CHAPTER
6. Breakfast with a Crocodile
HOW TO DESCRIBE IT? Not a nightmare. It was much more real and frightening.
As I slept, I felt myself go weightless. I drifted up, turned, and saw my own sleeping form below.
I’m dying, I thought. But that wasn’t it, either. I wasn’t a ghost. I had a new shimmering golden form with wings instead of arms. I was some kind of bird. [No, Sadie, not a chicken. Will you let me tell the story, please?]
I knew I wasn’t dreaming, because I don’t dream in color. I certainly don’t dream in all five senses. The room smelled faintly of jasmine. I could hear the carbonation bubbles pinging in the can of ginger ale I’d opened on my nightstand. I could feel a cold wind ruffling through my feathers, and I realized the windows were open. I didn’t want to leave, but a strong current pulled me out of the room like a leaf in a storm.
The lights of the mansion faded below me. The skyline of New York blurred and disappeared. I shot through the mist and darkness, strange voices whispering all around me. My stomach tingled as it had earlier that night on Amos’s barge. Then the mist cleared, and I was in a different place.
I floated above a barren mountain. Far below, a grid of city lights stretched across the valley floor. Definitely not New York. It was nighttime, but I could tell I was in the desert. The wind was so dry, the skin on my face was like paper. And I know that doesn’t make sense, but my face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn’t transformed into a bird. [Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy?]
Below me on a ridge stood two figures. They didn’t seem to notice me, and I realized I wasn’t glowing anymore. In fact I was pretty much invisible, floating in the darkness. I couldn’t make out the two figures clearly, except to recognize that they weren’t human. Staring harder, I could see that one was short, squat, and hairless, with slimy skin that glistened in the starlight—like an amphibian standing on its hind legs. The other was tall and scarecrow skinny, with rooster claws instead of feet. I couldn’t see his face very well, but it looked red and moist and…well, let’s just say I was glad I couldn’t see it better.
“Where is he?” the toadie-looking one croaked nervously.
“Hasn’t taken a permanent host yet,” the rooster-footed guy chided. “He can only appear for a short time.”
“You’re sure this is the place?”
“Yes, fool! He’ll be here as soon—”
A fiery form appeared on the ridge. The two creatures fell to the ground, groveling in the dirt, and I prayed like crazy that I really was invisible.
“My lord!” the toad said.
Even in the dark, the newcomer was hard to see—just the silhouette of a man outlined in flames.
“What do they call this place?” the man asked. And as soon as he spoke, I knew for sure he was the guy who’d attacked my dad at the British Museum. All the fear I’d felt at the museum came rushing back, paralyzing me. I remembered trying to pick up that stupid rock to throw, but I hadn’t been able to do even that. I’d completely failed my dad.
“My lord,” Rooster Foot said. “The mountain is called Camelback. The city is called Phoenix.”
The fiery man laughed—a booming sound like thunder. “Phoenix. How appropriate! And the desert so much like home. All it needs now is to be scoured of life. The desert should be a sterile place, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, my lord,” the toadie agreed. “But what of the other four?”
“One is already entombed,” the fiery man said. “The second is weak. She will be easily manipulated. That leaves only two. And they will be dealt with soon enough.”
“Er…how?” the toadie asked.
The fiery man glowed brighter. “You are an inquisitive little tadpole, aren’t you?” He pointed at the toad and the poor creature’s skin began to steam.
“No!” the toadie begged. “No-o-o-o!”
I could hardly watch. I don’t want to describe it. But if you’ve heard what happens when cruel kids pour salt on snails, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what happened to the toadie. Soon there was nothing left.
Rooster Foot took a nervous step back. I couldn’t blame him.
“We will build my temple here,” the fiery man said, as if nothing had happened. “This mountain shall serve as my place of worship. When it is complete, I will summon the greatest storm ever known. I will cleanse everything. Everything.”
“Yes, my lord,” Rooster Foot agreed quickly. “And, ah, if I may suggest, my lord, to increase your power…” The creature bowed and scraped and moved forward, as if he wanted to whisper in the fiery man’s ear.
Just when I thought Rooster Foot was going to become fried chicken for sure, he said something to the fiery dude that I couldn’t make out, and the fiery dude burned brighter.
“Excellent! If you can do this, you will be rewarded. If not…”
“I understand, my lord.”
“Go then,” the fiery man said. “Unleash our forces. Start with the longnecks. That should soften them up. Collect the younglings and bring them to me. I want them alive, before they have time to learn their powers. Do not fail me.”
“No, lord.”
“Phoenix,” the fiery man mused. “I like that very much.” He swept his hand across the horizon, as if he were imagining the city in flames. “Soon I will rise from your ashes. It will be a lovely birthday present.”
I woke with my heart pounding, back in my own body. I felt hot, as if the fiery guy were starting to burn me. Then I realized that there was a cat on my chest.
Muffin stared at me, her eyes half closed. “Mrow.”
“How did you get in?” I muttered.
I sat up, and for a second I wasn’t sure where I was. Some hotel in another city? I almost called for my dad…and then I remembered.
Yesterday. The museum. The sarcophagus.
It all crashed down on me so hard I could barely breathe.
Stop, I told myself. You don’t have time for grief. And this is going to sound weird, but the voice in my head almost sounded like a different person—older, stronger. Either that was a good sign, or I was going crazy.
Remember what you saw, the voice said. He’s after you. You have to be ready.
I shivered. I wanted to believe I’d just had a bad dream, but I knew better. I’d been through too much in the last day to doubt what I’d seen. Somehow, I’d actually left my body while I slept. I’d been to Phoenix—thousands of miles away. The fiery dude was there. I hadn’t understood much of what he’d said, but he’d talked about sending his forces to capture the younglings. Gee, wonder who that could be?
Muffin jumped off the bed and sniffed at the ivory headrest, looking up at me as if she were trying to tell me something.
“You can have it,” I told her. “It’s uncomfortable.”
She butted her head against it and stared at me accusingly. “Mrow.”
“Whatever, cat.”
I got up and showered. When I tried to get dressed, I found that my old clothes had disappeared in the night. Everything in the closet was my size, but way different than what I was used to—baggy drawstring pants and loose shirts, all plain white linen, and robes for cold weather, kind of what the fellahin, the peasants in Egypt, wear. It wasn’t exactly my style.
Sadie likes to tell me that I don’t have a style. She complains that I dress like I’m an old man—button-down shirt, slacks, dress shoes. Okay, maybe. But here’s the thing. My dad had always drilled into my head that I had to dress my best.
I remember the first time he explained it to me. I was ten. We were on our way to the airport in Athens, and it was like 112 degrees outside, and I was complaining that I wanted to wear shorts and a T-shirt. Why couldn’t I be comfortable? We weren’t going anywhere important that day—just traveling.
My dad put his hand on my shoulder. “Carter, you’re getting older. You’re an African American man. People will judge you more harshly, and so you must always look impeccable.”
“That isn’t fair!” I insisted.
“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same,” Dad said. “Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself. Do you understand?”
I told him I didn’t. But still I did what he asked—like caring about Egypt, and basketball, and music. Like traveling with only one suitcase. I dressed the way Dad wanted me to, because Dad was usually right. In fact I’d never known him to be wrong…until the night at the British Museum.
Anyway, I put on the linen clothes from the closet. The slipper shoes were comfortable, though I doubted they’d be much good to run in.
The door to Sadie’s room was open, but she wasn’t there.
Thankfully my bedroom door wasn’t locked anymore. Muffin joined me and we walked downstairs, passing a lot of unoccupied bedrooms on the way. The mansion could’ve easily slept a hundred people, but instead it felt empty and sad.
Down in the Great Room, Khufu the baboon sat on the sofa with a basketball between his legs and a chunk of strange-looking meat in his hands. It was covered in pink feathers. ESPN was on the television, and Khufu was watching highlights from the games the night before.
