of the House of Life, but it’s not going to be easy. Some nomes are in rebellion. Many believe the Kanes have taken over by force.

We’re sending out this tape to set the record straight.

We don’t have all the answers yet. We don’t know when or where Apophis will strike. We don’t know how to heal Ra, or Bes, or even Walt. We don’t know what role Zia will play, or if the gods can be trusted to help us. Most important, I am completely torn between two amazing guys—one who’s dying and another who’s the god of death. What sort of choice is that, I ask you?

[Right, sorry…getting off track again.]

The point is, wherever you are, whatever type of magic you practice, we need your help. Unless we unite and learn the path of the gods quickly, we don’t stand a chance.

I hope Walt is right and you’ll find me hard to ignore, because the clock is ticking. We’ll keep a room ready for you at Brooklyn House.
AUTHOR’S NOTE


Before publishing such an alarming transcript, I felt compelled to do some fact-checking on Sadie and Carter’s story. I wish I could tell you they had made all this up. Unfortunately, it appears that much of what they have reported is based on fact.

The Egyptian relics and locations they mention in America, England, Russia, and Egypt do exist. Prince Menshikov’s Palace in St. Petersburg is real, and the story of the dwarf wedding is true, though I can find no mention that one of the dwarves might have been a god, or that the prince had a grandson named Vladimir.

All the Egyptian gods and monsters Carter and Sadie met are attested to in ancient sources. Many different accounts survive of Ra’s nightly journey through the Duat, and while the stories vary greatly, Carter and Sadie’s account closely fits what we know from Egyptian mythology.

In short, I believe they might be telling the truth. Their call for help is genuine. Should further audio recordings fall into my hands, I will relay the information; but if Apophis truly is rising, there may no opportunity. For the sake of the entire world, I hope I’m wrong.

To three great editors who shaped my writing career: Kate Miciak, Jennifer Besser, and Stephanie Lurie—the magicians who have brought my words to life

WARNING

This is a transcript of an audio recording. Twice before, Carter and Sadie Kane have sent me such recordings, which I transcribed as The Red Pyramid and The Throne of Fire. While I’m honored by the Kanes’ continued trust, I must advise you that this third account is their most troubling yet. The tape arrived at my home in a charred box perforated with claw and teeth marks that my local zoologist could not identify. Had it not been for the protective hieroglyphs on the exterior, I doubt the box would have survived its journey. Read on, and you will understand why.
SADIE


1. We Crash and Burn a Party
SADIE KANE HERE.

If you’re listening to this, congratulations! You survived Doomsday.

I’d like to apologize straightaway for any inconvenience the end of the world may have caused you. The earthquakes, rebellions, riots, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, and of course the giant snake who swallowed the sun—I’m afraid most of that was our fault. Carter and I decided we should at least explain how it happened.

This will probably be our last recording. By the time you’ve heard our story, the reason for that will be obvious.

Our problems started in Dallas, when the fire-breathing sheep destroyed the King Tut exhibit.

That night the Texas magicians were hosting a party in the sculpture garden across the street from the Dallas Museum of Art. The men wore tuxedos and cowboy boots. The women wore evening dresses and hairdos like explosions of candy floss.

(Carter says it’s called cotton candy in America. I don’t care. I was raised in London, so you’ll just have to keep up and learn the proper way of saying things.)

A band played old-timey country music on the pavilion. Strings of fairy lights glimmered in the trees. Magicians did occasionally pop out of secret doors in the sculptures or summon sparks of fire to burn away pesky mosquitoes, but otherwise it seemed like quite a normal party.

The leader of the Fifty-first Nome, JD Grissom, was chatting with his guests and enjoying a plate of beef tacos when we pulled him away for an emergency meeting. I felt bad about that, but there wasn’t much choice, considering the danger he was in.

“An attack?” He frowned. “The Tut exhibit has been open for a month now. If Apophis was going to strike, wouldn’t he have done it already?”

JD was tall and stout, with a rugged, weathered face, feathery red hair, and hands as rough as bark. He looked about forty, but it’s hard to tell with magicians. He might have been four hundred. He wore a black suit with a bolo tie and a large silver Lone Star belt buckle, like a Wild West marshal.

“Let’s talk on the way,” Carter said. He started leading us toward the opposite side of the garden.

I must admit my brother acted remarkably confident.

He was still a monumental dork, of course. His nappy brown hair had a chunk missing on the left side where his griffin had given him a “love bite,” and you could tell from the nicks on his face that he hadn’t quite mastered the art of shaving. But since his fifteenth birthday he’d shot up in height and put on muscle from hours of combat training. He looked poised and mature in his black linen clothes, especially with that khopesh sword at his side. I could almost imagine him as a leader of men without laughing hysterically.

[Why are you glaring at me, Carter? That was quite a generous description.]

Carter maneuvered around the buffet table, grabbing a handful of tortilla chips. “Apophis has a pattern,” he told JD. “The other attacks all happened on the night of the new moon, when darkness is greatest. Believe me, he’ll hit your museum tonight. And he’ll hit it hard.”

