SADIE HERE. SORRY FOR THE DELAY, though I don’t suppose you’d notice on a recording. My nimble-fingered brother dropped the microphone into a pit full of…oh, never mind. Back to the story.
Carter woke with such a start, he banged his knees against the drinks tray, which was quite funny.
“Sleep well?” I asked.
He blinked at me in confusion. “You’re human.” “How kind of you to notice.”
I took another bite of my pizza. I’d never eaten pizza from a china plate or had a Coke in a glass (with ice no less—Americans are so odd) but I was enjoying first class.
“I changed back an hour ago.” I cleared my throat. “It—ah—was helpful, what you said, about focusing on what’s important.”
Awkward saying even that much, as I remembered everything he’d told me while I was in kite form about his travels with Dad—how he’d gotten lost in the Underground, gotten sick in Venice, squealed like a baby when he’d found a scorpion in his sock. So much ammunition to tease him with, but oddly I wasn’t tempted. The way he’d poured out his soul…Perhaps he thought I didn’t understand him in kite form—but he’d been so honest, so unguarded, and he’d done it all to calm me down. If he hadn’t given me something to focus on, I’d probably still be hunting field mice over the Potomac.
Carter had spoken about Dad as if their travels together had been a great thing, yes, but also quite a chore, with Carter always struggling to please and be on his best behavior, with no one to relax with, or talk to. Dad was, I had to admit, quite a presence. You’d be hard-pressed not to want his approval. (No doubt that’s where I get my own stunningly charismatic personality.) I saw him only twice a year, and even so I had to prepare myself mentally for the experience. For the first time, I began to wonder if Carter really had the better end of the bargain. Would I trade my life for his?
I also decided not to tell him what had finally changed me back to human. I hadn’t focused on Dad at all. I’d imagined Mum alive, imagined us walking down Oxford Street together, gazing in the shop windows and talking
and laughing—the kind of ordinary day we’d never gotten to share. An impossible wish, I know. But it had been powerful enough to remind me of who I was.
Didn’t say any of that, but Carter studied my face, and I sensed that he picked up my thoughts a little too well.
I took a sip of Coke. “You missed lunch, by the way.” “You didn’t try to wake me?”
On the other side of the aisle, Bast burped. She’d just finished off her plate of salmon and was looking quite satisfied. “I could summon more Friskies,” she offered. “Or cheese sandwiches.”
“No thanks,” Carter muttered. He looked devastated.
“God, Carter,” I said. “If it’s that important to you, I’ve got some pizza left—”
“It’s not that,” he said. And he told us how his ba had almost been captured by Set.
The news gave me trouble breathing. I felt as if I were stuck in kite form again, unable to think clearly. Dad trapped in a red pyramid? Poor Amos used as some sort of pawn? I looked at Bast for some kind of reassurance. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Her expression was grim. “Sadie, I don’t know. Set will be most powerful on his birthday, and sunrise is the most auspicious moment for magic. If he’s able to generate one great explosion of storm energy at sunrise on that day—using not only his own magic, but augmenting it with the power of other gods he’s managed to enslave…the amount of chaos he could unleash is almost unimaginable.” She shuddered. “Carter, you say a simple demon gave him this idea?”
“Sounded like it,” Carter said. “Or he tweaked the original plan, anyway.”
She shook her head. “This is not like Set.”
I coughed. “What do you mean? It’s exactly like him.”
“No,” Bast insisted. “This is horrendous, even for him. Set wishes to be king, but such an explosion might leave him nothing to rule. It’s almost as if…” She stopped herself, the thought seemingly too disturbing. “I don’t understand it, but we’ll be landing soon. You’ll have to ask Thoth.”
“You make it sound like you’re not coming,” I said.
“Thoth and I don’t get along very well. Your chances of surviving might be better—”
The seat belt light came on. The captain announced we’d started our descent into Memphis. I peered out the window and saw a vast brown river cutting across the landscape—a river larger than any I’d ever seen. It reminded me uncomfortably of a giant snake.