“Hey,” I said, though I felt a little weird talking to him. “Lakers win?”
Khufu looked at me and patted his basketball like he wanted a game. “Agh, agh.”
He had a pink feather hanging from his chin, and the sight made my stomach do a slow roll.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “We’ll play later, okay?”
I could see Sadie and Amos out on the terrace, eating breakfast by the pool. It should’ve been freezing out there, but the fire pit was blazing, and neither Amos nor Sadie looked cold. I headed their way, then hesitated in front of the statue of Thoth. In the daylight, the bird-headed god didn’t look quite so scary. Still, I could swear those beady eyes were watching me expectantly.
What had the fiery guy said last night? Something about catching us before we learned our powers. It sounded ridiculous, but for a moment I felt a surge of strength—like the night before when I’d opened the front door just by raising my hand. I felt like I could lift anything, even this thirty-foot-tall statue if I wanted to. In a kind of trance, I stepped forward.
Muffin meowed impatiently and butted my foot. The feeling dissolved.
“You’re right,” I told the cat. “Stupid idea.”
Besides, I could smell breakfast now—French toast, bacon, hot chocolate—and I couldn’t blame Muffin for being in a hurry. I followed her out to the terrace.
“Ah, Carter,” Amos said. “Merry Christmas, my boy. Join us.”
“About time,” Sadie grumbled. “I’ve been up for ages.”
But she held my eyes for a moment, like she was thinking the same thing I was: Christmas. We hadn’t spent a Christmas morning together since Mom died. I wondered if Sadie remembered how we used to make god’s-eye decorations out of yarn and Popsicle sticks.
Amos poured himself a cup of coffee. His clothes were similar to those he’d worn the day before, and I had to admit the guy had style. His tailored suit was made of blue wool, he wore a matching fedora, and his hair was freshly braided with dark blue lapis lazuli, one of the stones the Egyptians often used for jewelry. Even his glasses matched. The round lenses were tinted blue. A tenor sax rested on a stand near the fire pit, and I could totally picture him playing out here, serenading the East River.
As for Sadie, she was dressed in a white linen pajama outfit like me, but somehow she’d managed to keep her combat boots. She’d probably slept with them on. She looked pretty comical with the red-streaked hair and the outfit, but since I wasn’t dressed any better, I could hardly make fun of her.
“Um…Amos?” I asked. “You didn’t have any pet birds, did you? Khufu’s eating something with pink feathers.”
“Mmm.” Amos sipped his coffee. “Sorry if that disturbed you. Khufu’s very picky. He only eats foods that end in -o. Doritos, burritos, flamingos.”
I blinked. “Did you say—”
“Carter,” Sadie warned. She looked a little queasy, like she’d already had this conversation. “Don’t ask.”
“Okay,” I said. “Not asking.”
“Please, Carter, help yourself.” Amos waved toward a buffet table piled high with food. “Then we can get started with the explanations.”
I didn’t see any flamingo on the buffet table, which was fine by me, but there was just about everything else. I snagged some pancakes with butter and syrup, some bacon, and a glass of OJ.
Then I noticed movement in the corner of my eye. I glanced at the swimming pool. Something long and pale was gliding just under the surface of the water.
I almost dropped my plate. “Is that—”
“A crocodile,” Amos confirmed. “For good luck. He’s albino, but please don’t mention that. He’s sensitive.”
“His name is Philip of Macedonia,” Sadie informed me.
I wasn’t sure how Sadie was taking this all so calmly, but I figured if she wasn’t freaking out, I shouldn’t either.
“That’s a long name,” I said.
“He’s a long crocodile,” Sadie said. “Oh, and he likes bacon.”
To prove her point, she tossed a piece of bacon over her shoulder. Philip lunged out of the water and snapped up the treat. His hide was pure white and his eyes were pink. His mouth was so big, he could’ve snapped up an entire pig.
“He’s quite harmless to my friends,” Amos assured me. “In the old days, no temple would be complete without a lake full of crocodiles. They are powerful magic creatures.”
“Right,” I said. “So the baboon, the crocodile…any other pets I should know about?”
Amos thought for a moment. “Visible ones? No, I think that’s it.”
I took a seat as far from the pool as possible. Muffin circled my legs and purred. I hoped she had enough sense to stay away from magic crocodiles named Philip.
“So, Amos,” I said between bites of pancake. “Explanations.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Where to start…”
“Our dad,” Sadie suggested. “What happened to him?”
Amos took a deep breath. “Julius was attempting to summon a god. Unfortunately, it worked.”
It was kind of hard to take Amos seriously, talking about summoning gods while he spread butter on a bagel.
“Any god in particular?” I asked casually. “Or did he just order a generic god?”
Sadie kicked me under the table. She was scowling, as if she actually believed what Amos was saying.
Amos took a bite of bagel. “There are many Egyptian gods, Carter. But your dad was after one in particular.”
He looked at me meaningfully.
“Osiris,” I remembered. “When Dad was standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, he said, ‘Osiris, come.’ But Osiris is a legend. He’s make-believe.”
“I wish that were true.” Amos stared across the East River at the Manhattan skyline, gleaming in the morning sun. “The Ancient Egyptians were not fools, Carter. They built the pyramids. They created the first great nation state. Their civilization lasted thousands of years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And now they’re gone.”
Amos shook his head. “A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye. The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world’s largest Egyptian obelisk. Egypt is still very much alive. And so, unfortunately, are her gods.”
“Come on,” I argued. “I mean…even if I believe there’s a real thing called magic. Believing in ancient gods is totally different. You’re joking, right?”
But as I said it, I thought about the fiery guy in the museum, the way his face had shifted between human and animal. And the statue of Thoth—how its eyes had followed me.
“Carter,” Amos said, “the Egyptians would not have been stupid enough to believe in imaginary gods. The beings they described in their myths are very, very real. In the old days, the priests of Egypt would call upon these gods to channel their power and perform great feats. That is the origin of what we now call magic. Like many things, magic was first invented by the Egyptians. Each temple had a branch of magicians called the House of Life. Their magicians were famed throughout the ancient world.”
“And you’re an Egyptian magician.”
Amos nodded. “So was your father. You saw it for yourself last night.”
I hesitated. It was hard to deny my dad had done some weird stuff at the museum—some stuff that looked like magic.
“But he’s an archaeologist,” I said stubbornly.
“That’s his cover story. You’ll remember that he specialized in translating ancient spells, which are very difficult to understand unless you work magic yourself. Our family, the Kane family, has been part of the House of Life almost since the beginning. And your mother’s family is almost as ancient.”
“The Fausts?” I tried to imagine Grandma and Grandpa Faust doing magic, but unless watching rugby on TV and burning cookies was magical, I couldn’t see it.
“They had not practiced magic for many generations,” Amos admitted. “Not until your mother came along. But yes, a very ancient bloodline.”
Sadie shook her head in disbelief. “So now Mum was magic, too. Are you joking?”
“No jokes,” Amos promised. “The two of you…you combine the blood of two ancient families, both of which have a long, complicated history with the gods. You are the most powerful Kane children to be born in many centuries.”
I tried to let that sink in. At the moment, I didn’t feel powerful. I felt queasy. “You’re telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?” I asked.
“Not worshipped,” Amos corrected. “By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control—”
“Fight gods?” Sadie interrupted.
“Constantly,” Amos assured her. “But we don’t worship them. Thoth taught us that.”
I looked at Sadie for help. The old guy had to be crazy. But Sadie was looking like she believed every word.
“So…” I said. “Why did Dad break the Rosetta Stone?”
“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean to break it,” Amos said. “That would’ve horrified him. In fact, I imagine my brethren in London have repaired the damage by now. The curators will soon check their vaults and discover that the Rosetta Stone miraculously survived the explosion.”