JD Grissom squeezed around a cluster of magicians drinking champagne. “These other attacks…” he said. “You mean Chicago and Mexico City?”

“And Toronto,” Carter said. “And…a few others.”

I knew he didn’t want to say more. The attacks we’d witnessed over the summer had left us both with nightmares.

True, full-out Armageddon hadn’t come yet. It had been six months since the Chaos snake Apophis had escaped from his Underworld prison, but he still hadn’t launched a large-scale invasion of the mortal world as we’d expected. For some reason, the serpent was biding his time, settling for smaller attacks on nomes that seemed secure and happy.

Like this one, I thought.

As we passed the pavilion, the band finished their song. A pretty blond woman with a fiddle waved her bow at JD.

“Come on, sweetie!” she called. “We need you on steel guitar!”

He forced a smile. “Soon, hon. I’ll be back.”

We walked on. JD turned to us. “My wife, Anne.”

“Is she also a magician?” I asked.

He nodded, his expression turning dark. “These attacks. Why are you so sure Apophis will strike here?”

Carter’s mouth was full of tortilla chips, so his response was, “Mhm-hmm.”

“He’s after a certain artifact,” I translated. “He’s already destroyed five copies of it. The last one in existence happens to be in your Tut exhibit.”

“Which artifact?” JD asked.

I hesitated. Before coming to Dallas, we’d cast all sorts of shielding spells and loaded up on protective amulets to prevent magical eavesdropping, but I was still nervous about speaking our plans aloud.

“Better we show you.” I stepped around a fountain, where two young magicians were tracing glowing I Love You messages on the paving stones with their wands. “We’ve brought our own crack team to help. They’re waiting at the museum. If you’ll let us examine the artifact, possibly take it with us for safekeeping—”

“Take it with you?” JD scowled. “The exhibit is heavily guarded. I have my best magicians surrounding it night and day. You think you can do better at Brooklyn House?”

We stopped at the edge of the garden. Across the street, a two-story-tall King Tut banner hung from the side of the museum.

Carter took out his mobile phone. He showed JD Grissom an image on the screen—a burned-out mansion that had once been the headquarters for the One Hundredth Nome in Toronto.

“I’m sure your guards are good,” Carter said. “But we’d rather not make your nome a target for Apophis. In the other attacks like this one…the serpent’s minions didn’t leave any survivors.”

JD stared at the phone’s screen, then glanced back at his wife, Anne, who was fiddling her way through a two-step.

“Fine,” JD said. “I hope your team is top-notch.”

“They’re amazing,” I promised. “Come on, we’ll introduce you.”

Our crack squad of magicians was busy raiding the gift shop.

Felix had summoned three penguins, which were waddling around wearing paper King Tut masks. Our baboon friend, Khufu, sat atop a bookshelf reading The History of the Pharaohs, which would’ve been quite impressive except he was holding the book upside down. Walt—oh, dear Walt, why?—had opened the jewelry cabinet and was examining charm bracelets and necklaces as if they might be magical. Alyssa levitated clay pots with her earth elemental magic, juggling twenty or thirty at a time in a figure eight.

Carter cleared his throat.

Walt froze, his hands full of gold jewelry. Khufu scrambled down the bookshelf, knocking off most of the books. Alyssa’s pottery crashed to the floor. Felix tried to shoo his penguins behind the till. (He does have rather strong feelings about the usefulness of penguins. I’m afraid I can’t explain it.)

JD Grissom drummed his fingers against his Lone Star belt buckle. “This is your amazing team?”

“Yes!” I tried for a winning smile. “Sorry about the mess. I’ll just, um…”

I pulled my wand from my belt and spoke a word of power: “Hi-nehm!”

I’d got better at such spells. Most of the time, I could now channel power from my patron goddess Isis without passing out. And I hadn’t exploded once.

The hieroglyph for Join together glowed briefly in the air:Broken bits of pottery flew back together and mended themselves. Books returned to the shelf. The King Tut masks flew off the penguins, revealing them to be—gasp—penguins.

Our friends looked rather embarrassed.

“Sorry,” Walt mumbled, putting the jewelry back in the case. “We got bored.”

I couldn’t stay mad at Walt. He was tall and athletic, built like a basketball player, in workout pants and sleeveless tee that showed off his sculpted arms. His skin was the color of hot cocoa, his face every bit as regal and handsome as the statues of his pharaoh ancestors.

Did I fancy him? Well, it’s complicated. More on that later.

JD Grissom looked over our team.

“Nice to meet you all.” He managed to contain his enthusiasm. “Come with me.”

The museum’s main foyer was a vast white room with empty café tables, a stage, and a ceiling high enough for a pet giraffe. On one side, stairs led up to a balcony with a row of offices. On the other side, glass walls looked out at the nighttime skyline of Dallas.

JD pointed up at the balcony, where two men in black linen robes were patrolling. “You see? Guards are everywhere.”

The men had their staffs and wands ready. They glanced down at us, and I noticed their eyes were glowing. Hieroglyphs were painted on their cheekbones like war paint.

Alyssa whispered to me: “What’s up with their eyes?”

“Surveillance magic,” I guessed. “The symbols allow the guards to see into the Duat.”