The flight attendant came by and pointed to my lunch plate. “Finished,
dear?”
“It seems so,” I told her gloomily.
Memphis hadn’t gotten word that it was winter. The trees were green and the sky was a brilliant blue.
We’d insisted Bast not “borrow” a car this time, so she agreed to rent one as long as she got a convertible. I didn’t ask where she got the money, but soon we were cruising through the mostly deserted streets of Memphis with our BMW’s top down.
I remember only snapshots of the city. We passed through one neighborhood that might’ve been a set from Gone with the Wind—big white mansions on enormous lawns shaded by cypress trees, although the plastic Santa Claus displays on the rooftops rather ruined the effect. On the next block, we almost got killed by an old woman driving a Cadillac out of a church parking lot. Bast swerved and honked her horn, and the woman just smiled and waved. Southern hospitality, I suppose.
After a few more blocks, the houses turned to rundown shacks. I spotted two African American boys wearing jeans and muscle shirts, sitting on their front porch, strumming acoustic guitars and singing. They sounded so good, I was tempted to stop.
On the next corner stood a cinder block restaurant with a hand-painted sign that read chicken & waffles. There was a queue of twenty people outside.
“You Americans have the strangest taste. What planet is this?” I asked. Carter shook his head. “And where would Thoth be?”
Bast sniffed the air and turned left onto a street called Poplar. “We’re getting close. If I know Thoth, he’ll find a center of learning. A library, perhaps, or a cache of books in a magician’s tomb.”
“Don’t have a lot of those in Tennessee,” Carter guessed.
Then I spotted a sign and grinned broadly. “The University of Memphis, perhaps?”
“Well done, Sadie!” Bast purred.
Carter scowled at me. The poor boy gets jealous, you know.
A few minutes later, we were strolling through the campus of a small college: red brick buildings and wide courtyards. It was eerily quiet, except for the sound of a ball echoing on concrete.
As soon as Carter heard it, he perked up. “Basketball.” “Oh, please,” I said. “We need to find Thoth.”
But Carter followed the sound of the ball, and we followed him. He rounded the corner of a building and froze. “Let’s ask them.”
I didn’t understand what he was on about. Then I turned the corner and yelped. On the basketball court, five players were in the middle of an intense game. They wore an assortment of jerseys from different American teams,
and they all seemed keen to win—grunting and snarling at each other, stealing the ball and pushing.
Oh…and the players were all baboons.
“The sacred animal of Thoth,” Bast said. “We must be in the right place.”
One of the baboons had lustrous golden hair much lighter than the others, and a more, er, colorful bottom. He wore a purple jersey that seemed oddly familiar.
“Is that…a Lakers jersey?” I asked, hesitant to even name Carter’s silly obsession.
He nodded, and we both grinned. “Khufu!” we yelled.
True, we hardly knew the baboon. We’d spent less than a day with him, and our time at Amos’s mansion seemed like ages ago, but still I felt like we’d recovered a long-lost friend.
Khufu jumped into my arms and barked at me. “Agh! Agh!” He picked through my hair, looking for bugs, I suppose [No comments from you, Carter!], and dropped to the ground, slapping the pavement to show how pleased he was.
Bast laughed. “He says you smell like flamingos.” “You speak Baboon?” Carter asked.
The goddess shrugged. “He also wants to know where you’ve been.” “Where we’ve been?” I said. “Well, first off, tell him I’ve spent the
better part of the day as a kite, which is not a flamingo and does not end in -o, so it shouldn’t be on his diet. Secondly—”
“Hold on.” Bast turned to Khufu and said, “Agh!” Then she looked back at me. “All right, go ahead.”
I blinked. “Okay…um, and secondly, where has he been?” She relayed this in a single grunt.
Khufu snorted and grabbed the basketball, which sent his baboon friends into a frenzy of barking and scratching and snarling.