“But it was blown into a million pieces!” I said. “How could they repair it?”
Amos picked up a saucer and threw it onto the stone floor. The saucer shattered instantly.
“That was to destroy,” Amos said. “I could’ve done it by magic—ha-di—but it’s simpler just to smash it. And now…” Amos held out his hand. “Join. Hi-nehm.”
A blue hieroglyphic symbol burned in the air above his palm.The pieces of the saucer flew into his hand and reassembled like a puzzle, even the smallest bits of dust gluing themselves into place. Amos put the perfect saucer back on the table.
“Some trick,” I managed. I tried to sound calm about it, but I was thinking of all the odd things that had happened to my dad and me over the years, like those gunmen in the Cairo hotel who’d ended up hanging by their feet from a chandelier. Was it possible my dad had made that happen with some kind of spell?
Amos poured milk in the saucer, and put it on the floor. Muffin came padding over. “At any rate, your father would never intentionally damage a relic. He simply didn’t realize how much power the Rosetta Stone contained. You see, as Egypt faded, its magic collected and concentrated into its remaining relics. Most of these, of course, are still in Egypt. But you can find some in almost every major museum. A magician can use these artifacts as focal points to work more powerful spells.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
Amos spread his hands. “I’m sorry, Carter. It takes years of study to understand magic, and I’m trying to explain it to you in a single morning. The important thing is, for the past six years your father has been looking for a way to summon Osiris, and last night he thought he had found the right artifact to do it.”
“Wait, why did he want Osiris?”
Sadie gave me a troubled look. “Carter, Osiris was the lord of the dead. Dad was talking about making things right. He was talking about Mum.”
Suddenly the morning seemed colder. The fire pit sputtered in the wind coming off the river.
“He wanted to bring Mom back from the dead?” I said. “But that’s crazy!”
Amos hesitated. “It would’ve been dangerous. Inadvisable. Foolish. But not crazy. Your father is a powerful magician. If, in fact, that is what he was after, he might have accomplished it, using the power of Osiris.”
I stared at Sadie. “You’re actually buying this?”
“You saw the magic at the museum. The fiery bloke. Dad summoned something from the stone.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of my dream. “But that wasn’t Osiris, was it?”
“No,” Amos said. “Your father got more than he bargained for. He did release the spirit of Osiris. In fact, I think he successfully joined with the god—”
“Joined with?”
Amos held up his hand. “Another long conversation. For now, let’s just say he drew the power of Osiris into himself. But he never got the chance to use it because, according to what Sadie has told me, it appears that Julius released five gods from the Rosetta Stone. Five gods who were all trapped together.”
I glanced at Sadie. “You told him everything?”
“He’s going to help us, Carter.”
I wasn’t quite ready to trust this guy, even if he was our uncle, but I decided I didn’t have much choice.
“Okay, yeah,” I said. “The fiery guy said something like ‘You released all five.’ What did he mean?”
Amos sipped his coffee. The faraway look on his face reminded me of my dad. “I don’t want to scare you.”
“Too late.”
“The gods of Egypt are very dangerous. For the last two thousand years or so, we magicians have spent much of our time binding and banishing them whenever they appear. In fact, our most important law, issued by Chief Lector Iskandar in Roman times, forbids unleashing the gods or using their power. Your father broke that law once before.”
Sadie’s face paled. “Does this have something to do with Mum’s death? Cleopatra’s Needle in London?”
“It has everything to do with that, Sadie. Your parents…well, they thought they were doing something good. They took a terrible risk, and it cost your mother her life. Your father took the blame. He was exiled, I suppose you would say. Banished. He was forced to move around constantly because the House monitored his activities. They feared he would continue his…research. As indeed he did.”
I thought about the times Dad would look over his shoulder as he copied some ancient inscriptions, or wake me up at three or four in the morning and insist it was time to change hotels, or warn me not to look in his workbag or copy certain pictures from old temple walls—as if our lives depended on it.
“Is that why you never came round?” Sadie asked Amos. “Because Dad was banished?”
“The House forbade me to see him. I loved Julius. It hurt me to stay away from my brother, and from you children. But I could not see you—until last night, when I simply had no choice but to try to help. Julius has been obsessed with finding Osiris for years. He was consumed with grief because of what happened to your mother. When I learned that Julius was about to break the law again, to try to set things right, I had to stop him. A second offense would’ve meant a death sentence. Unfortunately, I failed. I should’ve known he was too stubborn.”
I looked down at my plate. My food had gotten cold. Muffin leaped onto the table and rubbed against my hand. When I didn’t object, she started eating my bacon.
“Last night at the museum,” I said, “the girl with the knife, the man with the forked beard—they were magicians too? From the House of Life?”
“Yes,” Amos said. “Keeping an eye on your father. You are fortunate they let you go.”
“The girl wanted to kill us,” I remembered. “But the guy with the beard said, not yet.”
“They don’t kill unless it is absolutely necessary,” Amos said. “They will wait to see if you are a threat.”
“Why would we be a threat?” Sadie demanded. “We’re children! The summoning wasn’t our idea.”
Amos pushed away his plate. “There is a reason you two were raised separately.”
“Because the Fausts took Dad to court,” I said matter-of-factly. “And Dad lost.”
“It was much more than that,” Amos said. “The House insisted you two be separated. Your father wanted to keep you both, even though he knew how dangerous it was.”
Sadie looked like she’d been smacked between the eyes. “He did?”
“Of course. But the House intervened and made sure your grandparents got custody of you, Sadie. If you and Carter were raised together, you could become very powerful. Perhaps you have already sensed changes over the past day.”
I thought about the surges of strength I’d been feeling, and the way Sadie suddenly seemed to know how to read Ancient Egyptian. Then I thought of something even further back.
“Your sixth birthday,” I told Sadie.
“The cake,” she said immediately, the memory passing between us like an electric spark.
At Sadie’s sixth birthday party, the last one we’d shared as a family, Sadie and I had a huge argument. I don’t remember what it was about. I think I wanted to blow out the candles for her. We started yelling. She grabbed my shirt. I pushed her. I remember Dad rushing toward us, trying to intervene, but before he could, Sadie’s birthday cake exploded. Icing splattered the walls, our parents, the faces of Sadie’s little six-year-old friends. Dad and Mom separated us. They sent me to my room. Later, they said we must’ve hit the cake by accident as we were fighting, but I knew we hadn’t. Something much weirder had made it explode, as if it had responded to our anger. I remembered Sadie crying with a chunk of cake on her forehead, an upside-down candle stuck to the ceiling with its wick still burning, and an adult visitor, one of my parents’ friends, his glasses speckled with white frosting.
I turned to Amos. “That was you. You were at Sadie’s party.”
“Vanilla icing,” he recalled. “Very tasty. But it was clear even then that you two would be difficult to raise in the same household.”
“And so…” I faltered. “What happens to us now?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from Sadie again. She wasn’t much, but she was all I had.
“You must be trained properly,” Amos said, “whether the House approves or not.”
“Why wouldn’t they approve?” I asked.
“I will explain everything, don’t worry. But we must start your lessons if we are to stand any chance of finding your father and putting things right. Otherwise the entire world is in danger. If we only knew where—”
“Phoenix,” I blurted out.
Amos stared at me. “What?”
“Last night I had…well, not a dream, exactly…” I felt stupid, but I told him what had happened while I slept.
Judging from Amos’s expression, the news was even worse than I thought.
“You’re sure he said ‘birthday present’?” he asked.
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“And a permanent host,” Amos said. “He didn’t have one yet?”
“Well, that’s what the rooster-footed guy said—”
“That was a demon,” Amos said. “A minion of chaos. And if demons are coming through to the mortal world, we don’t have much time. This is bad, very bad.”
“If you live in Phoenix,” I said.