Alyssa bit her lip. Since her patron was the earth god Geb, she liked solid things, such as stone and clay. She didn’t like heights or deep water. She definitely didn’t like the idea of the Duat—the magical realm that coexisted with ours.

Once, when I’d described the Duat as an ocean under our feet with layers and layers of magical dimensions going down forever, I thought Alyssa was going to get seasick.

Ten-year-old Felix, on the other hand, had no such qualms. “Cool!” he said. “I want glowing eyes.”

He traced his finger across his cheeks, leaving shiny purple blobs in the shape of Antarctica.

Alyssa laughed. “Can you see into the Duat now?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I can see my penguins much better.”

“We should hurry,” Carter reminded us. “Apophis usually strikes when the moon is at the top of its transit. Which is—”

“Agh!” Khufu held up all ten fingers. Leave it to a baboon to have perfect astronomical sense.

“In ten minutes,” I said. “Just brilliant.”

We approached the entrance of the King Tut exhibit, which was rather hard to miss because of the giant golden sign that read KING TUT EXHIBIT. Two magicians stood guard with full-grown leopards on leashes.

Carter looked at JD in astonishment. “How did you get complete access to the museum?”

The Texan shrugged. “My wife, Anne, is president of the board. Now, which artifact did you want to see?”

“I studied your exhibit maps,” Carter said. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The leopards seemed quite interested in Felix’s penguins, but the guards held them back and let us pass.

Inside, the exhibit was extensive, but I doubt you care about the details. A labyrinth of rooms with sarcophagi, statues, furniture, bits of gold jewelry—blah, blah, blah. I would have passed it all by. I’ve seen enough Egyptian collections to last several lifetimes, thank you very much.

Besides, everywhere I looked, I saw reminders of bad experiences.

We passed cases of shabti figurines, no doubt enchanted to come to life when called upon. I’d killed my share of those. We passed statues of glowering monsters and gods whom I’d fought in person—the vulture Nekhbet, who’d once possessed my Gran (long story); the crocodile Sobek, who’d tried to kill my cat (longer story); and the lion goddess Sekhmet, whom we’d once vanquished with hot sauce (don’t even ask).

Most upsetting of all: a small alabaster statue of our friend Bes, the dwarf god. The carving was eons old, but I recognized that pug nose, the bushy sideburns, the potbelly, and the endearingly ugly face that looked as if it had been hit repeatedly with a frying pan. We’d only known Bes for a few days, but he’d literally sacrificed his soul to help us. Now, each time I saw him I was reminded of a debt I could never repay.

I must have lingered at his statue longer than I realized. The rest of the group had passed me and were turning into the next room, about twenty meters ahead, when a voice next to me said, “Psst!”

I looked around. I thought the statue of Bes might have spoken. Then the voice called again: “Hey, doll. Listen up. Not much time.”

In the middle of the wall, eye-level with me, a man’s face bulged from the white, textured paint as if trying to break through. He had a beak of a nose, cruel thin lips, and a high forehead. Though he was the same color as the wall, he seemed very much alive. His blank eyes managed to convey a look of impatience.

“You won’t save the scroll, doll,” he warned. “Even if you did, you’d never understand it. You need my help.”

I’d experienced many strange things since I’d begun practicing magic, so I wasn’t particularly startled. Still, I knew better than to trust any old white-spackled apparition who spoke to me, especially one who called me doll. He reminded me of a character from those silly Mafia movies the boys at Brooklyn House liked to watch in their spare time—someone’s Uncle Vinnie, perhaps.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The man snorted. “Like you don’t know. Like there’s anybody who doesn’t know. You’ve got two days until they put me down. You want to defeat Apophis, you’d better pull some strings and get me out of here.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

The man didn’t sound like Set the god of evil, or the serpent Apophis, or any of the other villains I’d dealt with before, but one could never be sure. There was this thing called magic, after all.

The man jutted out his chin. “Okay, I get it. You want a show of faith. You’ll never save the scroll, but go for the golden box. That’ll give you a clue about what you need, if you’re smart enough to understand it. Day after tomorrow at sunset, doll. Then my offer expires, ’cause that’s when I get permanently—”

He choked. His eyes widened. He strained as if a noose were tightening around his neck. He slowly melted back into the wall.

“Sadie?” Walt called from the end of the corridor. “You okay?”

I looked over. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” he asked.

Of course not, I thought. What fun would it be if other people saw my vision of Uncle Vinnie? Then I couldn’t wonder if I were going stark raving mad.

“Nothing,” I said, and I ran to catch up.

The entrance to the next room was flanked by two giant obsidian sphinxes with the bodies of lions and the heads of rams. Carter says that particular type of sphinx is called a criosphinx. [Thanks, Carter. We were all dying to know that bit of useless information.]

“Agh!” Khufu warned, holding up five fingers.

“Five minutes left,” Carter translated.

“Give me a moment,” JD said. “This room has the heaviest protective spells. I’ll need to modify them to let you through.”

“Uh,” I said nervously, “but the spells will still keep out enemies, like giant Chaos snakes, I hope?”