“He dove into the river and swam back,” Bast translated, “but when he returned, the house was destroyed and we were gone. He waited a day for Amos to return, but he never did. So Khufu made his way to Thoth. Baboons are under his protection, after all.”
“Why is that?” Carter asked. “I mean, no offense, but Thoth is the god of knowledge, right?”
“Baboons are very wise animals,” Bast said.
“Agh!” Khufu picked his nose, then turned his Technicolor bum our direction. He threw his friends the ball. They began to fight over it, showing one another their fangs and slapping their heads.
“Wise?” I asked.
“Well, they’re not cats, mind you,” Bast added. “But, yes, wise. Khufu says that as soon as Carter keeps his promise, he’ll take you to the professor.”
I blinked. “The prof— Oh, you mean…right.” “What promise?” Carter asked.
The corner of Bast’s mouth twitched. “Apparently, you promised to show him your basketball skills.”
Carter’s eyes widened in alarm. “We don’t have time!” “Oh, it’s fine,” Bast promised. “It’s best that I go now.”
“But where, Bast?” I asked, as I wasn’t anxious to be separated from her again. “How will we find you?”
The look in her eyes changed to something like guilt, as if she’d just caused a horrible accident. “I’ll find you when you get out, if you get out ”
“What do you mean if?” Carter asked, but Bast had already turned into Muffin and raced off.
Khufu barked at Carter most insistently. He tugged his hand, pulling him onto the court. The baboons immediately broke into two teams. Half took off their jerseys. Half left them on. Carter, sadly, was on the no-jersey team, and Khufu helped him pull his shirt off, exposing his bony chest. The teams began to play.
Now, I know nothing about basketball. But I’m fairly sure one isn’t supposed to trip over one’s shoes, or catch a pass with one’s forehead, or dribble (is that the word?) with both hands as if petting a possibly rabid dog. But that is exactly the way Carter played. The baboons simply ran him over, quite literally. They scored basket after basket as Carter staggered back and forth, getting hit with the ball whenever it came close to him, tripping over monkey limbs until he was so dizzy he turned in a circle and fell over. The baboons stopped playing and watched him in disbelief. Carter lay in the middle of the court, covered in sweat and panting. The other baboons looked at Khufu. It was quite obvious what they were thinking: Who invited this human? Khufu covered his eyes in shame.
“Carter,” I said with glee, “all that talk about basketball and the Lakers, and you’re absolute rubbish! Beaten by monkeys!”
He groaned miserably. “It was it was Dad’s favorite game.”
I stared at him. Dad’s favorite game. God, why hadn’t that occurred to
me?
Apparently he took my gobsmacked expression as further criticism.
“I…I can tell you any NBA stat you want,” he said a bit desperately.
“Rebounds, assists, free throw percentages.”
The other baboons went back to their game, ignoring Carter and Khufu both. Khufu let out a disgusted noise, half gag and half bark.
I understood the sentiment, but I came forward and offered Carter my hand. “Come on, then. It doesn’t matter.”
“If I had better shoes,” he suggested. “Or if I wasn’t so tired—”
“Carter,” I said with a smirk. “It doesn’t matter. And I’ll not breathe a word to Dad when we save him.”
He looked at me with obvious gratitude. (Well, I am rather wonderful, after all.) Then he took my hand, and I hoisted him up.
“Now for god’s sake, put on your shirt,” I said. “And Khufu, it’s time you took us to the professor.”
Khufu led us into a deserted science building. The air in the hallways smelled of vinegar, and the empty classroom labs looked like something from an American high school, not the sort of place a god would hang out. We climbed the stairs and found a row of professors’ offices. Most of the doors were closed. One had been left open, revealing a space no bigger than a broom closet stuffed with books, a tiny desk, and one chair. I wondered if that professor had done something bad to get such a small office.
“Agh!” Khufu stopped in front of a polished mahogany door, much nicer than the others. A newly stenciled name glistened on the glass: Dr. Thoth.