“Carter, our enemy won’t stop in Phoenix. If he’s grown so powerful so fast… What did he say about the storm, exactly?”
“He said: ‘I will summon the greatest storm ever known.’”
Amos scowled. “The last time he said that, he created the Sahara. A storm that large could destroy North America, generating enough chaos energy to give him an almost invincible form.”
“What are you talking about? Who is this guy?”
Amos waved away the question. “More important right now: why didn’t you sleep with the headrest?”
I shrugged. “It was uncomfortable.” I looked at Sadie for support. “You didn’t use it, did you?”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “Well, of course I did. It was obviously there for a reason.”
Sometimes I really hate my sister. [Ow! That’s my foot!]
“Carter,” Amos said, “sleep is dangerous. It’s a doorway into the Duat.”
“Lovely,” Sadie grumbled. “Another strange word.”
“Ah…yes, sorry,” Amos said. “The Duat is the world of spirits and magic. It exists beneath the waking world like a vast ocean, with many layers and regions. We submerged just under its surface last night to reach New York, because travel through the Duat is much faster. Carter, your consciousness also passed through its shallowest currents as you slept, which is how you witnessed what happened in Phoenix. Fortunately, you survived that experience. But the deeper you go into the Duat, the more horrible things you encounter, and the more difficult it is to return. There are entire realms filled with demons, palaces where the gods exist in their pure forms, so powerful their mere presence would burn a human to ashes. There are prisons that hold beings of unspeakable evil, and some chasms so deep and chaotic that not even the gods dare explore them. Now that your powers are stirring, you must not sleep without protection, or you leave yourself open to attacks from the Duat or…unintended journeys through it. The headrest is enchanted, to keep your consciousness anchored to your body.”
“You mean I actually did…” My mouth tasted like metal. “Could he have killed me?”
Amos’s expression was grave. “The fact that your soul can travel like that means you are progressing faster than I thought. Faster than should be possible. If the Red Lord had noticed you—”
“The Red Lord?” Sadie said. “That’s the fiery bloke?”
Amos rose. “I must find out more. We can’t simply wait for him to find you. And if he releases the storm on his birthday, at the height of his powers—”
“You mean you’re going to Phoenix?” I could barely get the words out. “Amos, that fiery man defeated Dad like his magic was a joke! Now he’s got demons, and he’s getting stronger, and—you’ll be killed!”
Amos gave me a dry smile, like he’d already weighed the dangers and didn’t need a reminder. His expression reminded me painfully of Dad’s. “Don’t count your uncle out so quickly, Carter. I’ve got some magic of my own. Besides, I must see what is happening for myself if we’re to have any chance at saving your father and stopping the Red Lord. I’ll be quick and careful. Just stay here. Muffin will guard you.”
I blinked. “The cat will guard us? You can’t just leave us here! What about our training?”
“When I return,” Amos promised. “Don’t worry, the mansion is protected. Just do not leave. Do not be tricked into opening the door for anyone. And whatever happens, do not go into the library. I absolutely forbid it. I will be back by sunset.”
Before we could protest, Amos walked calmly to the edge of the terrace and jumped.
“No!” Sadie screamed. We ran to the railing and looked over. Below was a hundred-foot drop into the East River. There was no sign of Amos. He’d simply vanished.
Philip of Macedonia splashed in his pool. Muffin jumped onto the railing and insisted we pet her.
We were alone in a strange mansion with a baboon, a crocodile, and a weird cat. And apparently, the entire world was in danger.
I looked at Sadie. “What do we do now?”
She crossed her arms. “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? We explore the library.”
SADIE
7. I Drop a Little Man on His Head
HONESTLY, CARTER IS SO THICK sometimes I can’t believe we’re related.
I mean when someone says I forbid it, that’s a good sign it’s worth doing. I made for the library straightaway.
“Hold on!” Carter cried. “You can’t just—”
“Brother dear,” I said, “did your soul leave your body again while Amos was talking, or did you actually hear him? Egyptian gods real. Red Lord bad. Red Lord’s birthday: very soon, very bad. House of Life: fussy old magicians who hate our family because Dad was a bit of a rebel, whom by the way you could take a lesson from. Which leaves us—just us—with Dad missing, an evil god about to destroy the world, and an uncle who just jumped off the building—and I can’t actually blame him.” I took a breath. [Yes, Carter, I do have to breathe occasionally.] “Am I missing anything? Oh, yes, I also have a brother who is supposedly quite powerful from an ancient bloodline, blah, blah, et cetera, but is too afraid to visit a library. Now, coming or not?”
Carter blinked as if I’d just hit him, which I suppose I had in a way.
“I just…” He faltered. “I just think we should be careful.”
I realized the poor boy was quite scared, which I couldn’t hold against him, but it did startle me. Carter was my big brother, after all—older, more sophisticated, the one who traveled the world with Dad. Big brothers are the ones who are supposed to pull their punches. Little sisters—well, we should be able to hit as hard as we like, shouldn’t we? But I realized that possibly, just possibly, I’d been a bit harsh with him.
“Look,” I said. “We need to help Dad, yes? There’s got to be some powerful stuff in that library, otherwise Amos wouldn’t keep it locked up. You do want to help Dad?”
Carter shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah…of course.”
Well, that was one problem sorted, so we headed for the library. But as soon as Khufu saw what we were up to, he scrambled off the sofa with his basketball and jumped in front of the library doors. Who knew baboons were so speedy? He barked at us, and I have to say baboons have enormous fangs. And they’re not any prettier when they’ve been chewing up exotic pink birds.
Carter tried to reason with him. “Khufu, we’re not going to steal anything. We just want—”
“Agh!” Khufu dribbled his basketball angrily.
“Carter,” I said, “you’re not helping. Look here, Khufu. I have…ta-da!” I held up a little yellow box of cereal I’d taken from the buffet table. “Cheerios! Ends with an -o. Yumsies!”
“Aghhh!” Khufu grunted, more excited now than angry.
“Want it?” I coaxed. “Just take it to the couch and pretend you didn’t see us, yes?”
I threw the cereal towards the couch, and the baboon lunged after it. He grabbed the box in midair and was so excited, he ran straight up the wall and sat on the fireplace mantel, where he began gingerly picking out Cheerios and eating them one at a time.
Carter looked at me with grudging admiration. “How did you—”
“Some of us think ahead. Now, let’s open these doors.”
That was not so easily done. They were made of thick wood laced with giant steel chains and padlocked. Complete overkill.
Carter stepped forward. He tried to raise the doors by lifting his hand, which had been quite impressive the night before, only now accomplished nothing.
He shook the chains the old-fashioned way, then yanked on the padlocks.
“No good,” he said.
Ice needles tingled on the back of my neck. It was almost as if someone—or something—was whispering an idea in my head. “What was that word Amos used at breakfast with the saucer?”
“For ‘join’?” Carter said. “Hi-nehm or something.”
“No, the other one, for ‘destroy’.”
“Uh, ha-di. But you’d need to know magic and the hieroglyphics, wouldn’t you? And even then—”
I raised my hand toward the door. I pointed with two fingers and my thumb—an odd gesture I’d never made before, like a make-believe gun except with the thumb parallel to the ground.
“Ha-di!”
Bright gold hieroglyphs burned against the largest padlock.And the doors exploded. Carter hit the floor as chains shattered and splinters flew all over the Great Room. When the dust cleared, Carter got up, covered in wood shavings. I seemed to be fine. Muffin circled my feet, mewing contentedly, as if this were all very normal.
Carter stared at me. “How exactly—”
“Don’t know,” I admitted. “But the library’s open.”
“Think you overdid it a little? We’re going to be in so much trouble—”
“We’ll just figure out a way to zap the door back, won’t we?”
“No more zapping, please,” Carter said. “That explosion could’ve killed us.”