JD gave me an exasperated look, which I tend to get a lot.

“I do know a thing or two about protective magic,” he promised. “Trust me.” He raised his wand and began to chant.

Carter pulled me aside. “You okay?”

I must have looked shaken from my encounter with Uncle Vinnie. “I’m fine,” I said. “Saw something back there. Probably just one of Apophis’s tricks, but…”

My eyes drifted to the other end of the corridor. Walt was staring at a golden throne in a glass case. He leaned forward with one hand on the glass as if he might be sick.

“Hold that thought,” I told Carter.

I moved to Walt’s side. Light from the exhibit bathed his face, turning his features reddish brown like the hills of Egypt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Tutankhamen died in that chair,” he said.

I read the display card. It didn’t say anything about Tut dying in the chair, but Walt sounded very sure. Perhaps he could sense the family curse. King Tut was Walt’s great-times-a-billion granduncle, and the same genetic poison that killed Tut at nineteen was now coursing through Walt’s bloodstream, getting stronger the more he practiced magic. Yet Walt refused to slow down. Looking at the throne of his ancestor, he must have felt as if he were reading his own obituary.

“We’ll find a cure,” I promised. “As soon as we deal with Apophis…”

He looked at me, and my voice faltered. We both knew our chances of defeating Apophis were slim. Even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee Walt would live long enough to enjoy the victory. Today was one of Walt’s good days, and still I could see the pain in his eyes.

“Guys,” Carter called. “We’re ready.”

The room beyond the criosphinxes was a “greatest hits” collection from the Egyptian afterlife. A life-sized wooden Anubis stared down from his pedestal. Atop a replica of the scales of justice sat a golden baboon, which Khufu immediately started flirting with. There were masks of pharaohs, maps of the Underworld, and loads of canopic jars that had once been filled with mummy organs.

Carter passed all that by. He gathered us around a long papyrus scroll in a glass case on the back wall.

“This is what you’re after?” JD frowned. “The Book of Overcoming Apophis? You do realize that even the best spells against Apophis aren’t very effective.”

Carter reached in his pocket and produced a bit of burned papyrus. “This is all we could salvage from Toronto. It was another copy of the same scroll.”

JD took the papyrus scrap. It was no bigger than a postcard and too charred to let us make out more than a few hieroglyphs.

“‘Overcoming Apophis…’” he read. “But this is one of the most common magic scrolls. Hundreds of copies have survived from ancient times.”

“No.” I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, in case any giant serpents were listening in. “Apophis is after only one particular version, written by this chap.”

I tapped the information plaque next to the display. “‘Attributed to Prince Khaemwaset,’” I read, “‘better known as Setne.’”

JD scowled. “That’s an evil name…one of most villainous magicians who ever lived.”

“So we’ve heard,” I said, “and Apophis is destroying only Setne’s version of the scroll. As far as we can tell, only six copies existed. Apophis has already burned five. This is the last one.”

JD studied the burned papyrus scrap doubtfully. “If Apophis has truly risen from the Duat with all his power, why would he care about a few scrolls? No spell could possibly stop him. Why hasn’t he already destroyed the world?”

We’d been asking ourselves the same question for months.

“Apophis is afraid of this scroll,” I said, hoping I was right. “Something in it must hold the secret to defeating him. He wants to make sure all copies are destroyed before he invades the world.”

“Sadie, we need to hurry,” Carter said. “The attack could come any minute.”

I stepped closer to the scroll. It was roughly two meters long and a half-meter tall, with dense lines of hieroglyphs and colorful illustrations. I’d seen loads of scrolls like this describing ways to defeat Chaos, with chants designed to keep the serpent Apophis from devouring the sun god Ra on his nightly journey through the Duat. Ancient Egyptians had been quite obsessed with this subject. Cheery bunch, those Egyptians.

I could read the hieroglyphs—one of my many amazing talents—but the scroll was a lot to take in. At first glance, nothing struck me as particularly helpful. There were the usual descriptions of the River of Night, down which Ra’s sun boat traveled. Been there, thanks. There were tips on how to handle the various demons of the Duat. Met them. Killed them. Got the T-shirt.

“Sadie?” Carter asked. “Anything?”

“Don’t know yet,” I grumbled. “Give me a moment.”

I found it annoying that my bookish brother was the combat magician, while I was expected to be the great reader of magic. I barely had the patience for magazines, much less musty scrolls.

You’d never understand it, the face in the wall had warned. You need my help.

“We’ll have to take it with us,” I decided. “I’m sure I can figure it out with a little more—”

The building shook. Khufu shrieked and leaped into the arms of the golden baboon. Felix’s penguins waddled around frantically.

“That sounded like—” JD Grissom blanched. “An explosion outside. The party!”

“It’s a diversion,” Carter warned. “Apophis is trying to draw our defenses away from the scroll.”

“They’re attacking my friends,” JD said in a strangled voice. “My wife.”

“Go!” I said. I glared at my brother. “We can handle the scroll. JD’s wife is in danger!”

JD clasped my hands. “Take the scroll. Good luck.”

He ran from the room.