Without knocking, Khufu opened the door and waddled inside.
“After you, chicken man,” I said to Carter. (And yes, I’m sure he was regretting telling me about that particular incident. After all, I couldn’t completely stop teasing him. I have a reputation to maintain.)
I expected another broom closet. Instead, the office was impossibly big.
The ceiling rose at least ten meters, with one side of the office all windows, looking out over the Memphis skyline. Metal stairs led up to a loft dominated by an enormous telescope, and from somewhere up there came the sound of an electric guitar being strummed quite badly. The other walls of the office were crammed with bookshelves. Worktables overflowed with weird bits and bobs—chemistry sets, half-assembled computers, stuffed animals with electrical wires sticking out of their heads. The room smelled strongly of cooked beef, but with a smokier, tangier scent than I’d ever smelled.
Strangest of all, right in front of us, half a dozen longnecked birds— ibises—sat behind desks like receptionists, typing on laptop computers with their beaks.
Carter and I looked at each other. For once I was at a loss for words. “Agh!” Khufu called out.
Up in the loft, the strumming stopped. A lanky man in his twenties stood up, electric guitar in hand. He had an unruly mane of blond hair like Khufu’s, and he wore a stained white lab coat over faded jeans and a black T-shirt. At first I thought blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. Then I realized it was some sort of meat sauce.
“Fascinating.” He broke into a wide grin. “I’ve discovered something, Khufu. This is not Memphis, Egypt.”
Khufu gave me a sideways look, and I could swear his expression meant,
Duh.
“I’ve also discovered a new form of magic called blues music,” the man
continued. “And barbecue. Yes, you must try barbecue.”
Khufu looked unimpressed. He climbed to the top of a bookshelf, grabbed a box of Cheerios, and began to munch.
The guitar man slid down the banister with perfect balance and landed in front of us. “Isis and Horus,” he said. “I see you’ve found new bodies.”
His eyes were a dozen colors, shifting like a kaleidoscope, with hypnotic effect.
I managed to stutter, “Um, we’re not—”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “Trying to share the body, eh? Don’t think I’m fooled for a minute, Isis. I know you’re in charge.”
“But she’s not!” I protested. “My name is Sadie Kane. I assume you’re Thoth?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You claim not to know me? Of course I’m Thoth.
Also called Djehuti. Also called—” I stifled a laugh. “Ja-hooty?”
Thoth looked offended. “In Ancient Egyptian, it’s a perfectly fine name. The Greeks called me Thoth. Then later they confused me with their god Hermes. Even had the nerve to rename my sacred city Hermopolis, though we’re nothing alike. Believe me, if you’ve ever met Hermes—”
“Agh!” Khufu yelled through a mouthful of Cheerios.
“You’re right,” Thoth agreed. “I’m getting off track. So you claim to be Sadie Kane. And…” He swung a finger toward Carter, who was watching the ibises type on their laptops. “I suppose you’re not Horus.”
“Carter Kane,” said Carter, still distracted by the ibises’ screens. “What is that?”
Thoth brightened. “Yes, they’re called computers. Marvelous, aren’t they? Apparently—”
“No, I mean what are the birds typing?” Carter squinted and read from the screen. “‘A Short Treatise on the Evolution of Yaks’?”
“My scholarly essays,” Thoth explained. “I try to keep several projects going at once. For instance, did you know this university does not offer majors in astrology or leechcraft? Shocking! I intend to change that. I’m renovating new headquarters right now down by the river. Soon Memphis will be a true center of learning!”
“That’s brilliant,” I said halfheartedly. “We need help defeating Set.” The ibises stopped typing and stared at me.
Thoth wiped the barbecue sauce off his mouth. “You have the nerve to ask this after last time?”
“Last time?” I repeated.
“I have the account here somewhere….” Thoth patted the pockets of his
lab coat. He pulled out a rumpled piece of paper and read it. “No, grocery list.”