“Oh, do you think if you tried that spell on a person—”
“No!” He stepped back nervously.
I felt gratified that I could make him squirm, but I tried not to smile. “Let’s just explore the library, shall we?”
The truth was, I couldn’t have ha-di-ed anyone. As soon as I stepped forward, I felt so faint that I almost collapsed.
Carter caught me as I stumbled. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I managed, though I didn’t feel fine. “I’m tired”—my stomach rumbled—“and famished.”
“You just ate a huge breakfast.”
It was true, but I felt as if I hadn’t had food in weeks.
“Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll manage.”
Carter studied me skeptically. “Those hieroglyphs you created were golden. Dad and Amos both used blue. Why?”
“Maybe everyone has his own color,” I suggested. “Maybe you’ll get hot pink.”
“Very funny.”
“Come on, pink wizard,” I said. “Inside we go.”
The library was so amazing, I almost forgot my dizziness. It was bigger than I’d imagined, a round chamber sunk deep into solid rock, like a giant well. This didn’t make sense, as the mansion was sitting on top of a warehouse, but then again nothing else about the place was exactly normal.
From the platform where we stood, a staircase descended three stories to the bottom floor. The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were all decorated with multicolored pictures of people, gods, and monsters. I’d seen such illustrations in Dad’s books (yes, all right, sometimes when I was in the Piccadilly bookshop I’d wander into the Egypt section and sneak a look at Dad’s books, just to feel some connection to him, not because I wanted to read them) but the pictures in the books had always been faded and smudged. These in the library looked newly painted, making the entire room a work of art.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
A blue starry sky glittered on the ceiling, but it wasn’t a solid field of blue. Rather, the sky was painted in a strange swirling pattern. I realized it was shaped like a woman. She lay curled on her side—her body, arms, and legs dark blue and dotted with stars. Below, the library floor was done in a similar way, the green-and-brown earth shaped into a man’s body, dotted with forests and hills and cities. A river snaked across his chest.
The library had no books. Not even bookshelves. Instead, the walls were honeycombed with round cubbyholes, each one holding a sort of plastic cylinder.
At each of the four compass points, a ceramic statue stood on a pedestal. The statues were half-size humans wearing kilts and sandals, with glossy black wedge-shaped haircuts and black eyeliner around their eyes.
[Carter says the eyeliner stuff is called kohl, as if it matters.]
At any rate, one statue held a stylus and scroll. Another held a box. Another held a short, hooked staff. The last was empty-handed.
“Sadie.” Carter pointed to the center of the room. Sitting on a long stone table was Dad’s workbag.
Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm. “Hang on. What about traps?”
He frowned. “Traps?”
“Didn’t Egyptian tombs have traps?”
“Well…sometimes. But this isn’t a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse—”
“Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better.”
He trotted down the steps, which made me feel quite ridiculous, as I’m usually the one to forge ahead. But I supposed if someone had to get cursed with a burning skin rash or attacked by a magical donkey, it was better Carter than me.
We made it to the middle of the room with no excitement. Carter opened the bag. Still no traps or curses. He brought out the strange box Dad had used in the British Museum.
It was made of wood, and about the right size to hold a loaf of French bread. The lid was decorated much like the library, with gods and monsters and sideways-walking people.
“How did the Egyptians move like that?” I wondered. “All sideways with their arms and legs out. It seems quite silly.”
Carter gave me one of his God, you’re stupid looks. “They didn’t walk like that in real life, Sadie.”
“Well, why are they painted like that, then?”
“They thought paintings were like magic. If you painted yourself, you had to show all your arms and legs. Otherwise, in the afterlife you might be reborn without all your pieces.”
“Then why the sideways faces? They never look straight at you. Doesn’t that mean they’ll lose the other side of their face?”
Carter hesitated. “I think they were afraid the picture would be too human if it was looking right at you. It might try to become you.”
“So is there anything they weren’t afraid of?”
“Little sisters,” Carter said. “If they talked too much, the Egyptians threw them to the crocodiles.”
He had me for a second. I wasn’t used to him displaying a sense of humor. Then I punched him. “Just open the bloody box.”
The first thing he pulled out was a lump of white gunk.
“Wax,” Carter pronounced.
“Fascinating.” I picked up a wooden stylus and a palette with small indentations in its surface for ink, then a few glass jars of the ink itself—black, red, and gold. “And a prehistoric painting set.”
Carter pulled out several lengths of brown twine, a small ebony cat statue, and a thick roll of paper. No, not paper. Papyrus. I remembered Dad explaining how the Egyptians made it from a river plant because they never invented paper. The stuff was so thick and rough, it made me wonder if the poor Egyptians had had to use toilet papyrus. If so, no wonder they walked sideways.
Finally I pulled out a wax figurine.
“Ew,” I said.
He was a tiny man, crudely fashioned, as if the maker had been in a hurry. His arms were crossed over his chest, his mouth was open, and his legs were cut off at the knees. A lock of human hair was wrapped round his waist.
Muffin jumped on the table and sniffed the little man. She seemed to think him quite interesting.
“There’s nothing here,” Carter said.
“What do you want?” I asked. “We’ve got wax, some toilet papyrus, an ugly statue—”
“Something to explain what happened to Dad. How do we get him back? Who was that fiery man he summoned?”
I held up the wax man. “You heard him, warty little troll. Tell us what you know.”
I was just messing about. But the wax man became soft and warm like flesh. He said, “I answer the call.”
I screamed and dropped him on his tiny head. Well, can you blame me?
“Ow!” he said.
Muffin came over to have a sniff, and the little man started cursing in another language, possibly Ancient Egyptian. When that didn’t work, he screeched in English: “Go away! I’m not a mouse!”
I scooped up Muffin and put her on the floor.
Carter’s face had gone as soft and waxy as the little man’s. “What are you?” he asked.
“I’m a shabti, of course!” The figurine rubbed his dented head. He still looked quite lumpish, only now he was a living lump. “Master calls me Doughboy, though I find the name insulting. You may call me Supreme-Force-Who-Crushes-His-Enemies!”
“All right, Doughboy,” I said.
He scowled at me, I think, though it was hard to tell with his mashed-up face.
“You weren’t supposed to trigger me! Only the master does that.”
“The master, meaning Dad,” I guessed. “Er, Julius Kane?”
“That’s him,” Doughboy grumbled. “Are we done yet? Have I fulfilled my service?”
Carter stared at me blankly, but I thought I was beginning to understand.
“So, Doughboy,” I told the lump. “You were triggered when I picked you up and gave you a direct order: Tell us what you know. Is that correct?”
Doughboy crossed his stubby arms. “You’re just toying with me now. Of course that’s correct. Only the master is supposed to be able to trigger me, by the way. I don’t know how you did it, but he’ll blast you to pieces when he finds out.”
Carter cleared his throat. “Doughboy, the master is our dad, and he’s missing. He’s been magically sent away somehow and we need your help—”
“Master is gone?” Doughboy smiled so widely, I thought his wax face would split open. “Free at last! See you, suckers!”
He lunged for the end of the table but forgot he had no feet. He landed on his face, then began crawling toward the edge, dragging himself with his hands. “Free! Free!”
He fell off the table and onto the floor with a thud, but that didn’t seem to discourage him. “Free! Free!”
He made it another centimeter or two before I picked him up and threw him in Dad’s magic box. Doughboy tried to get out, but the box was just tall enough that he couldn’t reach the rim. I wondered if it had been designed that way.
“Trapped!” he wailed. “Trapped!”
“Oh, shut up,” I told him. “I’m the mistress now. And you’ll answer my questions.”
Carter raised his eyebrow. “How come you get to be in charge?”
“Because I was smart enough to activate him.”
“You were just joking around!”
I ignored my brother, which is one of my many talents. “Now, Doughboy, first off, what’s a shabti?”