I turned back to the display. “Walt, can you open the case? We need to get this out of here as fast—”

Evil laughter filled the room. A dry, heavy voice, deep as a nuclear blast, echoed all around us: “I don’t think so, Sadie Kane.”

My skin felt as if it were turning to brittle papyrus. I remembered that voice. I remembered how it felt being so close to Chaos, as if my blood were turning to fire, and the strands of my DNA were unraveling.

“I think I’ll destroy you with the guardians of Ma’at,” Apophis said. “Yes, that will be amusing.”

At the entrance to the room, the two obsidian criosphinxes turned. They blocked the exit, standing shoulder to shoulder. Flames curled from their nostrils.

In the voice of Apophis, they spoke in unison: “No one leaves this place alive. Good-bye, Sadie Kane.”
SADIE


2. I Have a Word with Chaos
WOULD YOU BE SURPRISED TO LEARN that things went badly from there?

I didn’t think so.

Our first casualties were Felix’s penguins. The criosphinxes blew fire at the unfortunate birds, and they melted into puddles of water.

“No!” Felix cried.

The room rumbled, much stronger this time.

Khufu screamed and jumped on Carter’s head, knocking him to the floor. Under different circumstances that would’ve been funny, but I realized Khufu had just saved my brother’s life.

Where Carter had been standing, the floor dissolved, marble tiles crumbling as if broken apart by an invisible jackhammer. The area of disruption snaked across the room, destroying everything in its path, sucking artifacts into the ground and chewing them to bits. Yes…snaked was the right word. The destruction slithered exactly like a serpent, heading straight for the back wall and the Book of Overcoming Apophis.

“Scroll!” I shouted.

No one seemed to hear. Carter was still on the floor, trying to pry Khufu off his head. Felix knelt in shock at the puddles of his penguins, while Walt and Alyssa tried to pull him away from the fiery criosphinxes.

I slipped my wand from my belt and shouted the first word of power that came to mind: “Drowah!”

Golden hieroglyphs—the command for Boundary—blazed in the air. A wall of light flashed between the display case and the advancing line of destruction:I’d often used this spell to separate quarreling initiates or to protect the snack cupboard from late-night nom-nom raids, but I’d never tried it for something so important.

As soon as the invisible jackhammer reached my shield, the spell began to fall apart. The disturbance spread up the wall of light, shaking it to pieces. I tried to concentrate, but a much more powerful force—Chaos itself—was working against me, invading my mind and scattering my magic.

In a panic, I realized I couldn’t let go. I was locked in a battle I couldn’t win. Apophis was shredding my thoughts as easily as he’d shredded the floor.

Walt knocked the wand out of my hands.

Darkness washed over me. I slumped into Walt’s arms. When my vision cleared, my hands were burned and steaming. I was too shocked to feel the pain. The Book of Overcoming Apophis was gone. Nothing remained except a pile of rubble and a massive hole in the wall, as if a tank had smashed through.

Despair threatened to close up my throat, but my friends gathered around me. Walt held me steady. Carter drew his sword. Khufu showed his fangs and barked at the criosphinxes. Alyssa wrapped her arms around Felix, who was sobbing into her sleeve. He had quickly lost his courage when his penguins were taken away.

“So that’s it?” I shouted at the criosphinxes. “Burn up the scroll and run away as usual? Are you so afraid to show yourself in person?”

More laughter rolled through the room. The criosphinxes stood unmoving in the doorway, but figurines and jewelry rattled in the display cases. With a painful creaking sound, the golden baboon statue that Khufu had been chatting up suddenly turned its head.

“But I am everywhere.” The serpent spoke through the statue’s mouth. “I can destroy anything you value…and anyone you value.”

Khufu wailed in outrage. He launched himself at the baboon and knocked it over. It melted into a steaming pool of gold.

A different statue came to life—a gilded wooden pharaoh with a hunting spear. Its eyes turned the color of blood. Its carved mouth twisted into a smile. “Your magic is weak, Sadie Kane. Human civilization has grown as old and rotten. I will swallow the sun god and plunge your world into darkness. The Sea of Chaos will consume you all.”

As if the energy were too much for it to contain, the pharaoh statue burst. Its pedestal disintegrated, and another line of evil jackhammer magic snaked across the room, churning up the floor tiles. It headed for a display against the east wall—a small golden cabinet.

Save it, said a voice inside me—possibly my subconscious, or possibly the voice of Isis, my patron goddess. We’d shared thoughts so many times, it was hard to be sure.

I remembered what the face in the wall had told me…Go for the golden box. That’ll give you a clue about what you need.

“The box!” I yelped. “Stop him!”

My friends stared at me. From somewhere outside, another explosion shook the building. Chunks of plaster rained from the ceiling.

“Are these children the best you could send against me?” Apophis spoke from an ivory shabti in the nearest case—a miniature sailor on a toy boat. “Walt Stone…you are the luckiest. Even if you survive tonight, your sickness will kill you before my great victory. You won’t have to watch your world destroyed.”

Walt staggered. Suddenly I was supporting him. My burned hands hurt so badly, I had to fight down a surge of nausea.