He tossed it over his shoulder. As soon as the paper hit the floor, it became a loaf of wheat bread, a jug of milk, and a six-pack of Mountain Dew. Thoth checked his sleeves. I realized the stains on his coat were smeared words, printed in every language. The stains moved and changed, forming hieroglyphs, English letters, Demotic symbols. He brushed a stain off his lapel and seven letters fluttered to the floor, forming a word: crawdad. The word morphed into a slimy crustacean, like a shrimp, which wiggled its legs
for only a moment before an ibis snapped it up.
“Ah, never mind,” Thoth said at last. “I’ll just tell you the short version: To avenge his father, Osiris, Horus challenged Set to a duel. The winner would become king of the gods.”
“Horus won,” Carter said. “You do remember!” “No, I read about it.”
“And do you remember that without my help, Isis and you both would’ve died? Oh, I tried to mediate a solution to prevent the battle. That is one of my jobs, you know: to keep balance between order and chaos. But no- o-o, Isis convinced me to help your side because Set was getting too powerful. And the battle almost destroyed the world.”
He complains too much, Isis said inside my head. It wasn’t so bad. “No?” Thoth demanded, and I got the feeling he could hear her voice as
well as I could. “Set stabbed out Horus’s eye.” “Ouch.” Carter blinked.
“Yes, and I replaced it with a new eye made of moonlight. The Eye of Horus—your famous symbol. That was me, thank you very much. And when you cut off Isis’s head—”
“Hold up.” Carter glanced at me. “I cut off her head?” I got better, Isis assured me.
“Only because I healed you, Isis!” Thoth said. “And yes, Carter, Horus, whatever you call yourself, you were so mad, you cut off her head. You were reckless, you see—about to charge Set while you were still weak, and Isis tried to stop you. That made you so angry you took your sword— Well, the point is, you almost destroyed each other before you could defeat Set. If you start another fight with the Red Lord, beware. He will use chaos to turn you against each other.”
We’ll defeat him again, Isis promised. Thoth is just jealous. “Shut up,” Thoth and I said at the same time.
He looked at me with surprise. “So, Sadie…you are trying to stay in control. It won’t last. You may be blood of the pharaohs, but Isis is a deceptive, power-hungry—”
“I can contain her,” I said, and I had to use all my will to keep Isis from blurting out a string of insults.
Thoth fingered the frets of his guitar. “Don’t be so sure. Isis probably told you she helped defeat Set. Did she also tell you she was the reason Set got out of control in the first place? She exiled our first king.”
“You mean Ra?” Carter said. “Didn’t he get old and decide to leave the earth?”
Thoth snorted. “He was old, yes, but he was forced to leave. Isis got tired of waiting for him to retire. She wanted her husband, Osiris, to become king. She also wanted more power. So one day, while Ra was napping, Isis secretly collected a bit of the sun god’s drool.”
“Eww,” I said. “Since when does drool make you powerful?”
Thoth scowled at me accusingly. “You mixed the spit with clay to create a poisonous snake. That night, the serpent slipped into Ra’s bedroom and bit him on the ankle. No amount of magic, even mine, could heal him. He would’ve died—”
“Gods can die?” Carter asked.
“Oh, yes,” Thoth said. “Of course most of the time we rise again from the Duat—eventually. But this poison ate away at Ra’s very being. Isis, of course, acted innocent. She cried to see Ra in pain. She tried to help with her magic. Finally she told Ra there was only one way to save him: Ra must tell her his secret name.”
“Secret name?” I asked. “Like Bruce Wayne?”
“Everything in Creation has a secret name,” Thoth said. “Even gods. To know a being’s secret name is to have power over that creature. Isis promised that with Ra’s secret name, she could heal him. Ra was in so much pain, he agreed. And Isis healed him.”
“But it gave her power over him,” Carter guessed.