“Will you let me out of the box if I tell you?”
“You have to tell me,” I pointed out. “And no, I won’t.”
He sighed. “Shabti means answerer, as even the stupidest slave could tell you.”
Carter snapped his fingers. “I remember now! The Egyptians made models out of wax or clay—servants to do every kind of job they could imagine in the afterlife. They were supposed to come to life when their master called, so the deceased person could, like, kick back and relax and let the shabti do all his work for eternity.”
“First,” Doughboy snipped, “that is typical of humans! Lazing around while we do all the work. Second, afterlife work is only one function of shabti. We are also used by magicians for a great number of things in this life, because magicians would be total incompetents without us. Third, if you know so much, why are you asking me?”
“Why did Dad cut off your legs,” I wondered, “and leave you with a mouth?”
“I—” Doughboy clapped his little hands over his mouth. “Oh, very funny. Threaten the wax statue. Big bully! He cut my legs off so I wouldn’t run away or come to life in perfect form and try to kill him, naturally. Magicians are very mean. They maim statues to control them. They are afraid of us!”
“Would you come to life and try to kill him, had he made you perfectly?”
“Probably,” Doughboy admitted. “Are we done?”
“Not by half,” I said. “What happened to our dad?”
Doughboy shrugged. “How should I know? But I see his wand and staff aren’t in the box.”
“No,” Carter said. “The staff—the thing that turned into a snake—it got incinerated. And the wand…is that the boomerang thing?”
“The boomerang thing?” Doughboy said. “Gods of Eternal Egypt, you’re dense. Of course that’s his wand.”
“It got shattered,” I said.
“Tell me how,” Doughboy demanded.
Carter told him the story. I wasn’t sure that was the best idea, but I supposed a ten-centimeter-tall statue couldn’t do us that much harm.
“This is wonderful!” Doughboy cried.
“Why?” I asked. “Is Dad still alive?”
“No!” Doughboy said. “He’s almost certainly dead. The five gods of the Demon Days released? Wonderful! And anyone who duels with the Red Lord—”
“Wait,” I said. “I order you to tell me what happened.”
“Ha!” Doughboy said. “I only have to tell you what I know. Making educated guesses is a completely different task. I declare my service fulfilled!”
With that, he turned back to lifeless wax.
“Wait!” I picked him up again and shook him. “Tell me your educated guesses!”
Nothing happened.
“Maybe he’s got a timer,” Carter said. “Like only once a day. Or maybe you broke him.”
“Carter, make a helpful suggestion! What do we do now?”
He looked at the four ceramic statues on their pedestals. “Maybe—”
“Other shabti?”
“Worth a shot.”
If the statues were answerers, they weren’t very good at it. We tried holding them while giving them orders, though they were quite heavy. We tried pointing at them and shouting. We tried asking nicely. They gave us no answers at all.
I grew so frustrated I wanted to ha-di them into a million pieces, but I was still so hungry and tired, I had the feeling that spell would not be good for my health.
Finally we decided to check the cubbyholes round the walls. The plastic cylinders were the kind you might find at a drive-through bank—the kind that shoot up and down the pneumatic tubes. Inside each case was a papyrus scroll. Some looked new. Some looked thousands of years old. Each canister was labeled in hieroglyphs and (fortunately) in English.
“The Book of the Heavenly Cow,” Carter read on one. “What kind of name is that? What’ve you got, The Heavenly Badger?”
“No,” I said. “The Book of Slaying Apophis.”
Muffin meowed in the corner. When I looked over, her tail was puffed up.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“Apophis was a giant snake monster,” Carter muttered. “He was bad news.”
Muffin turned and raced up the stairs, back into the Great Room. Cats. No accounting for them.
Carter opened another scroll. “Sadie, look at this.”
He’d found a papyrus that was quite long, and most of the text on it seemed to be lines of hieroglyphs.
“Can you read any of this?” Carter asked.
I frowned at the writing, and the odd thing was, I couldn’t read it—except for one line at the top. “Only that bit where the title should be. It says…Blood of the Great House. What does that mean?”
“Great house,” Carter mused. “What do the words sound like in Egyptian?”
“Per-roh. Oh, it’s pharaoh, isn’t it? But I thought a pharaoh was a king?”
“It is,” Carter said. “The word literally means ‘great house,’ like the king’s mansion. Sort of like referring to the president as ‘the White House.’ So here it probably means more like Blood of the Pharaohs, all of them, the whole lineage of all the dynasties, not just one guy.”
“So why do I care about the pharaohs’ blood, and why can’t I read any of the rest?”
Carter stared at the lines. Suddenly his eyes widened. “They’re names. Look, they’re all written inside cartouches.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, because cartouche sounded like a rather rude word, and I pride myself on knowing those.
“The circles,” Carter explained. “They symbolize magic ropes. They’re supposed to protect the holder of the name from evil magic.” He eyed me. “And possibly also from other magicians reading their names.”
“Oh, you’re mental,” I said. But I looked at the lines, and saw what he meant. All the other words were protected by cartouches, and I couldn’t make sense of them.“Sadie,” Carter said, his voice urgent. He pointed to a cartouche at the very end of the list—the last entry in what looked to be a catalogue of thousands.
Inside the circle were two simple symbols, a basket and a wave.
“KN,” Carter announced. “I know this one. It’s our name, KANE.”“Missing a few letters, isn’t it?”
Carter shook his head. “Egyptians usually didn’t write vowels. Only consonants. You have to figure out the vowel sounds from context.”
“They really were nutters. So that could be KON or IKON or KNEE or AKNE.”
“It could be,” Carter agreed. “But it’s our name, Kane. I asked Dad to write it for me in hieroglyphs once, and that’s how he did it. But why are we in this list? And what is ‘blood of the pharaohs’?”
That icy tingle started on the back of my neck. I remembered what Amos had said, about both sides of our family being very ancient. Carter’s eyes met mine, and judging from his expression, he was having the same thought.
“There’s no way,” I protested.
“Must be some kind of joke,” he agreed. “Nobody keeps family records that far back.”
I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry. So many odd things had happened to us in the last day, but it was only when I saw our name in that book that I finally began to believe all this mad Egyptian stuff was real. Gods, magicians, monsters…and our family was tied into it.
Ever since breakfast, when it occurred to me that Dad had been trying to bring Mum back from the dead, a horrible emotion had been trying to take hold of me. And it wasn’t dread. Yes, the whole idea was creepy, much creepier than the shrine my grandparents kept in the hall cupboard to my dead mother. And yes, I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I’m a liar. The truth was, I’d had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to. The feeling I was trying to shake was hope. I knew I was setting myself up for colossal hurt. But if it really were possible to bring her back, then I would’ve blown up any number of Rosetta Stones to make it happen.
“Let’s keep looking,” I said.
After a few more minutes, I found a picture of some of animal-headed gods, five in a row, with a starry woman figure arching over them protectively like an umbrella. Dad had released five gods. Hmm.
“Carter,” I called. “What’s this, then?”
He came to have a look and his eyes lit up.
“That’s it!” he announced. “These five…and up here, their mother, Nut.”
I laughed. “A goddess named Nut? Is her last name Case?”
“Very funny,” Carter said. “She was the goddess of the sky.”
He pointed to the painted ceiling—the lady with the blue star-spangled skin, same as in the scroll.
“So what about her?” I asked.
Carter knit his eyebrows. “Something about the Demon Days. It had to do with the birth of these five gods, but it’s been a long time since Dad told me the story. This whole scroll is written in hieratic, I think. That’s like hieroglyph cursive. Can you read it?”
I shook my head. Apparently, my particular brand of insanity only applied to regular hieroglyphs.
“I wish I could find the story in English,” Carter said.