The line of destruction trundled across the floor, still heading for the golden cabinet. Alyssa thrust out her staff and barked a command.

For a moment, the floor stabilized, smoothing into a solid sheet of gray stone. Then new cracks appeared, and the force of Chaos blasted its way through.

“Brave Alyssa,” the serpent said, “the earth you love will dissolve into Chaos. You will have no place to stand!”

Alyssa’s staff burst into flames. She screamed and threw it aside.

“Stop it!” Felix yelled. He smashed the glass case with his staff and demolished the miniature sailor along with a dozen other shabti.

Apophis’s voice simply moved to a jade amulet of Isis on a nearby manikin. “Ah, little Felix, I find you amusing. Perhaps I’ll keep you as a pet, like those ridiculous birds you love. I wonder how long you’ll last before your sanity crumbles.”

Felix threw his wand and knocked over the manikin.

The crumbling trail of Chaos was now halfway to the golden cabinet.

“He’s after that box!” I managed to say. “Save the box!”

Granted, it wasn’t the most inspiring call to battle, but Carter seemed to understand. He jumped in front of the advancing Chaos, stabbing his sword into the floor. His blade cut through the marble tile like ice cream. A blue line of magic extended to either side—Carter’s own version of a force field. The line of disruption slammed against the barrier and stalled.

“Poor Carter Kane.” The serpent’s voice was all around us now—jumping from artifact to artifact, each one bursting from the power of Chaos. “Your leadership is doomed. Everything you tried to build will crumble. You will lose the ones you love the most.”

Carter’s blue defensive line began to flicker. If I didn’t help him quickly…

“Apophis!” I yelled. “Why wait to destroy me? Do it now, you overgrown rat snake!”

A hiss echoed through the room. Perhaps I should mention that one of my many talents is making people angry. Apparently it worked on snakes, too.

The floor settled. Carter released his shielding spell and almost collapsed. Khufu, bless his baboon wits, leaped to the golden cabinet, picked it up, and bounded off with it.

When Apophis spoke again, his voice hardened with anger. “Very well, Sadie Kane. It’s time to die.”

The two ram-headed sphinxes stirred, their mouths glowing with flames. Then they lunged straight at me.

Fortunately one of them slipped in a puddle of penguin water and skidded off to the left. The other would’ve ripped my throat out had it not been tackled by a timely camel.

Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt.

Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt’s collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I’d met them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on top of it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted.

“Hindenburg,” I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. “Walt, why in the world—?”

“Sorry!” he yelled. “Wrong amulet!”

The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn’t much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawed at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas.

I moved to Walt’s side and tried to get my bearings.

The room was quite literally in chaos. Tendrils of red lightning arced between exhibits. The floor was crumbling. The walls cracked. Artifacts were coming to life and attacking my friends.

Carter fended off the other criosphinx, stabbing it with his khopesh, but the monster parried his strikes with its horns and breathed fire.

Felix was surrounded by a tornado of canopic jars that pummeled him from every direction as he swatted them with his staff. An army of tiny shabti had surrounded Alyssa, who was chanting desperately, using her earth magic to keep the room in one piece. The statue of Anubis chased Khufu around the room, smashing things with its fists as our brave baboon cradled the golden cabinet.

All around us, the power of Chaos grew. I felt it in my ears like a coming storm. The presence of Apophis was shaking apart the entire museum.

How could I help all my friends at once, protect that gold cabinet, and keep the museum from collapsing on top of us?

“Sadie,” Walt prompted. “What’s the plan?”

The first criosphinx finally pushed Hindenburg off its back. It turned and blew fire at the camel, which let loose one final fart and shrank back into a harmless gold amulet. Then the criosphinx turned toward me. It did not look pleased.

“Walt,” I said, “guard me.”

“Sure.” He eyed the criosphinx uncertainly. “While you do what?”

Good question, I thought.

“We have to protect that cabinet,” I said. “It’s some sort of clue. We have to restore Ma’at, or this building will implode and we’ll all die.”

“How do we restore Ma’at?”

Instead of answering, I concentrated. I lowered my vision into the Duat.

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to experience the world on many levels at once—it’s a bit like looking through 3D glasses and seeing hazy colorful auras around things, except the auras don’t always match the objects, and the images are constantly shifting. Magicians have to be careful when they look into the Duat. Best-case scenario, you’ll get mildly nauseous. Worst-case scenario, your brain will explode.

In the Duat, the room was filled with the writhing coils of a giant red snake—the magic of Apophis slowly expanding and encircling my friends. I almost lost my concentration along with my dinner.

Isis, I called. A little help?

The goddess’s strength surged through me. I stretched out my senses and saw my brother battling the criosphinx. Standing in Carter’s place was the warrior god Horus, his sword blazing with light.

Swirling around Felix, the canopic jars were the hearts of evil spirits—shadowy figures that clawed and snapped at our young friend, though Felix had a surprisingly powerful aura in the Duat. His vivid purple glow seemed to keep the spirits at bay.

Alyssa was surrounded by a dust storm in the shape of a giant man. As she chanted, Geb the earth god lifted his arms and held up the ceiling. The shabti army surrounding her blazed like a wildfire.