“Extreme power,” Thoth agreed. “She forced Ra to retreat into the heavens, opening the way for her beloved, Osiris, to become the new king of the gods. Set had been an important lieutenant to Ra, but he could not bear to see his brother Osiris become king. This made Set and Osiris enemies, and here we are five millennia later, still fighting that war, all because of Isis.”
“But that’s not my fault!” I said. “I would never do something like that.” “Wouldn’t you?” Thoth asked. “Wouldn’t you do anything to save your
family, even if it upset the balance of the cosmos?”
His kaleidoscope eyes locked on mine, and I felt a surge of defiance. Well, why shouldn’t I help my family? Who was this nutter in a lab coat telling me what I could and couldn’t do?
Then I realized I didn’t know who was thinking that: Isis or me. Panic started building in my chest. If I couldn’t tell my own thoughts from those of Isis, how long before I went completely mad?
“No, Thoth,” I croaked. “You have to believe me. I’m in control—me, Sadie—and I need your help. Set has our father.”
I let it spill out, then—everything from the British Museum to Carter’s vision of the red pyramid. Thoth listened without comment, but I could swear new stains developed on his lab coat as I talked, as if some of my words were being added to the mix.
“Just look at something for us,” I finished. “Carter, hand him the book.”
Carter rummaged through his bag and brought out the book we’d stolen in Paris. “You wrote this, right?” he said. “It tells how to defeat Set.”
Thoth unfolded the papyrus pages. “Oh, dear. I hate reading my old work. Look at this sentence. I’d never write it that way now.” He patted his lab coat pockets. “Red pen—does anyone have one?”
Isis chafed against my willpower, insisting that we blast some sense into Thoth. One fireball, she pleaded. Just one enormous magical fireball, please?
I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I kept her under control.
“Look, Thoth,” I said. “Ja-hooty, whatever. Set is about to destroy North America at the very least, possibly the world. Millions of people will die. You said you care about balance. Will you help us or not?”
For a moment, the only sounds were ibis beaks tapping on keyboards. “You are in trouble,” Thoth agreed. “So let me ask, why do you think
your father put you in this position? Why did he release the gods?”
I almost said, To bring back Mum. But I didn’t believe that anymore. “My mum saw the future,” I guessed. “Something bad was coming. I
think she and Dad were trying to stop it. They thought the only way was to release the gods.”
“Even though using the power of the gods is incredibly dangerous for mortals,” Thoth pressed, “and against the law of the House of Life—a law that I convinced Iskandar to make, by the way.”
I remembered something the old Chief Lector had told me in the Hall of Ages. “Gods have great power, but only humans have creativity.” “I think my mum convinced Iskandar that the rule was wrong. Maybe he couldn’t admit it publicly, but she made him change his mind. Whatever is coming—it’s so bad, gods and mortals are going to need each other.”
“And what is coming?” Thoth asked. “The rise of Set?” His tone was coy, like a teacher trying a trick question.
“Maybe,” I said carefully, “but I don’t know.”
Up on the bookshelf, Khufu belched. He bared his fangs in a messy grin. “You have a point, Khufu,” Thoth mused. “She does not sound like Isis.
Isis would never admit she doesn’t know something.” I had to clamp a mental hand over Isis’s mouth.
Thoth tossed the book back to Carter. “Let’s see if you act as well as you talk. I will explain the spell book, provided you prove to me that you truly
have control of your gods, that you’re not simply repeating the same old patterns.”
“A test?” Carter said. “We accept.”
“Now, hang on,” I protested. Maybe being homeschooled, Carter didn’t realize that “test” is normally a bad thing.
“Wonderful,” Thoth said. “There is an item of power I require from a magician’s tomb. Bring it to me.”
“Which magician’s tomb?” I asked.
But Thoth took a piece of chalk from his lab coat and scribbled something in the air. A doorway opened in front of him.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Bast said we can’t summon portals during the Demon Days.”
“Mortals can’t,” Thoth agreed. “But a god of magic can. If you succeed, we’ll have barbecue.”
The doorway pulled us into a black void, and Thoth’s office disappeared.
