The Red Pyramid -1 (26 page)

"Sadie, don't listen," Bast warned. "Come here."

"The cat goddess deceives you," the magician said. "She abandoned her post. She endangered us all. She will lead you to ruin."

I could tell he meant it. He was absolutely convinced of what he said.

I turned to Bast. Her expression had changed. She looked wounded, even grief-stricken.

"What does he mean?" I said. "What did you do wrong?"

"We have to leave," she warned. "Or they will kill us."

I looked at the portal. Carter was already through. That decided it. I wasn't going to be separated from him. As annoying as he was, Carter was the only person I had left. (How is that for depressing?)

"Toss me," I said.

Bast grabbed me. "See you in America." Then she chucked me up the side of the pyramid.

I heard the magician roar, "Surrender!" And an explosion rattled the glass next to my head.

Then I plunged into the hot vortex of sand.

I woke in a small room with industrial carpeting, gray walls, and metal-framed windows. I felt as if I were inside a high-tech refrigerator. I sat up groggily and discovered I was coated in cold, wet sand.

"Ugh," I said. "Where are we?"

Carter and Bast stood by the window. Apparently they'd been conscious for a while, because they'd both brushed themselves off.

"You've got to see this view," Carter said.

I got shakily to my feet and nearly fell down again when I saw how high we were.

An entire city spread out below us--I mean far below, well over a hundred meters. I could almost believe we were still in Paris, because a river curved off to our left, and the land was mostly flat. There were white government buildings clustered around networks of parks and circular roads, all spread out under a winter sky. But the light was wrong. It was still afternoon here, so we must've traveled west. And as my eyes made their way to the other end of a long rectangular green space, I found myself staring at a mansion that looked oddly familiar.

"Is that...the White House?"

Carter nodded. "You got us to America, all right. Washington, D.C."

"But we're sky high!"

Bast chuckled. "You didn't specify any particular American city, did you?"

"Well...no."

"So you got the default portal for the U.S.--the largest single source of Egyptian power in North America."

I stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"The biggest obelisk ever constructed," she said. "The Washington Monument."

I had another moment of vertigo and moved away from the window. Carter grabbed my shoulder and helped me sit down.

"You should rest," he said. "You passed out for...how long, Bast?"

"Two hours and thirty-two minutes," she said. "I'm sorry, Sadie. Opening more than one portal a day is extremely taxing, even with Isis helping."

Carter frowned. "But we need her to do it again, right? It's not sunset here yet. We can still use portals. Let's open one and get to Arizona. That's where Set is."

Bast pursed her lips. "Sadie can't summon another portal. It would overextend her powers. I don't have the talent. And you, Carter...well, your abilities lie elsewhere. No offense."

"Oh, no," he grumbled. "I'm sure you'll call me next time you need to boomerang some fruit bats."

"Besides," Bast said, "when a portal is used, it needs time to cool down. No one will be able to use the Washington Monument--"

"For another twelve hours." Carter cursed. "I forgot about that."

Bast nodded. "And by then, the Demon Days will have begun."

"So we need another way to Arizona," Carter said.

I suppose he didn't mean to make me feel guilty, but I did. I hadn't thought things through, and now we were stuck in Washington.

I glanced at Bast out the corner of my eye. I wanted to ask her what the men at the Louvre had meant about her leading us to ruin, but I was afraid to. I wanted to believe she was on our side.

Perhaps if I gave her a chance, she'd volunteer the information.

"At least those magicians can't follow us," I prompted.

Bast hesitated. "Not through the portal, no. But there are other magicians in America. And worse...Set's minions."

My heart climbed into my throat. The House of Life was scary enough, but when I remembered Set, and what his minions had done to Amos's house...

"What about Thoth's spellbook?" I said. "Did we at least find a way to fight Set?"

Carter pointed to the corner of the room. Spread out on Bast's raincoat was Dad's magic toolbox and the blue book we'd stolen from Desjardins.

"Maybe you can make sense of it," Carter said. "Bast and I couldn't read it. Even Doughboy was stumped."

I picked up the book, which was actually a scroll folded into sections. The papyrus was so brittle, I was afraid to touch it. Hieroglyphs and illustrations crowded the page, but I couldn't make sense of them. My ability to read the language seemed to be switched off.

Isis? I asked. A little help?

Her voice was silent. Maybe I'd worn her out. Or maybe she was cross with me for not letting her take over my body, the way Horus had asked Carter to do. Selfish of me, I know.

I closed the book in frustration. "All that work for nothing."

"Now, now," Bast said. "It's not so bad."

"Right," I said. "We're stuck in Washington, D.C. We have two days to make it to Arizona and stop a god we don't know how to stop. And if we can't, we'll never see our dad or Amos again, and the world might end."

"That's the spirit!" Bast said brightly. "Now, let's have a picnic."

She snapped her fingers. The air shimmered, and a pile of Friskies cans and two jugs of milk appeared on the carpet.

"Um," Carter said, "can you conjure any people food?"

Bast blinked. "Well, no accounting for taste."

The air shimmered again. A plate of grilled cheese sandwiches and crisps appeared, along with a six-pack of Coke.

"Yum," I said.

Carter muttered something under his breath. I suppose grilled cheese wasn't his favorite, but he picked up a sandwich.

"We should leave soon," he said between bites. "I mean...tourists and all."

Bast shook her head. "The Washington Monument closes at six o'clock. The tourists are gone now. We might as well stay the night. If we must travel during the Demon Days, best to do it in daylight hours."

We all must've been exhausted, because we didn't talk again until we'd finished our food. I ate three sandwiches and drank two Cokes. Bast made the whole place smell like fish Friskies, then started licking her hand as if preparing for a cat bath.