Khufu looked no different in the Duat, but as he leaped around the room evading the Anubis statue, the golden cabinet he was carrying flapped open. Inside was pure darkness—as if it were full of octopus ink.

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but then I looked at Walt and gasped.

In the Duat, he was shrouded in flickering gray linen—mummy cloth. His flesh was transparent. His bones were luminous, as if he were a living X-ray.

His curse, I thought. He’s marked for death.

Even worse: the criosphinx facing him was the center of the Chaos storm. Tendrils of red lightning arced from its body. Its ram face changed into the head of Apophis, with yellow serpentine eyes and dripping fangs.

It lunged at Walt, but before it could strike, Walt threw an amulet. Golden chains exploded in the monster’s face, wrapping around its snout. The criosphinx stumbled and thrashed like a dog in a muzzle.

“Sadie, it’s all right.” Walt’s voice sounded deeper and more confident, as if he were older in the Duat. “Speak your spell. Hurry.”

The criosphinx flexed its jaws. The gold chains groaned. The other criosphinx had backed Carter against a wall. Felix was on his knees, his purple aura failing in a swirl of dark spirits. Alyssa was losing her battle against the crumbling room as chunks of the ceiling fell around her. The Anubis statue grabbed Khufu’s tail and held him upside down while the baboon howled and wrapped his arms around the gold cabinet.

Now or never: I had to restore order.

I channeled the power of Isis, drawing so deeply on my own magic reserves, I could feel my soul start to burn. I forced myself to focus, and I spoke the most powerful of all divine words: “Ma’at.”

The hieroglyph burned in front of me—small and bright like a miniature sun:“Good!” Walt said. “Keep at it!” Somehow he’d managed to pull in the chains and grab the sphinx’s snout. While the creature bore down on him with all its force, Walt’s strange gray aura was spreading across the monster’s body like an infection. The criosphinx hissed and writhed. I caught a whiff of decay like the air from a tomb—so strong that I almost lost my concentration.

“Sadie,” Walt urged, “maintain the spell!”

I focused on the hieroglyph. I channeled all my energy into that symbol for order and creation. The word shone brighter. The coils of the serpent burned away like fog in sunlight. The two criosphinxes crumbled to dust. The canopic jars fell and shattered. The Anubis statue dropped Khufu on his head. The army of shabti froze around Alyssa, and her earth magic spread through the room, sealing cracks and shoring up walls.

I felt Apophis retreating deeper into the Duat, hissing in anger.

Then I promptly collapsed.

“I told you she could do it,” said a kindly voice.

My mother’s voice…but of course that was impossible. She was dead, which meant I spoke with her only occasionally, and only in the Underworld.

My vision returned, hazy and dim. Two women hovered over me. One was my mum—her blond hair clipped back, her deep blue eyes sparkling with pride. She was transparent, as ghosts tend to be; but her voice was warm and very much alive. “It isn’t the end yet, Sadie. You must carry on.”

Next to her stood Isis in her white silky gown, her wings of rainbow light flickering behind her. Her hair was glossy black, woven with strands of diamonds. Her face was as beautiful as my mum’s, but more queenly, less warm.

Don’t misunderstand. I knew from sharing Isis’s thoughts that she cared for me in her own way, but gods are not human. They have trouble thinking of us as more than useful tools or cute pets. To gods, a human life span doesn’t seem much longer than that of the average gerbil.

“I would not have believed it,” Isis said. “The last magician to summon Ma’at was Hatshepsut herself, and even she could only do it while wearing a fake beard.”

I had no idea what that meant. I decided I didn’t want to know.

I tried to move but couldn’t. I felt as if I were floating at the bottom of a bathtub, suspended in warm water, the two women’s faces rippling at me from just above the surface.

“Sadie, listen carefully,” my mother said. “Don’t blame yourself for the deaths. When you make your plan, your father will object. You must convince him. Tell him it’s the only way to save the souls of the dead. Tell him…” Her expression turned grim. “Tell him it’s the only way he’ll see me again. You must succeed, my sweet.”

I wanted to ask what she meant, but I couldn’t seem to speak.

Isis touched my forehead. Her fingers were as cold as snow. “We must not tax her any further. Farewell for now, Sadie. The time rapidly approaches when we must join together again. You are strong. Even stronger than your mother. Together we will rule the world.”

“You mean, Together we will defeat Apophis,” my mother corrected.

“Of course,” Isis said. “That’s what I meant.”

Their faces blurred together. They spoke in a single voice: “I love you.”

A blizzard swept across my eyes. My surroundings changed, and I was standing in a dark graveyard with Anubis. Not the musty old jackal-headed god as he appeared in Egyptian tomb art, but Anubis as I usually saw him—a teenaged boy with warm brown eyes, tousled black hair, and a face that was ridiculously, annoyingly gorgeous. I mean, please—being a god, he had an unfair advantage. He could look like anything he wanted. Why did he always have to appear in this form that twisted my insides to pretzels?

“Wonderful,” I managed to say. “If you’re here, I must be dead.”

Anubis smiled. “Not dead, though you came close. That was a risky move.”