Just then there was a cracking noise behind us. The empty-handed clay statue hopped off his pedestal and marched towards us. Carter and I scrambled to get out of his way, but he walked straight past us, grabbed a cylinder from its cubbyhole and brought it to Carter.
“It’s a retrieval shabti,” I said. “A clay librarian!”
Carter swallowed nervously and took the cylinder. “Um…thanks.”
The statue marched back to his pedestal, jumped on, and hardened again into regular clay.
“I wonder…” I faced the shabti. “Sandwich and chips, please!”
Sadly, none of the statues jumped down to serve me. Perhaps food wasn’t allowed in the library.
Carter uncapped the cylinder and unrolled the papyrus. He sighed with relief. “This version is in English.”
As he scanned the text, his frown got deeper.
“You don’t look happy,” I noticed.
“Because I remember the story now. The five gods…if Dad really released them, it isn’t good news.”
“Hang on,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”
Carter took a shaky breath. “Okay. So the sky goddess, Nut, was married to the earth god, Geb.”
“That would be this chap on the floor?” I tapped my foot on the big green man with the river and hills and forests all over his body.
“Right,” Carter said. “Anyway, Geb and Nut wanted to have kids, but the king of the gods, Ra—he was the sun god—heard this bad prophecy that a child of Nut—”
“Child of Nut,” I snickered. “Sorry, go on.”
“—a child of Geb and Nut would one day replace Ra as king. So when Ra learned that Nut was pregnant, Ra freaked out. He forbade Nut to give birth to her children on any day or night of the year.”
I crossed my arms. “So what, she had to stay pregnant forever? That’s awfully mean.”
Carter shook his head. “Nut figured out a way. She set up a game of dice with the moon god, Khons. Every time Khons lost, he had to give Nut some of his moonlight. He lost so many times, Nut won enough moonlight to create five new days and tag them on to the end of the year.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “First, how can you gamble moonlight? And if you did, how could you make extra days out of it?”
“It’s a story!” Carter protested. “Anyway, the Egyptian calendar had three hundred and sixty days in the year, just like the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle. Nut created five days and added them to the end of the year—days that were not part of the regular year.”
“The Demon Days,” I guessed. “So the myth explains why a year has three hundred and sixty-five days. And I suppose she had her children—”
“During those five days,” Carter agreed. “One kid per day.”
“Again, how do you have five children in a row, each on a different day?”
“They’re gods,” Carter said. “They can do stuff like that.”
“Makes as much sense as the name Nut. But please, go on.”
“So when Ra found out, he was furious, but it was too late. The children were already born. Their names were Osiris—”
“The one Dad was after.”
“Then Horus, Set, Isis, and, um…” Carter consulted his scroll. “Nephthys. I always forget that one.”
“And the fiery man in the museum said, you have released all five.”
“Exactly. What if they were imprisoned together and Dad didn’t realize it? They were born together, so maybe they had to be summoned back into the world together. The thing is, one of these guys, Set, was a really bad dude. Like, the villain of Egyptian mythology. The god of evil and chaos and desert storms.”
I shivered. “Did he perhaps have something to do with fire?”
Carter pointed to one of the figures in the picture. The god had an animal head, but I couldn’t quite make out which sort of animal: Dog? Anteater? Evil bunny rabbit? Whichever it was, his hair and his clothes were bright red.
“The Red Lord,” I said.
“Sadie, there’s more,” Carter said. “Those five days—the Demon Days—were bad luck in Ancient Egypt. You had to be careful, wear good luck charms, and not do anything important or dangerous on those days. And in the British Museum, Dad told Set: They’ll stop you before the Demon Days are over.”
“Surely you don’t think he meant us,” I said. “We’re supposed to stop this Set character?”
Carter nodded. “And if the last five days of our calendar year still count as the Egyptian Demon Days—they’d start on December 27, the day after tomorrow.”
The shabti seemed to be staring at me expectantly, but I had not the slightest idea what to do. Demon Days and evil bunny gods—if I heard one more impossible thing, my head would explode.
And the worst of it? The little insistent voice in the back of my head saying: It’s not impossible. To save Dad, we must defeat Set.
As if that had been on my to-do list for Christmas hols. See Dad—check. Develop strange powers—check. Defeat an evil god of chaos—check. The whole idea was mad!
Suddenly there was a loud crash, as if something had broken in the Great Room. Khufu began barking in alarm.
Carter and I locked eyes. Then we ran for the stairs.
SADIE
8. Muffin Plays with Knives
OUR BABOON WAS GOING completely sky goddess—which is to say, nuts.
He swung from column to column, bouncing along the balconies, overturning pots and statues. Then he ran back to the terrace windows, stared outside for a moment, and proceeded to go berserk again.
Muffin was also at the window. She crouched on all fours with her tail twitching as if she were stalking a bird.
“Perhaps it’s just a passing flamingo,” I suggested hopefully, but I’m not sure Carter could hear me over the screaming baboon.
We ran to the glass doors. At first I didn’t see any problem. Then water exploded from the pool, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Two enormous creatures, most definitely not flamingos, were thrashing about with our crocodile, Philip of Macedonia.
I couldn’t make out what they were, only that they were fighting Philip two against one. They disappeared under the boiling water, and Khufu ran screaming through the Great Room again, bonking himself on the head with his empty Cheerios box, which I must say was not particularly helpful.
“Longnecks,” Carter said incredulously. “Sadie, did you see those things?”
I couldn’t find an answer. Then one of the creatures was thrown out of the pool. It slammed into the doors right in front of us, and I jumped back in alarm. On the other side of the glass was the most terrifying animal I’d ever seen. Its body was like a leopard’s—lean and sinewy, with golden spotted fur—but its neck was completely wrong. It was green and scaly and at least as long as the rest of its body. It had a cat’s head, but no normal cat’s. When it turned its glowing red eyes towards us, it howled, showing a forked tongue and fangs dripping with green venom.
I realized my legs were shaking and I was making a very undignified whimpering sound.
The cat-serpent jumped back into the pool to join its companion in beating up Philip, who spun and snapped but seemed unable to hurt his attackers.
“We have to help Philip!” I cried. “He’ll be killed!”
I reached for the door handle, but Muffin growled at me.
Carter said, “Sadie, no! You heard Amos. We can’t open the doors for any reason. The house is protected by magic. Philip will have to beat them on his own.”
“But what if he can’t? Philip!”
The old crocodile turned. For a second his pink reptilian eye focused on me as if he could sense my concern. Then the cat-snakes bit at his underbelly and Philip rose up so that only the tip of his tail still touched the water. His body began to glow. A low hum filled the air, like an airplane engine starting up. When Philip came down, he slammed into the terrace with all his might.
The entire house shook. Cracks appeared in the concrete terrace outside, and the swimming pool split right down the middle as the far end crumbled into empty space.
“No!” I cried.
But the edge of the terrace ripped free, plunging Philip and the monsters straight into the East River.
My whole body began to tremble. “He sacrificed himself. He killed the monsters.”
“Sadie…” Carter’s voice was faint. “What if he didn’t? What if they come back?”
“Don’t say that!”
“I—I recognized them, Sadie. Those creatures. Come on.”
“Where?” I demanded, but he ran straight back to the library.
Carter marched up to the shabti who’d helped us before. “Bring me the…gah, what’s it called?”
“What?” I asked.
“Something Dad showed me. It’s a big stone plate or something. Had a picture of the first pharaoh, the guy who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom. His name…” His eyes lit up. “Narmer! Bring me the Narmer Plate!”
Nothing happened.
“No,” Carter decided. “Not a plate. It was…one of those things that holds paint. A palette. Bring me the Narmer Palette!”
The empty-handed shabti didn’t move, but across the room, the statue with the little hook came to life. He jumped off his pedestal and disappeared in a cloud of dust. A heartbeat later, he reappeared on the table. At his feet was a wedge of flat gray stone, shaped like a shield and about as long as my forearm.