"Could you not do that?" I asked. "It's disturbing."

"Oh." She smiled. "Sorry."

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. It felt good to rest, but I realized the room wasn't actually quiet. The entire building seemed to be humming ever so slightly, sending a tremble through my skull that made my teeth buzz. I opened my eyes and sat up. I could still feel it.

"What is that?" I asked. "The wind?"

"Magic energy," Bast said. "I told you, this is a powerful monument."

"But it's modern. Like the Louvre pyramid. Why is it magic?"

"The Ancient Egyptians were excellent builders, Sadie. They picked shapes--obelisks, pyramids--that were charged with symbolic magic. An obelisk represents a sunbeam frozen in stone--a life-giving ray from the original king of the gods, Ra. It doesn't matter when the structure was built: it is still Egyptian. That's why any obelisk can be used for opening gates to the Duat, or releasing great beings of power--"

"Or trapping them," I said. "The way you were trapped in Cleopatra's Needle."

Her expression darkened. "I wasn't actually trapped in the obelisk. My prison was a magically created abyss deep in the Duat, and the obelisk was the door your parents used to release me.

But, yes. All symbols of Egypt are concentrated nodes of magic power. So an obelisk can definitely be used to imprison gods."

An idea was nagging at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite pin it down. Something about my mother, and Cleopatra's Needle, and my father's last promise in the British Museum: I'll put things right.

Then I thought back to the Louvre, and the comment the magician had made. Bast looked so cross at the moment I was almost afraid to ask, but it was the only way I'd get an answer. "The magician said you abandoned your post. What did he mean?"

Carter frowned. "When was this?"

I told him what had happened after Bast chucked him through the portal.

Bast stacked her empty Friskies cans. She didn't look eager to reply.

"When I was imprisoned," she said at last, "I--I wasn't alone. I was locked inside with a...creature of chaos."

"Is that bad?" I asked.

Judging from Bast's expression, the answer was yes. "Magicians often do this--lock a god up together with a monster so we have no time to try escaping our prison. For eons, I fought this monster. When your parents released me--"

"The monster got out?"

Bast hesitated a little too long for my taste.

"No. My enemy couldn't have escaped." She took a deep breath. "Your mother's final act of magic sealed that gate. The enemy was still inside. But that's what the magician meant. As far as he was concerned, my 'post' was battling that monster forever."

It had the ring of truth, as if she were sharing a painful memory, but it didn't explain the other bit the magician had said: She endangered us all. I was getting up the nerve to ask exactly what the monster had been, when Bast stood up.

"I should go scout," she said abruptly. "I'll be back."

We listened to her footsteps echo down the stairwell.

"She's hiding something," Carter said.

"Work that out yourself, did you?" I asked.

He looked away, and immediately I felt bad.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just...what are we going to do?"

"Rescue Dad. What else can we do?" He picked up his wand and turned it in his fingers. "Do you think he really meant to...you know, bring Mom back?"

I wanted to say yes. More than anything, I wanted to believe that was possible. But I found myself shaking my head. Something about it didn't seem right. "Iskandar told me something about Mum," I said. "She was a diviner. She could see the future. He said she made him rethink some old ideas."

It was my first chance to tell Carter about my conversation with the old magician, so I gave him the details.

Carter knit his eyebrows. "You think that has something to do with why Mom died--she saw something in the future?"

"I don't know." I tried to think back to when I was six, but my memory was frustratingly fuzzy.

"When they took us to England the last time, did she and Dad seemed like they were in a hurry-like they were doing something really important?"

"Definitely."

"Would you say freeing Bast was really important? I mean--I love her, of course--but worth dying for important?"

Carter hesitated. "Probably not."

"Well, there you are. I think Dad and Mum were up to something bigger, something they didn't complete. Possibly that's what Dad was after at the British Museum--completing the task, whatever it was. Making things right. And this whole business about our family going back a billion years to some god-hosting pharaohs--why didn't anyone tell us? Why didn't Dad?"

Carter didn't answer for a long time.

"Maybe Dad was protecting us," he said. "The House of Life doesn't trust our family, especially after what Dad and Mom did. Amos said we were raised apart for a reason, so we wouldn't, like, trigger each other's magic."

"Bloody awful reason to keep us apart," I muttered.

Carter looked at me strangely, and I realized what I'd said might have been construed as a compliment.

"I just mean they should've been honest," I rushed on. "Not that I wanted more time with my annoying brother, of course."

He nodded seriously. "Of course."

We sat listening to the magic hum of the obelisk. I tried to remember the last time Carter and I had simply spent time like this together, talking.

"Is your, um..." I tapped the side of my head. "Your friend being any help?"

"Not much," he admitted. "Yours?"

I shook my head. "Carter, are you scared?"

"A little." He dug his wand into the carpet. "No, a lot."

I looked at the blue book we'd stolen--pages full of wonderful secrets I couldn't read. "What if we can't do it?"

"I don't know," he said. "That book about mastering the element of cheese would've been more helpful."

"Or summoning fruit bats."

"Please, not the fruit bats."

We shared a weary smile, and it felt rather good. But it changed nothing. We were still in serious trouble with no clear plan.

"Why don't you sleep on it?" he suggested. "You used a lot of energy today. I'll keep watch until Bast gets back."

He actually sounded concerned for me. How cute.

I didn't want to sleep. I didn't want to miss anything. But I realized my eyelids were incredibly heavy.

"All right, then," I said. "Don't let the bedbugs bite."

I lay down to sleep, but my soul--my ba--had other ideas.