A burning sensation started in my face and worked its way down my neck. I wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment, anger, or delight at seeing him.

“Where have you been?” I demanded. “Six months, not a word.”

His smile melted. “They wouldn’t let me see you.”

“Who wouldn’t let you?”

“There are rules,” he said. “Even now they’re watching; but you’re close enough to death that I can manage a few moments. I need to tell you: you have the right idea. Look at what isn’t there. It’s the only way you might survive.”

“Right,” I grumbled. “Thanks for not speaking in riddles.”

The warm sensation reached my heart. It began to beat, and suddenly I realized I’d been without a heartbeat since I’d passed out. That probably wasn’t good.

“Sadie, there’s something else.” Anubis’s voice became watery. His image began to fade. “I need to tell you—”

“Tell me in person,” I said. “None of this ‘death vision’ nonsense.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me.”

“You still sound like a little boy. You’re a god, aren’t you? You can bloody well do what you like.”

Anger smoldered in his eyes. Then, to my surprise, he laughed. “I’d forgotten how irritating you are. I’ll try to visit…briefly. We have something to discuss.” He reached out and brushed the side of my face. “You’re waking now. Good-bye, Sadie.”

“Don’t leave.” I grasped his hand and held it against my cheek.

The warmth spread throughout my body. Anubis faded away.

My eyes flew open. “Don’t leave!”

My burned hands were bandaged, and I was gripping a hairy baboon paw. Khufu looked down at me, rather confused. “Agh?”

Oh, fab. I was flirting with a monkey.

I sat up groggily. Carter and our friends gathered around me. The room hadn’t collapsed, but the entire King Tut exhibit was in ruins. I had a feeling we would not be invited to join the Friends of the Dallas Museum anytime soon.

“Wh-what happened?” I stammered. “How long—?”

“You were dead for two minutes,” Carter said, his voice shaky. “I mean, no heartbeat, Sadie. I thought…I was afraid…”

He choked up. Poor boy. He really would have been lost without me.

[Ouch, Carter! Don’t pinch.]

“You summoned Ma’at,” Alyssa said in amazement. “That’s like…impossible.”

I suppose it was rather impressive. Using divine words to create an object like an animal or a chair or a sword—that’s hard enough. Summoning an element like fire or water is even trickier. But summoning a concept, like Order—that’s just not done. At the moment, however, I was in too much pain to appreciate my own amazingness. I felt as if I’d just summoned an anvil and dropped it on my head.

“Lucky try,” I said. “What about the golden cabinet?”

“Agh!” Khufu gestured proudly to the gilded box, which sat nearby, safe and sound.

“Good baboon,” I said. “Extra Cheerios for you tonight.”

Walt frowned. “But the Book of Overcoming Apophis was destroyed. How will a cabinet help us? You said it was some kind of clue…?”

I found it hard to look at Walt without feeling guilty. My heart had been torn between him and Anubis for months now, and it just wasn’t fair of Anubis to pop into my dreams, looking all hot and immortal, when poor Walt was risking his life to protect me and getting weaker by the day. I remembered how he had looked in the Duat, in his ghostly gray mummy linen.…

No. I couldn’t think about that. I forced myself to concentrate on the golden cabinet.

Look at what isn’t there, Anubis had said. Bloody gods and their bloody riddles.

The face in the wall—Uncle Vinnie—had told me the box would give us a hint about how to defeat Apophis, if I was smart enough to understand it.

“I’m not sure what it means yet,” I admitted. “If the Texans let us take it back to Brooklyn House…”

A horrible realization settled over me. There were no more sounds of explosions outside. Just eerie silence.

“The Texans!” I yelped. “What’s happened to them?”

Felix and Alyssa bolted for the exit. Carter and Walt helped me to my feet, and we ran after them.

The guards had all disappeared from their stations. We reached the museum foyer, and I saw columns of white smoke outside the glass walls, rising from the sculpture garden.

“No,” I murmured. “No, no.”

We tore across the street. The well-kept lawn was now a crater as big as an Olympic pool. The bottom was littered with melted metal sculptures and chunks of stone. Tunnels that had once led into the Fifty-first Nome’s headquarters had collapsed like a giant anthill some bully had stepped on. Around the rim of the crater were bits of smoking evening wear, smashed plates of tacos, broken champagne glasses, and the shattered staffs of magicians.

Don’t blame yourself for the deaths, my mother had said.

I moved in a daze to the remains of the patio. Half the concrete slab had cracked and slid into the crater. A charred fiddle lay in the mud next to a gleaming bit of silver.

Carter stood next to me. “We—we should search,” he said. “There might be survivors.”

I swallowed back a sob. I wasn’t sure how, but I sensed the truth with absolute certainty. “There aren’t any.”

The Texas magicians had welcomed us and supported us. JD Grissom had shaken my hand and wished me luck before running off to save his wife. But we’d seen the work of Apophis in other nomes. Carter had warned JD: The serpent’s minions don’t leave any survivors.

I knelt down and picked up the gleaming piece of silver—a half-melted Lone Star belt buckle.

“They’re dead,” I said. “All of them.”