“No!” Carter protested. “I meant a picture of it! Oh great, I think this is the real artifact. The shabti must’ve stolen it from the Cairo Museum. We’ve got to return—”
“Hang on,” I said. “We might as well have a look.”
The surface of the stone was carved with the picture of a man smashing another man in the face with what looked like a spoon.“That’s Narmer with the spoon,” I guessed. “Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal?”
Carter shook his head. “He’s conquering his enemies and uniting Egypt. See his hat? That’s the crown of Lower Egypt, before the two countries united.”
“The bit that looks like a bowling pin?”
“You’re impossible,” Carter grumbled.
“He looks like Dad, doesn’t he?”
“Sadie, be serious!”
“I am serious. Look at his profile.”
Carter decided to ignore me. He examined the stone like he was afraid to touch it. “I need to see the back but I don’t want to turn it over. We might damage—”
I grabbed the stone and flipped it over.
“Sadie! You could’ve broken it!”
“That’s what mend spells are for, yes?”
We examined the back of the stone, and I had to admit I was impressed by Carter’s memory. Two cat-snake monsters stood in the center of the palette, their necks entwined. On either side, Egyptian men with ropes were trying to capture the creatures.“They’re called serpopards,” Carter said. “Serpent leopards.”
“Fascinating,” I said. “But what are serpopards?”
“No one knows exactly. Dad thought they were creatures of chaos—very bad news, and they’ve been around forever. This stone is one of the oldest artifacts from Egypt. Those pictures were carved five thousand years ago.”
“So why are five-thousand-year-old monsters attacking our house?”
“Last night, in Phoenix, the fiery man ordered his servants to capture us. He said to send the longnecks first.”
I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I wished I hadn’t chewed my last piece of gum. “Well…good thing they’re at the bottom of the East River.”
Just then Khufu rushed into the library, screaming and slapping his head.
“Suppose I shouldn’t have said that,” I muttered.
Carter told the shabti to return the Narmer Palette, and both statue and stone disappeared. Then we followed the baboon upstairs.
The serpopards were back, their fur wet and slimy from the river, and they weren’t happy. They prowled the broken ledge of the terrace, their snake necks whipping round as they sniffed the doors, looking for a way in. They spit poison that steamed and bubbled on the glass. Their forked tongues darted in and out.
“Agh, agh!” Khufu picked up Muffin, who was sitting on the sofa, and offered me the cat.
“I really don’t think that will help,” I told him.
“Agh!” Khufu insisted.
Neither Muffin nor cat ended in -o, so I guessed Khufu was not trying to offer me a snack, but I didn’t know what he was on about. I took the cat just to shut him up.
“Mrow?” Muffin looked up at me.
“It’ll be all right,” I promised, trying not to sound scared out of my mind. “The house is protected by magic.”
“Sadie,” Carter said. “They’ve found something.”
The serpopards had converged at the left-hand door and were intently sniffing the handle.
“Isn’t it locked?” I asked.
Both monsters smashed their ugly faces against the glass. The door shuddered. Blue hieroglyphs glowed along the doorframe, but their light was faint.
“I don’t like this,” Carter murmured.
I prayed that the monsters would give up. Or that perhaps Philip of Macedonia would climb back to the terrace (do crocodiles climb?) and renew the fight.
Instead, the monsters smashed their heads against the glass again. This time a web of cracks appeared. The blue hieroglyphs flickered and died.
“AGH!” Khufu screamed. He waved his hand vaguely at the cat.
“Maybe if I try the ha-di spell,” I said.
Carter shook his head. “You almost fainted after you blew up those doors. I don’t want you passing out, or worse.”
Carter once again surprised me. He tugged a strange sword from one of Amos’s wall displays. The blade had an odd crescent-moon curve and looked horribly impractical.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Unless—unless you’ve got a better idea,” he stammered, his face beading with perspiration. “It’s me, you, and the baboon against those things.”
I’m sure Carter was trying to be brave in his own extremely unbrave way, but he was shaking worse than I was. If anyone was going to pass out, I feared it would be him, and I didn’t fancy him doing that while holding a sharp object.
Then the serpopards struck a third time, and the door shattered. We backed up to the foot of Thoth’s statue as the creatures stalked into the great room. Khufu threw his basketball, which bounced harmlessly off the first monster’s head. Then he launched himself at the serpopard.
“Khufu, don’t!” Carter yelled.
But the baboon sank his fangs into the monster’s neck. The serpopard lashed around, trying to bite him. Khufu leaped off, but the monster was quick. It used its head like a bat and smacked poor Khufu in midair, sending him straight through the shattered door, over the broken terrace, and into the void.
I wanted to sob, but there wasn’t time. The serpopards came toward us. We couldn’t outrun them. Carter raised his sword. I pointed my hand at the first monster and tried to speak the ha-di spell, but my voice stuck in my throat.
“Mrow!” Muffin said, more insistently. Why was the cat still nestled in my arm and not running away in terror?
Then I remembered something Amos had said: Muffin will protect you. Was that what Khufu had been trying to remind me? It seemed impossible, but I stammered, “M-muffin, I order you to protect us.”
I tossed her on the floor. Just for a moment, the silver pendant on her collar seemed to gleam. Then the cat arched her back leisurely, sat down, and began licking a front paw. Well, really, what was I expecting—heroics?
The two red-eyed monsters bared their fangs. They raised their heads and prepared to strike—and an explosion of dry air blasted through the room. It was so powerful, it knocked Carter and me to the floor. The serpopards stumbled and backed away.
I staggered to my feet and realized that the center of the blast had been Muffin. My cat was no longer there. In her place was a woman—small and lithe like a gymnast. Her jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore a skintight leopard-skin jumpsuit and Muffin’s pendant around her neck.
She turned and grinned at me, and her eyes were still Muffin’s—yellow with black feline pupils. “About time,” she chided.
The serpopards got over their shock and charged the cat woman. Their heads struck with lightning speed. They should’ve ripped her in two, but the cat lady leaped straight up, flipping three times, and landed above them, perched on the mantel.
She flexed her wrists, and two enormous knives shot from her sleeves into her hands. “A-a-ah, fun!”
The monsters charged. She launched herself between them, dancing and dodging with incredible grace, letting them lash at her futilely while she threaded their necks together. When she stepped away, the serpopards were hopelessly intertwined. The more they struggled, the tighter the knots became. They trampled back and forth, knocking over furniture and roaring in frustration.
“Poor things,” the cat woman purred. “Let me help.”
Her knives flashed, and the two monsters’ heads thudded to the floor at her feet. Their bodies collapsed and dissolved into enormous piles of sand.
“So much for my playthings,” the woman said sadly. “From sand they come, and to sand they return.”
She turned towards us, and the knives shot back into her sleeves. “Carter, Sadie, we should leave. Worse will be coming.”
Carter made a choking sound. “Worse? Who—how—what—”
“All in good time.” The woman stretched her arms above her head with great satisfaction. “So good to be in human form again! Now, Sadie, can you open us a door through the Duat, please?”
I blinked. “Um…no. I mean—I don’t know how.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, clearly disappointed. “Shame. We’ll need more power, then. An obelisk.”
“But that’s in London,” I protested. “We can’t—”
“There’s a nearer one in Central Park. I try to avoid Manhattan, but this is an emergency. We’ll just pop over and open a portal.”
“A portal to where?” I demanded. “Who are you, and why are you my cat?”
The woman smiled. “For now, we just want a portal out of danger. As for my name, it’s not Muffin, thank you very much. It’s—”
“Bast,” Carter interrupted. “Your pendant—it’s the symbol of Bast, goddess of cats. I thought it was just decoration but…that’s you, isn’t it?”
“Very good, Carter,” Bast said. “Now come, while we can still make it out of here alive.”